Ask HN: Are you requiring email verification during signup for your service? - <AUTHOR> I'm a consultant/freelance developer, and a few large companies I do consulting for have recently switched to not requiring their users to verify their emails upon signing up for an account on their apps.
This has at least 2 issues that seem very problematic:
1. Since many companies use their "user base" as a means to calculate growth, not requiring email verification makes it much easier to fake this number.
2. Easily being able to cause spam for an email address that does not belong to the person who is signing up.
3. Advanced phishing methods
What have been your experiences around this? <comment><USER2> I started out requiring email verification. My userbase is a bit older and less tech savvy than your average saas. It was a nightmare.

People frequently type their email wrong, put @gmail when it's a Yahoo address, misspell their own name, forget that their are numbers on the end...

AOL and MSN addresses are nigh impossible to get a message through to. Messages don't even get marked as spam. They are silently discarded. (I use mailinator and my IP is clean). (With extreme accuracy, an aol or MSN email address indicates to us that the customer will require handholding to get started.)

People just don't understand or can't follow directions. Checking their email is too hard because they can't remember their password or it's only logged in on their computer at home.

On a separate note, you wouldn't believe how many people have an expensive iPhone and have literally never downloaded a single app. We did a conference where we helped people sign up and install our app. So many people had never had to enter their iCloud password for the app store since initially creating their account.

So I think it really depends on your target market. If you are targeting developers, then a good email verification system will cause almost no friction. If you are targeting an older crowd, good luck.

<comment><USER3> I think this boils down to, can your parents use it? My dad forgot his App Store credentials and never download an app. I couldn't believe it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You shouldn't do this UNTIL you need to.

You NEED to before allowing any operations that rely on this information being accurate. Let's say you are allowing users to chat with each other, or share information. In that case it is super helpful to verify the initiating user's email as proof of identity, so I can't just enter your email and phish someone...

<comment><USER5> I would agree with this assessment, but also add confirmation before you were ever to dispatch any email sent to the address.

I work for an ISP/services company and we require confirmation for everything.

Personally though, I abhor companies that allow account creation without confirmation. I have a gmail address that is my id, minus the first r in it. Over the years, I've received oil change notifications from people's cars, trip/hotel/dinner reservations with click-through ability to alter without supplying anything, rental agreements, billing, dating profiles, etc. that I have total control over because people are idiots. There has to be some kind of railing in place to keep lemming from leaping off the precipice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you don't ask for email validation and you don't implement an API rate limiting many hackers can create a script that will fill your database with random generated users and you won't understand what happened.

This is a simple example that demonstrates why you should and must implement email verification.

More.. you should block the account when a user enters wrong password 5 times during a 2 minutes period for example (you can adjust these numbers). This is also a good security measurement.

Even more.. you shouldn't fake business numbers. Customers and investors will lose their trust in you.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't make sense. Even a non-verified user lives as a row in your database. Sure, you can delete them if they haven't verified their address after 24 hours, but that doesn't mitigate the problem of filling your database before that.

<comment><USER6> Are you following the Silicon Valley TV series? In the first episode of the last season they use a botnet network to hack a pizza application, they create a lot of users and generate thousands of orders. They manage to put the pizza company in bankruptcy.

That's just a TV show, but the example is so good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We started by requiring email confirmation before allowing sign in but recently removed that requirement.

The initial friction and problems that arose from either the person not remembering its email access or not checking the spam or the email simply being dropped (hotmail inc) made us take that decision. For us the email is not very important, since we have other channels for communication with the user.

We will be adding an "annoying" banner reminding the user to confirm the email but the app/system is fully functional without it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Especially for brand-new products looking to make an initial impression, it's wise to allow signups without verification until your product gains some traction.

However, for the large companies you mentioned working for, I can't see any good reason to forego email verification.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am not currently. I saw it as a pain when you're already signing up for a paid SaaS. I looked back at similarly structured products that I've used in the past (B2B SaaS) and couldn't think of one that had me confirm my email so I did the same.

</comment><comment><USER11> I personally do not require email validation to do anything. I want to reduce the amount of friction for a user to start using the product as much as possible.

If it's a product that requires an email for some reason, that might be a different story.

</comment><comment><USER12> We did at first, but then removed it after realizing it was just another obstacle in the way that doesn't really do anything to remove spam or anything since anyone can make a new email account in mere seconds.

<comment><USER13> I think the spam concern is in the other direction:

If I sign you up with your email for a service that does not require verification. This is not only a problem for you, but also for the business if you click on the spam button.

</comment></comment><comment> video-host I have two things in place:

      - recaptcha to avoid people creating spam accounts
      - email validation with a grace period of 3 days.

This is a good balance so far.</comment>


InfluxDB v0.9.0-rc4 released, now with tags and more unicorns - <AUTHOR> http://influxdb.com/blog/2015/02/24/influxdb-v0_9_0-rc4_released_now_with_tags_and_more_unicorns.html#hn <comment><USER2> Would love to hear feedback from everyone on the new API. Let us know!</comment>


LLVM 3.1 released - <AUTHOR> http://llvm.org/releases/3.1/docs/ReleaseNotes.html

<comment><USER2> Collections subscripting operator [] and boxed C strings are life-savers. Instantiating obj-c object is always a pain cause the syntax is very verbose, expecially for NSString:

      NSString *s = [NSString stringWithCString:"hello" encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
      NSString *s = @("hello");

it's 11 characters vs 67. Now what I really, really miss is the implementation of the NSString concatenation operator. stringWithFormat isn't always the answer nor appendString. Please forgive me if you find that my idea is silly:

      // String concatenation
      NSString *s = @+(@"hello ", @"world");

Or maybe some concise dictionary operators.

      NSDictionary *d1 = @{ @"first":@"Hello", @("second"):@"World" };
      NSDictionary *d2 = @{ @"third":@"Greetings" };

      NSDictionary *cd = @|(d1, d2); // Dictionary merge
      NSDictionary *id = @&(d1, d2); // Dictionary intersect
      NSDictionary *dd = @^(d1, d2); // Dictionary difference

<comment><USER3> I think that would be inconsistent. All existing @<whatever> fragments are evaluated at compile-time. Your @+, @|, @&, @^ feel more appropriate as proper functions (the compiler could still know of them, so it could optimize calls away)

Also: dictionary merge/intersect/difference aren't easily defined. For example, what should

      @&( @{ @"a":@"aye", @"b":@"bee" }, @{ @"a":@"ai ai", @"Bee":@"bee" })

return?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sweet, especially the Objective-C Literals: <http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ObjectiveCLiterals.html>

<comment><USER5> Yes, I am ridiculously excited about this, especially the ability to create single-item NSArray's without a tonne of messy typing - this is probably the largest cleaning effect it will have.

Any idea how long it has historically taken apple to move the newer Clang releases?

<comment><USER3> I don't know, but I guess that the compiler itself has been seriously tested on Mac OS X, and WWDC is June 11-15. Esepcially if they want/dare to use this for compiling Mountain Lion, I expect there to be some kind of release around that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh cool! I didn't know Julia was LLVM backed! Now if only it had a good IDE package.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looking forward to playing with autovectorization in ruby-llvm. <https://github.com/jvoorhis/ruby-llvm>

</comment><comment><USER8> A cool, seems to include the changes that were needed by llgo: <https://github.com/axw/llgo>

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there any successful language/runtime that runs primarily on LLVM?

<comment><USER10> What do you mean by "primarily"? Do you mean "specifically"? "Succesful" how?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llvm></comment></comment>


P vs. NP and the Computational Complexity Zoo - Video - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX40hbAHx3s

<comment><AUTHOR> Video made by a friend of a friend. Thought it was highly entertaining and informational.</comment>


The Spider of Doom - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Spider_of_Doom.aspx

<comment><USER2>
      > ... management didn't quite see what was wrong with
      > that.  Instead, they told the client to NEVER copy
      > paste content from other pages.

I'm reminded of the story about Feynman exposing the security problems with the combination locks used on safes at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. Instead of fixing the problem, management just told people not to let Feynman near their safes.

      > He tells the story of being in Oak Ridge, and delivering
      > a report to a colonel there. He reports that the colonel
      > felt himself far too important to have an ordinary safe
      > -- he ordered a special multi-ton safe. Feynman was
      > delighted to discover that this big, important safe used
      > the exact same type of lock as their little safes did,
      > and just to be sure, he took the last two numbers off it
      > while standing in the colonel's office. After the colonel
      > closed the safe, Feynman told him the safes weren't
      > secure, and proved it by opening the safe, then
      > explaining how he did it. He told the colonel that the
      > vulnerability was in leaving the safe open while he
      > worked. "I see, very interesting," replied the colonel.

