Hyrax: An open-source repository front-end - <AUTHOR> http://hyr.ax/ <comment><USER2> This project needs a heavy redesign of the landing homepage and it should change the language not to confuse the developers.

Hyrax is a frontend of Hydra with CMS and social features. It's a merger of [https://github.com/projecthydra/sufia](https://github.com/projecthydra/sufia) and [https://github.com/projecthydra/curation_concerns](https://github.com/projecthydra/curation_concerns)

Hydra is a web applications framework based on the digital asset management repository (Fedora) and the search index (Solr). Demos: [https://projecthydra.org/apps-demos-2-2/](https://projecthydra.org/apps- demos-2-2/)

Fedora stands for Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture. Its repository is based on the Linked Data Platform (5-star linked data according to Tim Berners-Lee [http://5stardata.info/en/](http://5stardata.info/en/)). An intro presentation: [http://fedorarepository.org/presentations](http://fedorarepository.org/presentations).

In regard to the name:

 _In 1997 a research project at Cornell University was named the Flexibile Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (Fedora). In 1998 the Fedora name was used in article published by Payette and Lagoze and in research software that was released to the public under the Fedora name._

 _In 2005 Red Hat, Inc. filed a trademark request for the name "Fedora" to be associated with their Linux operating system project. Cornell and UVA formally disputed the request and, as a final settlement, all parties settled on a co- existence agreement [...]_

<comment><USER3> This is a good but incomplete summary.

1) the project before was called Hydra, but couldn't use the name anymore because of prior art

1.2) hyrax is a frontend for hyku which is basically a split of Hydra into 2 projects

2) the whole thing stores everything in fedora (fcrepo4/fedora commons 4) which is basically a data/key storage that calls itself repository

2.1) it is used to store the data with the according "metadata"

3) the idea behind hyrax is for scientists to work on their research and collaborate with other scientists

3.1) that is why the project was called Hydra because every researcher could work on their own "head" and the heads could collaborate with each other

3.2) the hyrax project now supports multi tenancy so that multiple people can work on it simultaneously

4) after the research is done the whole thing can be published with backlight

This project is a collaboration of multiple universities and entered beta on the third of may to collaborate on the testing/documentation

Disclaimer: I'm not associated with this project, but setup a test system for the university I work at.

PS yes this is all pretty confusing and hard to work with, but a worthwhile cooperation

<comment><USER4> swing and a miss on choosing new names without prior uses

<comment><USER5> How about Hyrothrax? That name got a fine Anthrax-vibe going for it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nothing here is what I expected:

\- a "repository solution" is not a thing for source control like Github. It's a CMS or a file sharing system or something.

\- "Fedora" is not a Linux distribution. It's a previous repository solution software.

\- this homepage causes more questions than it answers. No screenshots. No examples.

<comment><USER7> Haha, yeah. And when I saw it was based on "Hydra" I thought it was the Nix/Guix continuous build system. I was briefly really excited!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What the hell is a repository solution? A CMS?

<comment><USER9> Same question I had, it looks like that's an accurate description. From the "Fedora" link on their front page, which this tool is apparently built on:

 _Fedora is a robust, modular, open source repository system for the management and dissemination of digital content. It is especially suited for digital libraries and archives, both for access and preservation. It is also used to provide specialized access to very large and complex digital collections of historic and cultural materials as well as scientific data. Fedora has a worldwide installed user base that includes academic and cultural heritage organizations, universities, research institutions, university libraries, national libraries, and government agencies._

As an aside, FOSS projects: Please think before overloading common names, like a popular Linux distro.

As a double aside: Think about your target audience. Most developers hear "repository" and think VCSes.

<comment><USER2> Well, they did not "override" Fedora Linux name, because Fedora Commons preceded its OS counterpart by a couple years and has a trademark for the Fedora logo: [http://fedora-commons.org/about](http://fedora- commons.org/about)

By repository they mean digital asset management repository instead of a version control system repository.

<comment><USER10> so may be start with explaining that this is not a repository as a developer would expect.

<comment><USER2> I think they represent the library community more than the dev community and are a bit stubborn to use the terms familiar to us (IMO).

<comment><USER11> I mean, why wouldn't librarians be stubborn with respect to jargon? The intended audience clearly isn't Hacker News and the terms of the trade predate the tech community by decades in many cases- it doesn't make sense to just throw terminology to the wind.

It'd be like if a bunch of Frenchmen suddenly invaded England and forced them to speak French, even though English was perfectly sufficient for communication already.

Oh wait...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand any of this shit. Like, what is this a package management system for?

<comment><USER5> Information.

<comment><USER13> So uh... It rivals .txt files?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like vaporware to me, also they didn't do too much research about their name, because this is the hyrax I deal with day to day: [http://docs.opendap.org/index.php/Hyrax](http://docs.opendap.org/index.php/Hyrax)

</comment><comment><USER14> cf. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_repository)</comment>


The Manslaughter of 200k - <AUTHOR> https://the.ink/p/the-manslaughter-of-200000 <comment><AUTHOR> The book described, "Unprepared: America in the Time of Coronavirus", tells the events in a unique way as a timeline of quotes. Seems like a valuable piece of history to review. (I have no affiliation.)</comment>


What does 0^0 equal? Why do mathematicians and high school teachers disagree? - <AUTHOR> http://www.askamathematician.com/?p=4524 <comment><USER2> Technically, 0^0 is an indeterminate form and has no specific solution. Accurate but unhelpful.

Practically, 0^0 highlights the issue that most of us don't have a good conceptual model for what exponents really do. How would you explain to a 10-year old why 3^0 = 1 beyond "it's necessary to make the algebra of powers work out".

I use an "expand-o-tron" analogy

[http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding- exponents-...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-exponents- why-does-00-1/)

to wrap my head around what exponents are really doing: some amount of growth (base) for some amount of time (power). This gives you a "multiplier effect". So, 3^0 means "3x growth for 0 seconds" which, being 0 seconds, changes nothing -- the multiplier is 1. "0x growth for 0 seconds" is also 1, since it was never applied. "0x growth for .00001 seconds" is 0, since a miniscule amount of obliteration still obliterates you.

This can even be extended to understand, intuitively, why i^i is a real number ([http://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive- understanding-...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive- understanding-of-eulers-formula/)).

<comment><USER3> I successfully managed to explain 3^0 to 10 year olds (as a recovering high school math teacher) as:

      3^2 = 9
      3^1 = 3  (divide 9 by 3)
      3^0 = 1  (divide 3 by 3)
      3^-1 = 1/3  (divide 1 by 3)
      etc

This can logically be explained as n^0=1 for all real numbers.

Unfortunately this doesn't really handle 0^0 but fortunately 10 year olds are rarely that difficult.

<comment><USER4> This explanation works pretty well on adults: Just include the multiplicative identity (1) in the expansion.

      3^3 = 3*3*3*1 = 27
      3^2 = 3*3*1   = 9
      3^1 = 3*1     = 3
      3^0 = 1       = 1

and likewise:

      0^3 = 0*0*0*1 = 0
      0^2 = 0*0*1   = 0
      0^1 = 0*1     = 0
      0^0 = 1       = 1

I haven't yet tried this on an actual 10 year old, though.

<comment><USER3> Also good, but the last line doesn't work (in my opinion): to get from 0x1 to 1 you need to undo the x0, i.e. dividing by 0. Which is undefined ... Zero, confusing 10 year olds for centuries!

<comment><USER4> True. If you approach it from a standpoint of extrapolation from known values, you have a division by zero one way or the other.

What I'd intended was that the value of 1 was reached by applying the same algorithm that was applied to arrive at the other values: start with 1, multiply by the base once per instance of the exponent. No division involved.

It's still incorrect if we want to be strict, of course. That algorithm is not quite the definition of exponentiation, because that algorithm can't really be extended to work outside rational exponents. Exponentiation is defined across complex numbers (ignoring 0^0 for the moment). I think this is acceptable because I'm only shooting for an explanation, which doesn't need to be strict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The high school teacher in the link is a B.S. in math education. They're usually reflexive Platonists, believing that math is out there, and we merely discover it. This is a result of the teaching of undergrad math as essentially a series of completed works, with little history attached to it. This teacher probably hasn't thought critically about why, say, 1/x^2 = x^(-2).

By contrast, a mathematician has a Ph.D. in math, and has had to do original research and look at some history of topics. Thus, the mathematician knows that math is not a finished product, but is under constant refinement.

Now, let's talk about negative exponents. Students are taught that 1/x^2 = x^(-2). High school teachers often don't understand why. It is so ingrained that even asking "Why?" seems almost grammatically incorrect.

The reason why is that we know the following things about exponents: 1) x^n = x* x* ...* x for n a positive integer 2) As a consequence of 1, x^m* x^n = x^(m+n) for m,n positive integers

Now, the question is not "what is x^n if n is negative?" (which is what a high school teacher might ask). Rather, the question is "Can we define (!) x^n for negative n in a way consistent with the item two above?" (mathematician's framing). And, of course, we can. If x^n = 1/x^(-n) for n negative, then item two works.

So, a high school teacher most likely thinks that the negative exponent rule is simply a rule, handed down from the Gods of math. A mathematician recognizes that it is a convention, and such a smooth convention that there is simply no better choice.

