Zed Shaw on SF vs NYC - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-08-17.html <comment> old-gregg But isn't the end result the same? Joining an existing startup as an engineer is NOT financially beneficial. Just do the math:

An average post-series A startup has 10% chance of success and an average acquisition price is around $50M.

Now, when you're joining as an engineer how much do you get in equity? Much less than just 1%, yet you're losing a lot of potential earning power and, most importantly, you're investing 100% of your raw intellectual potential in it (good startups suck it all out of you). So... while at a startup you are: not working on your own projects, not making as much $$$ as you could have, and the payoff is what? 10% chance of making $50K in 3 years?

<comment><USER2> Crap dude you just summed my life up in a paragraph. 3 start ups, all sold and the most I ever pulled was 100k for my efforts. I did however make a comparable wage to developers in established businesses so it did not hit me so hard in the earning potential; but you are right about the intellectual capital spent. Once the risk of failure starts to subside the amount investors are willing to part with follows a similar curve. If you are going to get in, it has been my experience that, ground floor is the only place that you will see any significant chance of getting to anywhere better than well off or comfortable.

<comment><USER3> Being part of three successful startups must have taught you a ton, though. Certainly more than being a drone.

<comment><USER2> Most assuredly, I absolutely don't want anyone to take away that it was a completely negative experience. Those where some of the best times in my career. Every change you make, you can literally feel the money role in and you are in complete control of the decision making process. You are in it together and it is a conquer the world attitude. The best friends I have ever made, where bonds built in those companies. That said, I think the parent posters comment is often overlooked by the inexperienced, in the quest for the one hit. I am now a VP of a fortune 100 company due to the experience I gained in those companies and my track record of hitting it 3 times. I just wanted to highlight that even upon success, if the timing of entry is not right you may only walk out with some good resume fodder and enough to float you to the next gig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I give it six months before he starts whining about how everyone in SF is a "douche" and fuck them because I'm the genius who wrote Lamson... whatever.

<comment><USER5> +34, seriously? Apparently HN is like a high school girl clique that's decided Zed Is Bad.

<comment><USER6> No, we've just decided that Zed Is Predictable.

<comment><USER5> Well, I've never understood the Zed -hate. People say he's a prick, but people saying that doesn't make it true.

To me, he seems like an intelligent and nice person. His writings are often blunt, but how often is he blunt _and wrong_?

As for being predictable, I predict that the prediction _"he starts whining about how everyone in SF is a "douche" and fuck them because I'm the genius who wrote Lamson"_ is wrong. Your comment, on the other hand, looks like you believe it will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is this on HN's front page? :(

<comment><USER8> I upvoted because being an NYC native (well, after 5 years here) it is always interesting to see what I think I may be missing out on by not being in SF.

Honestly, I think he's spot on with SF being cheaper, cleaner and better tech scene than NY. Where NY wins out is that it is actually refreshing that not everyone is consumed by startup culture here, yet there are still people (buglabs, drop.io) building interesting companies. Also, NYC feels more vibrant compared to SF but my experience is highly limited to an 8 month stint in SF '05 and I wasn't working at a startup.

How about we cut the negativity and share other experiences of people that have relocated?

<comment><USER9> If you care about comparing SF and NYC, I wouldn't trust somebody's account of a weekend visit. I almost laughed out loud at some of it. "Awesome summer weather" and SF are fundamentally incompatible.

And Zed apparently doesn't actually like Mexican food, he just likes burritos, as that's the only thing you can only find in SF.

Now he is spot on regarding Muni. Actually, probably lucky he found a bus at all. Muni vs MTA alone probably makes it worth moving to NYC.

<comment><USER10> I don't know why people don't like the summer weather in San Francisco. Sure, if you live on the ocean side or in Pacifica it can be foggy and cold but in other parts of the city like the Financial District, North Beach or the Mission it is really comfortable most of the summer (high 60s, 70s and sunny most days). If you like super hot weather then you just head down the South Bay or over to the East Bay and you can get plenty of 80s/90s throughout the summer.

<comment><USER11> It's pretty cold here in early summer -- I was wearing a sweater and a winter coat a few evenings last month. I just spent seven years in Seattle (aka the Gloomiest Place on Earth), and even I think it's a bit ridiculous to be wearing a winter coat in July. I also routinely run into tourists over by Giants Park who underestimated the weather, and who are frantically searching for warmer clothes.

That said, I like it here. But had I moved here from LA or anywhere with heat, I would have probably been sorely disappointed.

<comment><USER12> I'm enjoying my first SF (well, Emeryville actually) summer after three years in Sacramento, where "summer" means "90 straight 100+ days". I think it's nice that even on the hottest day of the year I can still walk around outside for an hour without feeling like I'm going to die of heatstroke.

Unless you're planning a day at the beach, I think "hot" is overrated (and I say that as a Sydney native).

<comment><USER13> Emeryville is a significantly different Micro Climate than San Francisco. There are even parts of the actual _city_ of San Francisco that have different weather patterns - and just go a little South down the peninsula, and it's like you are in a different State when it comes to the weather.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one who doesn't give a shit about Zed's migration?

<comment><USER15> Being a New Yorker who wants to do the exact same thing that Zed is doing now (not because he's doing it, of course), it does interest me somewhat.

<comment><USER16> Me too. I was checking out SF a few weeks ago. Froze my ass off at night (50F!). People in SF are 10X nicer than NYC. Even the homeless. Food is not as good, though the high-end fancy places were ok. Housing appears to be half my insane rent in NYC. I'll inevitably move to SF when the economy improves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "More importantly, the general feel of the technology scene in SF has almost zero douchebag in it."

Good to hear that someone's trying to change that.

</comment><comment><USER18> "I went down to the Mission to get some Mexican food, because there is absolutely no good Mexican food in New York. None."

Wrong. Sunset Park in Brooklyn has excellent Mexican food. I say this as a person who recognizes the insane subjectivism of "good" Mexican food. Books could be written on how Americans judge US made Mexican food and I really do think there is no deterministic way to understand what goes into each persons position on what is good and not good when it comes to a burrito or enchilada.

