Tezos Raised $232M in a Hot Coin Offering, Then a Fight Broke Out - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/tezos-raised-232-million-in-a-hot-coin-offering-then-a-fight-broke-out-1508354704 <comment><USER2> I had been following Tezos closely since November and was really excited about the ICO. But it became incredibly apparent that the Breitmans were dishonest.

Firstly, the compensation structure was ludicrous. Many people were upset about an uncapped ICO -- I thought this was fine, until it became apparent that they would make hundreds of millions of dollars IMMEDIATELY. They have absolutely no incentive to continue the product or work another day in their lives. A huge portion of their new found wealth doesn't have a vesting period or depend on any tangible benchmarks.

Secondly, the background of Tezos is completely revised and modified according to their whims. They claim they had a large team working on the project for 4-5 years full-time. Even a cursory glance exposes that one person worked on Tezos while working full time for a major bank and that the team grew insignificantly 6-12 months before ICO. They even changed their LinkedIn profiles to revert this history.

Lastly, both Arthur and his wife are completely inept socially, or knew they would get rich enough to not give a fuck. I'm not one to judge a person, but its certainly not ideal as a manager and figure-head of a billion dollar project. I didn't even think it mattered until I heard they were incredibly rude to just about everyone in their Slack channel asking the most innocuous questions. I thought it must have been one bad experience. I joined the channel and the very first few words I spoke were met by flaming from Arthur himself. Not a couple hours later, he's raging on another person in the chat room at a time when there might be 100 messages/week. Every interaction he had over the next week oscillated between flaming and get rich memes. Later they would delete channel history and eventually shut them down completely under the guise of "preventing fishing attempts", though I never saw a suspicious link anywhere. Arthur stepped down as President because of these issues, but his wife did not fare much better (although I never interacted with her directly).

The ICO seemed worse than burning money. It would be like giving money to organized crime or the opposition party.

IMO they have no intention of delivering anything, except maybe to save face. If the past is any indication, they don't give a shit about saving face either.

<comment><USER3> > They claim they had a large team working on the project for 4-5 years full- > time.

There are two repositories. A public one and a private one. The Breitmans contracted with an OCaml shop

> They have absolutely no incentive to continue the product or work another > day in their lives.

The article disproves your point. They haven't walked away. I think it's commonly accepted that if you pay someone upfront they either don't do the work or do a shitty job. That isn't always the case.

> I didn't even think it mattered until I heard they were incredibly rude to > just about everyone in their Slack channel

I was there for most of its existence. They weren't rude. He never posted memes and wasn't that active in the chat compared to others and their community manager. It was pretty cool to see him respond to questions, but they were mostly short answers because A) he's busy and B) the questions tend to be quite repetitive because no one reads the white paper.

> Later they would delete channel history and eventually shut them down > completely under the guise of "preventing fishing attempts", though I never > saw a suspicious link anywhere

I was there for the end. Because of the way Slack is setup anyone can join and message other members. The scammers were messaging everyone telling them the ICO started and they should contribute at a fake URL. Because there is a lot of FOMO in this space their strategy works quite well.

The scammers also tried to take control of incoming webhooks. I'm not sure if the configuration was wrong or whatever, but I was quick to point out who was causing the deception. They were banned but the channel was shutdown shortly after that. I can dig up the screenshots if necessary.

> IMO they have no intention of delivering anything, except maybe to save > face. If the past is any indication, they don't give a shit about saving > face either.

The commits on Github prove that isn't true. They have put a lot of work into this blockchain and smart contracts that can be formally verified.

These are a lot of untruths in your comment.

<comment><USER2> > They claim they had a large team working on the project for 4-5 years full- > time.

[https://www.tezos.com/static/papers/Tezos_Overview.pdf](https://www.tezos.com/static/papers/Tezos_Overview.pdf) cites development began in 2014 and with a full staff of 10 core developers. I suppose I misread and was wrongly under the impression that they always had those numbers. But it doesn't change that Arthur and the gang modified their LinkedIn pages after the fact to remove full time employment at their day jobs and replace it with full time employment at Tezos.

> IMO they have no intention of delivering anything...

>> The commits on Github prove that isn't true.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/tezos/comments/7791ex/the_path_forw...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tezos/comments/7791ex/the_path_forward/dok4kx9/)

Yes development continues, but they've downsized the now unnecessary development team to from 10 to 4 and instead are relying on 3 outsourcing shops. They more or less have to spend the money they raised that belongs to the foundation, which requires significant public auditing and transparency while reducing their own involvement and spending their own windfalls as they please. The entire team except the leadership is gone. And now they are removing the head of the foundation.

> They weren't rude.

You're wrong. Arthur made everything conversation personal and used 4chan style name-calling all the time. Really obscene insults flowed from him almost everytime I heard him speak. He used memes to respond to questions he was probably admittedly tired of answering. But the content was ludicrous. They were Shkreli-like get rich or die trying memes. It might have been tounge-in- cheek, but its impossible to tell with him because he couldn't handle a normal conversation.

<comment><USER3> Please post proof of "obscene insults." I find this impossible to believe. Arthur didn't engage in that way on the Slack server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oddly enough, even Reuters picked this up: [https://uk.reuters.com/article/us- bitcoin-funding-tezos-spec...](https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin- funding-tezos-specialreport/special-report-backroom-battle- imperils-230-million-cryptocurrency-venture-idUKKBN1CN35K)

<comment><USER5> Given the amount of money involved that's not so odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's still an interesting project, even if drama like this sucks.

Of course, I'd have preferred to see a technical article about the engineering backing the project. Rather than one about a bad apple making its way to a foundation board member sit and caught self-dealing by the rest of the team. But, it's not the end of the world. I hope people will move on soon. Guy was caught. He has been suspended. I guess his removal is pending modulo some legal process.

That being said, I'm a bit surprised the project hasn't had much more interest from HN readers though. Why is that?

It's going to be one of the largest commercial application of OCaml, alongside Jane Street's. There's lots of cool hacking going on and software engineering challenges associated to it e.g replacing wasteful Proof-of-Work with PoS, hot-swapping protocol upgrades (voted on by stakeholders) safely, figuring out constitutionalism etc. ([https://github.com/tezos/tezos](https://github.com/tezos/tezos)).

Among the thing that I'm most excited about is the inflation-funded innovation.

Every voting cycle, you can submit an amendment to the protocol alongside a potential token issuance (i.e an amount of tokens that will be issued to you if the amendment is accepted). That means you get directly rewarded for the added-value you bring to the protocol.

That's a great positive feedback loop. Right now, I believe that there can only be one amendment approved every cycle. So, the "great engineer quits menial technical job to work on state-of-the-art amendments to the Tezos protocol" scenario isn't quite feasible on the short term horizon. I'd wager that is a limitation that will be eventually engineered out. It has so much potential.

Disclaimer: author donated to the Tezos fundraiser.

<comment><USER7> Do you have Tezos tokens? If so, it's polite to disclose your stake, like on stock investment forums. Promoting an ICO that doesn't have a shipping product is much like promoting a penny stock.

<comment><USER6> I'll edit my post. I have donated what I could afford to donate at the time ($200). Thanks for the heads up.

<comment><USER8> I'm confused. When you say "donated", what does that mean I'm this context? I thought ICOs are something you buy into to own the coins.

And as a follow up, why donate to an org that has $200M+?

<comment><USER6> In early July, the Tezos foundation ran a fundraiser to fund the project's development (R&D, Bizdev, etc.). At the time it did not have funding (or very little). Its current treasury comes from that fundraiser.

It is an "ICO" because in exchange of your donation, the foundation will recommend a token allocation for you in the genesis block. Nothing prevents anyone to create a "concurrent" genesis block with different allocations though. It's just that the chances are people are going to follow the one the foundation recommends.

So, in that sense... it's an ICO. Although not quite like an ERC20 token sale.

<comment><USER9> lol. I love how careful you are with your words. You know the SEC doesn't care how it's phrased, right? It's substance over form. Basically, "if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck".

<comment><USER6> I'm actually describing the process, which is what OP asked. I figured that the SEC doesn't seek legal advice from randos on HN.

<comment><USER9> That's true, that's true. However to other randos reading HN who may read your comment and take your word for how Tezos' ICO is different than the rest: it's not. Please do your due diligence and ask yourself if you actually want to send money to a couple that has no track record, no product, who is fighting with its development foundation, and whose plan is to re-implement an idea that isn't even proven to be useful yet ("decentralized turing-complete smart contracts").

Typically with securities, there is a bar of quality to meet before you are allowed to sell it, but in this case there is not. So we all need to be as honest and helpful as possible so that investors who don't know any better don't get scammed by those who are claiming to change the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At this point I wonder if people will soon be doing ICOs and then skipping the country. Why are people investing in random things at such a ridiculous rates just because they are cryptocurrency based? You invest in things hoping it pays off for you, not handing out free "money". The Mafia must be envious.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a list of ICO's that delivered on their initial promises (or even a substantial fraction of them)?