Now, about 0^0: The HS teacher asks "What is 0^0?" and is therefore under the impression that 0^0 is undefined because according to certain reasonings it could be 0 or it could be 1. Textbooks (not written by mathematicians) wouldn't correct this. The TI-86 gives a domain error when 0^0 is input. The mathematician asks "What value of 0^0 makes my preferred formulae continue working?" and thereby defines 0^0=1.

<comment><USER6> wait.. you mean math is simply made up? It's not the language of the universe?

well that's just depressing.

<comment><USER7> Although my mathematician friends would probably yell at me if they heard this, as far as I see things it's hardly any different from physics. Just a model we create to describe observed phenomenon.

<comment><USER8> Oh, math only works this way in intuitive fields, like elementary calculus, elementary probability and staticstis, graph theory or Euclidean geometry. However, there are fields in math that are different -- for instance, there are topological spaces that exhibit phenomenons unseen anywhere else and that are very hard to grasp intuitively (I had very hard time trying to imagine what Cech-Stone compactification construction based on ultrafilters look like, and eventually I gave up after I understood that this space is only supposed to satisfy an universal property, and not have any intuitive shape). Deep results in algebraic methods in topology say interesting things about the models, while being completely indescribable outside of them, apart from some trivial examples (for instance, what _exactly_ are cohomology classes?).

The bottom line is, if the only things you've seen are geometry and calculus, with intuitive concepts like speed of change, area, length, then yeah, it's only making our intuitions more formal. Otherwise, it's something completely different.

<comment><USER7> Again, I would argue this is no different than physics. The strength and maturity of a model is not only based on its ability to describe what we can verify, but predict what we have never (and may never) seen, and sometimes what we have never even conceived of- and I think both physics and mathematics are doing that.

<comment><USER8> My point is, many concepts in math do not exist outside of the models describing them, while if we throw away physical models, the reality does not go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The site isn't loading, but I find discussions about mathematical curiosities (though they're not that curious) come about because people are looking for a deeper meaning in mathematics. Math is playing with ontological objects in a system of definitions. There doesn't need to be an answer that "makes sense" for 0^0.

Depending on the context (are you working in set theory? are you making a new definitions for exponentiation?) you might have a different definition. But such operations are often defined recursively (e.g. in set theory, roughly, where S(x) = x+1 (or successor of x) Exp(x, 0) = 1, and Exp(x, S(y)) = x * Exp(x, y). Here you'll have 0^0 = 1, clearly.

For high school, 0^0 should be 1. It's necessary for problems high school students might encounter in calculous, and is the way it is defined in almost any field you'd be working in before graduate school.

High school teachers who insist that 0^0 != 1 likely don't understanding that it's a definition.

</comment><comment><USER10> Try these for size ( actual interview questions )

PITA interviewer > What's bigger, e^pi or pi^e ?

If you get past that one,

PITA interviewer > What's i^1 ?

Clever student> Its just 1 unit on the imaginary axis.

PITA interviewer >Good! So then, whats i^i ?

Clever student > Probably a few more units on the imaginary axis!

PITA interviewer >Then why does google say 0.207 ( <http://www.google.com/search?q=i^i> )

Clever student> hmmm...ohhh...aaahhh....WTF...I hate math I don't want this stupid stupid job lemme go back to coding monads in Haskell for my ubercool startup.

PITA interviewer >Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

<comment><USER11> What were you interviewing for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll stick with the grade-school math approach, at least until I need to approach it differently.

      4^2 = 2 fours multiplied = 4 * 4 = 16

divide by 4 - so you take away one of the 4s by division(canceling like terms like we do in grade school fraction math):

      4^1 = 4*4/4 = 4

divide by 4 again

      4^0 = 4*4/(4*4) = 1

divide by 4 again!

      4^-1 = 4*4/(4*4*4) = 1/4

Now try it with 0:

      0^2 = two zeros multiplied = 0*0 = 0

Divide by 0. Uh-oh. Well, let's keep following grade school fraction math and cancel like terms:

      0^1 = 0*0 / 0 = 0

Divide by 0. Hmm - keep canceling like terms.

      0^0 = 0*0 / (0*0) = 1

But what's 0^-1? _grin_

<comment><USER13> 0^-1 is definitely infinity

x^(-1) doesn't have an upper bound as x approaches zero.

<comment><USER12> Try approaching 0 from both the positive and negative sides.

<comment><USER13> So you get a +∞ or -∞.

<comment><USER12> But what's 0^-1? grin

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fun digression late on a Wednesday :)

The indeterminate form seems the most correct based on the analysis of the limit of f(x,y) = x^y as x approached zero from different paths.

I had always thought of it more of an algebraic identity thing; x^n * x^m = x^(n+m). Obviously x^(n) = x^(n+0) = x^n * x^0 which can only be satisfied if x^0 = 1. But this article (and really, the wikipedia treatment that beej71 linked to) made me think more about it.

<comment><USER15> "Obviously x^(n) = x^(n+0) = x^n * x^0 which can only be satisfied if x^0 = 1."

...or if x^n = 0, which is true if x=0 and n != 0

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since the site seems to be dead, here is a bit of wikipedia discussion on it:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponent#Zero_to_the_zero_power>

<comment><USER17> Time for my handy "Open this page in Google cache" bookmarklet:

        javascript:window.open("http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:"+encodeURIComponent(location.href))

<comment><USER18> I think you're missing a quote after cache: in there.

Otherwise, very handy, thanks.

<comment><USER17> Weird. It got stripped out somehow. Thanks for pointing it out; fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like my high school math consistent with set theory.

ø : empty set, 1 : {ø}, A : nonempty set, ~= : isomorph to.

A^ø ~= 1, because there is only one function ø->A, the empty function.

ø^A ~= ø, because there is no function with empty codomain and nonempty domain.

ø^ø ~= 1, because there is again one function ø->ø, the empty one.

So yes, 0^0 = 1.

<comment><USER20> This! The empty function is the function whose graph is the empty set. When you stop thinking of functions as symbolic expressions and make friends with the empty set, it's all clear as crystal. The empty set has perplexed a lot of people over the ages, so it's unsurprising that 0^0 prompts puzzlement. But with the benefit of modern hindsight, there's really no reason to stay confused. Set theory in the large is still a great mystery but we got the empty set well figured out by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The engineer in me says, "Why don't you guys pick something, and I'll go ahead and use it in my calculations (where it's appropriate)? I don't care much about the theory behind it."

</comment><comment><USER22> Wolfram Alpha says "indeterminate," which is a good example of why Wolfram Alpha needs an "Oh yeah? Prove it" button: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0^0>

</comment><comment><USER23> Doesn't a simple application of l'hospital solve this?

<comment><USER24> This is completely off-topic, but did you mean to call it l'hospital as opposed to L'Hôpital? I remember even my calculus book had similar errors, and I always wondered if it was just because the two looked so similar (or if there was any more reasoning behind it). didn't mean to nitpick, your comment just triggered a repressed train of thought :)

<comment><USER25> His original name was actually Guillaume de l'Hospital; French spelling reforms later did away with a number of cases of silent 's' (which had been silent for a long time already), replacing it with a circumflex over the preceding vowel.

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_circumflex_in_French...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_circumflex_in_French#Disappearance_of_.22s.22)

and: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_de_l%27H%C3%B4pital#c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_de_l%27H%C3%B4pital#cite_note-0)

<comment><USER24> ah, thanks - I had a feeling it was something like that! I figured a Calculus book would probably get it right :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Only after seeing how many comments on the article attempted to genuinely refute the article did I get a sense of how few people grasp the foundation of mathematics (that is, the composition of arbitrary assumptions to agreeable statements).

</comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't the first argument have a logic error, in that x^(1-1) = x^1 _x^(-1) has a caveat for x not equal to 0, so it shouldn't prove anything for x = 0. In other words, it just says x^0 = 1 for any x =/= 0.

Using Abstract Algebra, I think 0^0 = 1 is completely accurate. The power function (y^x) could be defined to be the amount you times (x times) you apply the _ operation between the y on the identity element. In our usual numbers that looks like y _(y_ (y... _(y_ 1)...)). When x is negative y becomes the multiplicative inverse of y and everything else remains the same.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you're interested in this topic and the discussion here, do yourself a favor and pick up David Foster Wallace's "Everything and More".

I'm about 1/2 way through. It's a real gift.

</comment><comment><USER29> The right convention is also "obvious" to practitioners of combinatorics. The exponentiation x^y, for integer x and y, is the number of possible strings of length y from a set of letters of cardinality x. (Hence 2 __8 possible bytes.) How many ways are there to make a string of length 0, regardless of the alphabet size? Just one... you don't do anything.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nullity? :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transreal_arithmetic#Transreal_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transreal_arithmetic#Transreal_arithmetic)

We had this guy as a lecturer. Whether nullity exists or not (though James's argument is that it's as valid as j), and I have to admit his arithmetic _does_ make some things simpler.

</comment><comment><USER31>
      Python: 0**0 == 1
      Javascript: Math.pow(0, 0) == 1
      Java: Math.pow(0, 0) == 1

Therefore 0^0 = 1

</comment><comment><USER32> > How would you explain to a 10-year old why 3^0 = 1

You draw the line 3^x. It "passes through" 1 when x = 0. So don't think about the point, think about the line. It's not rigorous but it's intuitive.

<http://fooplot.com/index.php?q0=3^x>

edit: added link and fixed typos

<comment><USER33> This is precisely the problem, though.

The same 10 year old draws two lines: 0^x, and x^0.

