Nonbelievers. - <AUTHOR> http://toohardtopronounce.com/2008/2/13/non-believers <comment><USER2> * Interesting idea, to save your best oration until after the first rejection. Does anyone here do this? I can't see it working in most circumstances, but in a boardroom setting where your audience has paid good money for the work you've already done, they're not likely to actually let you leave after 5 minutes regardless of your threats (it was quite a dramatic bluff, I'd say).

* His standing up was interesting, but I wouldn't respect it if I were his audience. You can put all your cards on the table with less drama. To me, he was too overtly aggressive & theatrical. It unnecessarily puts the rest of the room on the defensive.

*Did anyone else not find the quality of discussion low? Poor logic and superficial, emotional responses. Reminds me why I stopped watching (almost all) television.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Interesting idea, to save your best oration until after the first rejection. Does anyone here do this?_

When I was involved in student government in college I successfully pulled off a stunt similar to this against an obdurate administration. A group of deans had started a process by which they were going to take some public, widely opposed actions that would be deleterious to campus life. They had started a series of negotiations with the heads of some major student organizations, plus me (as president of the student body), ostensibly to come to a mediated response with all of the stakeholders.

At the penultimate meeting, our student coalition came to the administration with a reasonable, but amended version of the plan that we were willing to accept. They thanked us profusely and told us and the student newspaper that they were reviewing the proposal and integrating it into their plan.

At the last meeting, they presented us with the "final plan" they were going to execute. It turned out that they had incorporated none of our changes; the series of meetings had been an elaborate kabuki designed for the illusion of "listening to the students."

I'd prepared the other students for what we'd do if this turned out to be the case. At the meeting, I told the deans that it was clear that they had no real interest in incorporating student opinions and that for them to unapologetically discard our changes meant that the whole thing was a farce. If they wanted to execute their plan while systematically disregarding student input, that's wholly their prerogative, but we have no interest in helping them with the appearance of gathering student input. If and when they were actually interested in student input, we'd love to help them but until then there was no sense wasting time with meetings. Every one of the student leaders got up and left the room as we'd done in contingency planning.

The deans caved 36 hours later.

 _Did anyone else not find the quality of discussion low? Poor logic and superficial, emotional responses. Reminds me why I stopped watching (almost all) television._

I think your analysis is superficial, actually. The show is quite nuanced. This was a snippet, depicting one of the characters trying to sell a lipstick ad; I don't think anything in the scene is enough for someone to conclude that the show is plagued by poor logic.

<comment><USER2> Interesting scenario with student government. Remarkably similar to the content of the video, too.

I didn't find poor logic in the show per se, but in the discussion within the show -- the thinking of the participants of the meeting. The show may have done a very nuanced job of capturing that boardroom discussion true to reality and in a way that appeals to the audience... my issue with is the quality of that discussion itself, the quality of the reasoning of the participants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen What would happen if a VC sent you a term sheet, you had good alternatives, and sent them back a term sheet with a whole lot of changes marked out in red (say, no board seats, no preferred stock, no outside CEO, shorter vesting period, etc)?

</comment><comment><USER3> So I'm interested in everyone else's response at the end. Would you have sat down? What would be your response to the second command to sit?

<comment><USER4> I didn't even obey the command to install Flash 9.

<comment><USER5> You don't like flash?

<comment><USER4> No, I just didn't have Flash 9 installed on the machine I was using.

Some of the startups choosing between Javascript and Flash say that this is one of the problems with Flash. If you choose any recent version, some fraction of people won't have it installed, and faced with the interruption of installing it, will just click on Back instead.

<comment><USER6> and some fraction, like me, won't have any version installed.

<comment><USER7> Some fraction will also not have JavaScript enabled. That was very popular among nerds back when JavaScript wasn't essential to web browsing.

Fortunately, that particular brand of nerd can safely be ignored. They are a tiny, tiny minority who make a lot of noise on websites such as this.

<comment><USER4> Tiny but influential. So I don't think they can always be that safely ignored, especially for startups that hope to begin with techy early adopters.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Leaked Documents Show How the RIAA Plans to Spend the Limewire Settlement - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110426/03010214038/leaked-documents-show-how-riaa-plans-to-spend-limewire-settlement.shtml

<comment><USER2> I like how roughly 25% goes directly to Bonuses which they clarify as (Executives Only) and another ~15% on "celebratory blimp rides (Execs. only)"... Seriously you could not make this stuff up.

<comment><USER3> Actually, you could make this stuff up. And it was. But seriously, this was a hilarious article, and a great (and sadly fairly realistic) explanation of the breakdown of the music industry "costs".</comment></comment>


More than you ever wanted to know about Marijuana strains - <AUTHOR> http://www.leafly.com/explore

<comment><USER2> I have observed most of HN community to be pro-marijuana. Having no real experiece here and being really curious, I would like to ask you guys this simple question: Is Marijuana risky for your health? Have you personally been affected?

<comment><USER3> I cannot answer your question because I have only used pot two or three times in my life, but I can give you some advice: don't take the word of a drug user about whether drugs are good or bad for you. Drug users, like most people tend to suffer from self delusion, and you really do not want to be a victim of that.

There are very few people in the world that can be brutally honest about themselves and their lives. Very few people are willing to admit that a voluntary choice they took has caused a serious permanent damage in their lives.

<comment><USER4> While I agree with the second part, I think it's a fallacy to connect it with a fictitious group of people labelled "drug users".

True, there is a class of people who "use" drugs and a class of people "abuse" drugs, but in the common vocabulary, there's unfortunately no distinction between the two. And there really ought to be.

We (society) get all of the negative consequences of drug abuse and none of the positive consequences of responsible drug use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its amazing to see varieties of the same plant have such a broad range of effects on people's behavior and state of mind. This chart does not even consider the consumption method.

Its cool to think that in places where consumers have both information and choice (like SF and Amsterdam) the taste for weed will get refined. Strains will be grown for states of mind that consumers desire and demand.

'The Botany of Desire' is a really cool book/video that describes how cannabis DNA has been evolving according to the human brain's desire to affect its own state (the book also talks about apples, potatoes and tulips for other examples of human-driven plant evolution). We're probably looking at the results of strains that were originally selected for a market primarily driven to the potency of THC. I'd love to see the strains that self-select in markets where consumers have information and choice.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where the hell does one who has no connections get some? I don't live in America, however, there must be some basic strategies that work everywhere, right?

<comment><USER7> Go the a big cities website, or the police department's, or a criminology researcher's. Find a map or report of areas where known drug dealers or prostitutes hang out (there is often overlap between these). Go there late at night in the weekend. Walk around a bit, don't make contact with anyone. After a while you'll get a feel for the environment and can make (short) eye contact with people. Dealers will pick you out, if they haven't approached you before.

I walk through parts of my city regularly where I am often approached in this way, even though I don't want to buy anything from them. So I only know about the first part, I don't know anything about any transactions after that would take place, or how to keep yourself safe. Maybe dressing like a bum will make the chance they'll mug you smaller.

Alternatively, associate with someone who most likely has some underground connections. Call and meet a prostitute, approach a group of youths hanging around on the street, approach people in a clubbing area, things like that. All of this I got from watching Law and Order but it seems reasonable enough :)

<comment><USER8> If you don't like the super shady feeling that accompanies doing this, you could make friends with someone that uses marijuana. Contrary to popular portrayal, there are many users who are successful, normal people with interests that align with yours. Once you know people that smoke, you'll likely never be without at least one connection again (unless you move).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never smoked in my life, but consider myself pro-legalization. However I just love the UX and design of leaf.ly.

</comment><comment><USER10> glad you like the site :)

<comment><USER4> is this yours? I run ThatHigh.com -- would love to discuss possible partnerships. i get over a million page views a month, obviously that could be very targeted.

not sure how we could help each other, but perhaps we could meet sometime? are you in SF?</comment></comment>


Full-screen stacked navigation tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://alexsblog.org/2014/08/07/full-screen-stacked-navigation-tutorial/

<comment><USER2> More bad over qualified CSS. Dude please STOP giving BAD advice, your terrible code is polluting the internet, people are finding your blog posts and thinking that your way is the correct way to do things.

PLEASE STOP</comment>


Probe sees unused Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/web/21528/?a=f

<comment><USER2> Is there anywhere I can go and see a full size copy of the IP block "map" that's thumbnailed in the article?

<comment><USER3> I tried searching for theirs to no avail, but it looks like they used Randall Munroe's idea for using a Hilbert Curve to display their data. (See <http://xkcd.com/195/>)

Immediately following Randall's post, I did something similar using DNS queries and log files. I never finished it, but it sure was fun at the time: <http://flickr.com/photos/yellowbkpk/tags/hilbertcurve/></comment></comment>


Amazon's Program to Spy on Workers' Private Facebook Groups - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3azegw/amazon-is-spying-on-its-workers-in-closed-facebook-groups-internal-reports-show <comment><USER2> Or, a highly unpopular translation/spin: Company uses public platform to collect metrics on user satisfaction in order to improve platform and services.

This goes way back to Henry Ford and Walter Reuther. None of this is new.

<comment><USER3> It mentioned that the groups were closed. It also showed how the documents were labeled as internal sensitive information.