      > Several months later, Feynman was again at Oak Ridge, and
      > was surprised at all the secretaries telling him, "Don't
      > come in the office! Don't come in here!"

      > It developed that the colonel had immediately sent around
      > a memo asking everyone, "During his last visit here, was
      > Professor Feynman in your office?" Those that answered
      > yes received another memo: "Change your safe combination."

      > That was his solution - Feynman himself was the danger.
      > Meanwhile, of course, people still continued to work with
      > their safes open ...

</comment><comment><USER3> To me, the problem isn't that authentication depends on cookies and JS. The problem is that the system does the exact opposite of what it should.

An authentication system should allow access if and only only if the client presents valid credentials in the expected manner (e.g. reporting a cryptographic cookie back with the HTTP request). In other words, the auth system should use the _presence_ of valid credentials as the criterion for access.

Instead, this system used the _absence_ of something as the criterion. Imagine if a secure building did this. Everyone arrives at the security checkpoint, and if the guards don't recognize you, they give you a badge that says "I'm not allowed in." Anyone who's not wearing the badge is allowed in. That's what this website was doing.

Moral of the story: Your authentication system can depend on cookies, JavaScript, and any other technology being enabled on the client side _as a precondition for access_. If you do that, and someone has disabled the technology, they're locked out, and there's no security breach--just a frustrated user. But your system should never trust the _absence_ of some marker as proof that the client is allowed in.

</comment><comment><USER4> Local legend has it that the guy _didn't_ have a backup, but senior Googler Matt Cutts wrote a custom MapReduce to process the spidering results and make him a tarball of the content GoogleBot recorded as it deleted the site.

Supposedly he sent it with a note along the lines of, "This one's on the house, but we're not doing it again."

</comment><comment><USER5> > He brought up the root cause -- that security could be beaten by disabiling > cookies and javascript

Wouldn't the root cause be allowing GET requests to perform destructive actions?

<comment><USER6> I think the authentication problem is more dangerous. If you fix the GET issue, you're still allowing any savvy stranger to delete your articles by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haha, blame the client for copying and pasting between pages, that sounds fair.

This is also a pretty good case study of why using authentication frameworks is a _very_ good idea.

<comment><USER6> Also why a GET request should never delete, or possibly even modify, data.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, although it isn't enough anymore: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3100239>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I ran into this with my crawler, too. See <http://blog.mischel.com/2008/08/08/hey-you-deleted-my-files/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Actually expected a story about id software's spider of doom...

<comment><USER11> So did I.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Smells like 2006 in here :-D

I'm not a web-dev guy at all--is this still a problem today?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is also why nonces exist and should be used for admin actions.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love how it's spun at the end to make the client look stupid.

Josh should have been fired on the spot for such a ridiculous security oversight.

<comment><USER15> The article doesn't say that this was Josh's design decision, or that he was even involved in the project until the post-launch incident-handling.</comment></comment>


How 'South Park' Perfectly Captures Our Era of Outrage - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/arts/television/south-park-sketches-grander-satire-themes.html <comment><USER2> > "South Park" used to be so anti-continuity - its episodes are often written > days before airing

That last fact needs extra emphasis. The multi-month lead time needed for every other scripted show on Television means that South Park is the _only_ show that can pull Ripped-From-the-Headlines commentary without things being dated by the time the episode airs. (Law and Order: SVU is show that is guilty of this to a hilarious degree)

<comment><USER3> Well, with the exception of shows like The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, and the like but I agree overall.

<comment><USER2> That's why I clarified "scripted." (Or "procedural" would be the more technically correct term.)

<comment><USER4> I think "scripted" is the right word in this case.

"Procedural" refers to a specific type of scripted television, typically but not always a legal, medical, or law-enforcement drama. A procedural show follows the same format every episode: a mystery of some kind is introduced (medical, crime, or what have you), and the characters go through the procedures of solving the mystery. Law & Order: SVU can be described as a procedural; South Park cannot, unless you're using a very very loose definition of the term.

If you're looking at this in terms of nested sets or categories:

\- Scripted vs. Nonscripted

\- Comedy vs. Drama (usually also means half-hour vs. hour)

\- Episodic (every episode is self-contained) vs. Serialized (the show follows an overall, evolving storyline that builds each episode)

\- Subgenre

So a show like L&O: SVU would be a scripted, one-hour drama in the crime procedural subgenre. (We could also describe the show as episodic, but given that all procedurals are episodic, this would be redundant.)

South Park is a scripted, half-hour comedy in the animation subgenre that typically follows an episodic format, with occasional serialized story arcs spanning multiple episodes (and in the case of this season, the whole season).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand how people are able to put so much emotional energy into their views on South Park.

It's satire, if you don't enjoy watching it.

Then don't.

If you are truly worried about peoples views being strongly influenced by the content of South Park, then your opinion of peoples intelligence is far less than mine. It's for entertainment, and the viewer ship knows this.

<comment><USER6> >It's for entertainment, and the viewer ship knows this.

That's not true at all.

Edit: I'll expand on this since it's getting downvoted.

Most Americans have _absolutely no idea_ what "satire" is -- so they can't "know that South Park is satire". I think they know south park is funny, but in the same way a bully making fun of a nerd is funny: the bully is hilarious _because_ the nerd is pathetic. South Park is funny _because_ "social justice warriors"/Al Gore's insistence that climate change is an urgent problem/gun control advocates are wrong in their position.

The cool thing in millenial culture is to not care about anything. Having a cause of any kind makes you an SJW or a nutjob and that isn't cool. Liking what you do for a living makes you a nerd and that isn't cool. Being genuinely in love with your partner makes you whipped and that isn't cool. The only thing people aren't chill about is the need to be chill. All the time.

South Park captures this very well, I think. Caring about anything, having any hobby, South Park shoots it all down. It even shoots down itself -- notice how after every moving monologue from Stan or Kyle about how we all just need to stop caring about something, we get a nice comic relief of Cartman calling whoever just poured their heart out a faggot and does something vulgar? We can't even care about not caring.

Because of this, South Park was pretty regularly referred to as a moral and ethical guide by most of the friends I made in college. Who, like most people, have no idea what sarcasm even is (it isn't cool to pay attention in AP lit, you just do it for the grade and move on).

(I would even say that South Park isn't sarcastic or satirical and is instead flatly advocating utter nihilism. This seems to fit with the creator's styles and I think is a major contributor towards this cultural impulse towards nihilism. But that's another comment.)

<comment><USER7> -> The cool thing in millenial culture is to not care about anything.

It seems to be quite the opposite. Every week I'm let know what it is I'm supposed to be outraged about.

-> I would even say that South Park isn't sarcastic or satirical and is instead flatly advocating utter nihilism.

It would seem, if anything, South Park just tries to round things out to free speech. You can call that nihilism, I guess, in a sort of perfunctory way.

<comment><USER8> ->Every week I'm let know what it is I'm supposed to be outraged about.

I call this the "Five minutes of hate". If you don't get that reference, read 1984 by George Orwell. I think you'll find it very illuminating.

One week, it was Chik-fil-a and how we should hate them because their CEO gave money to a cause I disagree with, the next it's some baker in oregon who dared to refuse to do a wedding cake for a gay couple. (I'm queer, I believe in gay marriage, but just because you have the right to marry doesn't mean you have the right to make some business sell you something.)

There's a lot of other stuff from 1984 that have become real-

The memory hole-- how everyone forgets the past (and the media-- our big shouting head-- pretends like it doesn't exist.)

Double-Speak is Double-plus real too. Etc.

<comment><USER9> Oh. My. God. You're right! Social media is our version of the Two Minutes Hate. I've been complaining about this for years! Can't believe I never made that connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The latest episodes on ads with a wink (does she know she's an ad vs does she know she's a replicant) at Blade Runner (which is seen as the first SciFi to forecast the importance of ads in the future) fairly accurately depicted how hard I feel it is to not be distracted on the Internet these days, as well as discussing the really disturbing trend of the "sponsored content" in text content medias.

<comment><USER11> It also parodied Ex Machina.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not really sure why South Park is getting so much praise these days. Very little has changed from the previous seasons in terms of its outrageousness and the things it satirizes.