They clearly do not meet.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I was just talking about the easier concept of x^0. Going the other way, 0^x it makes a lot less sense to me. I know that for all positive x, 0^x = 0. That it pops up to 1 at the origin means the thing is not smooth so drawing lines isn't going to help us.

Plotting z = y^x could be interesting but we're going to see asymptotic behaviour at x = y = 0 (when going in the x direction). So no easy wins there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As a definitive answer is not available to us via mathematics, the real answer is that you can't give an exponent to nothing.

Sometimes you have to use another language to make sense of something.

</comment><comment><USER35> apparently it equals:

Error establishing a database connection

that is kind of funny... sorta

</comment><comment><USER36> A empty product is the multiplicative identity (1), just like an empty sum is the additive identity (0).

</comment><comment> buff-a Mathematica says "Indeterminate" =)

</comment><comment><USER37> Let's do it with complex numbers next!

</comment><comment><USER38> if 0^0=1 than ex nihilo

</comment><comment><USER13> 0.000000000001^(0.000000000001) = 1

</comment><comment><USER39> 0 ^ 0 = 0, on all architectures.

<comment><USER40> but not all languages ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Wia – Rock Solid Cloud Infrastructure for IoT - <AUTHOR> http://www.wia.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi All, A bit more about what we do. We provide the infrastructure to enable makers and companies bring their ideas to life in a matter of minutes.

To give you a bit more of an insight, check out our Monster Detector tutorial over here [http://blog.wia.io/build-your-own-monster- detector/](http://blog.wia.io/build-your-own-monster-detector/)

Cheers, Conall

</comment><comment><USER2> Sockpuppet votes and comments are forbidden on HN. We ban accounts and sites that do this; please don't do this.</comment>


How we made a professional(ish) product video for $146.55 - <AUTHOR> http://polaske.tumblr.com/post/91289197615/how-i-created-a-professional-product-video-for-146-55?two=two

<comment><USER2> You've submitted the source link three times in the last 2 days, and you deleted-then-resubmitted this particular submission with the two=two suffix.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted, thank you for the warning. I will not delete/re-submit moving forward. Just really felt this post had some legs :(</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I move computation to the front end? Why not? - <AUTHOR> I've been in doubt about this. This project is calculating curves for cement maturity.
My backend is smallish and the frontend is a VueJS project a few times bigger.
Which pattern makes more sense: calculate on the backend, or pull the data to the frontend and make my calculations in JS?
Since there are several ways to transform this data, I've been doing most of the calculations on the frontend... <comment><USER2> There are two big determining factors:

1.) Is your analysis fixed, or are you interested in expanding your analysis over time?

2.) Is your analysis method secret sauce?

Additionally, your scalability needs are also a factor.

If you plan on expanding or significantly modifying your analysis over time, the breadth of analytical tools available on the back-end is much larger. Working on the front-end is going to constrain your access to analytic libraries. You could of course do some analysis on the front end and some on the back-end but this is a hassle and why bother if you don't need to.

If your analysis is secret sauce, and you are worried about someone ripping off your site, you definitely want it on the back-end.

Scalability wise, moving computation to the front end is almost always a good idea. You'd be surprised at the numbers you can pull with well written javascript, and you can do even better if you can figure out a way to do your calculations using GLSL.

In my opinion you're better off prototyping and getting a product started with calculations on the back-end then migrating work to the front-end as needed in most cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I agree. Its simple calculation here. And with frontend code I can do stuff like [http://worrydream.com/Tangle](http://worrydream.com/Tangle) (interactive, re-rendering apps).

<comment><USER3> You can get reactive calculation with a backend using something like [http://intercoolerjs.org/](http://intercoolerjs.org/).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, but there will be a huge delay, so the "interactive" effect is kinda lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depends on your actual needs; there's no general answer.</comment>


How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/11/how-apple-keyboards-lost-a-logo-and-windows-pcs-gained-one/

<comment><USER2>
      It seems they don't understand why it is useful to draw a distinction
      between control-C, used to cancel an operation in a terminal environment,
      and Command-C, used to copy content in a desktop setting.

anyone know what he's referring to? why is it useful to have a distinction?

      Microsoft also added a special key for opening contextual menus...
      it's not only superfluous and clumsy for PCs using two button mice,
      but also less elegant than Apple's convention...

I use the context menu key regularly. using a complex app without ever needing to reach for the mouse is pretty elegant, in my opinion.

      Microsoft's contextual menu key is also typically placed on the right
      side of the keyboard, making it even more puzzlingly useless for
      right handed users. They'd have to hit the right side of the keyboard
      with their left hand while pointing the mouse with their right

I've never once used the context menu key that way, and that's not even how it works. it invokes the context menu of whatever element has the focus, not whatever element is beneath the mouse cursor.

an interesting history with unnecessary and obnoxious editorializing.

<comment><USER3> >anyone know what he's referring to? why is it useful to have a distinction?

I think because on Windows those two very different operations are overloaded onto the same key combo, and there could be situations where in context it is ambiguous which one would be invoked.

<comment><USER2> ugh, nevermind, I misread the text. I read it has pressing control+c to copy text, not to cancel something. so the distinction does make sense.

though I still don't like how you can't copy and paste files with cmd+c/cmd+v in os x :)

<comment><USER4> > though I still don't like how you can't copy and paste files with > cmd+c/cmd+v in os x :)

You can remap the Command key to the physical Ctrl key on your keyboard if you want; this makes some muscle-memory actions a bit more smooth across platforms.

In general -- and I'm not sure what the official / historical word from Apple is -- I've always thought that the Command key came about because Apple wanted a different key for commands that the OS could intercept, without stepping on any pre-existing application level shortcuts that used Control.

It might have been cleaner had they just kept Command reserved for shortcuts going to the OS (cut/copy/paste, open/launch, window manipulation, bossing applications around) and told developers to use Ctrl shortcuts within their applications. But I'm not sure if that distinction would have been meaningful to most users.

The Apple HIG on Modifier Keys doesn't give much in the way of rationale for Command versus Control, except to say:

> Because the Control key is already used by some of the universal access > features as well as in Cocoa text fields where Emacs-style key bindings are > often used, it should be used as a modifier key only when necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Windows key has become a lot more useful in 7 (and to some extent Vista), where you have

* win + [left/right arrow] = resize to left/right half of screen

* win + [up arrow] = maximize

* win + shift + [up arrow] = maximize vertically

* win + [down arrow] = minimize

* win + [#N] = invoke Nth-from-left application on taskbar

* win + shift + [#N] = start new instance of Nth-from-left app on taskbar

plus the ability to open the Windows/Start menu and start typing to search.

<comment><USER6> * Win + P = Change multi monitor setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "the combination of Microsoft's overwhelmingly powerful monopoly marketing muscle and its weak and flawed technical contributions. Microsoft has delayed the progress of new technology into mainstream in far more significant ways"

Isn't that a _bit_ over the top?

</comment><comment><USER8> Regarding the overloading of Ctrl-C on Windows - The story is actually a bit more complex.

In DOS, Ctrl-C command was not originally overloaded. Ctrl-Ins was Copy. Shift-Del was Cut, Shift-Ins was Paste. Both Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Break were abort. Macs, however, did not originally have the Ins or Del keys, and thus needed different shortcuts. Besides, Jobs would never have copied DOS. He didn't even want arrow keys on the original Mac 128K, but finally acquiesced.

As Windows began to mimick the "look and feel" of the Mac OS, they adopted the use of the Ctrl key as a substitute for the Cmd key. In other words, it was because Microsoft was copying pre-existing commands from Apple, but transposing them to Ctrl, that they ended up with ambiguous commands.

Ctrl-Ins and Shift-Ins continued to work for several versions of Windows. At the same time, newer versions of Word and other Microsoft DOS applications began to support the newer Windows shortcuts.

Since I was thoroughly used to those shortcuts from my use of QuickBasic and Word for DOS, I continued to use the original shortcuts in Windows until they no longer worked, and only then did I switch to Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.

<comment><USER9> Good post. The original Mac actually did ship without arrow keys and no current Apple keyboards have Ins. Not sure how long that's been the case...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Most Windows PC users are unaware of the use of either the Windows key or the contextual menu key, and some PC hardware makers refused to add the keys to their keyboards, the most notable being IBM._

i seem to recall ibm refusing to do this because of the old windows/os/2 warp battle. as soon as lenovo bought ibm's thinkpad line, they started putting windows keys on the keyboards.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't make a ton of sense; late-model IBM (consumer) computers were clearly designed to run Windows. While there may be people still bitter about the OS/2 thing, I think the company as a whole has moved on.

I think that IBM's engineers just thought that the Windows key was dumb, something that users were unlikely to care about or miss, and not worth redesigning their keyboards for. So they didn't. Given that the keyboards on some IBM products (esp. Thinkpads) were one of their defining features, I can't blame them for not wanting to mess around with it.

Personally I'm in favor of more modifier keys on keyboards, just generally; although the Windows key is lame in the sense that it's underutilized and gauche (putting the Windows logo on it), it's nice to have 3 modifiers on a keyboard in addition to shift. (Plus any hardware modifiers that you need to simulate a full 101 keys on a laptop.)