Sure the data no doubt had more than one purpose, but if all they were concerned about were bugs in the platform they could easily have a bug reporting box like thousands of other software platforms. It's not as if a company like Amazon can't figure out how to improve a service without religiously monitoring a closed fb group.

Combined with the job posting for analysts to stop labor organizing/protests I think their ultimate motivation is pretty clear.

<comment><USER2> Did you read my last line? Henry Ford used to send company men to the houses of his staff to inspect them. Read up on Walter Reuther to see how far that went in history. There were people killed by the company to protect its interests.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is your claim that this is a good thing for Amazon to do because Henry Ford also did it?

<comment><USER2> Only if you think I would advocate to shop at the company store, have my hose inspected by strangers then have a private security company threaten my life. The point is that Amazon is doing the same things we have seen large companies do in the past, its not a surprise to me. My lack of surprise however should not be seen as any endorsement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dark hair was common among Vikings, genetic study confirms - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/16/dark-hair-was-common-among-vikings-genetic-study-confirms <comment><USER2> > Among their results the team found that from the iron age, southern European > genes entered Denmark and then spread north, while – to a lesser extent – > genes from Asia entered Sweden.

A friend of Scandinavian extraction found through 23&Me that his Y chromosome comes from China. His variant traveled from SE Asia north to Siberia, then west to Scandinavia, presumably carried by progenitors of the Sámi.

Circumpolar peoples certainly got around, but I guess it's also much easier to travel around the world at those latitudes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Confirming that you are not a Viking but that you go Viking. Fairly obvious when you consider this is an "ing" adjective

</comment><comment><USER3> > genetic variants for dark hair were relatively common among Vikings.

Relative to what? "Common" could mean anywhere from 10% to 80%, and the article somehow never manages to explain.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's not explicitly stated but it's fairly clear that the comparison is with Scandinavians</comment></comment>


A Deep Dive into DNS Packet Sizes - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-deep-dive-into-dns-packet-sizes-why-smaller-packet-sizes-keep-the-internet-safe/ <comment><USER2> It's sort of pathetic that our answer to trying to stop DDoS amplification attacks is to cripple public UDP services. It shouldn't be acceptable for an ISP to originate spoofed packets. There is absolutely no excuse for it, yet we continue to accept it as some kind of inevitability and treat symptom after symptom of the same root cause.

<comment><USER3> BCP38/Anti-Spoofing is a really really hard problem to fix. It may not happen in our lifetimes. There is the MANRS document/routing manifesto, which has been gaining traction. [https://www.routingmanifesto.org/](https://www.routingmanifesto.org/)

There are other initiatives as well. But the problem is very difficult to solve.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean the problem is technically hard or politically hard? From my understanding, it's not too difficult for an ISP to implement, the problem is convincing ISPs to implement it (when many don't care).

<comment><USER5> The problem is technically difficult to solve. The same way deploying IPv6 was.

<comment><USER2> No, quite the opposite. Nearly every router has a very simple option to not allow packets from IPs not on the same CIDR as the interface. If ISPs turned this on on each edge interface, the problem would be solved.

It's entirely political/economic. There is no incentive for an ISP to do so because it provides no direct benefit. It's a classic issue of externalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is kind of epic how DJB predicted this.

"Domains with DNSSEC, because of the size of some responses, are usually ripe for this type of abuse, and many DNS providers struggle to combat DNSSEC-based DDoS attacks. Just last month, Akamai published a report on attacks using DNS lookups against their DNSSEC-signed .gov domains to DDoS other domains. They say they have seen 400 of these attacks since November."

[https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/forgery.html](https://cr.yp.to/djbdns/forgery.html)

<comment><USER7> > It is kind of epic how DJB predicted this.

That's not how I read the linked essay. The lesson I get from that is that until relatively recently it was trivial to poison DNS responses requested by most DNS servers, and that it's still quite possible if you have a "nearby" malicious machine.

The CloudFlare essay appears to be talking about DDoS attacks via traffic amplification through large DNS queries.

Yes they both involve DNS, but -AIUI- nether DNSSEC nor DNSCurve will fix the problem mentioned in the CloudFlare essay.

Am I misunderstanding either essay?

<comment><USER6> To be more specific he talks about it here:

[http://cr.yp.to/talks/2012.06.04/slides.pdf](http://cr.yp.to/talks/2012.06.04/slides.pdf)

[http://imgur.com/m6YCyG8](http://imgur.com/m6YCyG8)

<comment><USER7> > To be more specific...

ITYM: "To actually link to a talk where he talks about the topic I thought he was talking about..." ;)

But yeah, thanks for the links. That's good stuff.

<comment><USER6> Yep, copy paste fail the first link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _By implementing ECDSA natively in assembler, he was able to speed up signing by 21x._

Let's hope it is resistant to side-channel attacks[0] ;)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11223266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11223266)

<comment><USER9> I don't think side channels are an attack vector for them. These are running on machines that they own, and where they control all the software on them.

I wonder if removing side-channel countermeasures was part of the optimization?

<comment><USER10> Some side channels travel over networks. Timing, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Resolvers obviously can't generate signatures for synthesized responses to ANY queries.

So when the DO bit was set, the draft suggests returning unsigned records, because the initiator can then explicitly ask for HINFO and get a signed response.

However, resolvers just return SERVFAIL if the response doesn't validate. Will Qmail retry with more specific records after a SERVFAIL response code?

</comment><comment><USER12> While ECDSA size is nice comparatively, the screenshot is a little misleading if strictly comparing algo sizes. It's not showing cloudflare's ksk, and cloudflare doesn't sign its own KSK (though there's no reason to really, but the other domain appears to).

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like one solution might be to simply not send more data from the DNS server than it has received from the IP it is sending to. You could still spoof an IP and bounce traffic, but then you couldn't amplify it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are there any other protocols that work over UDP and amplify traffic?

<comment><USER14> Quake style game protocols ( Call Of Duty 4, Quake 2,3, etc ) were used quite a lot for amplified DoS</comment></comment>


The Coming Water Wars - <AUTHOR> http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/25/the-coming-water-wars/

<comment><USER2> The water doesn't just "disappear". If it's not in the ground, or on the ground, then it's in the air above the ground. And if you put enough water into the air above the ground, it will fall back onto the ground somewhere. Or maybe into the sea...

The problem we have is that we're reproducing too much in areas without enough natural resources, and too little in areas with enough resources. Humanity is incorrectly distributed around the Earth.

 _edit_

A coworker just sent me this article about a billboard that devaporates water from the air, and provides it from a tap at the bottom:

[http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/billboard-air-water- per...](http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/billboard-air-water-peru- lima-142159082.html)</comment>


Do you know your web browser's version? - <AUTHOR> http://betanews.com/2012/08/29/do-you-know-your-web-browsers-version/

<comment><USER2> Don't care.

It only matters, when I want to view something like the newest WebGL demo.

Additionally, it matters, if a version update breaks a plugin, but this is not specific to a certain version number.

<comment><USER3> I concur.

Browser version only matters if you're looking at or developing cutting-edge web technologies.

For any other users in 99.99% of cases it doesn't matter.

Devs do need to know this stuff, and act accordingly. But if the right strategies are used every visitor can get a usable site and not have to worry about if they're using SuperBroswer v13.2.4.094 alpha 3 nightly 6

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since the launch of Chrome, the browsers release cycles has been so quick that it is hard to keep a log of it. Thanks to the seamless upgrade, there is no need to.

It is amazing how it took more than 5 years for Firefox to go v1 to v3; but it took just over couple years from v3 to v15.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just realized my Chrome on Ubuntu did not update for over half a year out of some reason. Scary.

</comment><comment><USER6> No.</comment>


Comment Your Fucking Code – BlogCodeFX - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codefx.org/techniques/documentation/comment-your-fucking-code/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you agree, don't forget to follow these best practices while writing code comments. [http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2011/08/code-comments- java...](http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2011/08/code-comments-java-best- practices.html)</comment>


The Innards of Erlang  - <AUTHOR> http://contekst.org/blog/?p=55 <comment><USER2> Greetings,

I am so glad I found this site. My two other favorite sites are valleywag and peoplemagazine.com. The only thing I really needed was a site devoted to Erlang. I'm glad I found it. I'm adding it to my Internet Explorer favorites.

thanks

<comment><USER3> IE? Why?

<comment><USER4> Because of its excellent ActiveX control support, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know, I might actually like a _real_ article about the innards of erlang.

<comment><USER6> Being in Europe, I seem to have been sleeping during The Great Erlang Meme of 2009, so I was pretty disappointed to log in this morning, find what looked like a really juicy article about Erlang at the top of the list, and find out that 1) it doesn't really talk about the innards of Erlang, and 2) it's all a joke.

The innards of Erlang _are_ fascinating, because they're really what make the language so good at what it does, and are fairly different from many other languages in terms of architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My God, this is the most interes...

 _snore_

You've truly found a way to help out HN.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think I've ever seen a story get so many points so fast :D

<comment><USER9> And it continues. Is this legitimate?

<comment><USER10> It's by request <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145> .

<comment><USER11> I am in total agreement that all of these "boring" stories are far more interesting than most of the interesting stories have been.

Er, I think that makes sense.

Anyhow, maybe now we can pick a Language of the Day, or some other geeky topic to vote up on the front page each day of the week? Maybe C Efficiency Hacks, or Interesting Uses of Graph Algorithms, or ...