<comment><USER3> It requires a great deal of time and resources to develop blockchain software because everything has to be built up front. Doing an upgrade is not easy because nodes can choose not to upgrade and fork instead. Also, bugs mean people lose money and consequently faith in the project.

Tezos intends to solve the contentious fork problem by incorporating the governing structure into the protocol. Whether this works better than what is currently happening in the Bitcoin community remains to be seen.

Back to your initial question. Ethereum is a good example, but most of the ICO's that raised money recently won't launch until 2018-2019 at the earliest. In fact, some of them have innovation gaps. It's a long road.

<comment><USER9> > Ethereum is a good example

How? I have yet to see anything useful built with it. Except for more ICOs whose use for now is moot, what problem does Ethereum successfully solve today that makes you say it delivered on its promises?

<comment><USER11> [https://lunyr.com/](https://lunyr.com/) is a pretty cool project that I've been following. It's in alpha stages now.

Edit: I also have some of their tokens

<comment><USER12> "decentralized" wikipedia with a flat UI that requires 1.5Mb .js just for the landing page and running either a full eth node or a half-assed chrome extension (and hence isn't available on mobile).

As Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia says, "If everyone reading this donated $20, we would only have to fundraise for one day a year". Sounds like that would be a better way to spend money rather than on a vaporware pre-alpha token

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Better coverage in Reuters: [1]

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-funding-tezos- spe...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-funding-tezos- specialreport/special-report-backroom-battle-imperils-230-million- cryptocurrency-venture-idUSKBN1CN35K)

<comment><USER2> > The Breitmans had also hired Strange Brew Strategies, a U.S. communications > company, to promote their project, and Reuters wrote a news story on May 5 > about Draper's involvement.

> In pitching the story to Reuters, John O'Brien, a principal of Strange Brew, > had made claims about Tezos' progress. He wrote: "The applications of Tezos, > ranging from derivatives settlement to micro-insurance, are real and > recognized by industry giants. Ernst & Young, Deloitte, LexiFi, etc. have > adopted Tezos in their development environments and labs."

> On Oct. 3, a spokeswoman for the accounting firm Ernst & Young told Reuters: > "The statement is not correct. EY has not adopted Tezos." A spokesman for > Deloitte said Tezos' code is "one of many technologies we're considering" > with blockchain, but it's "still early stage and we haven't used the > technology for a client project."

> Jean-Marc Eber, CEO of the French software company LexiFi, said, "The > sentence, as stated, isn't accurate and unfortunately exaggerated, to say > the least." While there had been "informal contacts," he said, "at this > stage, LexiFi has not adopted Tezos' technology in its development > environment or labs."

Jesus.

<comment><USER13> That's grist for the SEC enforcement mill.

Understand how the SEC works. They're complaint-driven. After a few "I lost money on Zowiecoin after they didn't do what they said they'd do" complaints, a case gets assigned to a staff investigator. They dig up the obvious stuff quickly, and if it looks like there's enough bad stuff, the slow process of doing something to the people behind Zowiecoin starts moving forward. The SEC announces about two enforcement actions a day.

We'll start seeing SEC actions once ICOs crash and there are angry investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Primary non-paywalled source: [https://medium.com/@arthurb/the-path-forward- eb2e6f63be67](https://medium.com/@arthurb/the-path-forward-eb2e6f63be67)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've read half the article and still don't know what a Tezos is.

<comment><USER16> I skimmed their white paper[1] and saw this beauty:

> In order to reduce uncertainty regarding the monetary mass, addresses > showing no activity for over a year (as determined by timestamps) are > destroyed along with the coins they contain

It is, however, followed by this footnote:

> (inactive addresses will no longer lose their funds after one year as > initially proposed in the white paper, they will only lose their staking > rights until they become active again. What it means is that if an address > is inactive, it will not be selected to create blocks (which would slow down > the consensus algorithm), and it will not be allowed to vote until it is > reactivated (to avoid uncertainty about participation rate).

1\. [https://www.tezos.com/static/papers/white_paper.pdf](https://www.tezos.com/static/papers/white_paper.pdf)

Edit: Added footnote

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's easy to penalize hoarded money. The hard part is penalizing _substantively_ hoarded money. If I just make sham exchanges back and forth between some ring of addresses that I own, then we're right back to square one.

Does it do anything to distinguish sham transactions from real ones? Or have any theory about the difference? If not, then it's not doing anything novel.

(I know you're not the advocate of this, just a general reply to technical solutions to low money velocity.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> New messenger [https://ico.echat.io/](https://ico.echat.io/) with crypto

</comment><comment><USER19> Does it really take 232M to make a formally verifiable smart contract language?

<comment><USER3> When money flows freely you raise what you can. It's more than just verifiable smart contracts though. With money comes the ability to do a lot of research and lots of independent projects.

Take a look at the stuff Ethereum is researching. Watch one of Vitalik's talks on YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can bypass the paywall with this link, [https://outline.com/WthVfn](https://outline.com/WthVfn)

</comment><comment><USER21> After the ICO, I started trying to figure out who was on the board of the Tezos Foundation. I found it strange that there was very little info about who was on a three person board that controls hundreds of millions of dollars. What I found was that one person seems to be a company formation agent, Mr. Schmitz-Krummacher. Another is, Gevers, who is now being accused of self- dealing by Arthur Breitman. And the third is a virtually unknown software engineer named Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons.

I'm assuming that Diego Pons is a friend of Arthur's because they are both from France and both lived in NYC. I also have a hunch that there is a secret agreement in writing in place that compels Mr. Schmitz-Krummacher to vote according to someone else's wishes, perhaps Mr. Pons. If there is such an agreement in place, hopefully Mr. Pons is staying loyal to Arthur Breitman.

Handing over 200-400 Million to a three person foundation that is 1/3 company formation agent, 1/3 alleged crook, and 1/3 random software engineer seems like it may not have been the best idea after all. But the reason for this is probably to take advantage of the lack of know your customer laws in Switzerland.

[https://forums.tezos.community/t/who-is-running-the-tezos- fo...](https://forums.tezos.community/t/who-is-running-the-tezos- foundation/649)

<comment><USER22> What's the logic behind having a secret agreement in writing?</comment></comment>


An Interview with the Old Man of Floating-Point (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ieee754status/754story.html

<comment><USER2> For those looking for more details visit dr Kahan home page at [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/)

For example: [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ARITH_17U.pdf](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/ARITH_17U.pdf) explains what gradual underflow is.

And for Excel haters: [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/Mind1ess.pdf](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/Mind1ess.pdf) :-)

<comment><USER3> Don't forget the floating-point walkthrough from the ever-lovable Ridiculous Fish:

[http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/float.html](http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/posts/float.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is always a great read. I think most programmers fail to realize what a hellish nightmare floating-point arithmetic was and still could be if not for the amazing work of Kahan and his colleagues and a lot of luck that allowed this standardization process to be one of the most successful ones ever.

<comment><USER3> I have heard programmers complain about the hellish nightmare of IEEE754 floating-point arithmetic. I'd heard it was a compromise between reliability and implementability, but I hadn't know until know how far it pushed towards reliability, or how much more of a hellish nightmare pre-754 floating point must have been.

<comment><USER5> 754 arithmetic is not really hellish; it's quite easy to use correctly _if one can be bothered to learn how it works_. The trouble that most programmers run into is that they can't be bothered, and assume that it works just like arithmetic over the reals (which they typically don't really understand either).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This part is interesting:

> "If better precision, directed roundings, and exception handling > capabilities latent in hardware but linguistically inaccessible remain > unused, their mathematically provable necessity will not save them from > atrophy. The new C9X proposal before ANSI X3J11 is a fragile attempt to > insinuate their support into the C and C++ language standards. It deserves > the informed consideration of the programmers it tries to serve, not > indifference."

And it's now 2013 and directed roundings and exception handling largely remain linguistically inaccessible. C99 did add them, but they remain fragile. And most other languages haven't added them. It seems that the programming community has largely settled on indifference.

<comment><USER7> This is sadly true. If you want to do reliable floating-point computations beyond +, * and / with round-to-nearest (and even that isn't easy, since for example the use of x87 instructions can result in the wrong precision), the only portable solution is still to use a software implementation such as MPFR. Which is a shame because you're letting all that fast silicon go to waste.

<comment><USER5> Even if all the basic operations were fully specified and implemented identically on all architectures, you would still have a noticeable performance vs. reproducibility tradeoff across architectures for "real computation". For example, different architectures have different numbers of registers and different cache hierarchies, which favors different access patterns in a fast matrix multiplication; thus linear algebra routines that attempt to be as fast as possible will necessarily group the arithmetic operations differently, which leads to different results even if individual arithmetic operations are guaranteed to be identical.