<comment><USER9> The Windows key came into being around Windows 95, right when Windows and OS/2 were at the height of competition. IBM didn't implement it then (while most of the rest of the industry did) and then, even once OS/2 was dead, just never got around to making the change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >A year later in 1987, IBM released its new vision of the PC, called PS/2; it only offered a standard port for the mouse and another identical but unique port for the keyboard, a mistake that would plague PC users for the next two decades

Hmmm - for as long as I can remember the keyboard ports were colored purple, and the ones for mice were like a teal. I feel like the frequency of plugging in one's keyboard/mouse doesn't warrant it being called a plague.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps you're not old enough to recall, but that colour coding was indroduced with the PC97 standard[1], in 1997. While 'plague' is over the top, it was a great annoyance for a decade.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use the logo key a lot in windows. Esp for the 3 shortcuts

Win+E = Opens Explorer

Win+D = Go to desktop

Win+R = Run dialog

<comment><USER13> Win+D is actually toggle desktop. See what happens if you press it twice in a row.

Win+M = minimize all Win+U = utility manager

<comment><USER14> I use Win+D to open things on the desktop without affecting my current window setup. Win+D, double-click, Win+D quickly before the program opens.

I do try to keep my desktop clean though, I mostly use this on others' machines.</comment></comment></comment>


My so-called wife  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24tsingloh.html

<comment><USER2> While decent writing, and an interesting premise, I fail to see why this belongs on Hacker News...</comment>


Ask HN: Subscription or Micropayments - <AUTHOR>

New HN account as I don't want to risk competitors tracking my asking this question.
I run a mildly successful niche website with a strong audience, for which the plan has always been to proceed from ad based content to subscription based.
Originally I had planned to go micropayments because of the competitors in the niche who follow a subscription model, they use straight up subscription. I thought micropayments would differentiate me and be a welcome option.
The more research and reading I do I am coming to feel that micropayments would be worse and that I should simply follow a subscription model.
Does anyone have input? Are there any compelling reasons to go micropayments? <comment><USER3> Depends on typical user profile and the rates you're looking to charge - <USER2> micropayments are so low they're barely worth collecting the payment processing fees.

How do users obtain value from the service? Is it something where there's a quantifiable marginal benefit from each part of the content accessed (like a set of tutorials, or product/market/region specific data) or is it something more intangible (e.g. niche news, multimedia or a discussion platform) where customers might tend to underestimate the value of accessing that little bit more around their immediate area of interest. Can they even gauge whether specific bits of the service are worth money to them, or is the choice to subscribe to everything (possibly with a limited trial first) actually easier?

Is this the same for all users? Are user groups differentiated (i.e. discrete group that would only contemplate subscribing or making one-off micropayments) or overlapping (i.e. most would be happy with either payment option, and would go with the cheapest to them given a choice). If it's the former, is it possible to offer both payment options? If not, maybe it's feasible to segment parts of the service as chargeable extras. Is the value to the end user fairly uniform or are some likely to derive so much benefit from occasional use of one small part of the site that they'd happily pay subscription costs at the same rate as people using most of your content?

As a general rule smaller numbers of people make more use of resources made available on a subscription basis whilst larger numbers of people make substantially less use of resources billed individually. Which is easier to budget for will depend on your customer acquisition and support costs (vary by user) vs bandwidth costs (vary by usage)

</comment><comment><USER4> I would say the attractiveness of micropayments is it's less of a commitment, but subscriptions are generally better for both sides if what you are providing is valuable to your users.

As long as a subscription doesn't make it super difficult to cancel and notifies me when they're billing me I am usually fine with it.

<comment><USER5> _but subscriptions are generally better for both sides if what you are providing is valuable to your users._

How so? And what experience do you have with charging micropayments and subscriptions?

In case it needs to be said, this is not me trying to call you out but me trying to get some juicy information out of you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> why not both? single serving things as appropriate via micropayments, or unlimited via sub.</comment>


Stop Blogging. - <AUTHOR> http://orderedlist.com/our-writing/blog/articles/stop-blogging/

<comment><USER2> This is becoming a serious problem in some areas.

For example, the amount of help available for Ubuntu on the web is wonderful; however, the number of out of date pages is enormous. A few days ago I was trying to fix a problem with the NTP setup on my Ubuntu machine. I found it quite difficult to get current, correct information.

The solution given in this article is okay for them. On the other hand, blog or not, you can't expect the average helpful person who posts some info to maintain that info _forever_.

So: what to do about this?

<comment><USER3> "I found it quite difficult to get current, correct information."

OTOH, having information in a clearly dated format, like a blog, is helpful in letting you know when information might be out of date. Publishing information with less clearly marked dates won't make information more correct, it'll just leave us with fewer clues when trying to evaluate it.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. I use blogs to document stuff at work for this reason. You can't rely on people frequently going back to increasing numbers of old documents to update them, so you must leave clues for the reader as to what the context was when the article was written. Date is a really important part of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why? Let's wait some time and Google is going to prioritize fresher content more. They should not have any problems with assigning dates to blog posts.

Actually, "Specific date range" is step in this direction.

Edit: The interesting point is that the writing is now have to be much more iterative than it was few years ago. Content is now nearly always "work in progress".</comment>


Identifying the dimensions used by the primate brain to decode faces - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/science/facial-recognition-brain-neurons.html?_r=0 <comment><USER3> Key sentence - "the correct choice of face space axes is critical for achieving a simple explanation of face cells' responses."

They did PCA over two sets of metrics, taking the top 25 components from each set and then combined that into a 50d space. Using these dimensions and measured responses to fit a model resulted in explaining 57% of variance in real cell firing rates. (Much better than other models including a 5 layer CNN).

This is pretty cool. I'd like to see a follow-up where the chosen dimensions were further refined using something a bit more iterative that an arbitrary PCA cutoff.

Also I really want to know what eye motion was present during each trial. This paper presents a very "instantaneous" recognition perspective and doesn't talk about integration over time or the impact of sequential perception of face components on recognition. (Eg an upside-down face is hard to recognize because your gaze has to move up from the eyes to see the mouth which is a sequence rarely encountered in the real world)

<comment><USER4> A 5 layer CNN is absurdly shallow, so this isn't particularly surprising. I routinely work with 150+ layer CNNs - that's fairly standard practice if you want high-quality results.

<comment><USER5> This comment is absurd. "Your CNN sucks, I know this because I work with better ones all the time. (insert metric that doesn't mean much)"

Oh, BTW I do ML consulting lol

<comment><USER6> VGG has 16-19 layers, Inception has ~50 layers, and ResNet has 150 layers. All of which were the state of the art at one point in time over the last ~2-3 years. A more faithful comparison with CNNs would've used one of these models pre-trained on a much larger face dataset.

Oh, BTW I do ML consulting lol

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's anywhere near conclusive yet that more layers = better. It's pretty telling that the current state-of-the-art is combining a bunch of layers together in a pseudo random fashion. Nobody understands how these things work to the point that we can make a formula or equation to produce better CNN's, or even predict which models will be more effective to any accuracy. You think more layers is better, because the best models we have happen to have the most layers? Some deep understanding of concepts there.

<comment><USER6> I don't think I or the parent comment are necessarily suggesting that more layers are better, but are pointing out that the fact that they're only using 5 layers suggests that they're not using a state of the art architecture. You can't faithfully say "oh a CNN cannot model this relationship" when it wasn't a thorough evaluation. (especially given that they don't mention modern face recognition systems like DeepFace or FaceNet, which I'd be interested to see if there's any correlation between the embeddings they produce if a simple PCA model works so well)

Also don't be so dismissive, we have a strong enough empirical and intuitive understanding of CNNs that we're able to make thoughtful improvements over time. In fact the insight behind the ResNet paper was noticing that adding layers doesn't improve performance and that training error actually degrades as layers are added – the solution to this was to construct the network so that it learns residual mappings that only modify the input rather than completely transform it. The whole point of that paper was solving this degradation problem so they could use some ridiculously deep architecture like a 150-layer network to get better results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "It is a remarkable advance to have identified the dimensions used by the primate brain to decode faces, he added — and impressive that the researchers were able to reconstruct from neural signals the face a monkey is looking at."

"These dimensions create a mental "face space" in which an infinite number of faces can be recognized. There is probably an average face, or something like it, at the origin, and the brain measures the deviation from this base."

"Dr. Tsao said she was particularly impressed to find she could design a whole series of faces that a given face cell would not respond to, because they lacked its preferred combination of dimensions. This ruled out a possible alternative method of face identification: that the face cells were comparing incoming images with a set of standard reference faces and looking for differences."

I'm surprised that they didn't attempt to generate a face with exactly 0 on all dimensions.

It would be fascinating to know what the most memorable face looks like - <USER2> if it's different per-brain. (Presumably it is monkey shaped!)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the paper: [http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)30538-X.pdf](http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674\(17\)30538-X.pdf)

<comment><USER8> All the faces seem computer generated. It would have been nice if they had used celebrity faces we can all recognize and see what their system comes up with.

<comment><USER3> They are real faces that are morphed along one of the 50 axes they came up with. They look less real because it's standard practice to exclude hair and shoulders and backgrounds from face databases (even if this is totally unrealistic it helps isolated the system under study)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This paper is highly exciting for anybody working on the neural code and so- called encoding models.