<comment><USER12> You don't need to pick. A weird unstable combination of the internet and the community on this site will do the picking for you. Furthermore, it will pick 29 other topics to fill your front page. Isn't that amazing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You made my day. But Google obviously doesn't know the meaning of 'innards'.

Edit: Too bad your joke was so good it ruined HN for the rest of the day.

</comment><comment><USER14> Should I be worried? Isn't this the kind of inside joke that permeates sites like 4chan, or heaven forbid, /.? (Albeit more tasteful?)

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't mind that too much. Erlang is a neat language.

The problem with 4chan and the like is that they take it overboard. I have hopes that HN will know when to quit.

<comment><USER16> There is another article that corresponds to this one. Keep reading to find it.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I realize that. I'm just (half-jokingly) saying that if the inside joke results in more erlang articles being posted, that wouldn't be as devastating as the kind of inside jokes that take over other sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why did you have to ruin the last good site on the internet?

</comment><comment><USER18> A short concise description of Erlang would be welcome, given the Erlang tweet storm on HN.

I know nothing about Erlang, except for the hype :O

offtopic.. is there much activity around the arc lisp dialect [if you'll forgive me calling it that] these days?

</comment><comment><USER19> <http://marcusvorwaller.com/look/erlang-20090311-125410.jpg> 18 of 25 Erlang articles on the front page. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought all the Erlang stuff was due to the site reboot :)

</comment><comment><USER21> It took me awhile to figure why\how this happened but now that I understand it, it is hilarious to see this in real time on the HN homepage. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER16> hahaha, Sorry I laughed out loud.

<comment><USER22> haha :) I laughed out too!

Edit: it appears a bit too loud, GF thought I went crazy for a sec</comment></comment>


Commandeer App – Version 1.0, May 1, Release Information - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sergeantServerless/commandeer-version-1-0-release-information-ab641e7196e <comment><USER2> There's s a (common) grammar mistake: "let's" is a contraction of "let us", it's "lets"(in the sense of "allows" that you're looking for.</comment>


What it feels like to fail - <AUTHOR> http://aflanagan.com/what-it-feels-like-to-fail/

<comment><USER2> I really don't think that you have a failure on your hands.

You should stop to think that way and start to think about how you are going to monetize your users, one way would be to literally ask the community: "Hey guys & girls, this is going great but I need a living, what should I do for you to throw some money my way" might be a good start.

Most small scale bootstrapped start-ups would be trumpeting their success from the rooftops if they got a dedicated userbase like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> So... did you ever _try_ a revenue model? Make some sort of premium account? I'm not speaking from any amount of experience, but you have 7000 users, you're about to throw in the towel on the business end of things anyway, I would think it's worth trying to come up with something.

<comment><AUTHOR> We tried a couple of different ideas, neither of which gained traction. The most promising was offering a paid tool to Spanish and English professors, who could sign up their classes and then monitor how their students were using the site.

We actually had about 50 universities sign up for a free trial, although only about 10 actually used the site actively last term. I think the biggest problem with this idea was that most university students who are studying Spanish don't really care about learning, and are just doing it for credit.

<comment><USER4> I think you need to reaccess who your paying clients are. People that are so desperate to learn they'll try anything - expats in a new country for a job (or dragged along by a spouse), contractors dealing with workers and language barrier, esl teachers, travelers who want to be prepared to communicate with the locals, etc. Less fun, and more solution based advertising. I know I've seen Rosetta Stone ads highlighting it's use with diplomats and the like.

<comment><USER5> Having moved to a new country myself recently, I would have loved the opportunity to talk to the locals about life in general - where to live, where to go out, etc (though in my case I moved between English speaking countries so the language wasn't such a big deal). I could see the same working for travellers.

Also the chance to make some contacts in the country before I arrived would have been good - making friends in a new city is hard.

I would have paid for that kind of service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Your domain is, in my opinion, terrible. We spent three minutes trying to pronounce it.

2\. "We have >7,000 users, and lots of them are still super active in the community." That's actually great start! Why aren't you trying to expand?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'm getting that a lot on here. I think it is a hard name for people who only speak English, or speak English and other languages that aren't latin based. (Our Spanish speaking members really like the name.)

<comment><USER7> So use multiple domain names.

<comment><USER8> This is your best bet. I really like "Lenguajero", but I lived in Puerto Rico for a couple of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not what it feels like to fail. You've got an active, committed community of 7000 users - that is not even close to failure.

When I built Despammed.com in 1999, I peaked at around that. Donations were plenty to keep the site running and even paid for the mortgage once or twice when things were tight. You've got a much more committed community there, and while you're not going to be the next YouTube (because learning a language is _hard_ , while watching TV is _not_ ), you've built a useful service that can run in perpetuity and that, my friend, is what _success_ feels like.

I think you need to move on to your next idea; let Lenguajero run for a few years, try to think of a premium version of the service in some way, but mostly just let it ferment and grow organically, and get yourself engaged in something you'll find fun. Keep yourself moving.

<comment><USER3> Since you mentioned donations, I figured I'd ask you this. I've got a site I'm working on that I want to commit to full time, potentially without any other source of income. When you say it was "enough to keep the site running", do you mean enough to maintain servers, or enough to maintain your refridgerator and roof as well?

Also, is it ok to have a donation based site if you eventually hope to profit significantly from it? Or does that tend to imply that it's a "community" or "non-profit" sort of thing they're putting money towards?

<comment><USER8> By "keep the site running" I mean it paid to keep the server hosted at a local ISP. (Good Lord, what a blast from the past; it was the last server I ever actually physically saw, a used SPARCstation running Solaris, and I carried it to the ISP myself.) Occasionally, I had enough in the kitty to pay some personal bills. That was just on PayPal donations from one link in the corner of the home page.

But I wasn't even close to being committed to Despammed full time (although it sometimes felt like it during my trial-by-fire sysadminning lessons when things went wrong) - so I don't think there's much to generalize from. You have the advantage of full attention - but I was the only free spam filter in the world for a short time, and a few people were pretty virulently thankful about it.

As to the morality of donations when you hope to profit later - absolutely. You're not forcing people to donate, and if they like your site well enough to give you money, they will not only cheer you on if you become profitable, they'll even feel personal pride that they helped you on your way. The Knew- Him-When effect. I think only a few people would feel you'd sold out. And you can ignore them; they'll be looking for a way to feel superior no matter what, so you might as well let them feel superior all the way to your bank. Everybody's happy.

Now if you actually sell yourself as a community effort, then appropriate it to yourself when it's time to make money, that will piss people off, and rightly so. It's really all your attitude, though, that sets the tone. If you're honest about your plans, that's all people want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just for the fun of it does anyone want to throw out some new names for the site? Lenguajero is pretty bad in English. I think we fell into the trap of speaking Spanish everyday and thinking that it just sounded cool (and a bit witty). Ideas???

<comment><USER9> secondspeak.com is currently unregistered, and makes sense to me as a name for a site for people learning a second language.

<comment><USER10> _"... secondspeak.com is currently unregistered ..."_

That also means you could try other languages. Something that should be considered. Chinese/English for example could give you a lot bigger user base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify. I'm not shutting down Lenguajero. It will keep on running (at least I'll still use it to practice my Spanish :)), and maybe we'll come up with an idea on how to monetize.

One of the challenges we faced in monetizing the site was monetizing our international members. A really big chunk of our users are from Central and South America. When it comes to advertising we don't make any money off these users (say $0.05 per click versus ~$1.00 for someone in America). The majority of these users also don't have credit cards or paypal so getting them to pay for a premium version of the site would be difficult.

<comment><USER2> I'd kill for $1.00 / click on any traffic. $0.05 is still pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Startup failure != you as a failure.

It's 2 separate events. Associating startup failure as you as a failure is a very slippery slope; because eventually you won't get out of bed because everything you can possibly do when you get out of bed is going to result in failure anyway, so why get out of bed. Remember - 2 separate things :)

And as others have mentioned, many other startups _wished_ they had 7K of passionate users.

Keep tryin! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks jayliew. I don't actually think I'M a failure. I was just trying to express the gamut of emotions that one feels when a startup doesn't work out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's a great idea. Are you sure you want to give up on it ? Why do you call it a failure ? I wouldn't call having 7000 users a failure. You have plenty of room to grow.

Let me know if you want feedback. One reason a lot of people trying to learn a new language give up is because of lack of motivation after a while / not finding people to converse/practice/learn with (and I talk from first-hand experience)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been feeling the same way about my startup, which has almost 17,000 users but only a small amount of them are paying customers (launched a paid plan a few months ago). I keep wanting to ask myself how much longer I should give it to see if it reaches profitability, or should I just shut it down? Anyway, right now I'm creating a survey for the paying users to be able to tell what they like/don't like about the paid plan. I also plan on doing a referral program that benefits both parties (I did get both of those ideas from a slideshow about a startup and their freemium model, forgot which). Keep those ideas in mind if you ever plan on introducing any paid plans and good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I really appreciate the feedback and advice (from everyone on HN). The whole "wondering how much longer I should give it" phase lasted from about February until early April.