But I will say this; if you go to Sunset Park in Brooklyn NY, you will find quality tacos and tortas. Probably the burritos won't be as good, but I personally find the burrito to be an uninspired dish. I've had good enchiladas and excellent tamales in Sunset Park, too.

<comment><USER19> To be fair as well, the burrito (as we know it in SF) is either a San Francisco or LA based creation. You're not going to find that in Mexico.

<comment><USER20> Yes and no, it looks like:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrito#History>

Looking at that picture made me suffer though... I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'd probably be happy just to get some Taco Bell. Things are _that bad_ here in Padova.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting to see a New Yorker's view of SF, but why do we care? Who is Zed Shaw and why is he important?

<comment><USER22> I'm reminded about something I read regarding human interaction in general: "It's not who has the most interesting to say that's most popular, it's who's the loudest."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I lived in Bayview, north of Candlestick, for a couple months. My sense was that it was the worst neighborhood in San Francisco. It didn't even come close to the worst of Chicago. How does someone from NYC manage to get intimidated by SF? I kind of don't believe this happened.

San Francisco is too small for genuinely dangeous neighborhoods, and the whole area is so expensive that even Oakland is viable for family housing.

<comment><USER24> How could Bayview trump the Tenderloin? Or for that matter, Emeryville (if we're counting the East Bay?)

Here's a map of SF crime by district.

<http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/projects/sfcrime/>

<comment><USER23> I don't know this for sure, but I'd bet that vice and drug crimes jack the stats up for the Tenderloin. Also, this is 1998; 10 years could change a whole lot in SF. But I'm even more certain that 10 years has made SF more hospitable, not less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Re: "people are crazy"

San Francisco is less than twenty miles long. It's very easy to get to the other side of town in a short period of time. NY has neighbourhoods that are much more dangerous than shady parts of the Mission/Tenderloin (where he likely ended up) and even Bayview. It's just that it's much harder to stumble into them.

</comment><comment><USER26> In further news, I plan on eating a sandwich for lunch.

</comment><comment><USER27> "NYC constantly stinks like dried vagina in the summer."

i read zed for gems like that. hilarious. but, imho, nyc does have shortcomings when put up against sf, especially in the tech space. i live in manhattan now and although there are a handful of people/groups that do hackernews type stuff they are few and far between. mostly those that do play here are along the lines of the job zed made example of in his post.

<comment><USER28> Not sure who you have been meeting. But you should check out the hackers and founders meetup. There are of course a few financial people, but overall a great group of interesting like minded people. There are people in NYC doing interesting stuff, you just have to weed through a lot of crap to find them. But they do exist... If your interested in details for the meet up, shoot me an email.

</comment></comment><comment> a-priori The grass is always greener on the other side of the continent.

</comment><comment><USER29> I just did the opposite move, from SF to NYC.

The Mexican food in SF is very specific - Burritos. Burritos are as much Californian food as they are Mexican. You'll be hard pressed to get a decent burrito in most of Mexico. You'll also be hard pressed to find a decent burrito outside of SF once you've lived there.

The burritos in NYC are a joke. However, tacos in NYC are fine. The mexican people in California are usually from California... home of the burrito. All the mexicans I've met in NYC are from D.F - where there are no burritos to be found, but there are tacos. You can get nopales with your taco in NYC, it's hard to get them in SF. Zed's right though... in general there's better mexican food in SF. However, NYC definitely is not the worst. Try getting mexican food in Wisconsin, for example.

The weather in SF is weird. It's kinda cold most of the time. When I was a kid in the midwest I used to watch skateboard videos featuring SF. I'd mimic the guys who wore a winter hat and a t-shirt. I was determined to be as rad as they were. My head got so hot, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't figure out how those dudes could do it. It all came together when I moved to SF. It's the only place in the world where it makes sense to leave the house in a winter hat and a t-shirt.

The weather in NYC is balls this summer, but I kind of like having an excuse to wear shorts for the first time in 5 years.

NYC is indeed dirtier overall. However, if Zed really wants to know where the part of San Francisco that makes god weep, it's 6th and Market. Human poo, needles, meth tweakers, etc. The lower tenderloin up the hill from that intersection is a also a horror movie.

Regarding sketchiness, the sketchy parts of SF are actually sketchy. NYC, not so much. I've been mugged twice in SF. Once right in front of my apartment. My roommate was beat up by three dudes for 18 dollars. The hells angels dude got mowed down right over where I used to live. 21st street is the dividing line between the Nortenos and Sorrenos... 2 guys got shot on the street in front of my startup, while I was at work. Note that this was Bryant street and 21st in the Mission... where tons of hipsters and software people live...in 2006. There are constant gunshots in the projects next to Hayes Valley, right up the street from everyone's favorite coffee shop, Blue Bottle. I moved to a "nicer" neighborhood, Cole Valley, and within months my house got broken into and my TV was stolen by a crackhead. Market street after midnight (or after noon, depending on the day) is like 28 days later or similar apocalyptic zombie movie.. and so forth. Don't get me started on Oakland.

In contrast, New York is so safe these days it's a joke. You have to try pretty hard to get to a bad neighborhood in NYC these days. I never thought I'd "go soft" by moving to New York, but I'm not looking over my shoulder for tweakers and thugs anywhere in manhattan. I left my bike locked up on the street in Brooklyn and nobody ganked my seat like they did in Berkeley. Etc.

Regarding tech, I haven't been here too long. I know Zed hates ruby, but we had a nycrb meetup at work, and it was much better than the ruby meetups I'd been to in SF. The people were really cool. I also thought the "lame" project email he received sounded like a fun project, and I work for a fashion company, so maybe I'm not as cool as Zed. I do miss TechShop in Menlo Park already, as well as all the South Bay weirdos who build robots and actually design circuits and work on network routing protocols and stuff like that. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent to that out here, but maybe I just haven't found it.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, I think SF has more dangerous places then I've ever been to in NYC. In fact, though I've travelled quite a lot around the US and around the world, I'd say that I've never felt more threatened than I was in parts of SF.