I think the creators are just doing what they usually do which is take advantage of a controversial topic and satirize it. I guess it just so happens that more people care about the topic at hand (political correctness) and empathize with it.

<comment><USER13> This also is, to my recollection, the first time that they took one topic and went with it for a whole season. That is not to say that they deliberately singled this topic out for more attention; rather, it seems to be following a trend that they started last season where it felt like they experimented with more season long connections.

<comment><USER12> Not really though, last year they had Randy play Lorde for the whole season. And they've been doing 2-3 episode stories for a while. Even in this season the Yelp episode was off topic from the main plot.

<comment><USER7> -> Even in this season the Yelp episode was off topic from the main plot.

Was it, though? It seemed like the the chiding of Yelpers directly ties in to how people take their (perhaps authoritarian) views and opinions on things as sacrosanct and beyond reproach. In the same way that the PC Bros feel they're obligated to check everyone's privilege, the Yelpers felt like, if they weren't reviewing, no one would know anything about eating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the OP >>> But in a way, its project and theirs are the same: to deal with tensions by prescribing more conversation, even if it's uncomfortable, not less.

Why do reviewers always assume that because a show uses controversial content that it must have some sort of sociological agenda? They are making a show that is funny so that people watch and they can profit. The author strikes me as the sort of person who would describe Howard Stern as a troubled artist, rather than a talented entertainer. Some people are out there just to make people laugh and bring home a few bucks while doing so.

</comment><comment><USER15> From the article:

> But in a way, its project and theirs are the same: to deal with tensions by > prescribing more conversation, even if it's uncomfortable, not less.

Are you kidding me? The show does the exact opposite if you've seen more than a handful of episodes. This comment summarizes the show much better than this article:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/south_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/circlebroke/comments/3tsd5o/south_park_is_written_by_reddit/cx8xc4o)

> Uncritical, detached acceptance of the status quo is the only morally > upright posture, and those who draw a distinction between is and ought are > all smug bullies, outlandish freaks, and/or closed-minded zealots.

> It's a show that teaches its audience to become lazy and self-satisfied, > that praises them for being uncritically accepting of their own biases, and > that provides them with an endless buffet of thought-terminating cliches > suitable for shutting down all manner of challenges to their comfort zones.

Or in video form: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TttI60-mjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TttI60-mjQ)

<comment><USER16> > /r/circlebroke/ link

r/circlebroke is ego defense dressed up as analysis.

"apathetic-libertarian" is an interpretation for people that identify so strongly with their own political positions, that they can no longer laugh at themselves. A lazy categorization that allows them to dismiss thoughts the show might otherwise spark.

South Park's political criticism is often more about the unreasonable ways people act than their political goals. You can behave like a shithead and take yourself too seriously even in the service of an incredibly laudable goal. But that idea doesn't always play in a "with us or against us" mindset.

South Park has middle fingers up in all directions. That's just skeptical and contrarian, not apathetic. Unless you're already primed to choose apathy over having a think. Or will still choose apathy over something you can't believe in 110%. And the "libertarianism" of the show is largely just an anti- authoritarian "fuck off." But because you can tie it to that name, people with nothing smarter to say can just use guilt by association and tie it to everything crazy that also happens under that name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> South Park IS the American dream. If you don't like it, you can suck my fat taint.

</comment><comment><USER18> This thread won't end well.

<comment><USER19> Kind of reinforces his point.

<comment><USER18> Outrage is a choice, and it isn't one made by those who are willing to have an adult discussion about a topic.

I think MLK's strategy is the absolute gold standard for promoting intelligent discussion around social issues. Outrage won't solve anything, other than to silence dissent. And what a terrible world that would be to live in.

<comment> bro-stick Couldn't that be the heart of why Seinfeld doesn't play university campuses anymore and Bill Mahar's critique of us millennials as pampered p%ssies? An inability to hear differing viewpoints without them being shouted down and Yale Halloween costume girl screaming at guy she helped elect? It cannot be a legitimate, honest academic environment when the groupthink, thoughpolice are in charge, or when students are merely customers to appease at every moment... respectful debate and challenging of views, assumptions and ethical rationale gets lost.

Doesn't it seem currently (as also dramatized by SP) to be a war of emotional extortion of whom can most, disproportionately bully others with their micropain and force the rest of us to change our language every other week and walk on eggshells? (Sure, real sensitivity to prevent actual offense; and address actual bullying.)

<comment><USER8> "of whom can most, disproportionately bully others with their micro pain"

That reminds me a great deal of the situation at the "Twentieth Century Motor Corporation" in Atlas Shrugged, when the workers were paid according to their need- they focused on needing more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> South Park is a weekly morality play espousing the virtues of a nihilistic "libertarianism"* that appeals to the kind of person who wants to be reassured that not caring about other human beings is laudable behavior.

* I don't like libertarianism and have been known to vigorously dissent with its principles, but even I wouldn't stoop so low as to consider South Park a reflection of the views of a sincere and thoughtful libertarian.

<comment><USER21> I'm truly sorry that you think libertarian philosophy means not caring for your fellow human. The very reason I reject the "we'll stomp you in the throat until you comply" authoritarian approaches of the left/right is _precisely_ because I care about others.

<comment><USER22> Libertarianism has a lot of 'freedom!' rhetoric, but absolutely nothing in it is community-building. Any care for fellow humans in libertarianism (though I have yet to see a libertarian argue for community over individuality in _anything_ ) comes a distant second to "my stuff is MY stuff".

Libertarianism is a philosophy that rewards the wealthy and those with in- demand skills. It very much isn't a philosophy about caring for fellow humans in any way but lip service.

<comment><USER23> A libertarian must necessarily believe, I think, that markets work to enable technological progress, and that technological progress "lifts all boats" (with a much stronger effect-size than that of direct economic stimulus.)

Being a libertarian and _not_ believing these things sounds like a very sociopathic mindset, I agree. If you think "turning the economic crank as fast as possible" _won 't_ eventually invent us all flying cars and diseaseless super-bodies and free food-dispensers (and a pony!), then it's pretty obvious that redistributing wealth is the "right thing to do."

But if you _do_ believe that, then you have to measure the ROI of each dollar spent investing in the economy (and thus in turning the technological crank) vs. direct redistributive charity, as a means of helping the people on the bottom. Personally, I don't think it's clear which direction has higher ROI.

<comment><USER8> Part of the philosophy of libertarianism is the idea that if you allow people to cooperate (eg: build a community) they will advance faster... and looking at what happened in China and India when those countries legalized capitalism, the libertarians have a good point.

This is, of course, an economic perspective, but the history of economics generally agrees with them.

<comment><USER22> Capitalism is not a binary state. Chinese capitalism is not American capitalism is not Western European capitalism.

Herein is one of the huge problems of libertarianism - there's no space for shades of gray. Everything is an absolute, a binary; either something is or something isn't, but the real world doesn't work that way. Some capitalism is good. Unfettered capitalism is not - the libertarian cry of "well if someone wrongs you, then sue them for damages in court" is all but useless. You may not even know which chemical company was poisoning the air you have been breathing for 10 years that caused your illness, but libertarians wouldn't restrict the company's actions ahead of time; apparently a monetary settlement (that of course an individual will be able to force a large company into settling in courts...) is always an appropriate solution.

Hell, one libertarian I was talking to was suggesting _privatising_ courts, and saying that the courts would be paid on performance. Somehow he thought that would mean the courts would be fair, rather than heavily biased to the private entity providing the paycheck.

So, we'd end up with a system where the only restriction on capitalism would be actions performed well after the fact. We've seen what happens when profit motives are unfettered, and it's not pretty.

<comment><USER24> > So, we'd end up with a system where the only restriction on capitalism would > be actions performed well after the fact.

Why is that a problem specific to capitalism? What system of justice prevents everything up front? As long as justice is somewhat predictable, others can plan based on what will happen to them.

For example, we are currently in a system where the only restriction on murder is an action performed well after the fact (e.g., prison).

> Herein is one of the huge problems of libertarianism - there's no space for > shades of gray.

That's not how I see it. Markets are one big shade of gray. There's nothing absolute about them at all.

<comment><USER22> > _Why is that a problem specific to capitalism?_

Libertarians argue against regulations, which are restrictions in place ahead of time. I find it disturbing that you are oblivious to that, even though you're responding to a comment which mentions air quality as an issue. As it stands, government regulations limit air pollution. Libertarians would remove those regulations and move the onus onto individuals to prove their cases in court.