One of the first things that made me realize it might be time to cut my losses and focus my attention on other projects was when we launched this website in mid Feb - <http://toeflnow.com>

We sell a TOEFL Tips and Strategies guide eBook, and while it certainly isn't earning enough to pay all the bills it is making substantially more money than Lenguajero. In fact, in its first week it made more money than Lenguajero did the entire month of Feb.

That was a real turning point. It was like "Hmmm...hundreds of hours spent on Lenguajero vs. ~40hrs spent on an ebook. Maybe I should be doing something else right now..."

Good luck! I really hope it works out for you. What's the website if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER13> Thank you! That's amazing about your TOEFL vs. Lenguajero revenue. My site is <http://soshiku.com> and my submission to HN is <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=315281> (submitted ~19 months ago, yikes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a member of a small group of friends, venturing into the possibility of our first start-up, seeing the failures of others can be really eye opening.

I suppose I haven't thought too much about a revenue source, however the first major thing we're going to do is an Android app... If you can call that major.

<comment><USER15> Launching real products for real users it major :) Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm coming off a very painful startup failure myself, but I am honestly very thankful for the experience. There is an old cliche that says you learn more from your failures than your successes. It's become a cliche for a reason, it's usually true.

I reflect often on the entire experience and constantly go over all the mistakes we made in hindsight. It's painful, really painful, but you learn from the pain. The pain makes it real so you won't ever make the same mistakes again.

I'm onto my next startup now and all that hard learning is paying off. I'm working even hard but with much less stress since I know I'm doing the right things this time around.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm really surprised at all the negative comments on the domain name. I thought it was great!

I've picked a poor domain myself, due to the influence of another language (Mandarin), but this is Spanish! Not only is it the #2 language on the planet, it's a language that I thought would instantly recognizable to both Europeans and Americans.

Moral of the story: Make domain names out of English words and never ever assume your users have exposure to other languages.

</comment><comment><USER18> "I thought I'd be the next YouTube"

As far as I know YouTube is far from being a financial success either...

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 BILLION at a time that they had around 70 employees. So it was at least a financial success for the founders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Keep going, even if this isn't the site. Like you said, you've come miles in just one year, and you've achieved more than you're giving yourselves credit for.

Turn off Mixergy and get to work. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> how to get over failing: move on.

</comment><comment><USER21> Have you thought about putting a donate button for now? Might make a few bucks a months?

</comment><comment><USER22> Stop-loss on your time and effort is at times a smart business decision. There is no point in sugar coating it. That being said, a failed business does not make you a failure. Not at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it time for social media posts to have digital signatures? - <AUTHOR> Given the recent Twitter hack, I wonder if we would all be safer if there was a way to digitally sign tweets and other posts.
Basically you could sign your tweet with PGP or X.509 and anyone could click on a little padlock icon on your tweet to  download the signature for verification.
I imagine only a few accounts would actually use it (mainly cryptonerds and important officials).
Do you think it would help or would it just be a waste of time? <comment><USER2> How would this even work? Normally for such signatures there is either a hierchy of trust (ssl) or you know them personally (PGP). Even if there was a working model, if Twitter itself got hacked, an account could just claim they lost their key and made a new one.

<comment><USER3> For most people that's true but for extremely high profile like Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, they will have other channels to confirm their identity (and their current public key).

If you want to stretch to the logical extreme full-dystopian deepfake future where any message could be fake then the only real solution is the free press. A distributed network of groups and individuals that will each independently validate the things that people do and say then make those validations available for the general public to review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my opinion that definitely will help theoretically! But a significant number of users will find it complicated to use, in a business point of view implementing something that compromises user-friendliness isn't a good strategy. Probably this is one reason why blockchain based dApps are yet far from being mainstream. Majority of users of mainstream social network/email don't even use MFA to secure their accounts.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yep signed tweets solve this and it doesn't need to be perfect, it can even be partially automanaged by Twitter infrastructure just to restrict staff.

</comment><comment><USER6> This feature - social media comment authentication - substantially exists already on Twitter. It also already involves cryptography.

Under the current flow, tweets by notable people are authenticated if their profiles have the blue check mark. In turn, Twitter is authenticated by the TLS connection between your web browser and the server located at twitter.com, which is itself attested by one of a selection of certificate authorities you trust. A security compromise in Twitter should break your trust in the blue check mark authentication "scheme", just as a breach in a certificate authority should undermine your trust in the certificates it signs.

Suppose you want to augment this chain of trust with additional cryptography. You stand up a public key infrastructure (PKI) with unique public/private key pairs corresponding to every Twitter account. Each tweet is now digitally signed with the private key of its account owner, and the tweet view features a small tooltip which allows you to view the signature and the public key.

How do you augment this system so it's robust against a user's account being compromised? You could enforce two-factor authentication, sure. But if an individual account is successfully compromised, the attacker will be able to post arbitrary tweets with valid signatures corresponding to the victim's account, unless you segregate the signing functionality from the posting functionality. This puts us back to where we are now, but with more software to support and maintain.

What if we design this system to be robust against account takeover? We can make it so that every tweet requires a signature based on something only the real account owner owns. For example you could move the private key onto a Yubikey, which doubles for two factor authentication. Then a user needs to use the Yubikey to sign each tweet at post time. This incurs a significant usability barrier, but it might still be attractive to a small set of paranoid users. However the threat model it's defending against is not very compelling, because if you already have a hardware security token for producing digital signatures, your two factor authentication is robust anyway. Signing tweets in this way reduces to just authenticating with that token when you log into the account.

Finally, how do you defend against Twitter itself being compromised? This is what happened today. Assuming Twitter is being trusted to run this PKI, a compromise in Twitter is still going to undermine your trust in the authenticity of any given tweet. That again brings us back to where we currently are, but with more complex software to maintain and nontrivial performance cost.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze.

</comment><comment><USER7> yes, it would help

</comment><comment><USER7> yes</comment>


Show HN: Ola.js, a library for smooth realtime number interpolation - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> links back to the HN submission

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me fix it.

Edit: fixed - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19909267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19909267)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pauv, a P2P Bitcoin exchange - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pauv/x/4135454

<comment><USER2> its unclear to me what "their favourite payment processor" is supposed to be. How does the system prevent fraud?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. So, we will implement some payment processors by default, and obviously we are choosing the ones that do not let chargebacks. On the other hand, as the server has both your payment details and your Bitcoin details, the exchange happens automatically when the match is produced, so there is no fraud possible :)

<comment><USER3> [https://inputs.io/](https://inputs.io/)

[http://bitpay.com/](http://bitpay.com/)

[http://bitmerch.com/](http://bitmerch.com/)

[http://coinbase.com/](http://coinbase.com/)

[http://fasterco.in/](http://fasterco.in/)

[http://bitstamp.net/](http://bitstamp.net/)

[https://localbitcoins.com/](https://localbitcoins.com/)

[https://campbx.com/](https://campbx.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> ?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Invention - <AUTHOR> http://kevinlawler.com/invention <comment><USER2> Stanley I. Mason, who I met once later in his life before he passed away was what we might call a true inventor. He was kind enough to show me his shop and to give me some of his design notebooks (I returned them to his daughter after he passed).

He invented the disposable diaper, the form-fitting sanitary napkin, the squeezable bottle, the granola bar, microwave cookware, the underwire bra, the garbage compactor, stringless band-aid packaging, heated pizza boxes, and much more from his home in Connecticut.

I remember a few things quite clearly:

\- He had a map of all the places he had flown to, much of it on his own plane.

\- He was adamant that I learn how to draw if I ever wanted to invent something I could patent.

\- There was an old Mercedes in his driveway that he modified to run on soybean oil and he regretted that he wasn't able to convince car companies or congress to take it seriously.

\- He was incredibly generous with his time.

\- His home was part workshop and he didn't have a long commute.

It's actually hard to believe that the man doesn't have a Wikipedia page. For those who are interested, he wrote a very short book called "Inventing Small Products" which could be taken as inspiration, not a "how-to" guide. He also wrote a book called "Going Solo" which I haven't read but for $3.99 used will order immediately.

<comment><USER3> I think I saw a documentary on him in school. It was an interesting life: come up with crazy demos, and convince other people to turn them into products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899. (possibly mis- attributed)

Been there, done that. The next wave of invention has yet to come, and it won't be anything like you can possibly expect. If it were, you'd have invented it already.

<comment><USER5> I don't normally quote scripture around strangers, but:

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

Ecclesiastes 1:9

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was surprised by the number of powerful ideas packed into this essay. My intellectual horizons have been broadened!

Maybe some (or all) of these ideas are old and familiar to others, but most of them are new to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> OP mentions that we're reaching the limits of our inventiveness. Not true. We're just getting more accustomed to constant invention, constant change. When invention becomes the constant state, nothing is seen as invention. Invention is now normal.

It is just the name of the thing that has changed, not the thing itself.

</comment><comment><USER8> The other day I saw a commercial for the company Invent Help . I usually ignore them but for once it really got me thinking. They start by saying something along the lines of "are you an inventor..." which lead me to ask the same question as you (assuming you're Kevin); does anyone actually give them self the title "Inventor?" Event if you "invent" full time, doesn't that seem a bit pretentious? It could just be the US culture, but inventors seem to be a term to describe originators of technology, pushed by Hollywood. In movies and tv shows today we have engineers and scientists, decades and centuries ago we had inventors. I could go into a whole rant about the Invent Help company, but I'll save that for another time.