It's not insurmountable, but it's a thornier problem than it looks at first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am familiar with Kahan from his excellent low-error floating point summation algorithm:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahan_summation_algorithm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahan_summation_algorithm)

<comment><USER4> Compensated summation (aka Kahan summation) is a great algorithm. Interestingly, pairwise summation [1] is almost as accurate as the compensated algorithm, while being nearly as fast as naïve linear scanning summation. This makes it a great default summation algorithm since it does so well in terms of both accuracy and performance.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairwise_summation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairwise_summation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Almost every year, I reread the famous Goldberg paper, What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating Point Arithmetic[1]. And with every time I'm more astonished at how the hell can anyone do anything nontrivial with floats and _trust_ it.

[1] [http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.ht...](http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html)

<comment><USER4> This is the reason that support for changing rounding modes is so incredibly important for numerical reliability. One of the best ways to assess if your algorithm is numerically stable is to try it in all the rounding modes. If all of the answers are similar, you're probably doing ok. If they're wildly different, you may be computing complete nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Remember the bad old days of IBM big iron base _sixteen_ floating-point, which could gratuitously cost you up to three significant bits? Thank goodness those are gone.

</comment><comment><USER11> And to this day, most FPUs I've worked with don't support gradual underflow in hardware. They can only get 754 compliance with OS assistance.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean? Intel/AMD FPUs suport it in microcode, but it is somewhat slow. But the OS is not involved.

<comment><USER11> Good thing I hardly ever work with x86 (Power and ARM primarily)

<comment><USER5> ARM VFP supports gradual underflow. NEON also supports it on arm64. Most Power implementations that aren't Cell BE do as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


That Fingerprint Sensor on Your Phone Is Not as Safe as You Think - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/technology/fingerprint-security-smartphones-apple-google-samsung.html <comment><USER2> Yes, we know. [1][2]

\--

[1]: [https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6450_-_de_- _saal_1_-_201412272...](https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6450_-_de_- _saal_1_-_201412272030_-_ich_sehe_also_bin_ich_du_-_starbug) (German)

[2]: [https://media.ccc.de/v/dg49-biometrie](https://media.ccc.de/v/dg49-biometrie) (German)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sigh. I clicked, hoping to learn something. But in the fourth paragraph I read:

 _The researchers did not test their approach with real phones_

That's when I stopped.

What, nobody at NYU or Michigan State could afford to buy some "real phones" to check out their theories???

What fucking bullshit!!!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, exactly. "Did not test with real phones" is journalist code for "does not actually work in reality, but why throw away a perfectly good headline?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, if it weren't for the finger print sensor I'd still be passwordless. I can't imagine I'm alone on that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Keep in mind also that the giving of fingerprints is considered non- testimonial. You can be forced to give up your fingerprints, but in a criminal prosecution you cannot be forced to answer questions such as, "what is your password?" The heightened security thought to be obtained by cloaking a phone with a fingerprint is thus easily removed.

<comment><USER7> I hope that soon a 'duress fingerprint' option is implemented; the simplest way is that you enroll one finger to be your duress finger. When you scan that one, the phone will require a password to unlock it (even if rebooted)

<comment><USER8> "Please extend your right index finger"

Cop presses your finger to phone.

<comment><USER7> So keep your right index finger as the duress finger if you are high risk, or just use the duress finger as soon as you see police. Not 100% effective, but nothing is.

<comment><USER8> This is from the "I'll just stun them with a triple spin kick" school of activist fantasy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Fingerprint scanners have always had security issues.

2\. They replicated nothing.

3\. Why nyt?

<comment><USER10> I think the Master Print technique is an novel approach to biometric cracking — closer to the statistical techniques used to defeat passwords, right?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice for some possible founders in a (semi-)unique situation? - <AUTHOR>

So, my friend and I have had (what we think is) an awesome idea for a product. We want to start a company off of it. However, here's the big catch: he's 18 and I'm 14. We're still in high school. Obviously there are some legal concerns because of that, so if you could provide some general counsel off that, that would be awesome. I also have two specific questions:
My first question is whether to file jointly or have him file singly, then immediately hire me and give me 50%. (Apparently there are greater risks to the former.)
My second question is not-so-unique. We've been in touch with an awesome designer who wants in on it, but he lives out of the country. Are there any specific concerns we should think about before actually hiring him? <comment><USER2> For some reason my previous comment got killed. Let's try again (with some edits for conciseness, and a mixup of the ages).

1\. I think incorporation is too premature. All you guys have is an idea. Its the product that you build that actually matters. While it's a good idea for you guys to come to a basic agreement as to how you guys will divide equity/responsibilities in the future, it is too premature for any contracts to get signed now. For all you know, a year from know the product/idea/team could have imploded; not incorporating means you guys would not have any paperwork to deal with (nor wasted money).

First, build a minimum viable product, then launch it, then see what traction you guys are getting, while iterating. If you guys think you have something, then start a company.

2\. I am also very concerned because it sounds like you guys also have school to deal with (you seem to have several more years to go), which will make it very difficult for you guys to commit to making your product a success. Postponing college is an option for the 18 year old (taking a few years off), but if the 18 year old takes a leave of absence from college or otherwise postpones college while you still stay in high school, you guys will run into issues where you're contributing less than the other. I honestly think it will be nearly impossible to juggle school and work while also out-competing people who do not have school to worry about. As you can see, there are a whole host of issues you guys need to think through. Or maybe you've skipped a few grades and I don't know it.

3\. A guy you met on the internet (and have never/barely worked with, and have barely interacted with, and have never met face-to-face, and otherwise don't really know personally) is not a potential co-founder. What if it turns out that he's really flaky/lazy/abrasive/rude/generally bad? He is an unknown quantity. It also complicates things quite extensively because you guys have probably never had to manage someone (club leadership does not count). You are better off hiring him as a contractor for now (and in the process gauge his skills and his communication skills and also in the process improve your own project management skills).

If you do go ahead with incorporation:

1\. Get parents involved (see if your parents know or are friends with any lawyers who are familiar with incorporation or equity issues).

I am not intimately familiar with how equity is dealt with for minors, but I would wildly guess that a parent of the 14 year old would have to sign all legal documents for that 14 year old and also hold board seats/other contractually significant positions. However, a trust or custodial account might be able to be set up for the 14 year old. I am not sure about this.

<comment><USER3> Speaking from the point of view of someone who is the current position and has been for the last few years, as long as the health concerns of sleep deprivation do not bother you, number two does not have to be a concern.

To the OP, the biggest issue I had was bank accounts, many services wanted business bank accounts, which was a nightmare for the 14 year old me to try and convince them to give me. In the end I settled for an account with only a checkbook tied to it. I agree with what argonaut, before you make this official 'test the waters' and see if it has the traction that would be worth risking your education for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My advice -

1\. Start building the product. Once you have a minimum viable product, show it around. Get some potential customers on board (even if its for free). Have them test it out and see that it actually works.

2\. Step 2 would be incorporation. With this, I would say get some legal help.

3\. How long have you known the designer? Have you worked with him before?

\- Get a contract in place. Make sure you own all the assets he creates. You can find a "Freelance Contract Agreement" online.

\- Pay him on an hourly/monthly basis. Or give him some small equity...but if you don't know him very well, don't make him a partner or co-owner. (not sure if this is what you were considering)

\- Get all the assets he creates for your product. This includes photoshop/illustrator files. You never know when you might need to switch designers and you don't want to start all over again.

\- Set up a schedule that works for you and him. That way there is some level of accountability and stability in getting work delivered

\- Start with a couple of smaller projects, like maybe the logo or buttons, to figure out a good working pattern.

Edit: Updated formatting

</comment><comment><USER5> Depending on what you're doing I don't think you should worry too much about the legal structure. Focus instead on building a killer product and actually getting it built -- this is the hardest part and is most likely to mess you up, not disputes over company ownership.

Even if there are disputes, disputes + shipping are better than not shipping and no disputes.

If you have parents who are into this, one thing you could do is ask them to hammer all of this out for you and just put your heads back down and keep hacking.

Also, managing a remote worker is really hard, even moreso since you are so young and likely don't have much experience with it. I would try to avoid this if you can, or at the very least figure out a way to keep working asynchronously. This is a very hard problem though.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't bet anything but your time and sweat on it until you have proved you can make money with it. Don't think you've come up with something so revolutionary that you can't possibly tell anyone. Build as much as you can before you show anyone. Words are cheap. You don't need a designer yet. Don't spend much time worrying about what will happen when you are the next Facebook. 99.9999% chance that won't happen... Spend your time making a better product. If it is huge, you'll have time to work out that other stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> Get your parents involved. Don't bring anyone in just yet. You are young and have not dealt with too many evil people. Overall, have fun. This is your chance to do something few eer get to enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just build it!