Only few days ago there was a similar study reading faces from human brains by trying to construct a latent space:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07109](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07109)

[https://twitter.com/ccnlab/status/866548346751725568](https://twitter.com/ccnlab/status/866548346751725568) (animation, over time more dimensions from this latent space (afaik PCA components) are added)

Given the limitations of fMRI (we can not do single cell recordings in human brains) the results are not as accurate, but to my knowledge this is the best we can do in humans so far.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember reading about a study [1] that showed that humans recognize faces based on how similar they are to the faces of their parents. It's well known that humans are more easily able to differentiate faces within our own races. But what the study did was look at people who were adopted by parents of a different race. Those people were more easily able to differentiate faces of people of the same race as their adopted parents and had difficulty differentiating faces of people of their own race. The inference is that we actually store/recognize facial deltas, not full facial images.

I'm curious how this study would explain or contradict the results of that study. Also, were the monkeys raised by monkey parents or human scientists? Monkeys that were allowed to imprint on humans might be more similar to humans and, yet, unrepresentative of monkeys.

[1] I think it was [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15943669](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15943669)

<comment><USER11> Hm, I always guessed that the brain simply goes by a kind of "maximum information gain" approach, picking out the features that tend stick out most to distinguish things. If unused to, skin color sticks out extremely, so the signal it generates would drown out the other signals.

But that is just a guess and might also go against the findings of the article, which I haven't fully understood yet.

In any case it seems to me that the brain is optimized for processing certain features, as apparently there are people who are unable to recognize faces (face blindness).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm skeptical. Like "faked results" skeptical. Crime witness studies show that most humans can't reproduce another human face that accurately. So-so when the face is at least of the same race, but when of a different race it's a coin flip as to whether they can even recognize it. (That said, I've only heard this on various TV shows, never seen actual research, so the presumption could be wrong). How can primates do so much better with an entirely different species? Or, not even primates, but some AI going through primate neural signals?

<comment><USER13> Very good point, and yes there's a lot of research showing that humans are terrible at recognizing faces from other races. No idea why you're being downvoted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I understand this correctly, this works similar to an embedding in e.g. deep learning: faces are represented by high-dimensional vectors.

Reading the Cell article on this [0] I couldn't help to see the similarities with OpenFace [1].

[0] [http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30538-X](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(17\)30538-X) [1] [https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/#overview](https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/#overview)

<comment><USER15> Interestingly in the article, they try to differentiate the system from machine learning:

Advances in machine learning have been made by training a computerized mimic of a neural network on a given task. Though the networks are successful, they are also a black box because it is hard to reconstruct how they achieve their result.

"This has given neuroscience a sense of pessimism that the brain is similarly a black box," she said. "Our paper provides a counterexample. We're recording from neurons at the highest stage of the visual system and can see that there's no black box. My bet is that that will be true throughout the brain."

<comment><USER16> At this stage I don't think "black box" is a very fair description. We now understand a fair bit about how artificial neural nets encode information and calculate things. And what we don't understand, we can still see and study the processes.

<comment><USER17> We cannot be entirely sure of the behavior in any situation that is sufficiently different from anything that was presented during training. You can't necessarily expect a "common sense" response in that case, and in this sense the neural networks are black boxes.

<comment><USER16> The same applies to any complex system. 'Black box' means 'not inspectable', not 'anything which doesn't have predictable behaviour over all conceivable inputs'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing results, it is incredible to see that our brains do the same process as CNNs, encoding information using multiple layers of neurons to extract features. This makes me think that consciousness could be just an extreme high-level temporal representation of our own senses.

<comment><USER19> I'm not certain, but I don't think that's a coincidence. I.e. convnets were inspired by the neural visual system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can this model be translated into computer vision code? I always wonder if it means there are new more efficient models still to be found to copy from nature, or if the model ends up not being the most efficient and just the result of evolution.

<comment><USER14> Sort-of: [https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/#overview](https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/#overview)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How are these macaques able to so finely differentiate faces of a different species? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to differentiate many macaque faces from each other.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if this is related to why we recognize faces in nonliving objects such as cars.</comment>


I'm a Female Y Combinator Founder and You Can Be Too - <AUTHOR> http://amandapeyton.com/blog/2010/09/im-a-female-y-combinator-founder-and-you-can-be-too/

<comment><USER2> _DO NOT ask for anything in return from anyone._

I'm very much onboard with much of the other advice, and would have agreed with this bit for something like 25 or 26 years of my life. My goodness, I sure wasted a lot of people's time.

Create more value than you capture, but don't be afraid to _sell_. It gets easier with practice, and it is a core competence in a startup founder. You've got to be able to sell to customers, sell to investors, sell to the press, sell to your employees, etc etc. The most direct path to what you want is a) describing why it is in X's interest to give it to you and then b) asking for it. It works. _Astoundingly_ well.

Relatedly, "quality content will win out" is _not_ a marketing strategy. Much closer to the truth is this old chestnut: if your ideas are any good, you'll have to shove them down people's throats.

P.S. You're not a nobody. You're someone who has something X should want, but does not yet have a personal introduction, means of social proof, or whatever it is that the supposed "somebodies" have. You can fix that, and you should fix it, ASAP. The ROI on fixing it will be _spectacularly_ better than more cold emails.

<comment><USER3> >If your ideas are any good, you'll have to shove them down people's throats

Is this true? It makes me think of Helicobacter pylori and the guy who gave himself an ulcer to prove that he discovered a cure. But maybe that "chestnut" only applies to schema violators?

<comment><USER4> I think it is fairly true... the world seems to (generally) be resistant to change even if an idea is fantastic/revolutionary.

<comment><USER5> _the world seems to (generally) be resistant to change even if an idea is fantastic/revolutionary._

I would change that to " _especially_ if an idea is fantastic/revolutionary".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's funny that I have been doing something like this for a while on my own, but to be honest I still think that I am not YC material. What's really surprising is that I just realized that I want to keep it that way.

Sure, I have a bunch of ideas and I have refined them. Yeah, I can write comments and get karma. I have gotten projects funded for nothing, but I would never write a bet on myself. I've just never thought myself as someone good enough for anything, but I simply try.

I know that this isn't something healthy, but it has, ironically, helped me out. I've taken risks that no sane person would take, because I always thought that I was going to lose anyway. Can you imagine a 17 y/o trying to make a dynamic haptic UI? (what the hell was I thinking?)

Sure, I have failed a lot. I have tried to run before I could crawl, but in the process I've learnt and gained far more than those who played it safe. So, maybe hopelessness in the right dose might actually be a good thing. After all what's there to lose, if you think that you have nothing to lose?

<comment><USER7> I don't understand why people have opinions of themselves, let alone why they have negative ones. If I'm not good enough for YC, I'll apply and let the YC people tell me. Why would you reject yourself?

<comment><USER8> > _I don't understand why people have opinions of themselves, let alone why > they have negative ones_

Wow, I never really thought of the idea of having no opinion of myself whatsoever. It's an interesting idea--one that might make me a lot happier.

<comment><USER7> Well, yes! Having an opinion as a way of self-appraisal is maybe understandable, but I'd never let it get in the way of anything I wanted to do. I'd just try and fail. I can't see a reason why I wouldn't attempt something I wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's funny, I wrote an essay (that I haven't published yet) over the weekend about being a female founder. It has some of the same sentiments as Amanda's post.

It was surprising how little of my advice seemed very specific to being a female.

<comment><USER10> Love how Amanda's advice was all generic, also. It shouldn't make a difference what gender or species you are for YC, and it doesn't.

<comment><USER11> Pretty sure PG funds only _Homo sapiens_

<comment><USER12> _(rips up plans for echolocation-based social gaming startup)_

<comment><USER13> Not so fast! Pivot and make it for blind kids

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBv79LKfMt4>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't be a female YC founder but this is great advice for anyone who wants to apply to YC or simply found a startup.

Definite +1 on talking to alumni. That helped us a lot, and everyone we talked to was happy to give advice. While most alumni are in Silicon Valley, they are spread out all over the place.

Most of the alumni I reached out to I had met at conferences, so that is another good way to build your network. Chat up people - you never know who you're sitting next to.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Here's a freebie: the HN audience is uber-highbrow and likes longer articles on weekends._

would y'all describe HN as highbrow? seems pretty populist to me. e.g., every time there's mention of elite universities or anything prestigious in 'the establishment', it gets ripped to shreds and denigrated as being for elitists.

<comment><USER16> Anti-establishment but intellectual.

<comment><USER17> "Every revolutionary is a closet aristocrat." \- Frank Herbert

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know what being a female has to do with your post. Good tips for a founder of any gender though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, that's sort of the point - the advice is the same no matter your gender. I put that in the title because my theory about why more women don't apply is because they feel like they won't get in, and in general I have found (gross gender generalization coming) that women take rejection worse than men.

<comment><USER19> YC is approaching the acceptance rate of Berkeley PHD - due to the ever increasing supply of applicants, mostly. The classes have actually gotten larger. So any feelings that "I probably won't get in" are probably true for any gendered applicant.

By all means apply! But have a backup plan. I have known people that have looked for funding only from YC. That's just as silly as only applying to Berkeley and then giving up on your PHD if you don't get in. As they say in football, that's not a high percentage play.

There were plenty of women PHDs at my graduate school, and men too! So I know people of many genders can navigate processes with lots of rejection.

<comment><USER20> To be accepted, the 'backup plan' needs to be similar in implementation to the 'YC plan' — if you wouldn't have proceeded with your startup in some form if you got rejected, then YC will almost definitely reject you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> just to mention, Jen McCabe from <http://imoveyou.com> , Y Combinator s10, is another female founder that is doing well.

<comment><USER22> Don't forget Jessica Mah of InDinero.

<comment><USER23> Just curious: Are there any others from previous sessions YC classes?