<comment><USER9> We have some of the same thoughts on the matter. There was a thread on invention and marketing that I had to drop. Treating the marketing aspect properly takes the conversation too far away from the main subject. Points like who invented what first are too hot to introduce without spending a lot of time accounting for them. (That surprised me.) The same goes for who can be considered an inventor today.

I think invention and marketing have an old and deep connection.

<comment><USER10> Hey Kevin,

1\. About half-way through, you said that nobody would pay to own a pre- iPhone, or would give two twenty year olds the run of a plant. But what about Pebble? Granted, it's not built in a garage, but this printrbot could be: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printrbot/printrbot- your...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printrbot/printrbot-your- first-3d-printer)

You did say that there was a reversal of this trend, but can you clarify what you meant when you said _"In 2012 it almost defies belief."_

2\. I like the take on attributing inventions to a single inventor - this was brought up in the book _"The Myths of Innovation"_ by Scott Berkun which he talks about in a lecture at Carnegie Mellon: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc> and the premise for my website <http://brownieinmotion.ca> (read the essay on 3M) where I say that expertise in one domain helps you solve problems in another (also the reason I pursued three degrees in engineering, music and economics).

3\. I agree with your counter-argument to entrepreneurs chasing ideas that are too small. I wanted to add my thoughts on that. Groupon didn't think that selling 2-for-1 coupons were beneath them. I elaborated on it here: _The Move to Less Productivity_ [http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/25224585415/the- move...](http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/25224585415/the-move-to-less- productivity) Google, RIM, etc got to where they where by a series of small attainable steps. Eventually, they discover a scalable model.

4\. Also wanted to add to your take on lottery tickets/incubators. Getting into an accelerator program was never a permission slip for doing what you love. But business planning is essential, even if the plan is worthless (to paraphrase Eisenhower) and to paraphrase the founder of Zappos: the goal is not to lower risk, but to go for higher expected positive outcome.

Thanks for sharing Kevin. If you don't mind, please critique my book-in- progress on innovation and startups: <http://bit.ly/icecreamstart>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A constant state of curiosity is essential for "invention". The article gave me a sense of smugness that wouldn't let one sustain such a mental state.

Now, I'm off to get my antidote fix of Richard Feynman ;) !

</comment><comment><USER12> There are few inventors _a la_ Da Vinci nowadays because our society is based on industrial standards, and as such, rewards specialization.

The most innovative work will come from people spanning multiple areas of human knowledge: informatics and biology, chemistry and physics, sociology and medicine...

</comment><comment><USER13> I've actually got a ton of ideas for inventions but I have no idea how to break into the business. Any advice? Any books I could read?

<comment><USER14> There isn't really a 'break into the business' there is a process for filing a patent. You can look it up at uspto.gov. There are filing fees etc, they have been reduced for 'small' inventors courtesy of the JOBS act. Generally the application in by registered mail, and then answering all the questions that come back is sufficient. If you pay an attorney to do that its about $20K these days but it can be done for much less than that on your own. The risk you take by doing it on your own is that you don't write claims in your patent that hold up when challenged, or allow people to avoid your patent while still implementing your idea.

<comment><USER13> What are your thoughts on provisional patents?

Also I'm most confused what to do after getting a patent. How do you interest companies in licensing it?

<comment><USER14> Ok, lets separate two things.

1) There is no business where joe random person writes up a patent, gets it issued, and then BigCorp comes along and offers to buy it for eleventy billion dollars. That is a myth, a pipe dream, a fantasy. Doesn't happen (not that it _can't_ happen, just that it doesn't)

2) You invent something to solve a problem, generally people who invent things are quite taken with their own inventions, so they build them. A provisional patent is a good way to establish patent protection for your idea before you've invested too much time and effort into it, and it can make it easier to talk to third parties about it because they can't "steal" it if you've already got a provisional filed.

That said, you either self fund, or you convince folks of how great it is to fund you, and you convince them to help you build it. Then you find people who have the problem it solves and you try to sell it to them. If they buy it, you build more and continue. If nobody buys it, well you go on to your next idea. If you can't sell your idea you might partner with someone who is good at selling things.

This is all basic stuff. Its not "easy" in that there aren't any "easy" roads to success, if there were it would be trampled by everyone using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen>

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, that was truly a brilliant article, one of the best I've read in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER17> And as William Morris once said: "Nothing useless can be truly beautiful."</comment>


Apple more valuable than the entire FTSE 100 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53996191 <comment><USER2> I find this disturbing mostly because I can't stand using Apple products. They lost the magic around 2012, for me.</comment>


Why We Released Buggy Software - <AUTHOR> http://blog.holler.com/why-we-released-buggy-software-2011-09

<comment><USER2> "Because this is the first iPhone app I ever built, after taking a 6 week class on iPhone development in Atlanta".

You could have just said that, and people would have nodded and said "good on you". The rest of this post actually sapped your credibility.

<comment><USER3> I dont think that would have made for a good blog post.

<comment><USER4> Agreed :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I was merely a web developer, not an iPhone developer"

Thinking that alone is a mistake -- there is nothing magical about iPhone developers, and ios programming can be learned quickly. If you're doing a startup, you can't believe anything other people are doing is impossible to master.

(that may very well be the case, but it always warrants investigation)

<comment><USER6> That's not really true. For the most part (no, this isn't true everywhere, but for the most part), the tolerances are a lot looser in web development, in pretty much all areas. Unless you're getting pummeled on inadequate hardware, your performance choices in the backend of a web site or web app are _probably_ going not going to harm anything.

If you make bad performance choices on an iOS application, you'll create a stuttery, ugly mess (smooth scrolling in an iOS application is surprisingly nontrivial) that will--unforgivably--sap a user's battery and ruin their experience.

People are a lot more forgiving of 2ms greater response time on a web page than a web app that drains 4% of battery in five minutes.

<comment><USER5> No one is born writing elite code, and the question is one of overcoming fear to conquer new ground, even if modestly at first.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but subjecting other people (especially paying ones) to your novice code is kinda iffy.

<comment><USER5> Not if it gets the job done.

<comment><USER6> _Yes_ , even if it gets the job done. Because if it gets the job done poorly, by causing significant battery drain or performance problems or other hallmarks of bad code, you are mistreating your users.

<comment><USER5> Novice code isn't necessarily imbecilic code, you're conflating the two. If I'm otherwise proficient and have a grasp of hardware conceptually, my iOS code isn't likely to do those things you stated.

(signout from subthread)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with the 'release fast and often' approach. However, this is just an example of really poor testing. If a key button on your app causes it to crash, then there is no justification for that. You also pissed off a bunch of your users and many won't even bother to update.

It's all fine and good getting a very basic v.1 out to get feedback - but it shouldn't crash due to an easy to detect bug.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey. Kudos on shipping!

My honest feedback would be that your main point is lost in the story. Even though I read the whole article, the thing I was left thinking when I finished was that the root cause of your problem was 1) the failure of your contract developer to deliver and 2) you rushed an early version of the app out in 6 weeks without sufficient testing.

For what it's worth, leading with a clear apology to those affected by the problem would do no harm.

It would also help if you explained more clearly what _exactly_ you wanted to learn from the release that justified the impact of this bug on users. Eg, some key hypothesis or assumption in your business model or product roadmap etc.

Good luck with the next iteration :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback! I'll update the post ... that's what I get for a midnight article :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _We are now well aware of the problem and have since submitted a version > that fixes the problem for_ the vast majority of _users_.

Well, you either found _the_ problem and fixed it or you fixed something and now hoping it was what was crashing your app. Or you have multiple crash points in the app. If it still crashes - fine, you have more work ahead of you. Just don't try and twist words to make things look better than they are.

<comment><USER4> I can only laugh at this comment "don't try and twist words to make things look better than they are". Not twisting words, it's pretty straight forward.

<comment><USER9> Well, does your updated version still crash once in a while?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not only do they release buggy software, they also crash IE8 instantly.

<comment><USER4> The homepage crashes in IE8 for you?

<comment><USER10> <http://blog.holler.com/> crashed IE8 (using Vista SP1).</comment></comment></comment>


What other communities do you frequent online? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wondering if you are taking part in any other online communities. Myself, I don't even know many places to visit. Sometimes I indulge in discussions on Slashdot-like pages (not a really community), another place is a closed community run by a friend, with mostly other friends from real life. How many other people have a place like that? Do many people just use the social pages (MySpace etc) for that? Somehow I doubt it, it doesn't feel the same.

It just would be great to find likeminded people for the one or other thing. For exmaple sometimes I enjoy discussing economics, but I couldn't find a good online community for that yet.

</comment><comment><USER2> In general, Digg, Facebook, Youtube, and also the TechCrunch forums for startup related discussion ( <http://forums.techcrunch.com> ).

I also visit a lot of Web2.0/startup blogs (Valleywag, Read/WriteWeb, FoundRead, Mashable, Guy Kawasaki, Webware), but I guess those are not real "communities".