Don't worry about all the other distractions. You might works on it for a week then find the reason why nobody else has done it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sign a short letter agreeing to terms and put off incorporation until you have revenues. And do the design work yourself.</comment>


Scientists' warnings about climate change have intensified - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/a-scary-year-for-climate-change/ <comment><USER2> > "Again and again, the same message," she tweeted recently. "Listen to the > scientists, listen to the scientists. Listen to the scientists!"

And the mainstream media keeps reporting this while completely ignoring the scientists.

<comment><USER3> (Climate) Scientists aren't actually that helpful in proposing solutions, just predicting how screwed we are if we do nothing.

Moving from fossil fuels is actually quite hard. There is nothing to replace oil as fuel for global trade (i.e. fuel for airliners, cargo ships, long-haul trucking). There are tens of thousands of petroleum-based products without an obvious replacement. The environmental movement is still spreading FUD on nuclear (the only non-carbon emitting power source along with hydro and geothermal), preferring to push solar and wind even though those need natural gas backup to be viable.

At this point it's probably more practical to start planning for mitigations to climate change effects.

<comment><USER4> This is utter nonsense. There are things that are hard to replace, but all of what you talk about is being studied by scientists extensively. Obviously not climate scientists, becasue, duh, they are experts on cimate, not on long haul shipping.

But renewables are scientifically a solved problem (all the predictions on the long term technological development of renewables also turned out to be far far to conservative). For the last 10% or so you need synthetic gas for long term storage of energy, but actually with the electrification of the heating sector, it turns out that nuclear would need synthetic gas for long term storage, too, for economic reasons.

Further, it is is clear that a lot of R&D is still required, but again, environmental economists have discussed in detail that the best way to incentivize the R&D spending required would have been a solid carbon tax.

The problem is not the lack of solutions, the problem is the lack of political will to implement them. It's disruptive, powerful lobbies have been funding climate denialism for decades, and people are unwilling to suffer even a minimal drop in living standards in order to stop climate change.

The technical hurdles are all doable, but whether we as a species can collectively act on the knowledge that we collectively have is an open question. It's the hardest question, and it's infused with ideological battles on all sides. The US can't even operate an efficient public health system. It accepts enormous inefficiencies and human suffering for ideological reasons. And that's for its own citizens. Climate change will affect the poorest countries most.

<comment><USER3> >But renewables are scientifically a solved problem

I don't think so. Whenever there is huge investment in solar and wind, you see a comparable investment in natural gas to bridge the intermittency issues (e.g. Germany). That isn't a solved problem. That solar and wind require huge amounts of rare earth minerals, have huge land-use requirements, and are largely unrecyclable, is not a solved problem.

>For the last 10%

You sure that shouldn't be the 'last 50%'?

>so you need synthetic gas for long term storage of ener

These discussions always seem to go this way. When presented with major challenges to large scale deployments of solar and wind, an unproven, unavailable or unworkable workaround is propsed. No, synthetic gas is not a solution, just like pumped/gravity or Li-ion storage isn't either.

>The technical hurdles are all doable

To be clear, this is an expression of hope for the future (after more R&D), and not reality today, correct? Today, we don't have a way to fully move off of fossil fuels.

>It's disruptive, powerful lobbies have been funding climate denialism

There are powerful lobbies all over the place. For example, did you know that natural gas companies are one of the biggest lobby groups for solar and wind deployments? Why is that?

<comment><USER5> That's a good summary of all the arguments made by the people who denied it was happening while talking to any audience that would buy that line when they're talking to slightly more sophisticated rubes.

But it's not based in facts, it's just a collection of false talking points.

No one who brings up rare earth in these discussions cares about that issue. Usually they don't even understand or care why they're called rare earths.

But people are still denying it's even happening, others are arguing it's a good thing so we should expect people to trot out well rehearsed lies on the proposed solutions too.

I don't understand why anyone would want to do that, but again it's plainly clear that's what's happening and pretending it's not isn't going to help anything.

The benefit of the doubt has been sorely abused by the "skeptics" in this matter, and now they want to be "skeptical" of the solutions to the problem they claimed didn't exist.

Well mark me down as "skeptical" of these so-called skeptics.

In particular this line about the evil gas lobby being behind the push for solar and wind is the most cynical lie I've heard in a long time.

<comment><USER3> >But it's not based in facts, it's just a collection of false talking points

That's not true and unfair. Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I want somebody to walk me through what a end-goal for our ideal energy mix is, preferably without casually throwing it that we just need to create a new exotic battery technology. The most hopeful proposals always put in something in the fine-print like burning some carbon-emitting fuel, like 'biofuels' (i.e. burning garbage or corn) to work around intermittency issues of solar and wind. That's how I got disillusioned with solar(and wind) being the answer to climate change. Then there's Germany (and California to a lesser extent), huge economic regions that are a great test bed for large-scale deployments. Germany is signing multi-decade deals to build NEW pipelines to ship natural gas and isn't expected to be carbon free until 2060s (i.e. never). Both Germany and California are importing fossil fuel-based electricity from neighbours to plug holes in their grids. Meanwhile, France is basically carbon-free for energy generetion, without much solar and wind.

Also, you haven't actually said which part is wrong. Just that it's wrong. Can you make an effort?

>No one who brings up rare earth in these discussions cares about that issue.

I think there's a level of hopeful and overly positive thinking around what solar panels can be to the point where it is cult-like. Why can't you be skeptical of solar energy? I'm not denying climate change, or the need to minimize carbon emissions. I'm skeptical of solar and wind as a modality for that change.

There are major challenges with scaling solar deployments past a certain point due to the fact that solar energy is highly diffuse, intermittent and variable (across seasons and years).

I agree, the material requirements are a secondary consideration, but let's be clear, if you're going to scale solar to being something like 50% of global energy mix, those are important considerations.

>But people are still denying it's even happening

There are people like that, but they aren't the problem because we don't have a real solution anyway. The people that are spreading FUD on nuclear are the real problem. If Western world doubled-down on nuclear power to the same level as France in the 60s and 70s think of the trillions of tons of CO2 that would not have been emitted. So is the anti-nuke movement or conservative climate change denials that is worse for climate change?

<comment><USER4> > That's not true and unfair.

I believe you are genuine, but also the information you present is miles from the reality in Germany and Europe, and the state of research in the field in general.

> Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I want somebody to walk me > through what a end-goal for our ideal energy mix is, preferably without > casually throwing it that we just need to create a new exotic battery > technology.

Until 80% the carbon optimal mix is Gas + Renewables. For the last 20% you need to start producing the Gas from excess energy during times when renewables outstrip demand.

Also, gas is incredibly much better for carbon footprint than coal, so in the short term replacing coal with gas makes a lot of sense.

And again, there are no unproven technologies in this scenario. Everything exists and exists today. It just makes no sense to start generating gas from renewables until you have many periods where renewables outstrip demand.

Finally, again, for economic reasons it starts making sense to do the same (turn excess production into gas) for nuclear as well [2]. It also is obvious that Germany fucked up with getting out of nuclear when they did.

The intermittency issues you claim also don't really exist as such in todays grid. What's your source for that? In Germany the amount of balancing energy used to combat intermittency has been _declining_ for years [1]. They have congestion issues, but that is again a political rather than a technical issue (if you can't get people to accept power lines in their backyards, good luck with building nuclear power plants).

European grid stability has generally been improving with the build out of renewables (and blackouts are ten times more common in the US than in Germany). This is often said to be related to the improved coordination in the European system.

A number of authors have mapped out different aspects of the transition towards 100% systems [3]. But again, we already have 100% systems on islands today. So your claim that no one knows how to build them is manifestly wrong. There are plenty of problems with transitioning or scaling, but there is no fundamental mystery about any of this.

For the 100% scenario the work of Greiner for example explicitly is built around tackling the question of transmission vs storage, taking all sorts of variability into account [4]. You can always quibble with the assumptions, with the level of modeling, etc. But none of this is entirely new. We have had reports maping out the 100% scenarios for years, with a number of different options. (Last relatively excentric one I saw advocated building electrolysis platforms powerd by windfarms offshore and directly transporting gas into the gas system, I would class that as a technological challenge, even if there isn't anything fundamentally unproven about the technology).

And again, look at what happened with solar. Our knowledge of running and building these systems will increase dramatically as we build them. There is no indication to me that we are not capable of doing so _if there was sufficient political will_. And that last part is what's truly hard.

Of course then we still have to face the hard problems: Industry and agriculture....