<comment><USER24> Think there have been 7 female founders so far...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess the 'female founder' thing is a hook to, um, hook us all into reading the article (including me, since I'm female and a startup co-founder), Actually, writing an article about Y Combinator is another obvious hook for this crowd. But, ultimately, I wish the article didn't mention the female thing. Lose that and suddenly this is a great article for anyone wanting to apply to YC, as well as conveying general principles for startups in general. Focusing on being female does not help female entrepreneurs get/maintain credibility - it draws attention to their gender rather than their substance as entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER26> No, I'm fairly sure this is not possible for me.

Although it is not a practical consideration, I do wonder what would happen if everybody followed the nothing ventured nothing gained advice and sent cold the 'optimal' amount of cold solicitations. There would have to be a point of diminishing returns eventually, in aggregate.

Is this an important property of good advice - that people do not follow it, otherwise it ceases to be good advice?

<comment><USER27> No. While there is a subset of good advice which is only valuable because a lot of people don't follow it, that's not a property of good advice in general.

For instance, "Eat healthy food" is good advice, and doesn't become less good even if everyone began following it.

Marketing advice, though, is probably more susceptible to "becoming bad," since it typically depends on making your product stand out. Thus, as more people follow a bit of advice on how to stand out, the less this advice actually helps them stand out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No, I really can't.

<comment><USER29> My thoughts exactly. But then again: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_change>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> For those who haven't seen Amanda's interview on This Week in Social Media, you might want to check it out on thisweekin.com (show link: <http://bit.ly/9GiyPy>).

</comment><comment><USER31> Some very interesting advice. I especially loved the bit about talent sourcing; the more I talk to various startup founders, the more I realize how desperately people are looking for good talent.

Also loved this quote: "If you ask 100 people out for coffee and even ONE agrees to go with you, that's one more coffee than you'd get by doing nothing. Net win."

</comment><comment><USER32> Thanks for sharing your thoughts Amanda, I agree the advice wasn't gender specific but quite useful and encouraging nonetheless.

I would love to hear more from female founders like you though. It's quite encouraging.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Or if you are a 21 year old white male hacker, you might find this useful too." can somebody shed a light on the meaning/joke? behind this sentence? what's there about being a 21 year old _white_ male hacker?

</comment><comment><USER34> Has anyone ever put together a list of female YC founders and their companies? Also, is the trend for female YC founders to be solo-founders?

</comment><comment><USER35> aside from #6, this is great in general career advice across sectors...not just YC advice.

</comment><comment><USER36> I completely agree on the Startup School piece of advice. I flew out from Nebraska last year and met more entrepreneurial/like-minded people than I ever knew existed. That event was one of the main motivations for me to move out to the Valley.

I still keep in close contact with a number of people I met from that event last year. There are very few places where you can meet fellow hackers who are entrepreneurial focused. Hearing what the speakers have to say is just the icing on the cake.

</comment><comment><USER37> Sorry, but I can't be a female because I'm a male today.

<comment><USER38> Have you tried Expert Sexchange?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Maybe they would get more women founders if they called it X Combinator?

</comment><comment><USER40> So it's finally time for XY and XX Combinators!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system>

<comment><USER40> Well I'm afraid I have to explain the post, although I believed enough of people would understand the hint and even develop discussion in that direction. I certainly didn't expect the reaction I've got.

Maybe I'm being genetics-biased but the name "Y combinator" always had for me a "macho" association -- Y being the chromosome unique for men. When I read the title "woman ... Y combinator" it really stands out to me. And I see nothing wrong in the idea of also having something like the "X combinator" which would be intentionally more oriented towards women in the business.

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that the name has nothing to do with gender and, instead, has something to do with this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator#Y_combin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator#Y_combinator)</comment></comment></comment>


The end is near: Henry Blodget's index of companies that don't make products and don't have revenues - <AUTHOR> http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/04/alley-insider-creates-bubble-20.html <comment><USER2> Priceless quotes:

" _Because if there's any sure sign that the end is near, it's the fact that Henry Blodget is publishing an index with ridiculously high valuations_ "

" _Is he not satisfied to have played a starring role in the greatest financial mess of our lifetime? Now he needs to do it again?_ "

" _I'm told Henry Blodget is driven by a desire to redeem himself. If that's the case why doesn't he go do some kind of charitable work in the Third World instead of touting worthless stocks?_ "

Amen.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know that you could make a decent argument that some of these companies make no revenues, but he's way off base on some of them. Betfair, for instance, had 2007 revenue of ~$300 Million. And Kayak has a great revenue stream.

I'm an admitted skeptic sometimes, but seriously, do some research before spouting hyperbole.

<comment><USER4> And craigslist? Has he been living under a rock?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like to imagine bankruptcy auctions; what would the listings look like if any of these companies went under?

The bulk of most would be hardware and shwag. And that's not comforting.

<comment><USER6> it will be awesome. Another weeding out of companies that provide not much value. A lot of them, should really be just few guys working form their apartments, getting some revenue back ala Craigslist, and not these big companies, with offices, with lot's of expenses, and "hyped" evaluations. The ecosystem might not support this large companies, and once they burn their vc funding a lot of them will be gone, or just be a lot lot smaller than today, to match what they actually are earning.

Just like earth's mass extinsions, where 60%-80% of the animals died, and new ones came up and flourished, bringing us humans to light.

<comment><USER5> Maybe that's the next big change: the acceptance of apartment working. If it was legitimate to work at home/have shared spaces, you might see a lot more startups that take their time, are in it for the long haul, and (perhaps) more focus on better products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best part is how the index updates in "real time" as the NASDAQ changes.

BTW, did anyone notice that the SAI25 "advisory board" features VCs who happen to be investors in many of the companies that are so generously valued:

<http://www.alleyinsider.com/sai_25_advisory_board>

Conflict of interest? How Web 1.0 of them...

</comment><comment><USER8> I think Henry did a pretty good job at explaining his methodology. He uses public and private comps for revenue multiples. Cites valuations in the case of private comps. It's certainly better than most of the random valuation speculations I read on Techcrunch.

<comment><USER9> _It's certainly better than most of the random valuation speculations I read on Techcrunch._

Very, very debatable. A back-of-the-envelope estimate on Techcrunch only wastes your time once. This endless stream of eternally-updating back-of-the- envelope estimates threatens to waste your time over and over again, as Fake Steve laughingly points out.

The problem with these guesses is that they're dynamic, and the up-and-down movements in the guesses are essentially pure noise, which you are now being encouraged to inject directly into your brain. If tracking hourly movements of _actual stock prices_ is a waste of time -- and it is -- than this is an even higher order of stupidity: It's a waste of a waste of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dang. Didn't make the list. Gotta keep workin'...</comment>


Hacking POS Terminal for Fun and Non-profit - <AUTHOR> http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-Security-Research-Blog/Hacking-POS-Terminal-for-Fun-and-Non-profit/ba-p/6540620 <comment><USER2> This comment provides a lot of insight into the situation from the perspective of someone who claims to "install and provide tech support" for the Aloha POS system: [http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-Security-Research- Blog/Hacki...](http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-Security-Research-Blog/Hacking- POS-Terminal-for-Fun-and-Non-profit/bc-p/6541118#M349)</comment>


Show HN: College2Startup delivers startup jobs to your inbox - <AUTHOR> http://www.college2startup.com

<comment><USER2> This is classic chicken and egg problem. As a Startup who wants to post a job ad, I've no idea if you have enough students who are looking for job on your site, and is it worth paying $100/post. If you're starting now, then keep the job posting free or very minimal, so that you'll have more jobs posted. Once you reach students mass, then you can charge more to startups.

<comment><USER3> Well, with the amount of email I get I suspect either my school sells my email address or companies get people to just download the entire directory. There's at least 4 companies that I get regular email from and I've never interacted with them before. Maybe they plan on mass emailing students about this new service.

While it sounds like I'm being critical of this service, I would have liked to see this before I graduated. I know a few people who joined startups but it's because they knew someone who knew about the startup to even apply. My school has an entire building for technology startups but there's no listing of who's hiring, or at least if there is one it's not very well known.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Welcome to the recruiting space, try not to go crazy :) To get your service started, using email as the main messaging medium is smart as you want to build up your candidate-base, so offering something (in this case, information and job leads) will help you win adopters. Charging on a per job posting basis is a difficult sell as there are literally thousands of others offering very similar services. Showing job-seeker numbers can help motivate the employer to go with you as can past success stories. I'd recommend focusing on achieving those before you start charging. Think about offerings above and beyond just job postings, those are a commodity.

I've been running CollegeJobConnect for the past year and be happy to chat with a fellow entrepreneur who is trying to make student recruiting better. This is a really, really difficult space to be a startup in, so as much as we can all help each other the closer we will be to bringing improvement.

</comment><comment><USER5> PricePoint is key in any service. We started a similar service for The London Silicon Roundabout called TechStartupJobs and started at about £5 (about $8) to test market within our community of 1000+ tech individuals and companies. Once you prove value price can be adjusted. Didnt mean to preach but this is 101 Pricing Services that we mentor to our Startups (<http://www.techstarthub.com/startup-mentoring/>) Best of luck anyway!

Rgds Shawn Techmeetups

</comment><comment><USER6> Great idea! Maybe I missed it, but how many people do you have subscribed to begin with? Perhaps that number isn't as high now, but that would be valuable information to display if it was something high enough to attract startups and sponsors.