> _What system of justice prevents everything up front?_

Where did I say 'everything'? This is exactly what I mean by libertarianism has no shades of gray.

> _Markets are one big shade of gray._

'Unpredictability' is not the gray we're talking about here.

<comment><USER25> > Libertarians argue against regulations

Every party has flaws. Every philosophy that derives from first principles has flaws. If there's a flaw in libertarianism, it's that it doesn't recognize externalities well.

That it infuriates you is problematic. I bounce all over the spectrum on what I believe, and I frequent the DMV voter registration guy to change parties enough that he knows me by name. That said, no matter how much you love any particular philosophy, it can't always hold to be the rightest thing ever.

The American left thinks that it's too burdensome to demand an ID to exercise the right to vote, which isn't even enumerated in the constitution, but think that in-depth background checks are perfectly acceptable to purchase a firearm. The American right feels exactly the opposite. A true civil libertarian believes that an ID infringes on both, and would reject registration hurdles for both.

 _In scenarios like this_ I believe that libertarians hold the most enlightened view, which is why I sometimes refer to myself as a libertarian for convenience, depending on the conversation.

> libertarianism has no shades of gray.

On this I disagree vehemently. There are many, many shades of gray within libertarianism. Yes, there are absolutists in every camp, and yes, as with every other camp, they tend to be vocal, but there's no singular libertarian rulebook that everybody follows. There's even a Wiki article on their quibbles:

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

Generally speaking, the one universal truth within libertarianism is the non- aggression principle, which states that force should not be used. As most penalties eventually result in force (not paying taxes results in jail), it tends to _seem_ absolutist, but not all libertarians are propertarians, nor are they universally opposed to business obligations (like carbon offsets and the like).

<comment><USER22> > _Generally speaking, the one universal truth within libertarianism is the > non-aggression principle, which states that force should not be used._

Which is one of the most nonsensical things about libertarianism - that any time authority want you do to something, it's referred to as 'violence'. It's 'violence' because if you keep refusing to comply, then at the end of a long chain of events, eventually an authorised officer will start to manhandle you. Hence even the smallest thing becomes 'violence'.

Yet...

Libertarianism offers "the courts" as the solution to pretty much all disputes. What happens when someone doesn't comply with court rulings? The court finds that your activities have injured your neighbour and you must give remuneration. You flip off both the court and the neighbour. What happens now? Libertarianism has quite a few of these blind spots.

Again, you don't have to be a _Libertarian_ to be for _civil liberties_.

<comment><USER24> > What happens when someone doesn't comply with court rulings?

Again, that problem is not specific to libertarianism. Every socioeconomic system must address it, and none of the solutions are pretty. In our current world, a person who ignores a court's ruling is physically forced to comply. I don't see any particular reason why something similar couldn't work in a more libertarian world.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Broadcom Explores Deal to Acquire Chipmaker Qualcomm - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/broadcom-explores-deal-to-acquire-chipmaker-qualcomm <comment><USER2> There's a ridiculous amount of consolidation going on the semiconductor industry these days.

Freescale (formerly Motorola) was purchased by NXP (formerly Phillips) in 2015. Qualcomm is in the process of buying NXP, although apparently there's been some difficulty getting it past the European regulators. Now it sounds like Qualcomm is going to get swallowed up by Broadcom. That's going to be a huge company.

Last year, Microchip bought Atmel, ADI bought Linear Tech, ON Semiconductor bought Fairchild, and Renesas bought Intersil. The year before, Intel bought Altera.

Any bets on the last two semiconductor conglomerates standing? I'm thinking Intel vs. Samsung. I hope whoever swallows up ON Semiconductor rebrands to the Fairchild name - there's almost something poetic about a reverse-Fairchildren split.

EDIT: I should also point out that "Broadcom" isn't really Broadcom anymore - Avago Technologies purchased Broadcom last year and took on the Broadcom name for itself. Avago was previously the semiconductor division of Agilent which in turn was a spinoff of Hewlett-Packard. Avago traces its lineage back to the semiconductor division of HP which was formed way back in 1961.

<comment><USER3> I've heard that mergers aren't (legally) supposed to be anticompetitive, but I've seen the banking and semiconductor industries undergo a merger-fueled competition implosion in the last few decades, so obviously whatever mechanisms we have in place are laughably insufficient. As a voter, what keywords should I pick up on to fight the good fight?

<comment><USER4> Chinese are just glad to have one big fish to swallow, instead of 20 small.

Qualcomm and Broadcomm both spent enormous funds trying to enter Chinese market. Both ended up with Pyrrhic victories

Qualcomm sold distribution deal for China to Allwinner guys where they chew into their already small margins - most Chinese smartphone makers simply do not pay "Qualcomm tax"

Broadcomm bought few Chinese wifi fablesses, yanked up prices. Most Chinese soc fablesses just switched to own internal IP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This might be a bit in the weeds but this is related to broadcom moving their head quarters back to the US. If you work in the merger arbitrage space you'll know about CIFUS, the US committee on foreign investment.

Since the silicon space has had so many deals recently and is looking at more consolidation, moving their headquarters back to the US removes one possible legal obstacle to buying up other semi conductors chip makers as CIFUS won't review any deals where a US company buys another US company.

I mean, broadcom's sweetheart deal with Singapore is almost over as well, so the financial benefits are probably over. That probably plays into their move as well:)

If this ploy works, look for several Chinese companies to buy US companies and looking to do reverse takeovers to get a US address for their company to attempt to avoid the CIFUS review.

[http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/02/news/companies/broadcom- sing...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/02/news/companies/broadcom-singapore-us- move-trump/index.html)

<comment><USER6> Beyond high level corporate jobs, would moving headquarters back to the US lead to more lower-class and/or manufacturing jobs? Or would the company just be based in the US on paper?

<comment><USER7> The company stated that it will expand its employment in the U.S. Mostly in research, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So Broadcom wants to be your one stop shop for everything networking related? Server, Switches Controller, Bluetooth, LTE, WiFi etc. On the WiFi chip there is basically only three players left in the consumer market, Broadcom, Qualcomm ( Atheros ) and Mediatek ( Mediatek is actually doing surprising well )

Another point is Broadcom seems to have a very good relationship with Apple so far. If you look at all the iPhone taken apart there are lots of Broadcom chips in it.

Off Topic: How do these Acquisition works? I get that it is a Share + Cash. The Share part is basically Qualcomm shareholder getting shares at the new company, but cash, we are talking about near 100 billion acquisition, where do the loans come from? Banks? Or could it be interest free coming from Apple?

<comment><USER9> > How do these Acquisition works?

You mostly answered it yourself. If it's an all-cash deal, of this size, they pay for it out of on-hand cash / short-term securities, and or raise debt from major banks or private equity types (eg Silver Lake Partners, as in the Dell/private & Dell/EMC deals). Depending on the cost of the interest on the debt, a company may choose to make the deal more or less cash, more or less debt, more or less stock.

Sometimes corporate partners do throw in on the deal. Microsoft for example helped finance the deal to take Dell private. It was obviously in their interest to have a healthy Dell corporation. I believe Microsoft put $2 billion into that.

It wouldn't be interest free coming from Apple. Zero chance of that. They also won't risk $100 billion. They could put in $10 or $20 billion however, with standard loan conditions including interest.

It's going to be difficult (expensive) for Broadcom to buy Qualcomm. QCOM is in a stronger financial position, despite the lower multiple on their stock presently. Qualcomm's quarterly earnings are about 50% (or more) higher typically than where Broadcom is at today. Qualcomm has $21 billion in cash, Broadcom has a mere $5.4 billion in cash.

It should really be Qualcomm attempting to eat Broadcom, rather than the other way around. In this case, Broadcom is being opportunistic when it comes to timing. The result of that will (if it goes forward) be very expensive for Broadcom shareholders. The sole reason Broadcom is able to attempt this, is due to the stock market bubble driving Broadcom's valuation extremely high (50+ times earnings) over the last year (the stock has climbed from ~$172 to ~$273).

<comment><USER10> There are ways to get these deals done without introducing PE though. Look at the recent SABMiller acquisition by AB Inbev (different sector, same thing -- close to $100bn).

<comment><USER9> That's why I mentioned raising financing via major banks. For a deal like that, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, (a dozen major Asian banks) et al. will happily step in and help arrange the debt necessary.

Broadcom is relatively cash poor when it comes to a deal this size, and their balance sheet is already a mess with negative $16b in net tangible assets. Annually they're burning nearly the equivalent of a quarter worth of net income on debt interest payments.