[1] [https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp- content/uploads/ausschreib...](https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp- content/uploads/ausschreibungen-regelenergie-q2-2019.png)

[2] [https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of- proof.html](https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of-proof.html)

[3] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032118307913)

[4] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Just a note: I appreciate that you took the effort to post the links you did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are there any compelling papers or presentations on the impact and science of climate change? Virtually all reporting presents/qualifies it as 'what scientists say'. Since the convention in journalism is to create doubt for the reader by phrasing something as 'person _says_ ' I find these articles easy to ignore.

<comment><USER7> You could do worse than read an IPCC report - [https://www.ipcc.ch/](https://www.ipcc.ch/) \- which aims to distil the agreed impacts. In aiming to present only that which is most certain they err on the side of benign conservatism, which has attracted criticism.

A more readable view on possible impacts, which is the result of one journalist's attempt to understand the science, is David Wallace Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth. Whilst well cited throughout he may have included studies and impacts that are less concrete.

For a balanced presentation BBC's Climate Change - The Facts with David Attenborough gives all you should need in an hour.

<comment><USER8> Reminder that every single sentence in the IPCC report must be approved unanimously by a panel of government-appointed authors from various countries, including e.g. Saudi Arabia. Therefore IPCC reports are to be considered as quite conservative (the seriousness of the situation is often leveled down).

Nonetheless, that's what makes them an irrefutable source. Anyone discrediting the IPCC reports findings can and should be dismissed immediately from the discussion.

<comment><USER9> []

<comment><USER7> Being an intergovernmental body, they also include representatives from the oil states and administrations who are "wilfully unconvinced" by any science that might impact profit or industrial dominance. Yet IPCC reports still require unanimity.

Here's a report of Saudi leading a push to tone down reports to protect their oil interests, which I see as substantively different to _making a mistake:_

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth- insight/2014/m...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth- insight/2014/may/15/ipcc-un-climate-reports-diluted-protect-fossil-fuel- interests)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something worth noting that likely gets ignored regarding the topic of climate change. Some of the population really doesn't care if the world becomes inhabitable for humans after they die. As an optimist I've observed this outlook and I think it's because quality of life has actually diminished from the visibility of social media and rising cost of homes. I could be wrong on the cause but the original problem exists and I wonder if society needs to improve for the mid to lower classes before people have the desire to help in the protests.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I think a lot of these things go in 4 year cycles, with the American elections.

Not to dismiss climate change-- it's a real issue-- but the publicity around it is certainly tied to politics.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, it seems to last 1-2 years, so I really only trust the news about 50-75% of the time, less if there's ongoing political drama. The less I hear from politicians in the news, the more I trust the news, which is sad...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Propaganda of global proportions

<comment><USER4> Yeah, because the damn environmentalists have all the power to impose their views on the unsuspecting, well meaning, oil giants and global corporations. If only those oil giants and their allies had pushed back early enough, maybe the truth could have won out!

Well, reality check, in the 90s the GOP and even the oil giants accepted the reality of and scientific consensus on global warming, but with sufficient funding from interested parties, they were able to stave of decisive action for decades, netting them many many billions.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmS0exb7r8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmS0exb7r8)

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland- examin...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how- the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> With the human population growing exponentially, its a certainty that we will breeze by the 1.5 degrees limit very soon.

People don't want to give up their cheeseburgers, all excuses are good, and the level of misinformation that goes around the topic of climate change is through the roof.

I'm glad Greta is contributing to informing the general public of the consequences of their choices but people don't want to hear it will take a lifetime to change the behavior of even a small amount of people.

<comment><USER15> Only when Miami is completely underwater and uninhabitable will there be a change of behavior.

<comment><USER14> I bet that still then you will only hear: "it's just a couple of miles near the coast, it's not the end of the world. It's not that bad."

<comment><USER16> I get your point about people being stubbornly ignorant, but I learned this today so I thought I'd throw it out there.

If ocean rising has gotten so bad that Miami is underwater the accompanying acidification of those oceans will have reaped havoc on marine fishing putting 500 million people's food security at risk.

Half a billion people in underdeveloped countries without to a vital part of their diet. Half a billion, and that's just people that rely on fish. Inland people add to the numbers if their farming suffers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We will have overpopulation and environmental crises in the future and they will get explained away mindlessly as being completely caused by climate change, when that may be only a partial or even not significant factor in the events.

Not enough fresh water - climate change! Not the fact that the population increased by a factor of 4, and the local acquifers have been drained.

<comment><USER18> So what is your solution to overpopulation?

<comment><USER17> I dunno, either we lurch from crisis to crisis and possibly end up with an ungovernable world, or look at implementing something like a one child policy in countries with very high population growth (or pressuring them to do so by preventing them from exporting population).

Certainly move the discourse beyond ... so well population is going up, nothing can be done about it.

<comment><USER18> Fertility has already fallen below replacement levels in most of the world. The only exception is Africa however carbon emissions from that part of the world are so small it barely makes a difference. Even if you wanted to focus in on Africa you will find the countries with the highest emissions like South Africa have a fertility rate barely above replacement level.

The reality is nearly all the increases in population are built in already, it's caused by people surviving into old age. The population is going up and nothing can be done about it.

This is why arguments about population are pointless with regards to climate change, we resolved that years ago through education and better health provision.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/blogs/BenWeber/20160314/267956/DeepMind_Challenges_for_StarCraft.php <comment><USER2> Starcraft is a game that is played with mouse and keyboard (or game controller on console). I think in order to say an AI has beat a human, it should have to use the same interface that a human uses. That's part of the definition of the game.

In Go, anyone can place a stone as well as anyone else, it's deciding where to place a stone that's the game. In Starcraft, not everyone can control the interface to the game equally well. Playing Starcraft without using the same interface as humans is like playing baseball with something other than a baseball bat.

Also, I think it's unfortunate that they're choosing Starcraft 1: Brood War (presumably because of API reasons) instead of Starcraft 2, since there are many more top-level players playing sc2 right now to give it a run for its money, with an evolving meta that could more likely adapt and challenge the AI after it wins some matches. SC2 is where the tournaments and money is right now (compared to BW), hence the best players devoting the most time.

<comment><USER3> From the 2015 AIIDE Starcraft AI competition report[0].

> ""Why not StarCraft 2?"

> This is the question we always get asked when we tell people we are doing a > BroodWar AI competition. This competition relies completely on BWAPI as a > programming interface to BroodWar. BWAPI was created by reverse engineering > BroodWar and relies on reading and writing to the program memory space of > BroodWar in order to read data and issue commands to the game. Since any > program that does this can essentially be seen as a map hack or cheat > engine, Blizzard has told us that they don't want us to do anything similar > for StarCraft 2. In fact, most of the StarCraft 2 EULA specifically deals > with not modifying the program in any way. We are happy that Blizzard have > allowed us to continue holding tournaments using BWAPI, and they have also > helped out by providing prizes to the AIIDE tournament, however until their > policy changes we will not be able to do the same for StarCraft 2."

[0] [http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/starcraftaicomp/report...](http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/starcraftaicomp/report2015.shtml)

<comment><USER4> So why not use Matt's version for SC2 that doesn't provide map hacks?

[https://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/GameAIs.html](https://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/GameAIs.html)

<comment><USER3> I imagine it also has something to do with convenience. Being such an old game, the technical requirements are quite low, which allows them to easily have that setup of multiple virtual machines on a few servers. Also, I believe they can use the same CD Key for each instance, and it doesn't require a connection to the internet, reducing variables and potential problems.

That said, it would be cool to see SC2 for this, and maybe we'll see it eventually. But I think Blizzard would have to allow it in the end, considering they've been in direct contact with them about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, anyone who says that advantage in micromanagement is not a big thing should see "Automaton 2000" videos. Given that automaton is a map script and thus can have virtually unlimited APM, it beats people from a horribly disadvantageous positions (40 banelings vs 21 marine [1], or 100 zerglings vs 20 sieged tanks [2]).

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXUOWXidcY0) [2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs)

<comment><USER6> I agree. It's one of only areas the AI's have been hood at. Pathfinding and build orders being other two. AI should be limited to a specific number of actions a minute comparable with opposing player or best human champ. Then, we're grading it on its "thinking" instead of dexterity.

They better keep fog of war on too.

<comment><USER7> Or, the AI could be set up like AlphaGo was: as a computer _giving instructions to_ a merely human player. I'd love to see what a powerful StarCraft AI would do if trained to "predict and compensate for" not only its opponent, but also the inevitable human errors in faithfully executing its strategy. A certain Sector Command and Control Unit springs to mind...

<comment><USER8> A huge amount of Starcraft is the intense APM training regiment that the pros undergo.

APM is a huge indicator of Starcraft "skill". Its not the only thing of course, but winning "micro-battles" greatly changes the game.

I don't care how good Michael Jordan is. He'll never "win" a game of basketball vs a standard professional by shouting commands to an average joe.