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://reddit.com>

<http://programming.reddit.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> crooksandliars, webhostingtalk

</comment><comment><USER5> Usenet.</comment>


Wikimedia Foundation: Universal Code of Conduct/Draft Review - <AUTHOR> https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review <comment><USER2> The objection I have to CoC documents is that by design they reward people who litigate language to push agendas instead of participating in the community they are designed to support based on genuine welcome. This legalism empowers people who specialize in exploiting leverage to achieve governance, while policing and alienatating contributors. In this sense, CoC's are an anti- pattern that exacerbates the very problem they ostensibly solve.

In Canada, we have a colloquialism that says, "well, that opens up the constitution," which means that when you open up founding principles for change, every obscure chancer takes a shot at getting their niche interest encoded into it. Builders aren't engaged in political struggles, but political strugglers' whole existence is around finding new communities to exploit and govern.

For Wikipedia to spend time on this seems like bike shedding, and there is literally no upside to appeasing the social litigants who benefit most from code of conduct pseudo-legalisms. Products are not countries and they are not societies. They are things, which people make and take responsibility for. Forfeiting responsibility and discretion to these exogenous power struggles arguably betrays the people whose work makes it valuable.

<comment><USER3> Your assertion that people will abuse the code of conduct of push agendas is interesting. I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm not seeing that as different.

Wikipedia already pushes agendas; they don't need the code of conduct to push those agendas.

<comment><USER2> The shortest version of this is: a set of principles provides a basis for recourse and a means for people to reconcile their differences, but a code-of- conduct is like just throwing them a bag of hammers and knives to police each other with.

The only rational response to a code-of-conduct accusation is not reconciliation, but litigation by rejecting the legitimacy and standing of both the code and the accuser, by any and all means necessary, and in this sense they are a foundation of conflict that produces permanent struggle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems generally harmless. As usual there's the natural tension in self- organizing groups between ensuring inclusiveness while not weaponizing the tools used to protect inclusiveness. No doubt someone will succeed in the latter with the UCoC. No doubt in its absence someone would have abused their position unshackled by these explicit norms. It's just an optimization problem.

But that's just the nature of the thing. The network of WMF controlled sites is just far too big now for efficient auto-cooperation, which often happens. So now we have rules to mediate. The rules don't seem particularly onerous, though doubtless one day someone will find out that I advocated against organ donation on Twitter and drag me through the mud and request a rewrite of all my en-wiki contributions.

But until then, I've found en-wiki _very_ easy to contribute to. I think the norms around picture copyright inclusion are super strict but everything else is easy. I've been a member for more than a decade and auto-confirmed for some long time so maybe that's it, but honestly I don't interact with other people at all, and the other day I looked back and I haven't been reverted once over that period.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't really address the actual problems on Wikipedia - things like people "owning pages", or people contributing incorrect information, or people appointing themselves as the arbiter of what is and isn't useful (or correct) information.

In my entire time contributing I've never even once, been aware of the other person's physical characteristics, or social standing. So it seems rather pointless to include those (although I guess harmless).

What I would like for a COC is things like not demeaning other people's contributions by just removing them with barely even a comment, or just a dismissive one.

<comment><USER6> I nearly died because of bullying. One of the worst moments of my life, obviously it exacerbated an existing condition but it was terrible. A CoC would definitely have helped.

<comment><USER7> Wow, sorry to hear that. I'm glad you're still around. Was this on Wikipedia?

<comment><USER6> It was, it was awful and had there been a code of conduct around respect then I'm pretty certain it would have been dealt with a lot better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To get a sense of the community consensus, it is worth browsing the General Comments section: [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Code_of_Condu...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review#General_comments)

Additionally, the overall project page (not just the draft review) offers the foundation's arguments for why they believe this needs to be made: [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct)

</comment><comment><USER9> Can Wikipedia really be a fair, neutral, and global resource if its code of conduct includes political and cultural positions? For example this code of conduct mentions gender identities and pronouns, a topic that is the subject of significant debate and also very much a product of the American progressive perspective rather than universal. Whether a trans woman is actually a woman is not only controversial (rather than decided), but also a political war over a definition change in one language and culture. There are other cultures where there are instead three categories of gender identities, and the existence of these concepts predates western civilizations even. Given there is this diversity of opinions, it seems strange to require participants in Wikimedia adhere to one set of views.

<comment><USER10> Hopefully I'm living in a place where this pronoun thing have not been imported, but if someone is ever trying to bully me with his invented words (acknowledging self-declared gender with existing ones is totally fine, using "hir" is not), I'll ask for reciprocity and I'll impose the use of a made up pronouns that contains some of my favorite writing systems (they're all logographic) and a few Unicode characters outside BMP. If they don't want to play that game, why should I play theirs? It will be an easy way to uncover a lot of hypocrisy.

<comment><USER11> Fix your heart.

<comment><USER10> Fix your grammar.

English is the only foreign language I can read where I routinely have to pause to wonder and read sentences again to be sure of what's going on because of purposely messed up pronoun usage. Normally I'm lucky as the rules are the same as my native language (his encompass both genders when speaking of a group). However recently I've come across usage such as singular they and even more striking 'her' to encompass both gender. This bugs me out each time, not because I'm trying to be offended of everything I read (that's an easy game...) but because if a text is deviating from convention it's normally to put the focus or emphasis on something. In the case of her for example, this screams "warning: in this sentence the human under discussion is a woman and this is a very relevant fact for the understanding of the text". So I naturally start paying more attention to that. Except it's not an important detail at all so it doesn't need any attention whatsoever. This is the infuriating thing. The most ridiculous recent example of this I read was a technical document written by a Microsoft employee, where her was used as the default generic pronoun for programmers... I took me a few seconds to realize I wasn't reading doc written in a parallel universe. For made up pronouns, they require searching on the web which is super annoying too.

So yes, I refuse to play the attention game of a few people that are decided to ruin fluid reading for anyone else for their own self-important interests. They are doing the same in my native language on a larger scale and my opposition is consequently stronger there. Language is a shared good and is the basis of human communication, so it must not weaponized by an infime minority to create division among people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values upon functionally autonomous communities elsewhere around the world becomes a form of cultural imperialism?

To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here.

<comment><USER13> I'm in the UK and am happy to report the values are not American. Ask some Aussies or Kiwis and I'm sure they'd say the same.

I'd also remark that perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to comment in such a trite way if Wiki had instead make a statement on respecting people's sexualities. Once controversial, now widely accepted as a facet of who people are, and originally a darling cause of the left. It's recognised as a human rights issue, which is to say it has outgrown reasonable politics. I look forward to gender identity doing the same.

<comment><USER12> This isn't in any way about gender identity, it's about the fact that there _isn't_ a universal values system.

You mentioned the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand - do you notice a pattern there? Throw in Canada and you've perfectly recreated the FIVEEYES international surveillance pact members. It's a culturally homogeneous group.

I think you'd get very different results if you were trying to come up with a universal conduct framework and you actually bothered including Russia, China, India, Venuzuela..

Of course, they weren't properly asked and provided no input , because this is a subtle form of upper class Western imperialism.

<comment><USER14> Of course there is not a universal value system. If you asked someone from nazi germany how they felt about jewish people editing wikipedia, they would probably respond negatively.

Does it follow that we should care? Creating Wikipedia is fundamentally a political act. It subscribes to views like information should be free, amateurs can compete with professionals in information compilation, articles should attempt to neutrally represent the facts, etc. These are all ideological views, many of them controversial. Why should we succumb to moral relativism when deciding on how wikipedians ought to collaborate, when we don't subscribe to moral relativism in other aspects of the creation of wikipedia. To put another way: being neutral in article content doesn't imply that we have to be neutral in literally every organizatiinal aspect.

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

<comment><USER15> You have a part about solidarity being expected as if it could be enforced. Completely ridiculous. Solidarity with whom?

So, I expect you are some high official of Wikipedia/Wikimedia?

Wikipedia was not political act to enforce behavior, it was an act to share information in good faith. And that goal is endangered by multiple interests I don't feel guarded against those with this set of rules. What about people investing money to adjust their own pages? It isn't even mentioned and perhaps one of the most immediate issues.

I was an amateur contributor 6 or 7 years ago but lost interest at some point. I don't know if you even can get bullied on Wikipedia, I am sure it is possible, but that is probably not an issue for most contributors.

No comment on the Nazi stuff, just be aware that some Jews would noticed your misplaced usage of "we" if you really want to make an argument in their name.

<comment><USER14> > You have a part about solidarity being expected as if it could be enforced. > Completely ridiculous. Solidarity with whom?

Well for starters, solidarity with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Purpose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Purpose) (and equivalents in other langs). The page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_encyclopedia) talks extensively about how a certain baseline of alignment is needed to contribute to Wikipedia.

> So, I expect you are some high official of Wikipedia/Wikimedia?

Umm no. I've been around Wikimedia for a while and have opinions. At most, I am a contributor to the MediaWiki open source project, which may give me some clout in certain technical conversations - but this is definitely not a technical conversation. (Full disclaimer - in the past i used to be employed as a contractor by WMF to do work on MediaWiki, but haven't been for several months now. My views are purely my own)

> What about people investing money to adjust their own pages? It isn't even > mentioned and perhaps one of the most immediate issues.

Why would it be mentioned in this document - its off topic and is already extensively covered by other rules and policies. Trying to cover all things in one document would probably doom it to failure.

> No comment on the Nazi stuff, just be aware that some Jews would noticed > your misplaced usage of "we" if you really want to make an argument in their > name.