Given their size and the strong cash & income position of Qualcomm, there's no doubt major banks will be very willing to help despite the weak balance sheet. $50 billion in debt would nearly cost them all their current income. $100 billion would further chew into about 1/3 of Qualcomm's income. It's won't be an easy debt arrangement unless they lean heavily on their bubbly valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It probably makes more business sense to do this mega merger/acquisition rather than continue to sue each other into oblivion over IP. The last settlement between QCOM and Broadcom was almost a billion dollar payment from QCOM to Broadcom... while that may not necessarily kill off Qualcomm, can't say it's not a major dent in their pocket after 4+ years of litigation.

</comment><comment><USER12> The only reason I would want this to happen is if Qualcomm's obviously terrible and anti-competitive leadership would get the boot. And then the whole company's abusive culture needs to be cleaned-up.

Also, I wonder how serious Broadcom is about competing with Intel, and whether or not they would consider purchasing AMD, too, to aid in them in that effort. AMD's market cap is now only 1/10 of the price they intend to pay for Qualcomm, so it's almost a matter of "throwing some extra money on the table" at this point.

Broadcom could use Qualcomm primarily for mobile and IoT, and AMD for desktop, servers, machine learning, and automotive.

<comment><USER13> _> Also, I wonder how serious Broadcom is about competing with Intel, and whether or not they would consider purchasing AMD, too, to aid in them in that effort. AMD's market cap is now only 1/10 of the price they intend to pay for Qualcomm, so it's almost a matter of "throwing some extra money on the table" at this point._

AMD effectively cannot be bought. There is a termination clause in the cross licensing of patents between AMD and Intel for x86/x86_64 in the event either company is sold. [0]

Anyone who bought AMD would immediately cause a huge issue for any company manufacturing x86 CPUs. AMD wouldn't be allowed to manufacture x86-based CPUs anymore, and Intel wouldn't be allowed to manufacture x86_64 CPUs. The only people who would conceivably benefit from such a situation would be patent lawyers who are probably already salivating at the mere thought of litigating that.

[0] [https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd- clar...](https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-clarifies- cross-license-with-intel-change-of-control-terminates-agreement-for-both/)

<comment><USER14> Intel already tried to raise this concern when AMD spun-out GlobalFoundries. I assume immediately after that one of their lawyers noticed they'd lose all rights to x86-64 if they tried to invoke the termination clause because Intel never mentioned it again.

IMHO this is effectively a non-issue and has been from the moment Intel was forced to abandon Itanium in favor of x86-64.

The other aspect is anti-trust. If x86 really does become single-source (Intel) then there is no evading monopoly status. The current US administration won't do anything about it but the rest of the world probably will. Intel would be forced to openly license x86 anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> looks like someone who did not wanted this deal leaked it to media. why would one try to acquire it now when the nxp deal is still in limbo? would it not be better to complete nxp deal and then make acquisition offer? doing it now will create more regulatory hurdles.

</comment><comment><USER16> Broadcom is awful for the open source world, it is worse than Oracle on the software side I think. TI/Freescale and to some extent Qualcomm are open to OSS. I hope this acquisition to fail.

<comment><USER17> Raspberry PI's SOC is made by Broadcom. They did a decent job in open source that part. I heard even the GPU driver/library was opensource for PI.

GPU driver/library was definitively not opensource for the Freescale's IMX6 as far as I know.

Feel free to point out other issues with Broadcom opensource.

<comment><USER16> the RPI is an exception, it did not come easy.

Freescale would love to open its GPU etc, however it is licensing the IP from other vendors that Freescale has no right to open source it, yes it would be nice if Freescale can get that part work. Otherwise, Freescale is fairly open on everything it owns and makes.

<comment><USER18> The Raspberry Pi having a non-closed bootchain, let alone a free driver is a feat of tens of thousands of people pressuring Broadcom, and a few people doing the hard work to free as much of the RPI as they could.

Having to run Raspbian just to boot the board was a dark time!

<comment><USER19> >Having to run Raspbian just to boot the board was a dark time!

Is this some sort of joke I am missing becuase now the pi can run more than just raspbian?

<comment><USER20> What? I used to run 9front(a plan9 fork) on raspberry pi back in 2013. Their bootloader is closed source, so you have to use that to load your kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr: deal is pending regulator approval of how many m's will be at end of combined company name

<comment><USER22> comcomm?

<comment><USER21> I think BroadmmmQual has a nice ring to it (and far less misogynistic than the reverse)

<comment><USER11> funny, cause Quality Broad was the very first thing that popped in my mind... I must be the only one with a sexually charged imagination here ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why wouldn't they just M&A? Just curious.

<comment><USER4> Because of Hock Tan's mentality, there is a long story to that

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does this imply that next Raspberry PI boards will be Snapdragon based?

</comment><comment><USER25> Coming soon to HN: Qualcomm to be Acquired by Broadcom; Broadcom to be Acquired by Comcast</comment>


Online Sight Check - <AUTHOR> http://www.visionexpress.com/online-sight-check/#/intro

<comment><USER2> At least in my case the results were wrong: I was labelled as 16% "above average" (may or may not be true but I am beginning to have trouble with my contacts not letting me read far enough signs); and I was labelled as "longsighted" because I found it easier to read text on a green background (very not true: my contacts correct nearsightedness which is steadily advancing; it's distant signs which I have trouble reading). I'm also not sure that the arrows test clearly means anything.</comment>


Ask HN: QA site for clothing? - <AUTHOR> Curious if there's a QA site for clothing. A place to ask questions about specific garments I guess.
I'm looking for a hoodie I can wear all day but is heavy enough / warm enough that I can keep it on when I pop outside for a quick smoke or shovel snow or etc...
Winter is upon us and its a pain to put on a coat to be outside for just 5-10 minutes. Obviously, if it's blizzard conditions (in Buffalo, NY) going to opt for a full coat, but "most" days, just something to cut the wind / keep warm.
Otherwise - anyone have any recommendations for a nice, heavy hoodie? Solid color or small graphic is fine. Preferably full zip. <comment><USER2> [https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/](https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/) specifically [https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/search?q=author%3...](https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator+Simple+Questions&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/femalefashionadvice/](https://www.reddit.com/r/femalefashionadvice/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/femalefashionadvice/comments/9na9do...](https://www.reddit.com/r/femalefashionadvice/comments/9na9do/daily_questions_october_11_2018/)</comment>


Security Robot Pwns Toddler at Stanford Mall - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/security-robot-pwns-toddler-at-stanford-mall-report-1783519433 <comment><USER2> I've been to that mall many times and it's an extremely safe place already, I guess they're starting the robot out in a tutorial level or something.</comment>


A farewell message from the Bop.fm founders - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bop.fm/2015/10/the-music-never-stops-on-bop-until-now/ <comment><USER2> Why did LifeLock purchase a music streaming service (not really a music streaming service but kinda sorta)?

<comment><USER3> reads like an aqui-hire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> YC S13</comment>


Cloud Zoom - <AUTHOR> http://www.professorcloud.com/mainsite/cloud-zoom.htm

<comment><USER2> very nice! useful like all hell</comment>


GitHub humans.txt - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/humans.txt

<comment><USER2> Line 165 is useless.

That's it! I've had enough with them. I'm moving to the competition.

</comment><comment><USER3> robots.txt...humans.txt nice! It reads like a movie's credit roll.

But do you really want to make it easier for a recruiter to poach your team?

<comment><USER4> If you have the right work environment and employees, recruiters don't stand a chance :)</comment></comment>


Soylent taking pre-orders on Crowdhoster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/soylent-taking-pre-orders-on-crowdhoster-now-what-if-you-never-had-to-worry-about-food-again <comment><AUTHOR> Soylent is a YC company? Nice...</comment>


Apple's reasoning behind the height of the new iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Rc4MDmr8o

<comment><USER2> Mediocre commercial. The overall message sounds like Apple is trying too hard to justify the new screen size to the customer, instead of communicating to us an actual reason why someone should get the new iPhone. Not to mention that it's kind of funny to see the guy's thumb contorting to reach the other side. Apple could have done much better.

</comment><comment><USER3> common sense? I love this reasoning. So for the past 5 years there was no common sense in this regard? I love when marketing does this contradicting messages over the years, I always realize how big the hype factor is.