Similarly, no average joe will be able to perform a muta-harass while retaining full-speed, taking only a single missile from a Turret. That sort of "micro-skill" takes practice and dexterity.

<comment><USER7> You don't think it'd be interesting to take a player who's already one of the top players, and measure the marginal gains of them doing their own macro+micro, vs. just doing micro and leaving macro to the AI?

<comment><USER9> We can see that now, with the new Archon mode, which allows two players to control the units together.

<comment><USER10> I haven't been following SC2 since HOTS, are they really still trying to achieve feature parity with Brood War?

[http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee](http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee)

<comment><USER9> _I haven 't been following SC2 since HOTS_

Too bad, it's really good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > StarCraft is closed source, making it quite challenging to run simulations. > One of the techniques used by AlphaGo is reinforcement learning, which > involves a huge amount of simulation. In order for DeepMind to overcome this > limitation, it's likely that novel abstractions of the state-space will need > to be developed.

For their atari work, deepmind was using raw pixel data from the screen. You could do something similar for starcraft. I suspect the actual machine learning question is 'given a sequence of n frames of the game, where should i click next? repeat.'

A training set might look something like video of a game with a text file recording X,Y positions for every click and a timestamp that can be synced to the video. They need lots and lots of those.

From there things get drastically more complicated. To go from very unstructured data like that and form higher level representations that can be used for long term planning and strategy... That would be quite a feat.

<comment><USER12> Game replays (including all the fun data like player clicks, unit selection, movements, and exact timing) are stored in an easily parsable format. [https://github.com/GraylinKim/sc2reader/wiki/Replay- Format-H...](https://github.com/GraylinKim/sc2reader/wiki/Replay-Format-Home)

<comment><USER13> This has the immense advantage that there's a large corpus of games available to learn from as well. I don't _think_ Battle.Net saves all games ever (only locally on the computer), there's still many thousands available online.

But man, if Battle.Net _did_ save all of them, there'd likely be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, available. That'd be pretty spectacular as a training set!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Artosis wrote his view on the topic, it's probably worth a read: [http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/15019778/infinite- apm-...](http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/15019778/infinite-apm-artosis- deepmind-starcraft-part-2)

<comment><USER14> It sounds like he has no idea about the machine learning basis of Alpha Go (and therefore presumably any future Starcraft AI) and thinks all this complex decision making has to be programmed in by hand (which would indeed be nigh- impossible).

<comment><USER9> The interesting parts aren't his views of AI (since he doesn't have much knowledge there) but rather his views on the complexities of the game. Because on that topic he is an expert.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the issues to overcome is the advantage machines can have in individual unit manipulations vs what a human can do in terms of APM

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZawUuAccnc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZawUuAccnc)

<comment><USER16> The problem is, as ActionButton argues in this review of Diablo 2 [0], Starcraft is a game that may contain some amount of strategy, but wherein the element of strategy is strongly over-powered by a reflex-based combat system more akin to Street Fighter than anything else.

[0] [http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=518](http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=518)

<comment><USER17> If that was true, then bots would already easily dominate humans, just like they can for fighting games.

But they don't; even moderately competitive players can beat the best bots.

<comment><USER18> "But they don't; even moderately competitive players can beat the best bots."

That's because the programmers are bad at AI for that kind of game. It just means human beings don't understand how to make a good AI for a game like starcraft. AKA the human being being the idiot that doesn't understand how to make one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> DeepMind is becoming a nightmare for South Koreans

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not as optimistic as most seem to be. I think SC adds a completely new layer to the game, that none of the previously learned games had. It's not enough to play the game just by rules that are implied by the pixels.

In chess, go, and even simple atari games, you have a clear way of reading the current state of the game in which the next move will be based on. In SC, this state space includes the predictions of your opponent. What will your opponent build next? What will they try to do with their army? There's an element of theory of mind here, where opponents try to project themselves and preempt each other's moves.

For an AI to truly play and win against a SC pro, using only human level interfaces, it would need to learn how human minds will be playing the game. Otherwise, I think we can expect a strong AI with unconventional tactics that SC pros will be able to fool with tricks and take advantage of because the AI lacks a meta-game capability. A more "general intelligence" would be needed to play at this level, not just a learning algorithm that learns from the pixels on the screen.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think poker would also be a great challenge. It is a special game because as well as the math, you also have to understand your opponent and adjust accordingly. It'd be interesting to see weather DeepMind can beat professional poker players who have different playing styles.

<comment><USER22> Wouldn't that depend on what you want to achieve? To maximize $/h you need to understand your opponents weaknesses and exploit them. But if you just to _beat_ the best humans, and don't care about the margin with which you beat them, then playing a mathematically perfect game should be enough. And before you ask, a mathematically perfect game can incorporate occasional bluffs, and occasional calling of bluffs, this would be known as a Mixed Strategy.

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER23> That's about it for a two player game. Anything with more than two people has more interesting / complicated properties.

<comment><USER22> One very real issue I'd imagine is that two players could cooperate out of ignorance, i.e. either player could do better by deceiving the other, but they are not good enough players to realize that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anybody else think teaching a rapidly evolving strong AI about how to be really good at war might be a bad thing?

<comment><USER23> StarCraft is not war.

<comment><USER25> Maybe they should go for Warcraft?

<comment><USER23> I was tempted to write `StarCraft is not WarCraft.' in the first place, but I managed to resist the pun. Seems like you've yielded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Survey paper below introducing Starcrafy challenges plus all the AI's that failed to conquer humans.

[https://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/87/10/01/PDF/survey.pdf](https://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/87/10/01/PDF/survey.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER26> It would also be interesting to see if DeepMind challenges Dota 2 one day maybe. How they would handle a 5-man team game and adapting to major game updates?

<comment><USER27> I'm more of a LoL guy, but i'd be excited to see this in action. I think it's actually an easier challenge than starcraft - the action space is much smaller and dodging/aiming AI already gives some players extreme advantages (against the TOS of course).

<comment><USER28> IMO the smaller action space/better defined win conditions is outweighed by the greater playstyle diversity: SC has 3 races while League and Dota have 100+ champions to understand the interactions with. How is an AI supposed to know that Tryndamere's ult has a 0.5 second cast time, but can't be interrupted by any CC?

Personally, I think (all else being equal) Dota might be an easier starting point than League because of its focus on item abilities, rather than champion abilities. Anybody can use a BKB in Dota, but in League you have Fiora W, Morg E, and a bunch of other things. You have a smaller set of abilities/effects to worry about.

The dodge/aim AI can be situationally good (Cass bots) but still, the best players do win against scripters. Scripters rarely make it into the elite echelons of the ladder; there's a situation right now with a former pro Korean player who started scripting but couldn't make it back into Master tier. You'd expect a former pro with very in-depth game understanding to play at the very tip top level with some 'aim assist' but it doesn't appear to be the case!

<comment><USER29> This is incorrect as Starcraft has a much larger playstyle diversity than League. Every league game follows the same structure: with very high probability, one player will be top, one middle, and two bottom, with one jungler. Teams will farm with occasional gank attempts until the midgame, where there is a slow transition from farming to objective taking and teamfighting. This is relatively formulaic and easy to learn. In contrast, from the start of the game in starcraft, players can choose from a wide variety of strategies, ranging from early rush strategies (with low and high- tech variants), harass-and-expand strategies, greedy expand strategies, and safe expand strategies. Also, it must also construct a prior over strategies for its opponent that changes by map, as map properties change the viability of certain strategies.

Your example of script-users not attaining high ranking in online play for league of legends is also misguided. Because the action space in league is so much smaller than in starcraft, it is much easier to develop an AI with game strategy competency for league. Combine that AI with perfect mechanics, and human players should be falling very readily.

<comment><USER28> > Every league game follows the same structure: with very high probability, > one player will be top, one middle, and two bottom, with one jungler.

The prevalence of lane swaps (2 go top, 1 goes bottom) in competitive is one major counterexample. In fact, these often turn into having 3 or 4 people in one lane at the start of the game, forcing a fast push strategy.

> Teams will farm with occasional gank attempts until the midgame, where there > is a slow transition from farming to objective taking and teamfighting.

Stereotypical Chinese LoL matches are nearly all teamfights, for better or for worse. Regardless, laning and midgame is where I think you should consider my point of champion diversity as well. Here, mistakes can be more readily mechanically exploited (late game, mistakes are punished strategically), e.g. if a laner is far from baron without TP, exploiting a 5v4 fight is a strategic decision, whereas missing certain skills early on in certain matchups means a severely negative outcome if the opposite laner has the mechanics, e.g. no flash and Q on CD as Lux means any Morgana can flash ult for guaranteed kill. These have a bigger impact than racial considerations and probably make up for map considerations (idk)

The script user example is one of mechanics: top players still win against those with pixel perfect scripted mechanics. This is despite having some scripters having 'game strategy competency' (that might be a real thing, but I interpret it as a player having real game knowledge).