SF is kind of weird in that it has these micro-neighborhoods, where you could go from a quite nice, posh neighborhood to a junky hangout in the space of a block. In NYC the transition from neighborhood to neighborhood is much more gradual, so you've got more of a warning.

And Market St in SF is just insane. I have never seen so many homeless people in my life. It's like a homeless army. It's really quite sad.

I heard that at one point there was an actual proposal being considered by the SF government to round up all their homeless people and send them to Treasure Island.

<comment><USER31> I was coming off Market and heading towards California one day when I happened to look at a homeless guy. I mean it was just an innocent glance -- like anybody does all the time.

His eyes got big and round and he walked over to me and started screaming, at the top of his lungs. Every sort of paranoid delusion and profanity you could imagine: he yelled it right in my face.

I, of course, totally ignored him at this point. Lord knows what he would have done if I had confronted him.

He followed me all the way home -- about a half-mile. Screaming the entire time. I was very thankful to live in a secure apartment building!

Sadly, this same thing happened to me a few months later with a different guy.

SF is a beautiful city, but it has a lot of issues.

<comment><USER30> I honestly think many of those homeless people are suffering from quite serious mental illness. They are not on the streets by choice.

<comment><USER31> My wife studied sociology. She tells me that there was a big push like in the 1970s to let a lot of crazy people out on the streets. It was deemed to be better to have them on the streets than in institutions.

If that's true, I don't think it's worked out very well.

<comment><USER30> I think it was due to budget cuts to social services across the board. That included closing a lot of asylums.

<comment><USER31> I've heard both that it was due to budget cuts and I've heard that it was due to well-meaning activists who were pushing for patient's rights. Honestly I never dug into it to figure out what really happened.

Whatever happened, it's a sad state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There is, in fact, good Mexican food in NYC--at the Red Hook ball fields on weekends in the summer.

[http://nycfoodguy.com/2009/05/06/redhookballfieldsintroducti...](http://nycfoodguy.com/2009/05/06/redhookballfieldsintroduction/)

[http://events.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/dining/reviews/23unde.h...](http://events.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/dining/reviews/23unde.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Mexican food is only good in Texas, London is more expensive than NYC, and the SF weather is the nicest of all.

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock.

<comment><USER23> There are really good taquerias in the Mission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> a one page comparison of NYC vs SF, blurgh...

<comment><USER35> Based on a four day visit _rolleyes_

Almost every time I visit a new place I want to move there, then I hang out for a few days and miss either New York or Sydney and realize that I'm perfectly content with my home(s).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> He's right about the Mexican food in NYC, just horrible. But then all the Mexican stands are run by Chinese because the Latinos run the pizza parlors.

<comment><USER35> Meh, you can't get California style Mexican food but you can definitely get some great tacos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Let's rename this site to Zed Shaw's Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER38> one could argue this guy doesn't get NY. (by making almost the same arguments that is)

</comment><comment><USER39> Wish you all the best Zed.

</comment><comment><USER40> _Something negative and irrelevant that doesn't add to conversation about this link and somehow says I hate Zed Shaw so I sound like I'm a cool rebel too_

Joking. Was a good read. Also, some of you need to read to the bottom to the 'Clue mean in' part.

</comment><comment><USER41> Who is this guy? the next Anthony Bourdain? come one...

</comment><comment><USER42> "More importantly, the general feel of the technology scene in SF has almost zero douchebag in it."

++0

</comment><comment><USER43> Almost everything I read about NYC seems to reinforce my prejudices against it. :)</comment>


No Execute - <AUTHOR> http://emulators.com/docs/nx01_intro.htm

<comment><USER2> He raises valid points, but the obvious difference is that people expect building a bridge to cost millions and take months, whereas most customers think building quality software is easy.

This is made worse by the fact that it is in fact _easy_ to build a near- functional prototype. It's turning that into a quality project that takes the most time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Modern software can be fast and efficient (see Google Chrome), but I guess most developers don't consider responsiveness a feature anymore.

<comment> loup-vaillant How fast and efficient is it compared to Dillo?

Overall, responsiveness doesn't play well with feature creep. Now the problem is to sort useful features from useless fat. In the case of web browsers, what would you leave out? Flash? Javascript? CSS? Broken tag soup parsing? Personally, I think we would be better off without all those things, except CSS. I also bet that most of the world disagree with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this interesting near the end: <http://emulators.com/docs/nx13_olpc.htm>. The author wonders about _A New Era For Personal Computing?_

I think three years later, a lot of us are starting to see through to the other side. Funny that he mentioned the Newton, too.</comment>


John Carmack's former employer claims he stole tech for Oculus VR when he left - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/01/zenimax-claims-oculus-stole/ <comment><USER2> > In August 2012, ZeniMax began seeking compensation for the intellectual > property, according to people familiar with the discussions. Negotiations > continued on and off for nearly six months, with Oculus eventually offering > ZeniMax a small equity stake, but no deal was reached, the people said. This > past summer, Mr. Carmack joined Oculus, and earlier this year, five ZeniMax > employees joined Oculus, the people said. In February, ZeniMax asked Mr. > Carmack to disclose all of the virtual-reality inventions he developed while > working at ZeniMax, one of the people said.

it sounds to me like they are saying that John Carmack did VR work for Oculus while still at Id and then took his tech demo with him when he left Id/ZeniMax.

This seems like the kind of thing John had done in the past and no one cared when they were still Id software. Once they sold themselves, it seems like the parent company no longer considers this type of activity to be ok.

or put another way, it sounds like shades of Sergey Aleynikov ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov)), where a programmer does something he always does but once he leaves the company the company decides that they weren't cool with it after all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh, Zenimax legal is the worst. I mean, maybe they have a claim - Carmack was probably working on Oculus stuff while employed there - but I find the idea that businessmen own everything a programmer works on just because he's an employee abhorrent.