</comment><comment><USER4> What about the notification shade then? It didn't look how he could reach it. Apple is just finding excuses for the real reason they made the phone bigger.</comment>


Why MBAs fail at Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://stuwall.tumblr.com/post/489661696/why-mbas-fail-at-entrepreneurship

<comment><USER2> Are there a lot of people who think getting an expensive MBA degree is worth something in the startup world? I'd never heard anything but the opposite until reading this article and now I'm wondering if there's some segment of the population that I've just never heard from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Sam,

I'm the technical co-founder of <http://postabon.com> (the crazy guy who wrote the entire thing in Lisp ;-)).

Based on my experience over the last 6 months, I think most MBAs start out thinking that they'll be fine at doing a startup with no domain expertise, and can just 'throw money' at that problem. This is true whether the domain is manufacturing, fashion, tech, etc. However, after they've been at it for N months and have nothing done, the smart ones realize the error of their ways ;-)

Business savvy (just like technical skill) is a necessary (but not sufficient) requirement for being a successful entrepreneur. Having co-founders with disparate skill sets helps you cover all your bases.

I think just as many engineers think they can build something cool (with no thought to marketing, capital, strategy, etc), and build a start-up.

<comment><USER3> If you go to _any_ engineer-focus start-up discussion site (JOS, RiR, Erik Sink, HN, PG, bothsidesofthetable .. you name it) that's _exactly_ what they don't hear.

If anything, engineers are under-confidant about business things. They seem to think that selling stuff takes at least a 3 year degree (or equivalent experience) just like writing a program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Man do I regret not funding these guys.

<comment><USER5> Ever considered setting aside say 5% of your funding allocation for wildcard acceptances? Every company that gets rejected from YC could go into a lottery and depending on the absolute size of that 5%, a number of companies could make it in _solely_ because their names were drawn from a hat.

Because the odds are so low that a rejected contender will win a wildcard spot, it removes any unconscious scoring bias you might implement. In other words, I was thinking of the scenario in which you might only make some of the rejects eligible for a wildcard spot based on a scoresheet. You might unconsciously bias your scoring to make some rejects eligible and others not. The beauty of the wildcard is that it's totally random.

EDIT: Another thought. Wildcard entries would set a nice benchmark for merit- based entrants to YC to compete against. They would have more to prove because they've been written off. I'd be curious how this would affect the larger group dynamics of the programme.

<comment><USER4> There are two phases of acceptance, the application and interviews. The first phase is where most mistakes occur, because written applications are so much lower bandwidth than face to face conversations. So if we were going to insert randomness, we should randomly invite people to interviews, not randomly fund them. But the trouble with _that_ is that, unlike funding, interview slots are constrained. There is a physical limit to the number of interviews we can do. So to invite someone randomly we'd have to not invite someone who was (as far as we could tell) more deserving, and we are very reluctant to do that.

<comment><USER6> _The first phase is where most mistakes occur_

Even if this were true, which I wouldn't argue against, it doesn't mean that it's where the mistakes of the highest aggregate value occur.

For example, what percentage of first phase rejections try again, as compared with second phase rejections?

 _But the trouble with that is that, unlike funding, interview slots are constrained._

You could apply the usual interview scaling technique of adding another phase (e.g. shorter pre-screen with a single interviewer) or delegating. This has the obvious disadvantages, which is, arguably, one of the major reasons big company hiring processes are so unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "MBAs idealize jobs and ideas that used to offer outstanding returns. Private Equity and Hedge Funds offered outstanding salaries to HBS students from 06-08 and thus attracted "top" HBS students. As more talented students pursued these options it became conventional wisdom that everyone should be doing the same."

From an article _today_ ([http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/01/markets/hedge_fund_manager_p...](http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/01/markets/hedge_fund_manager_pay/index.htm)): "After plunging during the financial crisis, the income of top hedge fund managers surged in 2009 to a record high as financial markets recovered from historic lows, according to a new survey published Thursday.

Altogether, the 25 top-earning hedge fund managers made a record $25.3 billion last year, according to rankings in AR: Absolute Return+Alpha, a magazine dedicated to the hedge fund industry.

The highest paid manager on the list was David Tepper of Appaloosa Management, who made $4 billion last year on investments in the financial sector."

David Tepper isn't just an MBA, he has a business school named after him: <http://web.tepper.cmu.edu/tepper/about.aspx>

I think he'd get a good laugh out of this article.

<comment><USER8> precisely...there is so much money in finance, that the "1 million dollar exit" that a lot of entrepreneurs would salivate over is peanuts to them

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Entrepreneurship is the truest form of meritocracy_

Great point - I worked for a big company before I had a startup, where they claimed to have a culture of meritocracy. The trouble is that large organisations are too standardized to ever be truly meritocratic. People are generally banded based on perceived ability, but there must be such variation between those in each band, meaning you are rewarding people of varying abilities the same. This type of system is slow and fails to take in to account outliers.

</comment><comment><USER10> So I'm curious about this scenario:

How do you feel about an engineer, maybe with good ideas, maybe not, who gets an MBA? Would they be useful in a startup or anywhere else for that matter?

<comment><USER11> Bingo, just what I was about to make a post on.

There's a _fantastic_ difference between someone who goes straight from an undergraduate degree to an MBA vs. someone who gets some number of years of experience in the real word and then goes back for an MBA to learn how to do it better.

Sort of like how the very best lawyer I ever worked with had started as an embedded engineer (in some California nuclear power plant there's a Z-80 of his monitoring valve wear). While he could certainly do the work, he just didn't find it to his taste, so he became a patent lawyer (in the long term, he first also discovered that being an associate in a big law firm was seriously negative fun).

So e.g. when we had to weaken an external cryptosystem of ours to make the export guys happy, he knew _exactly_ what I was doing when I explained the context and said "we zero these bits of the key"; together we wrote the application (which was accepted). And he taught me a _lot_ about the law (this was the company that went kaboom in a cery bad and big way and we spent a lot of time in the local law library to get our back wages etc, etc, settled).

So I'd view the one with real world experience who then got an MBA or became a lawyer favorably (and probably tend to run away from the one without :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It totally depends on what industry/vertical you are trying to take on. For web apps, yes an MBA is not vital since you can bootstrap w/out funding (as the author alluded to). However, I'd argue that the connections you get with an MBA can be worth their weight in gold.

Case in point: Gilt. Don't tell me that these MBA's are failing (<http://www.gilt.com/company#team>). I'd happily trade shoes with them :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> You know Alexis and Alexandria (the two HBS MBAs who are ostensibly behind Gilt) had almost nothing to do with the company's conception - right?

The real founders are Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman (the founders of DoubleClick). They created and funded Alley Corp with their Google money, which runs a whole bunch of really great startups (like 10Gen, the company behind MongoDB). The story about Alexis and Alexandria dreaming up the idea in business school is just for PR purposes ...

<comment><USER13> wow, that's definitely interesting... after reading the bios of both on Gilt, you can definitely notice the nuance of the language.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_P._Ryan>

"Gilt Groupe is an online retailer based in the United States. Founded in 2007, Gilt Groupe stages online 'flash' sales, offering women's, men's and children's designer apparel and accessories, designer home goods and high-end travel destinations at discounted prices in a limited time sale format, typically 36 to 48 hours.

Kevin Ryan founded Gilt Groupe in 2007. Gilt first launched women's clothing and accessories in November 2007, men's in April 2008, Gilt Groupe Japan in February 2009, Gilt Fuse in August 2009 and a travel site named Jetsetter in September 2009. Gilt Groupe is based in New York, NY with warehouses in Brooklyn, NY and Andover, MA.

Gilt Groupe has raised a total of $48 million to date; its investors include Matrix Partners and General Atlantic Partners. [edit] " .. thx for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just a comment on the final point. Most investment bankers don't hate their jobs, most love their jobs. If you hate the job and are just in it for the money you'll burn out and drop out pretty quickly. Investment Banking is pretty much dominated by people who love doing what they do, probably more so than the vast majority of other industries.

<comment><USER15> I can only go on personal and anecdotal experience, but having known a lot of investment bankers, I cannot agree with this at all. After a few years, the folks who truly love it are a definite minority. But many get snared by money/lifestyle. I see the same in management consulting where I get told over and over "I'm just here until I figure out what I really want to do"

<comment><USER16> agreed, living in NYC, i know many ibankers and very few of them actually enjoy what they do. They're pretty much glorified excel junkies.

<comment><USER8> There is a big difference in ibanking between analysts, associates, and the guys who are at the higher levels.