IMO the biggest challenge to a human player playing against a team of 5 AI- controlled players is that of communication; perfect understanding of each others' intent is a far cry from the communication of even practiced teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> An AI with human-like abilities (so no infinite APM for instance) would be great for balance problems in competitive video games. Just run the AI a certain number of times, and if some race or unit always wins the game, there's definitely a problem.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would say Koreans are on supercomputer AI level in this game.

<comment><USER32> StarCraft would indeed be interesting for one of these challenges, however the peak of human skill in this game has already been lost. Tournaments are dwindling, many players have moved on to other games like StarCraft II or retired. The remaining players aren't at the level that they were, say, 5 years ago, when there were two major televised starleagues.

Even if some AI does defeat Flash in 2017, would they have defeated Flash in 2010?

The mechanical skill required for this game means you simply can't come back to the game after a year and resume where you left off. Knowledge and understanding aren't enough, your fingers must be lightning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> When it comes builds: [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/11/02/genetic- algorith...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/11/02/genetic-algorithms- find-build-order-from-hell/)

For micro, there are scripts: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325855)

So, while it may be not easy to conquer humans, I don't see why it is out of our current reach.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm rather suprised there are no player beating ais for starcraft. i dont think it should be very hard as decisions need to be made very quickly in this game and humans are bound to make more than a few mistakes. but perhaps i'm underestimating the problem. it may have something to do with the limitations of the api though.

<comment><USER35> You're underestimating the problem. And there are several:

\- Controlling individual units: scouting, resource gathering, micro- management while attacking/retreating, ...

\- Resource management and planning: knowing when and where to expand, save resources for certain points in the tech tree, e.g. so you can immediately build a bunch of units once a crucial research or building is complete, ...

\- Figuring out what the opponent is building and what he could be doing: where is he and what race, what tech buildings are there, when does he start to harvest gas, key tech buildings may be hidden in other places of the map, essentially even _not_ being attacked with certain units at a certain time may be a clue to some strategy

\- Reading and using the terrain properly: High ground has an advantage, Terran can wall off certain entrances with a depot and a barracks, where would be good places for drops (and with what units), figuring out where the enemy could come from and which places to defend – all those vary by map quite a bit

\- Finding a good strategy to counter what the opponent is doing: This ties into a few of the things above, because first it must be known what the enemy is doing. Keeping the strategy flexible enough to counter the enemy's counters, etc.

Some of those are necessary to solve in real-time (unit movement), some of those can be run in background and don't need to be frame-exact (strategy, etc.), which helps a bit. But there are still quite a few parts to playing the game, all of which are interconnected and require information from other parts. Many successful bots currently are rush bots, which exploit that most bots are weak in the beginning and are easy to create. Others rely on a number of fixed strategies and build orders that are chosen based on what the enemy is observed to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I want to see StarCraft next and then League of Legends/DOTA. The control advantage an AI has in StarCraft is immense. It exists in League of Legends, especially when perfectly coordinating 5 different characters, but it's less impactful.

<comment><USER37> The control required to master SC2 is far beyond any MOBA style game. AI for MOBA games seems trivial compared to AI for a large scale RTS. It's the difference between controlling 1 unit vs 100 units.

<comment><USER36> I don't think I agree with that at all. If you can control 1 unit it's trivial to control 100.

I might argue that the AI vs AI challenge in Starcraft is deeper and more difficult to master. But for AI vs Player the Starcraft AI has an enormous mechanical advantage. Being able to harass mineral lines in four different places is a big deal. Being able to perfectly micro multiple lines of attack/defense is a big deal. It's very unfair and very much in the AI's favor.

Chess < Go < Starcraft < League of Legends

In my moderately educated opinion.

<comment><USER38> > If you can control 1 unit it's trivial to control 100.

Control them, sure-kiting 100 units at a time would be a breeze-but using them together in a coherent way is drastically more difficult.

<comment><USER39> From an above poster: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs)

<comment><USER37> The developer of the AI in this video even states that this AI is applies 300 APM _per unit_. That's 30000 actions per minute. There are simply not enough decisions to make in League of legends to make use of that power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> IMHO it's not artificial intelligence it's just intelligent scripting. A real AI, like a human shouldn't be programmed for something specific but adapt itself to what it encounters.

</comment><comment><USER41> I know bliz doesn't want it, but it would be so much better with sc2.

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe Civ? I guess the single game takes too long but I still would love to see it as default AI is totally crap and relies on handicaps.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is an amazing project. Thank you for that post. I would love to find some teams working on this who are interested in adding junior level engineers.

</comment><comment><USER44> damn bored</comment>


Ask HN: How do you all feel about using recruiters? - <AUTHOR> At least in terms of non-SV locations, it's kind of hard to find more than a few companies looking for rails devs / data engineers. And I'm sure there are companies working on interesting problems, but the thought of those jobs needing a recruiter to fill them kind of turns me off to them. And also the pushiness and lack of domain knowledge is a little annoying to deal with. Any thoughts on the issue? <comment><USER2> I like them. I'm always happy to give a 5-10 min chat to see what the opportunity is.

Sure some are time wasters but overall I'm pleased with the few I've worked with in the past.</comment>


Lesser-Known Dennis Ritchies - <AUTHOR> http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/otherlives.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This one's from the family. Uncle Dennis was particularly proud of his association with the the band "Stale Urine".

</comment><comment><USER2> That link is dead.

Here google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://cm.bell- labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/otherlives.html)</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome plugin that previews stars for GitHub repo links on the page - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexpyzhianov/awesome-star-spy <comment><AUTHOR> Get it here: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/awesome-star- spy/b...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/awesome-star- spy/bbdnhdniecjhlhkenkcgilbpcacjhlap)

A week ago I was browsing this list of zsh plugins [https://github.com/unixorn/awesome-zsh- plugins](https://github.com/unixorn/awesome-zsh-plugins) and I wondered if there was a way to quickly find the best and hottest without visiting each repo's page. I found none, so I've built it myself.

It's a Chrome plugin that uses GitHub API to fetch metadata for each repo it finds on the page and then it shows the results right next to each link. It's opensource and you can find the code here: [https://github.com/alexpyzhianov/awesome-star- spy](https://github.com/alexpyzhianov/awesome-star-spy)

I'd be delighted if someone else finds it useful :) Any feedback is welcome</comment>


Python or Google Go? - <AUTHOR>

Hello. I'm thinking of learning a scripting (kind of) programming language. I already know C, C++, Java, PHP, C#, etc. I learnt Ruby as well for some time.
Now I have 2 choices, Python or Google Go. What you think, for which language I should go?
BTW, I'm working in IT industry as Developer since 2 years. <comment><USER2> What do you mean by "etc" when you list the languages you know?

Python is more widespread than Go. I don't think that Go is proven enough for a production environment, and you'll find many more resources for Python.

Go seems to have potential, though...

I think that right now the best bet would be to learn Python, and later, when Go is more widely used, learn Go.

If you have the time, why don't just learn both?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd say it'd be wise to learn Python instead of going with a language with syntax that you're already extremely familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Could you clarify "IT industry as Developer" for us? How much 'small' development do you do, vs maintenance programming?

Depending on what you're looking for and why you're looking for it, Perl could actually be a better choice. (I am personally in the Python camp, but right tool - right job.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> But wouldn't knowledge of Google Go be beneficial for me when there are less developers for Go than Python?

<comment><USER5> If it's not production quality (and I don't gather it is yet), and it's at alpha state at best (code you write _will_ break, and critical features are still in the planning/development state, like exceptions as I recall), you'd be better picking a production quality language that's more obscure than Python.

I'd recommend Clojure ^_^, at least if you're interested in a good concurrency story, which is one of the major things Go is about. Studying a functional language will do you good; it'll be a bit harder than you're used to at the beginning because you have to learn new ways of doing things, but perhaps easier in the long run and it will teach you vital stuff.

Plus you've perhaps now had enough experience with imperative side effecting languages to really appreciate what functional programming can do for you.

If you're alergic to Lisps, you might try Haskell or ML/OCaml/F#.