Remember the whole Scrolls debacle? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethes...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolls_%28video_game%29#Bethesda_lawsuit) Apparently that was Bethesda Softworks, not Zenimax... but I wonder who was really behind it.

<comment><USER4> If a programmer is compensated for his time working for a company i think the company has a right to claim the work produced during that time. If they pursue it, is a different question, but i think Zenimax has a valid argument here.

<comment><USER5> Your salary covers the work you produce while you are at work. If you pursue unrelated side projects in your spare time, I don't see how anyone with half a brain can reasonably claim that they also own those projects (partially or wholly).

<comment> loup-vaillant I hear some US company make you sign off your right to write anything on your own. Meaning, you agree that _any_ code you write belongs to them by default. Sometimes, this is even a problem for Open Source contributions.

Paul Graham himself warned about this: he basically said that if you're thinking about launching a startup and are currently employed, you shouldn't write a single line of code, if only to be safe.

This state of affair is obviously twisted and wrong, but in this world, corporations have more say than the people. Of course they will push in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Smart people should stop leveraging the amount of information in their brain. That's the property of some corporation! What was he thinking?!

<comment><USER7> It sounds like he actually wrote software, but yes, this line seriously bugs me:

> The proprietary ... know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax > employee ... are owned by ZeniMax.

<comment><USER8> Why the hell would Zenimax have legal ownership to stuff he did during his time off?

<comment><USER9> Why would you assume Carmack did everything he gave to Zenimax in his time off?

It seems a lot more likely to me that he felt he was entitled to spend his time however he saw fit and did the VR work during work hours. I doubt if it would have even occurred to him to differentiate between "work time" and "time off".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >The proprietary technology and know-how Mr. Carmack developed when he was a ZeniMax employee, and used by Oculus, are owned by ZeniMax.

John Carmack's 'know-how' is owned by ZeniMax? Absurd.

<comment><USER11> "Trade secrets" might be a better term there.

<comment><USER12> It's not a trade secrets case. Zenimax wasn't in the same business. Zenimax are claiming that they own everything he did while employed, thus, Oculus IP is zenimax IP. Typical tech company lawyer BS.

<comment><USER13> This is why you sign an exclusion clause when you start anywhere. I don't know why this is so crazy. Salaried employees are paid regardless of hours worked, which means that you are technically always employed, regardless if you're expected to be working.

If you're paid hourly, then there's a clear demarcation between working hours and not, being a salaried employee blurs that line. That's why many states have regulations as to who can be salaried and how.

<comment><USER14> "Salaried employees are paid regardless of hours worked, which means that you are technically always employed, regardless if you're expected to be working."

I don't know what third-world despot you've gotten stockholm syndrome for, but that is absolutely not true. Salaried employees can, and often do, have second jobs, run their own businesses, from restaurants to real estate ventures.

You are not the property of your employer. Salaried employment is an arrangement which cannot legally demand more than 40 hours of you. It often does, but I'd actually argue in those cases that the agreement is in breach and not binding at all.

Just because some states have stricter guidelines on how these lines can be drawn does not mean that you are ever the property of your employer.

<comment><USER15> I've had employers make me sign contracts that strictly forbade moonlighting and anything I developed while employed there belonged to them. I no longer work there, and don't sign agreements like that anymore, but they exist and aren't terribly uncommon.

<comment><USER16> Companies put a lot of terms in their contracts, not all of which are legally enforceable. Check your rights as well as your contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Carmack's response: "No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR." [0]

[0] [https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/461918500307472384)

<comment><USER18> Unless part of his agreements with Zenimax required him to provide all necessary assistance and documentation so that they can patent his work, which many agreements do...

<comment><USER19> Also, they may own it as a trade secret rather than as a patented process. Or, further, it's possible that code that John is working on now is a derivative work of code owned by Zenimax. We won't know until the facts come out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is what happens when you sell your company to lawyers (CEO/founder of Zenimax)

</comment><comment><USER21> When you are acquired for $2 billion, know that there will be hundreds of lawyers looking to find a way to sue you and get some of that Facebook stock.

<comment><USER22> I think it's worth pointing out that ZeniMax has been pursuing this since 2012, long before the Facebook acquisition. At least according to this article on ArsTechnica:

[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent- sta...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/05/id-software-parent-stakes-claim- on-carmacks-oculus-rift-technology/)

<comment><USER21> it might be true that they were pursuing it earlier, however, according to the WSJ article that is the source for all this, the lawyers didn't get involved until after the Facebook announcement.

 _The letters from ZeniMax 's lawyers came after Facebook struck its deal to acquire Oculus, part of the company's efforts to leap from a social-media platform to a major player in the race with Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to be at the forefront of Internet use._

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > To be completely clear, Zenimax is claiming that John Carmack took software > with him to Oculus VR that he developed while still an employee at id > Software (owned by Zenimax).

But:

> ZeniMax provided necessary VR technology and other valuable assistance to > Palmer Luckey and other Oculus employees in 2012 and 2013 to make the Oculus > Rift a viable VR product, superior to other VR market offerings.

My guess: it sounds like John Carmack began an informal relationship with Luckey and Oculus, and possibly wrote some code for or advised them while he was still at iD. If so, Zenimax is likely legally in the right. Yikes.

<comment><USER10> I find it hard to imagine that an industry veteran like Carmack would write code for another company while employed with another and proving some bit of proprietary advice was incorporated into the product would be difficult.

My guess is that Zenimax wants to get access to the source to go on a fishing expedition.

<comment><USER24> Not unprecedented though. Carmack did once advise Ken Silverman on using sectors with his 3D engine. Which later became the Build Engine.

<comment><USER25> Correct me, Build engine is 2.5D. Isn't it?

<comment><USER24> The exact nature of various FPS gaming engines from that era kind of gives me a massive headache.