The bottom pole hates their lives, because they tend to work a lot. And are the glorified excel junkies as you put it. On the upper level, you don't do the busy work, and you spend your time going around the world doing deals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was just investigating postabon, I zoomed out to the whole US and only found a few dozen postings. They really need to work on their network effects, probably by spending large amounts of $ on contests and marketing.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 How is it that this link points to a "parked" domain site after just seven days?

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice try mr MBA

</comment><comment><USER18> How does/will postabon make money?

<comment><USER19> Getting in front of consumers looking for deals (i.e. ways to spend their money) must be a good thing -- consider it a "real world" slickdeals.

Just a few ideas:

Sponsored listings

Analytics

Commission on deals

Subscribers (early access to the best deals, or subscriber-only deals)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A different way to visualize the Bitcoin marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.coinsight.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a beta of a side project that I've been working on for the last few months. Look forward to your feedback and hope it can handle more than a few simultaneous connections :) -Ben

</comment><comment><USER2> what are you using for the grid control? is it virtualized?

Would be great to have a way to switch between this and a more traditional HLOC bars as well

<comment><AUTHOR> It's challenging to show HLOC when viewing data from multiple exchanges because there are three (or more) H, L, O, C on each bar and the view becomes very cluttered. A way to turn on and off the different exchanges could make this work. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll consider it.</comment></comment>


Now here's my domain name generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotcomroulette.com/

<comment><USER2> This is better and more usable than the brute force generator posted yesterday.

If you start using it to generate new domain names from high ranking keywords you might be able to build a monetizable tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> I trained the generator on domains from the crunchbase data set, so they should (presumably) be somewhat higher quality than average</comment></comment>


Maria Konnikova Shows Her Cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/science/maria-konnikova-poker.html <comment><USER2> It's a possibility that Dr. Konnikova just played NY Times like a flute! That would be legendary. I'll repeat my comments about this part:

"When you see someone looking a certain way, you assume they play a certain way. So once I figure out how they view women, I can figure out how to play against them. They're not seeing me as a poker player, they're seeing me as a female poker player.

There are people who'd rather die than be bluffed by a woman. They'll never fold to me because that's an affront to their masculinity.

I never bluff them. I know that no matter how strong my hand, they are still going to call me because they just can't fold to a girl.

Other people think women are incapable of bluffing. They think if I'm betting really aggressively, it means I have an incredibly strong hand. I bluff those people all the time."

I'm sorry but has anybody who praises these quotes actually played poker? This kind of strategy would only work on complete fish. It'd be very quickly exploited by any pro or a decent amateur.

I'd like her to name one pro or one good amateur in the world who thinks like this "Other people think women are incapable of bluffing."

This article seems like a throwback to 2004 when this kind of strategy would actually work on newbie players flooding casino tables.

I will however give Dr. Konnikova tons of credit if she got these quotes in the paper, so that now she can exploit people who actually believed them. That would be amazing. She seems like an accomplished and smart person, so this seems most likely.

<comment><USER3> From what I understand, what she's trying to say is that she divides the players into two types, and for one type she never bluffs, and for the other, she bluffs all the time.

But she didn't discuss how she figures out if the player belongs to category one, or category two. There are two possible answers:

\- She follows her intuition by observing the player and player's demeanor.

\- She collects data on the players poker choices/tactics/strategies (in other words, she studies the player's game history), and using some kind of analysis, probably backed by a combination of her psychology and game theory expertise, she reaches the conclusion on the likelihood of the player belonging to category 1 or 2.

If it's the latter, then I have mad respect for her. If it's the former, my best guess is that she's just going through the phase of beginner's luck, and it won't last very long.

<comment><USER4> Well, she says:

1\. There are people who view women like X, and when I suss that out, I play them like X'. 2\. There are people who view women like Y, and when I suss that out, I play them like Y'.

That doesn't exclude the possibility she is fully aware that there are large numbers of people who don't have views about women that affect their poker play, and if they don't show view X or view Y, she just plays them normally.

So I'd say the quote suggests she divides players into AT LEAST two types, but my instinct suggests she has a lot more than two categories :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> _Do you have any insights on why grifting schemes appear to be proliferating?

Fraud really thrives in moments of great social change and transition. We're in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can't be real. _

<comment><USER6> Any evidence that fraud doesn't thrive at all times, including times of change and transition? This sounds like a just-so story.

<comment><USER7> Quote from OA that caught my eye as well...

 _"...We're in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can't be real."_

So I suppose the hypothesis is that more people have defective bullshit detectors during big changes in any given field. A possible test of the hypothesis would be to look at fraud prosecutions by domain of deception (high tech stocks, property development) and by choice of victim (newly rich technical people, people new to a country &c) and see how those vary with time.

<comment><USER8> Microsoft doesn't know that you have a virus on your PC (and won't call you about it) but Facebook can identify your friends in a photo you posted better than you can.

That is not obvious to most people, because the concept of customer service we understand, while we really don't understand learning algorithms.

<comment><USER9> > Microsoft doesn't know that you have a virus on your PC

But technically Microsoft definitely can know that, if that were its goal. There's nothing technologically lacking to have that knowledge. Most probably it simply doesn't use that information, specifically doesn't call random users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Poker is an extremely interesting game that I have been diving head first into ever since I cam home from college and had a bit of disposable income.

Besides the fact that it's a very fun game that bizarrely mirrors the real world economy in many ways, it's a great way to make new friends in a town. Unlike a lot of other games, poker is all about communication. It really fosters connections when you play with the same people a bunch.

If you're interested in getting into poker, avoid the casino cash games at all costs. Casinos take a rake or the pot - aka, transaction fees (oh wow, so you're expected winnings are the growth of the economy minus transaction fees? How economic!). If you're starting to play poker you'll want to see as many hands as cheaply as possible. Try free bar poker or local cash games and try to make your money last as long as possible. This means folding a lot of hands

It's interesting, because there is one thing that professional poker players love and hate a lot: gamblers. A gambler will go all in on an extremely stupid bet, such as a 45/55 heads up. Your EV is to lose with such bets but gamblers will play them anyway. And hell, once about every two times they'll win.

<comment><USER11> Not trying to be a jerk but I disagree with about everything here.

Casino cash games are of the most profitable games, and certainly some of the most accessible, given that they typically run at consistent hours with usually a variety of tables/game times (depending on the size of casino).

Expected winnings are not the growth the economy, they are based off your personal win rate in your personal player pool, established by playing a high number of hands.

I agree you'll want to start by playing a lot of hands, but definitely do not just try to 'make your money last as long as possible'. I would recommend playing around a million hands online at the small stakes, using bank roll management, and working your way up that way. Develop strategies by reading some of the related content and adjusting it with your personal experience against your player pool.

Professional poker players love 'gamblers', they make the world go round.

Note: This is for people who want to get good at poker and maybe make some money off it. If you like to play just for fun, by all means do so at whatever stakes you enjoy. Poker is honestly a lot more fun if you are just trying to enjoy yourself and playing within your financial limits, and not trying to play optimally.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! I was very misinformed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is a bit misleading. She might have won $200,000, but it doesn't account for buy-ins. Also, tournament poker has huge variance. It could take years to know if someone is a winning player. If you play cash, a good player will win something like 7/BB per hour. I'm not saying she is or isn't a good player, but the metrics used are misleading.

<comment><USER13> >$200,000 in tournament jackpots.

I have never played jackpot tournaments. If I understand correctly it's you get a jackpot from winning several sit&go tournaments in a row. I don't know how the money there is divided.

<comment><USER14> @nokinside the quote is poorly written, this isn't some special bonus she won, she's amassed over 200k in earnings over the last 18 months. Her largest single win being worth over 80k. You can view her stats here.

[http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869](http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've always loved poker. I played for a year or so online for funsies and watched a lot of videos of the pro.

Then one day I went to a casino and tried my luck there. I did very well, cleaned up two guys. I went home way richer than I entered, and I felt sick to my guts.

Never went back and stopped playing.

</comment><comment><USER16> >> Sometimes I'll go to New Jersey and hop onto the poker website at an internet cafe. Online poker is illegal in New York, but not in Jersey. <<

Aka, VPN.

<comment><USER6> When I worked for Amazon in NYC - back before NJ was paying sales taxes, we were told we were allowed to work from home if we lived in NJ, but to say code of something like "I'll be working from Penn Station tomorrow".

<comment><USER16> Because they didn't have a presence at that point in NJ?

Cool, tax fraud!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of my small pet peeves is how Texas Hold'em became the "standard" for poker games as opposed to classic 5 cards each game

You get 2 cards and fold most of the time. Not really fun.