</comment><comment> A-K Neat idea! Caught a small typo: next to the lock image on the homepage, it says "ever" in place of what I assume was supposed to say "never".

"We ever misuse or sell any information you give us."

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah gotcha thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why isn't the email submit on the front page?

</comment><comment><USER8> How does this compare to InternMatch?

</comment><comment><USER9> How is this not automated ageism?

<comment><USER10> For the same reason facebook's "college students only" rule when it first launched wasn't ageism.

It's a hook, catering to a very specific niche of ppl. If it catches on, you can bet that they'll expand with MBA2Startup and others, for more 'seasoned' vets.

<comment><USER9> Not buying it. If there was a facebook rule for "college students only", it was because facebook _was_ for college students.

I have no doubt that many companies and headhunters look for recent graduates not because they have just been taught the finer points of development, but because they are most likely young.

If this website was slightly less veiled it would be called 20sToStartup.com, and you wouldn't even dare call that acceptable niche marketing. Maybe that's ok for cars and music, but not for peoples livelihoods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's cool, but I wish there was a way to separate what jobs you want mail for. (different types of programming, marketing, seo, product management, there is a lot of variety.)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely something we've got feedback on and would implement in the next few days. Thanks!

<comment><USER12> Similarly, it would be nice to let students specify whether they are graduate/undergraduate, and maybe their field of study/interest.

I can imagine if I was paying to send an offer out to find people to solve hard CS or math problems for me, I'd be disappointed to find that 90% of the recipients were (for example) undergrad marketing majors.

<comment><USER13> When applicants receive the jobs in their inbox, when they click on the job to apply...they are asked a number of questions including being grad/undergrad, if they have github profile (for those applying for engineering jobs) and many more.

But we do have a great mix of backgrounds..about 30% marketing and the rest are engineering and design.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacking a ProgComp with Side Channels - <AUTHOR> http://lukechampine.com/progcomp.html <comment><USER2> Cool attack and nice write-up. It's always interesting to see how so much information can be extracted through so restricted a channel.</comment>


NTSB report shows Boeing's 787 battery analysis fell short - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020505762_ntsb787reportxml.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The NTSB server is overloaded, analysis can be DLed from the trusty AvHerald [http://avherald.com/files/public_54000-54499_54251_520521.pd...](http://avherald.com/files/public_54000-54499_54251_520521.pdf)

some grim stuff in there:

During this incident, the supply valves (which are electrically driven) lost electrical power after the APU shut down because the APU was the only source of electrical power being used at the time. As a result, smoke generated by the APU battery could not be effectively redirected outside the cabin and aft E/E bay.

</comment><comment><USER2> When all is said and done, Elon Musk's armchair analysis will turn out to be correct -- lithium-ion batteries can't be allowed to get too hot or too cold.</comment>


Dual-Purpose Drones for Agriculture - <AUTHOR> https://www.agweb.com/article/dual-purpose-drones-agriculture <comment><USER2> >"What we can do is spray insecticide right where it's needed and herbicide right where it's needed,"

This is the most important part for drone applications in crop management. With multispectral imaging and RTK it's possible to get much more specific about application of various products that were previously applied in bulk to prevent or remedy a situation.

Unfortunately TFA amounts to an advertisement and doesn't have any useful info.

<comment><USER3> > "What we can do is spray insecticide right where it's needed and herbicide > right where it's needed,"

And if you remembered where you sprayed it, you can sell a part of your crop at a premium, i.e. as "insecticide-free".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.xa.com/en/pseries?gclid=CjwKCAjwzIH7BRAbEiwAoDxx...](https://www.xa.com/en/pseries?gclid=CjwKCAjwzIH7BRAbEiwAoDxxTvmZ- zxBNqVcLmR0aW3J_7VUscmsvwejNfI_TDg-hUHrjSwzTQTDzRoCVc4QAvD_BwE)

Potential alternative?

</comment><comment><USER5> For comparison, the avg piloted spray plane can do about 200 acres/hr, with a running cost of $1200/hr which is $6/acre.

[https://www.agairupdate.com/how-much-does-it- cost/](https://www.agairupdate.com/how-much-does-it-cost/)

An acre of cash crop is has gross value of $500-700.

[https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2018/08/corn-soybean- budge...](https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2018/08/corn-soybean- budgets-2018-2019.html)

<comment><USER6> If regulations require pest/herbicide to be below certain concentrations per acre, a blanket application is often insufficient.

Targeted application by drone makes it a) actually work at all under stricter regulations and b) can be placed only on the areas that need it, so it actually is cost competitive with blanket application despite being more expensive per acre.

<comment><USER2> I will pull up a chair and watch the fields near me get sprayed for an hour. It's like a free air show.

That said, in ten years this will probably be all drones. The ability to do precision dosing, safely fly a few feet above the target, lower noise, lower capital investment, no need for commercial pilot, little to no overspray, high automation potential, simultaneous high resolution monitoring, etc etc etc.

Big limitation now are the meager payloads and flight times. Drone delivery is going to open up the market for manufacturers to start pumping out drones that meet that demand and it's going to be mothballs for the old guard in quite a few places.

Hopefully companies like Air Tractor get on board and adapt their product lines, they have way too much valuable experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm very surprised these are electric.

I would have thought they would have to be fuel based.

I would have thought electric for information (ie photography) Fuel for the meat world.

The Chinese are electric as well - [https://www.xa.com/en/xp2020](https://www.xa.com/en/xp2020)

I don't get it?</comment>


Show HN: First Crack, a simple static blog engine in Python - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/zjszewczyk/firstcrack-public/src/master/ <comment><USER2> > Because I started this project in 2011, though, with Python 2, you will need > Python 2.* to use my blogging engine. I plan to port it to Python 3 soon. > Use with versions other than 2.* at your own risk.

7 months until PY2 goes EOL...

</comment><comment><USER3> Everyone and their dog has written a static site generator - and that is good thing.

Blogs are a personal creation and there is something very satisfying about publishing your own text using your own tools.

Things I particularly like about this project:

* No dependencies

* the generated pages are clean

* good documentation and usability

Since it is tradition at this point, here is my static site generator: [https://github.com/andrewstephens75/gensite](https://github.com/andrewstephens75/gensite)

And an example page: [https://sheep.horse/2017/10/how_you_are_reading_this_page.ht...](https://sheep.horse/2017/10/how_you_are_reading_this_page.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> All you need to do to make this work with Python 3 is change your print statements (add parentheses) and change raw_input to input, as far as I can tell running it in python 3 locally. It seems to work perfectly with these ~20 seconds of changes.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like 2to3 should be able to magically fix it? I suppose adding "from future import print" and similar for input would keep it working for python2 too?

Ed: i think that should be:

from builtins import input

from __future__ import print_function

<comment><USER4> Don't bother with python 2 compatibility, it's EOL in a few months. And 2to3 will probably work but even that is more effort than it needs to be.

<comment><USER6> An official "EOL" from the Python Benevolency doesn't mean Python 2 has reached the end of its life. There's too many projects out there using it for the same reasons this one is, i.e. "Because I started this project in 2011, though, with Python 2, you will need Python 2".

Both Python 2 and Python 3 will continue to exist for active projects for a long time yet. All programming languages have this issue, though many try to hide it, such as Apache Groovy.

In 2012, Groovy 2 shipped as two separate compilers bundled together, one was a continuation of Groovy 1 and the other was the new edition with the invoke- dynamic capabilities. A few weeks ago, the Groovy Committee decided to keep these separate in the bundle for the upcoming Groovy 3 release, add the new features such as the parser upgrade from Antlr 2 to Antlr 4 to the invoke- dynamic compiler only, and keep the other compiler (the one actually used by Gradle and Jenkins and everyone else) at the Groovy 1 capabilities.

So virtually everyone will be using the old antlr2 parser and slower dynamic function dispatches in Apache Groovy for a long time yet, something which the Groovy project managers are deliberately doing to cater for all the legacy Groovy code out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favourite static blog engine is a NIH fueled mix of NodeJS, Handlebars, fs- extra and some glue code. It takes about 10 minutes to knock one up and then you are blessed you can extend it using JS not whatever DSLs are thrown are you by the static site generator. There is a lot more help out there for JS problems than Hugo problems.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wrote a static microblog engine in Python as well (3.7+). There is also a Perl version: [https://github.com/john- bokma/tumblelog](https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog)

Demo site: [http://plurrrr.com/](http://plurrrr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> > First Crack does not rely on any third-party tools, code, or frameworks

Sorry just a little nitpick: Python _is_ a dependency that's not guaranteed to be on someone's system, probably should mention this somewhere

</comment><comment><USER10> > First Crack does not rely on any third-party tools, code, or frameworks.

That's music to my ears!

</comment><comment><USER11> No example images or demo site?

<comment><USER12> Looks to be [https://zacs.site](https://zacs.site)</comment></comment>


Bad news: KeyWe Smart Lock is easily bypassed and can't be fixed - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/11/f_secure_keywe/ <comment><USER2> "device [MAC] address. It's from this address the common key is generated."

[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot15/woot15...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot15/woot15-paper- lorente.pdf)

"With no exceptions, all WPA2 default key generating algorithms that were recovered during our experiments use either the router's MAC address or serial number, or both, as input."</comment>


Facebook's big deal shows we're back in the dot-com funny money era  - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-facebook-20140221,0,3459685.story <comment><USER3> I don't know if WhatsApp is a good buy for Facebook or not. But I do remember when people cried "bubble" at Google for purchasing YouTube (after all: it was too much, it was only valuable because of illegally copied content, there are hundreds of video sites, TV companies can do the same thing), and now they look pretty silly.