Still, the point stands that this isn't unprecedented. John Carmack's has, in the past, just helped out potential competitors before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Actual source is [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230394810...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846) which sadly is behind a paywall. So here is a Google Cache [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579534013624548846) or as more permanent archive [http://archive.today/fz5Ge](http://archive.today/fz5Ge)

</comment><comment><USER27> I guess this means that ZeniMax owns all the code that Carmack wrote for Armadillo Aerospace, too.

Oh right, AA isn't worth $2B.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hmm...sounds quite hairy, and quite likely that Carmack did, to some extent, leverage existing proprietary id software to assist in developing Rift's SDK or whatever before he left. I mean, who wouldn't? But at the same time, you'd think someone like Carmack would be aware of the murkiness of using company IP to make something...and then taking that something to another company.

<comment><USER8> This looks more like typical tech lawyer company bullshit where they claim that to basically own your brain while you're employed including anything you did during your time off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A gaming giant going against a gaming legend, not sure if Zenimax thought this one through. Also doesn't Carmack still own a portion of id software and thus Zenimax? Carmack tried to get them to pursue VR but they didn't want to. Sounds like a bratty response to a bad decision.

<comment><USER30> Zenimax owns id, not the other way around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> For those who bemoaned the Facebook acquisition, now you can be reassured that papa Facebook has deep enough pockets to make the patent troll go away.

</comment><comment><USER32> Do they/companies in general have no notion of how bad stuff like this makes them look.

Either they should fire the people handling PR or talk to them before doing dumb shit.

<comment><USER33> They just can't resist the pile of money that Facebook paid for Oculus. Getting a slice of that might be more profitable than writing new software, unfortunately. Goodwill be damned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Honestly, the details in something like this don't matter. ZeniMax is betting on Oculus not wanting a spurious legal claim holding up the closing of the Facebook deal. Oculus leaders don't really care, because they just want their big payday. Oculus will settle, ZeniMax will get some money, and we'll all move on.

</comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of _Count Zero_. The whole plot about a scientist leaving one corporate nation-state to work for another, and having to be extracted by a team of commandos so his old bosses don't kill him.

</comment><comment><USER36> so here's the agreement Oculus allegedly broke: [http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus- alle...](http://recode.net/2014/05/01/heres-the-agreement-oculus-allegedly- broke-according-to-zenimax/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I can certainly understand why Carmack left. Doesn't sound like his kind of company.

</comment><comment><USER38> Teenager me would have had no way to process this. Adult me's struggling too.</comment>


Chrome reports xkcd.com's TLS cert from RapidSSL as unverifiable - <AUTHOR>
 ( https://xkcd.com/ ) Unsure why. <comment><USER2> SHA-1 is being deprecated.

E: For more reading: [https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/09/09/s...](https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2014/09/09/sha1-deprecation- what-you-need-to-know)

<comment><USER3> HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9368418)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks guys :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://ma.ttias.be/chrome-version-42-starts-marking- sha-1-s...](https://ma.ttias.be/chrome-version-42-starts-marking-sha-1-ssl- certificates-insecure/)

</comment><comment><USER5> SHA-1 cert with a expiration date past Dec 31 2015 (SHA-1 certs with expiry date within 2015 will continue to be marked as secure, but will state that they have obsolete crypto if the details are viewed).

</comment><comment><USER6> You should check out this: [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=https%3A%2F%2...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=https%3A%2F%2Fxkcd.com%2F)</comment>


Key Mapping and Vintage Mode Setup for Sublime Text 2 - <AUTHOR> http://projectpoppycock.com/key-mapping-and-vintage-mode-setup-for-sublime-text-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> For OSX Lion / Mountain Lion:

 _OS X Lion

In Lion, holding down a key won't repeat it, but will instead show a popup menu to select between character variations. This doesn't work well with command mode, so you may want to disable it. This can be done via entering this at the terminal:

defaults write com.sublimetext.2 ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false_</comment>


Fireman Shostakovich - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/01/02/anna-aslanyan/fireman-shostakovich/ <comment><USER2> The recording I have is of Bernstein conducting the Chicago Symphony, which is apt since Chicago has traditionally had a reputation of an amazing brass section. The invasion theme (which Shostakovich later admitted was actually supposed to be a depiction of Stalin) in the first movement is really amazing in that it's a repeating theme (like Bolero) except that it just gets more and more psychotic as time goes on. Really fun recording to listen to.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love Shostakovich's music. At first I found his music weird and even ugly, but I persevered and never gave up. In time, I realized he created some of the darkest and other times most joyful music I ever listened to. His music is ironic and full of jokes. I'm wondering how his music would have changed had he not lived under Stalin and Soviet Russia.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HON-9Z1Greo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HON-9Z1Greo) (ignore the comments, as usual)</comment>


A tool to decide what your next fundable startup should be - <AUTHOR> http://fundablestartup.com/

<comment><USER2> The idea I received was Netflix for movies. I think it has potential ;<).

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL. There's always a refresh button ;)</comment></comment>


I will work on one project for free - <AUTHOR> I'm an Android/Qt developer with average skills. I'm experienced in working on industrial and mission critical projects for about 7 years. I have experience in UI/UX design as well. I'm open for work for upto 2-3 hours a day, after my office hours the entire year (2018). I'm ready to do this for free, since I cannot accept any payment apart from my full-time employer. I will only work on ONE project. I'm ready for any type of online communications, email is preferred. I will only use toolchain I'm familiar with. I do it for fun and meet people from other parts of the world. I cannot guarantee any timely delivery.<p>Any takers? Any other thoughts or suggestions? <comment><USER2> Retroshare is a Qt desktop application with a recent Android version: [https://github.com/RetroShare/RetroShare/blob/master/retrosh...](https://github.com/RetroShare/RetroShare/blob/master/retroshare- qml-app/src/android/AndroidManifest.xml)

LibreOffice has an Android version: [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/BuildingForA...](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/BuildingForAndroid)

These are the projects I am affiliated with.

<comment> git-pull The above projects are open source. So those are definitely areas where you can pitch in!