<comment><USER18> My experience is the opposite. I think Hold 'em opens up the game for playing more. Unless you're playing some crazy home game with wild cards, the classic 5-card games (draw, stud) are "you get 2 cards and fold most of the time." And since you have less information about the other players' hands, you can't exploit (bet) marginal edges as well. The 7-card games (including 7-card stud, which _is_ a classic) are more fun.

<comment><USER17> The information sharing is something that changes the game, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No paywall: [https://outline.com/bJxgcH](https://outline.com/bJxgcH)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can Google's AI win at poker?

<comment><USER20> Not necessarily Google AI. But AI is already at pro poker level.

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-reveal-how- poker-p...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-reveal-how-poker- playing-ai-beat-the-worlds-top-players/)

<comment><USER21> One caveat, the AI in those matches, Libratus, played heads-up Texas Hold 'Em, i.e. 1 vs 1 play.

It's yet to be demonstrated that any program can defeat humans in 6 handed or full-ring play, probably due in no small part to the variance in those games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kinda a light read, but interesting.</comment>


Drizzle: MySQL slims down on Aker's diet - <AUTHOR> http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Drizzle-MySQL-slims-down-on-Aker-s-diet/0,339028227,339290807,00.htm <comment><USER2> The problem with Drizzle is that it doesn't do what web developers need. No, we don't need stored procedures, triggers, views, or anything else that Drizzle is removing. What we really need is the kind of replication that something like BigTable, Cassandra, or Hadoop's HBase provide. Drizzle doesn't cover that.

So, let's say that Drizzle is 50% faster than MySQL. That means that we can delay thinking about scaling out a little, but it still doesn't solve that problem. Also, if you are going for no-single-point-of-failure, it doesn't handle that.

I'm personally hoping that the documentation on Cassandra takes off. As a web programmer, I want a replicated data store and I don't care too much if it's "dumb". Drizzle is simply giving me a database with joins, but nothing more.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And: <http://krow.livejournal.com/602409.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> "Stored Procedures, Views, Triggers, Query Cache, and Prepared Statements are gone for now."

Its fine if they do this but why are they still calling this a database? Its a dumb object store (not that that is a bad thing). The term RDBMS has been misused enough already.</comment>


HackerRank's security hackathon tonight at 7pm PT - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerrank.com/security

<comment><USER2> It would be nice to have a better explanation of the types of problems being solved here, because the security space is so massive.

Is this websec? appsec? Reverse engineering?

<comment><USER3> hey hyperplane, that's an excellent point. I'll see about clarifying the contest description.

To answer your question directly though, it's a bit of a mix of mostly introductory concepts with the goal of introducing crypto and breaking/defensive programming to people who might not get much exposure to it. The first challenges are simple crypto-based challenges to get participants into the right frame of mind, and they culminate with exploiting a hash length extension vulnerability. Hopefully, we'd like to introduce more challenges like this in the future.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like fun I signed up! Question though how long does the contest run for? How many challenges are there and how long should each one take?

<comment><USER3> Glad you signed up! :) The contest is going to run for 4 hours, and there are 4 challenges. The first two should take about an hour total, with the remaining 3 hours split over the remaining harder two challenges.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How can I give my wife emergency access to logins, passwords, etc.? - <AUTHOR> http://superuser.com/questions/514558/how-can-i-give-my-wife-emergency-access-to-logins-passwords-etc <comment><USER2> Deadmanswitch or other electronic services are all fine and well, but what you're trying to do is add fault tolerance for a non-techie to access your stuff after you're dead. What happens if the hard drive crashes right after you're gone? Or the online service you swear by closes shop a few months later?

Low-tech is the most reliable solution here. Print out key passwords, instructions, etc and store them with your will. You can include instructions in here about how to access stuff like Deadmanswitch, LastPass, etc, but for everyone's sanity, print out key passwords as well.

Yes, this creates a security hole. You need to weigh that against the desire to ensure that your significant other can easily access this information in case of your demise.

(If you want to make this a bit more foolproof, print out a simple ciphered version where you agree to replace one character with another (e.g. replace the last initial of your name with the first initial) but then again, if your significant other can figure out a simple cipher, they can probably handle the electronic systems...)

</comment><comment> cupcake-unicorn I will probably get some backlash for this but...

Why not take this as a learning opportunity and teach your wife how to be secure in her own personal accounts, using SuperGenPass and LastPass? She'll learn about how to make her own accounts secure, and will go on with that knowledge if she were to create any further more sensitive accounts for financial institutions etc.

She is safer and more secure using the internet, now and hopefully in the future, and then you just give her the master passwords for SuperGenPass/LastPass, and there you go! Problem solved?

</comment><comment><USER3> Deadmansswitch was the first thing I thought about, though my idea was to keep the info somewhere off the net (thumb drive) and have the email contain instructions

</comment><comment><USER4> i see people saying deadmansswitch, but if you are in a coma, or go to jail, kidnapped, etc, not dead, but in a condition where you are restricted, but can still make it out.</comment>


Why Most Websites Look the Other Way on Ad Blockers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-29/why-most-websites-look-the-other-way-on-ad-blockers <comment><USER2> Why would eBay block ad blocker users?</comment>


Y Combinator in Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://bc.tech.coop/blog/070611.html

<comment><USER2> why are there so many erlang submissions lately? i'm not ready to bandwagon yet

<comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145></comment></comment>


First Round Is Making Early Stage User Discovery More Accessible - <AUTHOR> https://discoveryassist.firstround.com <comment><USER2> Brilliant</comment>


Ask HN: Where does religion/spirituality fit into your life? - <AUTHOR>

I've been struggling with where religion fits into my life.  Until now, I've been pretty agnostic, but recently feel a strong need to make an attempt at incorporating religion into my values.  Personally, I'm highly considering diving into (Zen) Buddhism.
What are you religious values? Where/When/How did you start?
DISCLAIMER:  I realize religion can be a sensitive and personal topic.  I'm not AT ALL interested in debating the validity of different faiths, but VERY interested in how an agnostic goes about effectively incorporating religion/faith into their lives. <comment><USER2> I don't understand how otherwise reasonable people have this need to incorporate some amount of woo into their lives. As far as I can tell its just because "that's what you do."

If you feel your value system is lacking, perhaps look into secular work on value systems, rather than looking for answers in the thought trap that is religion, even if it is made of warm fuzzies.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell What is a religious value? I have values, some of them are the same as values that certain religions promote. Every religion promotes both good and bad values. I prefer to select my own.

</comment><comment><USER3> my thought is that religion should become part of your life based on a spiritual awakening or pull. If it is based on an intellectual or practical basis (i.e. New Years resolution), it will not sustain itself. I am a fence rider and for the most part OK with it - if an awakening happens, great, but I can't see myself searching for an awakening when I am a happy person.

</comment><comment><USER4> follow your conscience!</comment>


Which recurring tasks have you not automated? - <AUTHOR>

I noticed this question on Hackernews, (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6688440) and I am interested in the opposite.<p>Which recurring tasks has you not automated? and why? <comment><USER2> Well, I can't tell for sure if it qualifies as a task but automated UI / UX testing has proved to be no less than an ordeal having a sloppy effort to value ratio. Why?

* It is damn slow. Considering I use CDNs and a remote database the tests take quite a while to execute.

* After thr excitement it becomes a sort mind numbing task because of sheer no of tests you have to write even to test a single aspect.

* I have always hated watir and likes. CasperJS gave me hope but I was dissappointed with lack of docs and community around it. Gave it up after being stuck on a problem for two days.

Software development can never be a impecabble process and bad experiences tell me to give up UI testing untill I really need it.

<comment><USER3> What got you stuck on CasperJS?

I've been thinking about creating a web front-end to CasperJS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Automatically organizing all the mixed up files in my folders, namely: Desktop, Downloads and Documents.

Currently working on a command-line client that can organize all photos, videos, pdfs, zip files, installers at their proper places.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interacting with my email is one of the biggest non-automatable tasks I have.</comment>


Xtreme typing challenge pits iPhone vs. Netbook - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10230160-1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I know its a little bit not so new (April 2009), but I'd found amusing, regardless of the result.

I have performed a simpler test, typing the same sentence and walking with my samsung omnia and the results are pretty same. Apparently the main factor is that you have a lot more control on a handheld device vs a unstable surface like the eee. Of course, predictive software helps a lot in such case.</comment>