$16B ($1B) for a hardly profitable mobile app (video sharing site) seems stupid. $16B ($1B) for the future of telecoms (TV) world wide seems a bargain.

<comment><USER4> Youtube at the time had a massive marketshare in terms of video hosting and sharing (mostly because it was one of only a few which actually worked properly). Whatsapp is popular, definitely. But it's one of hundreds of messaging platforms, and I suspect it doesn't have anything like a majority share in the worldwide messaging space.

The similarities are of course that they're both defensive aquisitions - <USER2> money is justified not on its earnings potential but that it could be the start of a new social network that ousts Facebook. If that really is the case, $16B is well worth it. Facebook's aquisition strategy at the moment appears to be 'overpay for anything that could be the next Facebook to their MySpace'. It'll probably work, too - at least for the near future.

But that said Whatsapp is not very popular in Australia so I have a skewed perspective (current marketshare here seems to be roughly a 50/50 split between legacy SMS and Facebook mesenger).

<comment><USER5> > I suspect it doesn't have anything like a majority share in the worldwide > messaging space.

Whatsapp has 450 million users. The issue is that most Americans (and Australians, in your case) have never heard of it, so they assume that it's not very popular.

[http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/02/whatsapp- rules-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/02/whatsapp-rules-rest- world/)

<comment><USER4> I have heard of it and have used it - I'm not surprised at the 450 million users figure, but the global messaging market is measured in in billions. Even people in third world countries use SMS - they do not have the ~90% marketshare which YouTube had when it was purchased.

In Australia it just, for some reason, never caught on - many people I know have accounts (as many as say, Instagram, for comparison) - it just seems to be something people try but don't stick with. Which in a sense, is a pity, as it's demonstrably better than SMS.

But in Australia Facebook Messenger already has the equivalent marketshare. Perhaps between Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, Facebook would end with a majority marketshare [of IP-based messaging] as one app is popular where the other isn't. I honestly wouldn't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Long time lurker, first time poster here. There are tons of factors to this deal, but here's a simplistic take.

If:

(Google acquires WhatsApp and builds from its existing social network of 450m active users to form a mobile version of Google+ on steroids)

And:

($19Bn FB investment) minus (Actualized FB profit from WhatsApp over 10 years) is greater than (Potential lost profit to Google+WhatsApp in the social networking space)

Then: Buy WhatsApp

I also think its been largely undiscussed that WhatsApp was a company desperately wanted by both Google (for a, finally, serious attempt at competing in social networking) and FB (for a bunch of reasons, as well as defending against a potential Google acquisition) really helped to significantly propel this deal valuation.

<comment><USER7> Maybe I'm missing something, I've never used WhatsApp, but how do you get from it to mobile Google+ on steroids?

It's text messaging (including group text messaging) over the internet. In other words a very stripped down walled garden email system -- like we had on Prodigy in the mid 80s.

Once it got off college campuses, Facebook's killer app was discoverability. That guy you went to high school with? The girl you met at the party last weekend, and you only know her first name and who she came with? Your brother- in-law's brother who offhandedly mentioned that he had season tickets he wanted to split? All of them could be discovered on Facebook without having to tediously trace the chain.

I'm hard pressed to see how you can have a social network without discoverability, even leaving aside the text only nature of the thing. Pictures were were Facebook's zeroth killer app, without those it never would have taken off even at Harvard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Facebook is doing the right thing by diversifying their portfolio. They've seen how quickly a social network can dry up and are wisely using their capital to avoid ending up like myspace.

If you really think about it there's not much more they can do with their original platform without upsetting some of their users. It makes much more sense for them to overpay for a product with traction than to try and spin something off of their original brand (last time they tried it with the Facebook phone it was a total flop).

<comment><USER9> it's the 19bn$ that's completely dumb.

whatsapp's entire business model is charging 1$ per month. for a little less than 19bn $ you could:

\- build an app doing exactly the same

\- run a media/marketing ad blitz

\- charge 50c per year. or make it for free, until whatsapp is dead.

if it's about the awesome talent at whatsapp, 32 engineer can be hired for 19bn $. each one of the whatsapp members could have been acquired for less money besides the 2 founders.

it makes no economic sense. as in old school economics, not the valley funny money one.

<comment><USER10> don't you think that Facebook has tried this already? Facebook Messenger/Messages has a non trivial number of engineers working on it, but it still doesn't have the usage that WhatsApp does.

<comment><USER11> FB messenger isn't a replica precisely because it ties into FB. WhatsApp made it a point to be extremely easy to sign up for and to not require any other major social media accounts.

Somewhat ironically, Facebook may have been more successful in replicating WhatsApp if they had also made a messenger that was not connected at all with Facebook other than its corporate origins.

<comment> mkr-hn This seemed to work for AIM and AOL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't see much analysis of the obvious underlying motive: destroying the bargaining power (SMS) of the phone carriers, who are currently extracting vast sums of money from (mobile) Facebook users.

<comment><USER13> Messaging apps are going to destroy SMS regardless of whether Facebook bought one or not. It doesn't give Facebook any more bargaining power.

<comment><USER12> Facebook isn't bargaining with them directly though. This just accelerates the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We are, but I find it distasteful how people are reacting to this deal. I think a lot of people really don't understand exactly how popular this thing is. Who cares if people in India use it, I haven't seen it in my personal little bubble so it must be pure hype.

People are taking out their feelings about other aspects of the industry and the economy on this deal. If you're one of the people bitching about how startups focus too much on the problems of rich young men, what's not to like about this? What is more broadly useful than a messaging system?

<comment><USER15> Just because something is _popular_ doesn't make it inherently _valuable_ , because popularity is often fleeting.

Over the past fifteen years nearly all messaging platforms have had bell- curves of popularity. MSN, ICQ, AIM, BBM. What stops users of WhatsApp from moving onto another platform? Nothing.

Personally I think the deal is bad for Facebook because they've spent $16+ billion acquiring users that are ephemeral. They are not buying technology. They are not buying talent. It is purely a user buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think one extraordinary data point shows anything, actually.

<comment><USER17> It's not one datapoint. Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp. Three smallish companies, three mind-boggling valuations. I don't think it necessarily indicates that there is a bubble, but it does sound like funny money.

<comment><USER18> Instagram is a bad example. As far as we can see, Instagram has kept on growing and growing, and the ironic thing is that all those blog posts talking about how teens are leaving FB show them flocking to Instagram. So it was obviously a brilliant strategic move, and time will tell if it was a brilliant revenue generating move (I suspect Instagram will make buckets of money eventually, like YouTube does).

The key thing to look at to see if it's a bubble is IPOs. And as far as I can see, good companies are the ones IPOing successfully, and less stellar companies (Zynga, Groupon) are getting punished.

<comment><USER19> > Instagram is a bad example.

Instagram is a good example. As soon as Facebook bought it, the teens started switching to Snapchat, etc.

The problem for Facebook is that to be profitable it needs to connect and make visible things that people don't want connected or made visible.

<comment><USER20> >the teens started switching to Snapchat

huh? AFAIK I've heard nothing of the Instagram exodus, and its actually growing. Are we sure that Instagram is actually in a bad spot, or are we just praying for doom and schadenfreude?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The dot-com buyouts were based on hope, while this era's acquisitions are mostly based on fear - more of the defensive kind.

</comment><comment><USER22> WhatsApp revenue is $1/user/year for all users who have used the service > 12 months. So, revenue is somewhere south of $450 million, but certainly a 9 figure number. That's real revenue.

What would be interesting is to know the gross and net margins, plus growth rates. With these numbers you could back your way into a valuation using various traditional valuation models.

That said, my opinion is this deal is a mix of traditional business plus Zuckerberg's vision. The first and only time I got to hear Zuckerberg in person was at Startup School in 2013.

Zuckerberg made some very interesting comments at Startup School. Basically, it was something along the lines of FB already has almost everyone who can afford a smartphone (i.e. developed markets) as a user. The next big idea is to help connect the next 6 billion people to the Internet...and then he went on to say this is an exciting idea but may not be good business. Make of that comment what you will.

<comment><USER23> > The next big idea is to help connect the next 6 billion people to the > Internet...and then he went on to say this is an exciting idea but may not > be good business. Make of that comment what you will.

Someone is only a customer if they have money to spend on your product/service/widget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Bubble 1.0 was greed without the knowledge on how to value digital companies properly. This phase is greed even after knowing how to value digital companies properly.

You will come off looking really silly if an attempt is made to make sense of all these on actuals and fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER25> Facebook buy WhatsApp because it fears to die, much more than it wants to grow. On that point I don't think $42 a user is too much.

</comment><comment><USER26> If Facebook stock is wildly overvalued then using it as currency is reasonable.

<comment><USER27> Except they bought an even more worthless pile of stock with it. Compare that to Google, who gutted Motorola for its IP and then flipped it for a significant chunk of Lenovo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No. Things can only be wrong if they're in the past. In the present, they're anointed by the status quo effect: if it is the status quo, then it is the best of all possible worlds by reason of many armchair economics-based arguments.

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone remember when armchair economists would talk about the inflated P/E numbers of Google?

Oh how things have changed.</comment>