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not considered open source projects which are in development, since it prevents me from having an opportunity to develop from scratch, also highly likely that I have to use toolchain which the project is already using, as opposed to tools that I'm familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Build an app graphic designers can whitelabel to sell photo "templates", ala InstaMag. I know someone selling Photoshop templates on Etsy looking for this.

</comment><comment><USER4> if you use Qt, why do you limit yourself to android? wouldn't it be fairly simple to set up ios builds as well?

(i just recently evaluated, and rejected, qt for a project i'm about to start. i found it to be buggy and poorly organized. and $459 per month is just outrageous.)

<comment><AUTHOR> My Qt experience is in developing native desktop applications. I have not used Qt for mobile apps yet.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are open-source websites possible/practical? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose one has an idea for a web service that is universally beneficial and will make the world a better place.  There is lots that can be done and myriad directions to go in, but it should be completely free (modulo hosting costs, that can be covered) and best run by volunteers. For regular code open-source is great, but how about extending this to the full design and development of a website.  Design, front-end, back-end all submitted by regular people. Is this plausible, and how would you see it happening?  Would it be better to use Rails or Django or what?  Either way anyone could fork/clone the project and run it for free on Heroku/AppEngine (with test data) and then submit changes to the main project. <comment><USER2> AS long as you set a couple of APIs to account for security and standardization across the site, I don't see why not.

Also, someone has to be the Gatekeeper to push code to production.

That's essentially what Wordpress plugins are, its all open source.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't Wikipedia work like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> With Wikipedia you can update the main text content, but there is no direct access to the backend or even to the templates/css/etc. Unless you meant MediaWiki being open source? That's an interesting datapoint. Do you know how quickly MediaWiki changes are pushed out to wikipedia? (Also, the idea I had in mind is more suited for a single host, rather than some software that would be beneficial to host on many different sites)

<comment><USER4> All of Wikipedia is developed using an open source model

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay my bad, that looks very much like what I was asking for. I'm still wondering about the language, PHP might not be ideal :)

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


True Micropayments with Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@21/true-micropayments-with-bitcoin-e64fec23ffd8#.s8ezmd20q <comment><USER2> This is an implementation of "simple" directional payment channels between two parties, without the concept of hubs (as in the original LN) or p2p routing (as we have in LN today), and which expire at at a pre-determined timestamp (forcing you to close & re-open the channel every once in awhile).

This is useful for cases where one party wants to send payments in small increments to another party (e.g. pay-per-kilobyte for internet access). Funds locked up in the channel are only usable for transacting between the two parties, and funds can only be sent in one direction.

BitcoinJ implemented this nearly two years ago: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=945401.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=945401.0)

And BitPay released this as part of BitCore around 1.5 years ago: [https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore-channel](https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore- channel)

The innovation in payments channels being discussed nowadays is something completely different: bi-directional payment channels that can be kept open indefinitely, with a peer-to-peer routing layer that makes it possible to send off-chain payments to anyone in the network and not just to one specific party.

<comment><USER2> Correction: the bitcointalk link above is wrong, it should be [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244656.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244656.0). I also got the times wrong because of that - BitcoinJ released payment channel support 2.5 years ago, not "nearly two years ago" as in the original comment (which cannot be edited now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (Disclaimer, work for Blockstream on Lightning).

Commenters are right that micropayment channels have been around for years; but they're not widely used; more convenience is a big win. Lightning uses more sophisticated generalised 2-way channels, plus routing to form a network, but it's still early days.

<comment><USER4> Smiles from China Rusty. We met back in Sydney in the late 90s/early noughties. I wrote a Wikipedia page for your pettycoin project but it was deleted by the notability police. Funny that it changed your career path, as I'd found it significant in distant observation! Congrats on the new role. I was in touch with your apparent new co-worker Jorge (congrats to him too) on the more socially engaged side of economies circa time of writing [http://www.ifex-project.org/](http://www.ifex-project.org/) ... I left Kraken now, still thinking to push IFEX forward if anyone expresses interest. Too many of these new systems have assumptions baked in, IMHO we still need a business-level transaction protocol that doesn't suck to glue these innovations together with conventional assets/systems of exchange and to justify (possibly automatically) in business terms (speed, reputation, redundancy, assets supported, jurisdictions (not) traversed, etc.) versus a well expressed risk model (critical) why they should be used. I feel this is a big part of the lineage-of-cryptoanarchist fintech equation that is missing if broad social adoption is desired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The scale of the Bitcoin mining buildout indicates that grid computing may indeed be feasible after all given the appropriate compensation, and potentially better than or competitive with cloud computing for some applications.

Now that we have a quick way to set up a fine-grained bitcoin micropayments channel between any two machines, an obvious next step is to start generalizing this to the renting out of other compute resources beyond just storage._ [1]

Can anyone provide an example of a problem that would be better solved with grid computing/micropayments instead of cloud computing?

[1] [https://21.co/learn/grid-computing-with-bitcoin- micropayment...](https://21.co/learn/grid-computing-with-bitcoin- micropayments/#bitcoin-mining-as-grid-computing)

<comment><USER6> Assuming grid computing ends up cheaper, any problem that doesn't depend on high availability.

Why grid computing might be cheaper: people could rent out excess capability that would otherwise go wasted, so their marginal cost of computing is 0 or close to 0. The question is how much overhead would be, but building on a marginal cost of 0 is better for costs than any dedicated solution.

It's not obvious that those considerations outweigh the cost efficiencies of centralization, but it's by no means obvious that they wouldn't or can't.

Think the power grid as an example. If power wasn't fungible in close to real time (like cloud computing today, unless you specifically set it up that way) our prices would be more expensive, because less participants would be producing energy. The fact that anyone can, in theory, produce energy and sell it on a market which accepts the best bid improves the market for everyone. This seems similar.

<comment><USER5> > any problem that doesn't depend on high availability

Do you have any specific examples of resource-intensive computing problems (other than SETI@home) that do not depend on high availability? Seems a bit like a solution in search of a problem.