I don't understand what you mean by this. The antecedent of "we" in my comment was Wikipedians. Note that this example wasn't purely hypothetical.

<comment><USER15> The links don't talk about solidarity. Wouldn't you agree that forcing solidarity wouldn't work?

Baseline of alignment fits exactly the arguments of Nazi against cultural participation of Jews. It is plain gatekeeping you try to enforce in my opinion. Perhaps it is a misjudgment, but I believe not.

<comment><USER14> > The links don't talk about solidarity. Wouldn't you agree that forcing > solidarity wouldn't work?

They talk about solidarity of purpose.

To quote the definition of solidarity: "A bond of unity or agreement between individuals, united around a common goal..." [https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/solidarity](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/solidarity)

I would also point out that "solidarity" was not my choice of wording.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Grounds for Jury Misconduct in Apple v Samsung Patent Trial - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/grounds_for_jury_misconduct_in_apple_v_samsung_patent_trial/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is certainly more legal than technical, but I've been very intrigued by the comments that the jury foreman has made to the media.

After some research, and speaking with attorneys, I think there may be a problem with the way the verdict was decided. Not that I'm trying to make a judgment on who should have won, but it seems that this foreman was a bit too excited by his role and the information he claims to possess.

Any thoughts?

<comment><USER2> > After some research, and speaking with attorneys, I think there may be a > problem with the way the verdict was decided.

That's exactly what this article is saying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, I know, I wrote the article. I think I didn't correctly articulate my first comment. What I meant to say was something like "I don't think there's any way to overlook this, and that's a problem" because many of media outlets covering the trial have not even mentioned it.

I just imagine a bunch of Apple legal team members watching the foreman's interviews and all of them simultaneously face-palming. It probably won't cost Apple the verdict, but it will cost them more time and money on appeal.</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome 64 Out – Spectre Mitigations Not Visible - <AUTHOR> https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2018/01/stable-channel-update-for-desktop_24.html <comment><USER2> I forgot to test Chrome 63 with [https://xlab.tencent.com/special/spectre/spectre_check.html](https://xlab.tencent.com/special/spectre/spectre_check.html) but 64 says Not Vulnerable. Anybody got 63 and want to check?</comment>


Ask HN: How can I live by my principles? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
Without going into too much personal detail - I'm not living by my own principles.
My view of the world doesn't fit my lifestyle, I work on things that aren't important to me, etc
How can I get on track?  What strategies do YOU use to live by YOUR principles? <comment><USER2> In all seriousness it sounds like you are going through a mid-life crisis. Where you wake up one day, and think 'wtf am I doing with my life?'.

I don't have any answers for you, but I do know where you are coming from though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try to make one thing right. That often leads to help you change more things in life.</comment>


Show HN: Our (two) weekend project: 365.io - A photo a day for one year. - <AUTHOR> http://365.io

<comment><USER2> How about charging a fee X but reducing it by Y for each consecutive month a person uploads a daily photo, to the point where, if anyone actually uploads 365 photos they get the use the service for free?

Charge $12, but refund $1 for each completed month.

<comment><USER3> Building off of that idea: incorporate ads.

The refunds keep the users coming back, and the ads support your business.

<comment><USER4> I have no tolerance for products that have ads and I pay for them. Nowadays, a lot of times paying means simple ¨removing¨ ads. This is a product that I can achieve in some ways for free. Why should I both pay for it and experience ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great design! And I love the idea even if I'm not a big photo guy myself.

11$ seems a fair price if I'm hooked to your product but I need to try it before. Maybe you can offer a free plan, or give a trial period (10days for example).

Also I think that you should put your "View a sample collection" way higher in your homepage.

Good luck! I really love what you did, your design and your logo are awesome :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll take those into account, thanks!

<comment><USER6> I would recommend offering a free trial until the first of January, then they have to switch to a paid version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a bit unclear what I am getting for $11 (over say a flickr stream).

<comment><AUTHOR> 365.io was created specifically for Project 365, which is a year-long photography project in which you upload a picture a day for 365 days so that after a year you have some sort of photo documentary of your life over that year.

The main difference between this and a Flickr stream is the focus. Flickr is meant for photography in general, and while you could use it for Project 365, it's less organized and focused. For example, your P 365 entries would be mixed in with your regular flickr uploads.

<comment><USER8> That's what I interpret Flickr groups to be - a way to focus on a given subject rather than photography in general.

You need to prove the value of your product before you can start charging users $11. Your frontpage gives no indication of the value added.

<comment><AUTHOR> We feel Project 365 is more personal than flickr would allow you through groups.

Regardless, thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some co-workers of mine have been doing 365 projects for 2010. On their server, each photo has a comments section where they give each other feedback and suggestions. That community aspect has really encouraged them to keep going. They talk about how hard it is to find something that makes for an interesting photo every day, but it's made them pay attention to their surroundings, and the feedback is making them better photographers.

One guy was pretty intimidated by the project at first. He started by trying it for a week, and now he's done 320 days or so.

They had their own server, but it recently died. The photo are copied elsewhere, but the comments are possibly gone forever. I'm certain that any of them would pay $20 for someone else to take care of the servers.

<comment><USER10> That's a good anecdote, thanks. We definitely think some more social interaction (primarily following/friending and commenting) is the next logical step for the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great timing. You should really ramp up the marketing and put an emphasis on starting on the 1st of January!

<comment><AUTHOR> That was the plan originally, but we felt it'd feel to restraining for those who signed up earlier and wanted to try it out right a way.

What we did instead is put up a "Start Project" button instead of auto- starting it on sign-up so users can choose when to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think what could add value to this, if the focus was on taking a picture of yourself - from your laptop's webcam or something. Then you could do some basic facial recognition to align the pictures, centering the face, and slideshow that.

<comment><AUTHOR> We were planning to add webcam support, good thing to see it'd add value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool! My thoughts:

On the homepage there should be a much higher-priority link to see a sample gallery.

When I clicked on a photo, I didn't know how to get back to the timeline/365 view. I went for the back button, but it wasn't active. It was hard to figure out that it was actually a light box. An animation when the lightbox activates would help, as would making the lightbox "less fullscreen."

</comment><comment><USER14> I can understand the Flickr argument, but what (other than a lovely design) makes this better than <http://365project.org/> or <http://www.fotolog.com/> \- at least $11 better (for now, then $20 better)?

<comment><USER10> Well, I guess we think people are willing to pay for lovely design (and by "design", I'm referring to the way it works, in addition to the way it looks).

You could also ask, "What (other than a lovely design) makes a Macbook/BMW/Dyson/Armani better than a Dell/Lincoln/Hoover/Old Navy?"

<comment><USER14> I get what you're saying but all of your examples are really bad examples.

Macbook vs Dell - Technology (specialised CPUs, Dual graphics chipsets in Macs to give better battery life and hard-wired flash chips in Macbook Air)

BMW vs Lincoln - Forgive me, I'm not well versed in American cars, but BMWs have cutting edge technology as well as some serious add-ons and tech (one of the first to introduce GPS, in-seat heating, various energy/mileage saving technologies such as brake-recharging). I don't know enough about Lincoln to say what they've introduced.

Dyson vs Hoover. Massive differences in technology, better suction on a Dyson, bagless, easier to clean.

It's interesting in the first three comparisons the premium option has a large amount of patents and internally developed technologies don't have (exception: Lincoln, I don't know enough about them to comment).

Armani vs Old Navy. Material quality, stitching quality, the way the garments are (traditionally) made although the gap is closing (if you'll pardon the unintentional pun).

Ultimately though there's a big difference in focus. Old Navy makes clothes for day to day wear in a variety of circumstances. Armani make clothes to be seen in at events. Apple are highly consumer and creative focused, Dell are more business oriented (but also attacking the consumer market). Dyson targets people who don't want to clean/change bags every now and again. BMW targets moderately wealthy men who want something decent they can drive as though they own the road with, I don't know who Lincoln target but it appears to be a higher end luxury car brand of Ford.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Our product has a different focus.

<comment><USER14> So what's the difference? I can't see it. I'm not saying there isn't one, I'm saying I'm interested in hearing what it is because it's not immediately clear (or at least sufficiently clear to make me want to hand over the cash if I know about fotolog).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One problem that I experienced is that when I viewed the sample gallery and then clicked on an image to view it larger, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the gallery again. I tried pressing the back button but it returned me to the landing page, rather than to the gallery as I expected.

<comment><USER10> The ESC key also returns you to thumbnail view, but we should probably make the back button do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting but your page raise too much questions: \- What will my page look like? \- Is there a quota or something? \- What are the possible interaction with the community? \- What is the difference with flickr? etc ...

<comment><USER10> re: interaction with the community. It's currently limited to sharing via a public URL, but we've discussed a follow model (like Twitter, except you'd have to opt-in) where you'd be able to view a stream of all photos from the people you're following. Since it's limited to one photo a day per user, the stream should be pretty easy to keep up with. Beyond that, there are lots of things we could do with favoriting, commenting, etc., but we'd like to keep it really focused and simple for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice idea, but people could do the same thing with Flickr for free.

<comment><USER10> That's certainly true. We feel like the service offers a superior experience _for this particular usage_ than Flickr.