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to mention, I have working knowledge of Haskell and LISP. Not worked on any "project" as such, but coded a few things in both. Should I go ahead with functional programming then?</comment></comment></comment>


Re-approaching Color (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://design.lyft.com/re-approaching-color-9e604ba22c88 <comment><USER2> This is an amazing tool.</comment>


Ask YC: Thoughts on iPhone mobile office market - <AUTHOR>

My startup, iTenna, is working on mobile document management for the iPhone.
Specifically, we are solving 2 problems: 1. Enabling access and editing of MS docs on the iPhone / web 2. Providing wireless bi-directional sync across iPhone, computer, web (bye, bye to versioning hell, cables and missing docs)
Our target market is sales and mobile professionals that need synced docs on the go.
We subscribe to MA's product/market fit and would like feedback on the market part of that equation (if iTenna "just works", then the product part should solve itself).
Based on our research, a large segment of early iPhone buyers had used Palm Treos (which has a mobile office app, not wireless bi-directional syncing though).
Is our target market ripe for such an app/service?  Are we solving a real problem?
Thanks in advance.
(btw, if you want to help test, email me at beta at itenna dot net) <comment><USER2> I think theres a need for this. Go for it. I know there are a lot of business- type folks who adopted the iPhone because they wanted it, but still need traditional MS doc syncing and transfer for their day jobs. Apple has never really been very accommodating to business, so if you could satisfy this need it could work well.

What technologies are you using for your iPhone app development?

<comment><AUTHOR> C and Objective-C</comment></comment>


The Collapse: How a top legal firm destroyed itself - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/14/131014fa_fact_stewart?currentPage=all

<comment><USER3> The former chairman (Davis), and the two administrators (DiCarmine, and Sanders) are now facing criminal charges for fraud: [http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/four-ex-dewey- of...](http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/four-ex-dewey-officials- charged-by-manhattan-district-attorney.html).

The Dewey collapse is a fairly typical story of greed, too much leverage, and borrowing against uncertain future earnings destroying a company. Its also a great example of cargo cult thinking. Law firms see their clients merging and think: we need to get bigger too. Thus, there has been a huge trend in law firm mergers the last couple of decades. Yet, law firms as businesses bear almost no resemblance to the sort of traditional companies that benefit from mergers. There's very little economics of scale in a law firm. They have little to no physical capital, and almost all their value is wrapped up in their people, who are only there as long as it suits them.[1] And legal ethics rules penalize larger firms, because they impute conflicts of interest for every lawyer onto the whole firm.

The only value to merging beyond a certain size,[2] is for the managers and administrators, who can use the mergers as an opportunity to funnel more profits up to themselves. At Dewey, Di Carmine and the CFO, two non-lawyer administrators, were making over $2 million per year. They also had golden parachutes and clauses saying they could only be fired if they committed crimes. Their justification for all that was of course the role they played in the merger. Its notable that at lockstep firms, where partner pay is based strictly on seniority, and there is not a huge incentive for partners who take on managerial roles, merger mania has not taken hold.

The collapse is also a wonderful example of how intelligent people can make dumb decisions based on the narratives they create for themselves. Prior to the merger, LeBouef & Lamb was financially sound, while Dewey Ballantine was facing declining revenues. The folks pushing the merger, Davis and the consultants, painted this narrative of LeBouef merging its way into a prestigious brand, and Dewey shoring itself up with a profitable marriage- partner. Of course in hindsight the narrative was ridiculous. The pedigree of the brand wasn't particularly valuable in the end, and LeBouef was not large enough to successfully absorb an ailing firm that was almost as large as itself.

[1] Law firms face a more extreme version of the "talent exodus" problem that plagues tech companies. At a firm, almost all of the value of the business is wrapped up in the partners. If they leave, they take their billings with them and your bottom line is in trouble overnight. The top partners might want to stick with the firm through a rough patch, but they have an enormous game- theoretic incentive to jump ship because if the firm does implode, the folks that don't leave will be left holding the bag.

[2] Practice areas ebb and flow, so you need enough lawyers to support diversified counter-cyclical practices and to be able to cross sell clients internally. The point of diminishing returns for that are probably a quarter of the size Dewey ended up after the merger.

<comment><USER4> There are marketing reasons for law firm mergers. Law firms make money by having the biggest/richest clients who pay multimillion legal bills. The idea is that these clients want to hire the "best" law firms, and they determine the "best" by looking at which firms are the biggest/richest/hired by other big clients. This logic says that if your competitor firm becomes larger, you need to get larger too in order to appear competitive to clients.

In reality clients are probably smart enough to realize bigger != better, but it's not just pure cargo cult thinking that leads to firms trying to stay large.

<comment><USER5> Compare this with the world of advertising, where you have three major holding companies controlling most of the market, but each company runs dozens - <USER2> not hundreds - of independent agencies.

<comment><USER6> It seems remarkably similar. Professional services is professional services. In ad agencies, a star can always walk too.

Does the federated style of these firms minimize the damage from key walkouts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice. Sounds like an average "rainmaker" partner at a law firm clears north of $2mil/year with sign-on bonuses and multi-year contracts; and you can be a prima-donna and complain with the management and throw your weight around.

Very unlike an engineering company where you have to keep your head down and do the work. Good for them.

<comment><USER3> Law firms don't have "management" like a typical company. Partners are shareholders, not employees, and the power structure is based on who originates the most business, not on who holds what title. "Management" can be a pretty thankless job under those circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty interesting and humorous write up about the e-mails between the financial leaders of the firm: [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-06/law-firm- ac...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-06/law-firm-accountants- were-bad-at-accounting-law)

<comment><USER9> Odd how _lawyers_ did not stick to the basic rule of letting off steam/having arguments face to face or by phone! Reminds me of the e-mail banter between bankers in London when they were basically fiddling the LIBOR rates. Perhaps it takes a generation to fully understand a new communications technology.

<comment><USER10> The technology firms seem a lot more capable at keeping their illegal conspiracies from being written to storage.

<comment><USER3> Like these tech firms? [http://rt.com/usa/apple-google-low-wages- collusion-169/](http://rt.com/usa/apple-google-low-wages-collusion-169/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whenever I read a story like this I inevitably remember Greenspan. Its always good to start with an extreme to begin with whats wrong with most systems today.

As he once said - there shouldn't be any law against financial fraud; as the markets themselves will take care of that.

And he himself got away with all the mess by saying there was a flaw in his model of the world.

</comment><comment><USER12> "About 100 partners had guarantees totaling about $100 million a year".

There's half of their problem right there.

</comment><comment><USER13> Dye and his group should have left the week Davis shafted him out of the leadership position. Their insurance specialty would have been successful wherever they went, and D&L would have failed earlier. Since they didn't leave, Davis was really borrowing trouble in going ahead with the merger that he had justified as somehow taking their place.

I know, hindsight is 20/20.

</comment><comment><USER14> Fascinating tale of incentives gone wrong.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sure sounds a lot like high school, except with millions of dollars going back and forth.</comment>


The Worst API Ever Made (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0025 <comment><USER2> Wait until you see ptrace(2), for which the man page on my machine contains choice quotes such as "the following is believed to work correctly" and "the following system calls are affected (this list is likely incomplete)". I have used the ptrace API from userspace and worked on reimplementing it kernel-side and it's pretty horrible either way. If you ever look into the code of GDB, you'll see it performs a bunch of checks to make sure that your ptrace conforms to the things that the man page says it should (because it's been buggy in many kernel versions) and even then has like a dozen fallbacks so that it can still be useful when pretty much nothing works.

<comment><USER3> > The resulting type and value of an instance of use of the new value notation > is determined by the value (and the type of the value) finally assigned to > the distinguished local reference identified by the keyword VALUE, according > to the processing of the macrodefinition for the new type notation followed > by that for the new value notation. — ISO 8824:1988, Annex A

Now, ASN.1 may not strictly be an API, but it's pretty crap.

<comment><USER4> there's a reason no one uses the old standards if they can help it. when I worked on a compiler for asn.1 we supported a very limited subset of the 1988 macros by doing some hard coded generation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was in the same hallway in Building 26 as the guys designing ETW. They sounded smart. I was too inexperienced to know better, but a good friend (n@) clued me into their insanity and I steered clear.

</comment><comment><USER6> EDIT: sorry, didn't mean to one-up someone's article. Do read it for it's intended purpose: showing how much time gets wasted, and how much a dev can get frustrated, by a bad API.

That's a pretty crappy API, but far from the worst: HP Fortify. When I used it about four years ago, the code examples wouldn't even compile, let alone work. The documentation was often flat out wrong. IIRC, there was at least one method with a named parameter, and the spelling of the parameter name was wrong. But then when one went to go retrieve it, it would be spelled correctly. It had every scent of a project that was spec'ed at HP in colloquial English, then sent to some far-off land where English is at best a second language for folks and price per hour is more important than coding chops.

The API referenced in the article is, I'm sure, annoying to work with. But as far as getting actual work done, I would wager a good sum of money that the Fortify API will block you far, far more often and for longer than the Windows Event Tracing API.

 _And am I correct in seeing that the web page turned my scroll thumb fscking white to match the background? Safari on macOS Catalina._

</comment><comment><USER7> A truly wonderful read, with a bit of suspense, wonder, disbelief and a lesson to be learnt.</comment>