I like your example of the power grid as an explanation for how owners of small amounts of computing power might interact with the larger system and have an impact on market prices. But if the analogy truly holds, it would be a good indication of how negligible rewards would be to smaller entities (individuals running computers or smartphones).

<comment><USER6> Anything that would currently use AWS spot instances. Amazon created it, so we can assume there's a market for "cheaper, but lower availability". Google has something similar [https://cloud.google.com/preemptible- vms/](https://cloud.google.com/preemptible-vms/)

>I like your example of the power grid as an explanation for how owners of small amounts of computing power might interact with the larger system and have an impact on market prices. But if the analogy truly holds, it would be a good indication of how negligible rewards would be to smaller entities (individuals running computers or smartphones).

I'm not thinking of individuals making a living off of their one computer. But surely there's a significant amount of computing power in datacenters that goes unused, or not optimally used. Now, they could manually partner with other datacenters to absorb excess capacity, and bargain a price individually. But if grid computing becomes a thing, all they'd have to do is hook up a bidder to their excess capacity.

Admittedly, focusing on high capacity entities makes it harder to see micropayments as helpful. Even if the minimum transfer amount was $100, it would still be worth it for datacenter operators to trade on such a market.

<comment><USER7> The smaller the minimum payment, the closer you can fit the area under the curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recently drafted a protocol for micropayments. It is almost trivial, and while it requires a trusted payment provider which issues and validates tokens, the way it is designed should prevent any vendor lock-ins. My goal was to design something that avoids the need for user authentication and logins towards the website which provides content or services. Anyway, here's the link to the specification I wrote: [http://konstantinschubert.github.io/pennytoken- spec/](http://konstantinschubert.github.io/pennytoken-spec/) I am very interested in your opinion and I hope it is not considered rude that I am posting here.

<comment><USER9> _> while it requires a trusted payment provider which issues and validates tokens_

The most interesting part about Bitcoin micropayments is that they can be done in such a way that you do not have to trust a "payment provider."

<comment><USER8> I know. But I think at least for instantaneous payments you will need SOME trusted party, even if you trust this party only for small amounts and a limited amount of time. Also, regarding bitcoin, I'm worried about the future of the network after the recent drama and I'm concerned about the computing resources spent in securing the network. I realize that this expense in securing the network is a necessary component of the game theory. But apart from the ecological impact, I think that the cost of it might be higher than trusting a provider who is ultimately backed by the state.

I think bitcoin is amazing and I'd love for it to succeed. However, I believe that for micropayments, the most pragmatic solution might be the one with trust involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related, here is a probabilistic nanopayment implementation for Bitcoin: [https://github.com/paulkernfeld/bitcoin- nanopayment](https://github.com/paulkernfeld/bitcoin-nanopayment)

And here a unidirectional payment channel contract for Ethereum (.sol file): [https://github.com/obscuren/whisper-payment- channel](https://github.com/obscuren/whisper-payment-channel)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really a private payment network that happens to be denominated in Bitcoins. You have a balance denominated in Bitcoins on a server at "21.co". "Before you can execute an off-chain transaction in the 21 system, you need a bitcoin balance at 21.co." It's a centralized micropayment system. So only people with 21.co accounts can play. Hey, it worked for PayPal.

You can initiate a "flush" transaction which asks "21.co" to sell you real Bitcoins in exchange for their book-entry Bitcoins. Sellers would presumably do this at least once a day, avoiding keeping a substantial balance on "21.co". Given the track record of "hosted Bitcoin wallets", which tend to be "take the money and run" operations (anyone knowing the whereabouts of Cryptsy's "Big Vern", please contact the Silver Law Firm) that's a good feature.

There's no real reason this needs Bitcoins at all. This scheme would work if it was denominated in dollars. There's a startup opportunity here. Reuse the micropayment system, forget about the Bitcoins. You'd deposit money into your micropayment account with a credit card, and your computer can then spend against that balance. Merchants could "flush" their balance via an ACH transfer to their bank.

<comment><USER12> This is false. The micropayments system they are using is based on fancy Bitcoin transactions and does not require anyone to be trusted:

[https://21.co/learn/intro-to-micropayment-channels/#how- micr...](https://21.co/learn/intro-to-micropayment-channels/#how-micropayment- channels-work)

<comment><USER11> When they actually do it that way, the "channel" relationship is between buyer and seller, without going through "21.co". That's fine. But that only works if you do enough transactions with one buyer to justify a blockchain transaction. You have to tie up some predetermined amount of BTC for a day or so, and you get back change for what isn't used. That's a pain.

The more common case is what they call "Off-Chain Transactions (BitTransfers)". "21.co" acts as a clearing agent for microtransactions, and so you have funds tied up against "21.co", not with the seller. This involve some degree of trust in "21.co", in that they can potentially steal your balance. (In keeping with Bitcoin scam tradition, they'd probably claim they were "hacked".)

Their terms of service demand confidential arbitration (!), so you're gagged if they screw you.[1]

[1] [https://21.co/terms-of-use/#dispute-resolution](https://21.co/terms-of- use/#dispute-resolution)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's take a look at their Bitcoin miner. From their FAQ: $399, 50 gigahashes per second, 0.16 Joules per gigahash. Plugging those numbers into a Bitcoin mining calculator [1], initial revenue is under $0.05/day, and declines as the difficulty increases, until you're paying more for power than you're getting out in Bitcoins within a year. This does not make sense financially.

What's the point of the "miner", then? You don't need it to do transactions. This could be a pure software product.

[1] [https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator](https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator)

<comment><USER13> the point is to remove the barrier of buying bitcoins and instead give these new users a bitcoin generator so they can try out bitcoins.. its less about being profitable and more about providing a platform to participate in the bitcoin ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This solves the problem of inflating the Blockchain, now a user can have multiple offline transactions and have it count as only 1 when everything is settled. Anyone else think Micropayments in Bitcoin will be it's killer app?