<comment><USER17> Not $11 superior. If it offered some funky filters Instagram style you could perhaps capitalize on the Polaroid/Lomography type of audience. Or build a Flash driven picture uploaded that would use the web cam.

The way it stands is you're offering a pretty page for photos at $11 that doesn't target any real customer niche and does what a Tumblr blog paired with a Flickr account would do for free in a more flexible way.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on webcam capture, actually. Regarding using flickr/tumblr, it can be done, but it's a decentralized, unfocused, and unorganized way of doing so.

<comment><USER17> You keep saying "focused" everywhere. I'm not sure I know what it means in this context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't see me paying for the service, but I think it's a great idea, especially for anyone who is trying to learn photography. I think I might make that my New Year's resolution.

</comment><comment><USER19> Could the pricing model be modified to provide some sort of a trial/demo?

Say like, you can use it for free for the first month, then if you like to continue with it, pay $11.

<comment><USER10> That's a good idea. I think we're going to try to figure out something along those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really like the design but finding it hard to see what I get for $11 that I can't do with flickr or tumblr. Maybe go with a freemium approach?

<comment><AUTHOR> Flickr's upload limit and 200 photos (on the free plan) limit wouldn't allow you to complete the 365 project, specially if you use flickr for other photos outside the project as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This was originally the idea behind dailybooth.

<comment><USER22> I think this is more about taking a picture every day, as opposed to taking a picture of _yourself_ every day.

<comment><USER21> Fair point, I didn't realise that was the idea.

<comment><USER22> I thought it was what you said at first, too, so no worries :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> wow, great design love the way it looks. I'm going to have agree with what value you get paying 11 dollars?

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone care to recommend a good point & shoot camera?

<comment><USER25> Anything Nikon or Canon in the mid-$200 range would do wonders for you. Depends on what you want to spend of course. Have seen great results from Panasonic Lumix range also. I might suggest avoiding cameras with only touch screens - you'll go crazy about missing your shot if you need to set up and your fingers are gloved and it's cold out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great idea. I would sign up immediately if I owned a digital camera, although I am not sure about the $11. You should show visitors some of the members' pages.

The price should be free or lower if you upload daily, and automatically charge your CC for the higher yearly fee if you miss uploading.

I have a feeling this site will take off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're working in direct-from-webcam support as well.

There's a sample collection you can check out at <http://365.io/u/2fe9781736>.

<comment><USER27> i think the thumbnails should link to a dedicated page for each picture, rather than a lightbox version, like flickr does. that way users can have a url per-picture but still have some context around it (like who took it, show the user's other pictures, promote the 365.io site, etc.) rather than just the raw jpeg url on s3. i'd say add the ability to leave comments and favorites and all that, but it sounds like you're just duplicating flickr at that point.

you could probably accomplish the same thing by using flickr's api. let users upload photos to flickr (with a certain tag that your site would look for) or through your site, but collect and present all of them with your own layout and sharing mechanisms. flickr can host all of the photos and let users keep copies of their own photos in their own photostream. you could pull in comments made on flickr and show them in the same stream with comments left on your own site.

there should still be incentive to use your site to view the photos, though, like having a voting mechanism and some kind of 'picture of the day' that would get displayed on the homepage.

<comment><AUTHOR> They do, actually. If the public user url is <http://365.io/u/2fe9781736>, you can access the 20th image by going to <http://365.io/u/2fe9781736/20>. The link to individual images are shown in the private index view.

Flickr's terms won't allow that type of use of their api. Also, flickr has a 200 photo limit on free accounts that makes project 365 impossible unless you upgrade, and even less so if you use flickr for something else.

<comment><USER19> "Also, flickr has a 200 photo limit on free accounts that makes project 365 impossible unless you upgrade, and even less so if you use flickr for something else."

Incorrect.

From <http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/>

"When you have a free Flickr account, you can upload 2 videos and 300MB worth of photos each calendar month....Your upload limits are reset to zero at midnight in Pacific Time Zone (Flickr headquarters time) on the first of each calendar month."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Countries to Raise a Family in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.asherfergusson.com/raising-a-family-index/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thoughts?</comment>


Quick and Easy BeyondCorp BackOffice Access with ALBs, Cognito and GSuite - <AUTHOR> https://www.awsadvent.com/2018/12/18/quick-and-easy-beyondcorp-backoffice-access-with-albs-cognito-and-gsuite/ <comment><USER2> this looks like a long article. i stopped after the overview. why would you do all this rather than front your 3 "back office web services" with nginx+oauth2_proxy? does cognito offer some particular advantage beyond TFA stated purpose of oauth2 SSO?

oh, and just doing SSO is a very far cry from "beyondcorp".</comment>


The different attitudes of computer scientists and economists - <AUTHOR> http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2009/09/different-attitudes-of-computer.html

<comment><USER2> The causal model that the writer speaks about, the one economists try to construct, is susceptible to story-telling because such models intrinsically rely on more than just the data for their construction, but the constructor's intuitions about the world.

The writer's reductio ad absurdum example of predicting land value based on size of house is illustrative. Producing predictions like "build smaller houses in rural areas" to increase their value are only absurd because humans have existing intuitions about why land is so expensive in urban areas. It is a lack of data that makes the naive black box model so poor; its lack of access to human insight.

This weakness of statistical predictive models has an exact analogue in economic causal models, though. The intuitions being appealed to do not necessarily need to be based on fact, observation and statistics, or they would be amenable to predictive models too. Instead, at the margins they tend to be politically and ideologically driven, giving "intellectual backing" to social and political policy positions that benefit various interest groups.</comment>


Ask HN: Heroku or VPS? - <AUTHOR>

Here are a few considerations...I am just learning programming and am bootstrapping. My app will be accepting file uploads. I am a fairly quick learner - e.g. just learnt Rails 6 months ago and am about 90% complete with the app (despite doing everything myself including product decisions and UI/UX development).
I would like to be able to backup all user uploaded files in at least 2 (preferrably 3) CDNs/Hosts. I am getting familiar with the command-line on OS X, but running my own VPS would definitely be an initially steep learning curve.
Especially getting the regular 'Rails' support software installed and configured properly (i.e. Passenger, Nginx, Capistrano, etc.).
I also am not flush with cash, given that I am bootstrapping.
I would love to hear pros and cons for both - given my situation. <comment><USER2> I vote that you roll with Heroku until you feel so comfortable with the Passenger/Nginx/Capistrano that you're frustrated with the amount you're spend at Heroku because you feel like you could do it yourself.

Point is you have enough to worry about, don't get a VPS till you HAVE to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a bootstrapper myself and not a techie. After trying to set up a VPS myself, the value of Heroku was a no-brainer. Developer time is expensive, so why have a coder be a sys admin, too? Build on Heroku, and it'll be easy-ish to migrate if you need to.

</comment><comment><USER4> Heroku's is really easy. But it's got some quirks (that seem to get fixed very quickly, but that may change with their new corporate overlords). It's also _really_ expensive. In my experience, it's not as reliable as it needs to be either. (It's not much fun to tell a client that that bizzaro error page that intermittently shows up is Heroku's problem and there's nothing I can do about it). Make sure you look into SSL on heroku before committing.

But the dial up scaling is nice. As is the very quick setup and minimal config.

I use Slicehost most of the time. Setting up a basic passenger/nginx/rails/mysql server is not that hard once you figure it out. It takes me about an hour to do it manually. So I'd learn - it won't take long to make it worth your while with Heroku's prices.

</comment><comment><USER5> Start off with Heroku. It's free to get started with just 1 dyno, and you don't need to worry about VPS administration or installing Passenger/Nginx/Capistrano. Another benefit, since you will be handling user uploads, is that you can use Amazon S3, since Heroku runs on Amazon's platform. (see <http://docs.heroku.com/s3>)

You can always move parts of your app off Heroku if you start to outgrow it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about that, but what is the upper limit - in terms of monthly recurring users - you think for their free version?

I guess I am trying to balance the free cost, with the cost of switching 1 month after launch because I have exceeded capacity. Wouldn't it make more sense to just do that from day 1 ?

I am just simply thinking out loud, and would love to be corrected where I am wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It depends on your skill level and time you have. I personally prefer a VPS for the sake of control + the fact that you could possibly host multiple apps on it for the same price. I also use Heroku but generally only for testing/dev. I love the fact that I can deploy an app in 5 mins.

</comment><comment><USER7> My VPS is $6 a month for great stats and limits, but I'd still hit Heroku on the free to get rolling and worry about scale later. If you build something successful, migration shouldn't be a huge pain.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you allow user uploading files, i'd suggest you get started with Amazon S3, as once the number of uploaded files grow big, your slice storage might not be able to fit.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just get a VPS with an outfit like MediaTemple. You can start off with their cheapest and move up as you need.</comment>


How We Stripped WordPress Bare to Build This Responsive Site - <AUTHOR> http://arc.applause.com/2014/11/05/deconstructed-wordpress-build-arc/

<comment><USER2> Looks great on any device, and you treated your content authors right. Well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks gmillard. Our team thought a lot about the reading experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Responsive can work on any platform for every platform

<comment><AUTHOR> This is true. The story here isn't so much the responsive bit, but how we built this beautiful if slightly complicated site (that doesn't LOOK complicated) with nothing but the Wordpress structure.</comment></comment>