<comment><USER15> We could be doing that now, on the blockchain instead. Inflating the block chain isn't really a "problem" until you get to very large values.

<comment><USER16> what is the current max speed of transactions again? yeah, that what I thought

<comment><USER17> It worked for Satoshi Dice, which happened to sell for ~$11,000,000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That device looks awefully lot like a Raspberry PI. Anyone know the exact spec?

<comment><USER19> It's a Raspberry Pi 2 with 21's mining chip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone have any guesses on what the 21 team will release as a product for consumers?

The best theory I've heard is a charger that mines BTC for you when it's done charging your phone for the night.

<comment><USER20> That is an excellent idea, doesn't your phone continue to use power after it's done charging? This wouldn't produce a ton of Bitcoin but it would be an opportunity for a net-positive outcome from a cost perspective which is clever.

<comment><USER21> How is it net-positive from a cost perspective? From what I remember, 21 takes a large cut of the Bitcoin "mined" and you'll spend far more on electricity than you'll get in return for Bitcoin.

<comment><USER2> You're right indeed. 21's mining chip does give a negative ROI, even in areas where electricity is very cheap.

Why would anyone buy a $400 mining chip that costs more in electricity than it produces in bitcoins, when they can just buy $400 worth of bitcoins? Beats me...

<comment><USER22> Because they aren't paying for the electricity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't the library already out here? [https://testpypi.python.org/pypi/two1](https://testpypi.python.org/pypi/two1)</comment>


Ask HN: Forums Similar to Hacker News in the Internet - <AUTHOR> Are there forums similar to Hacker News on the Internet? Any subreddits or similar? <comment><USER2> I was not able to find anything close to Hacker News at least UI-wise, moderation, comments and content-wise.

The anything closer, imo, is Reddit and Slashdot.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs) is similar to HN

<comment><USER4> Do you have any advice for the best way to get an invite to the site? Great content on it

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure what you mean by similar. tildes.net is similar in some ways.

<comment><USER6> Can you spare an invite?</comment></comment>


Random Forests predict the World Cup winner. Spoiler alert - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611397/machine-learning-predicts-world-cup-winner/ <comment><USER2> This is the actual research: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.03208](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.03208)

At the very least, the title of this post should have "makes a prediction" rather than "predicts". The future has not happened yet. Once it does, we will know whether this particular prediction was correct.

That is, we are going to have a single data point in the ability of the authors' technique in predicting this stuff.

See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17297264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17297264)</comment>


"Intel Packet of Death" not Intel's problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Intel-Packet-of-Death-not-Intel-s-problem-1801537.html <comment><USER2> Kielhofner's response.

<http://blog.krisk.org/2013/02/packets-of-death-update.html>

I used to use "Lanner" gear for voip and these had embedded intel ethernets. I don't have any more of them to test, but I swear I've seen it on them as well. We suspected power supply problems because the link lights would just go dark every once in a blue moon and need a power cycle to set right, but then we were never be able to reproduce it.

<comment><USER3> I am impressed by his original troubleshooting, but this followup seems impractical. Of his three suggestions, only the third (Intel providing improved board testing tools) even seems like it could possibly prevent this sort of problem. Asking for hardware-enforced "sane" behavior is like asking, "why doesn't my computer know I don't want my program to deadlock, segfault, or loop indefinitely?" That is, if the controller could do that then it would solve the Halting Problem. Improved drivers, his second suggestion, are always a good thing, but drivers only get patched to handle broken hardware in response to the discovery of broken hardware. There is no way to anticipate each particular way a NIC could possibly be broken ahead of time.

The market demands controllers with flexible and expandable functionality. Board manufacturers use the EEPROM to specify exactly what behavior is required. If a particular manufacturer underestimates the importance of correctness and doesn't perform the code review and testing necessary to prevent a PoD, that isn't Intel's fault.

<comment><USER4> Kristian Kielhofner here - While I understand your analogy I don't think it's an accurate one. In fact, with the release of the successor to the 82574 Intel has already implemented some of the things I suggested:

[http://communities.intel.com/community/wired/blog/2012/10/18...](http://communities.intel.com/community/wired/blog/2012/10/18/i210-launch- announcement)

Clearly they have learned from the various EEPROM issues on previous controllers (including the 82574) and implemented (among other things) EEPROM signing, which addresses some (most?) of my concerns about sane hardware behavior. Software drivers already do some basic EEPROM checks on this hardware (I know because I've had to tweak them); I'm simply suggesting these checks go a little further to verify the various EEPROM settings than could potentially result in a scenario like this one. When the effects are as significant as they are here I hope we can all agree: more sanity checking is a good thing.

<comment><USER3> Let me preface this by saying that your epic trouble-shooting effort was really cool. That's what inspires me to pay so much attention to this.

If you'll excuse my ignorance, could you identify which points made on the linked page correspond to your suggestions? I can see how signature checking, if there is in fact such a mechanism on the controller, can help ensure that an EEPROM image is a member of a particular favored set of such images, but you'll admit that that's a less general approach than "in-hardware sane behavior". I don't know anything about µC design, but it would surprise me if the mistake here were as simple as setting a "die when you see this particular byte sequence" bit. It seems more likely that the behavior is an emergent property based on a combination of flags and coded behavior. I still don't think it would be possible for the controller to prevent that result in general. It is possible to test for bad behavior, as your customers proved. It's also possible for drivers to correctly handle the bad behavior of their hardware, and I'm sure appropriate patches are welcome.

Did your board vendor inform you of Intel's findings back in October? If so, could your original article have been a bit more explicit about the fact that Intel wasn't responsible for this? If not, are you looking for another board vendor?

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

Let me start by saying that I'm not asking for or expecting perfect hardware or software. This does not exist. I'm looking for improvements. Sane? Let's start with "sane-er". I linked to the i210 because it offers exactly what I'm asking for: improvement (as you'd expect in 4+ years of development).

The link for the i210 was an overview for general consumption. The 862 page datasheet is here:

[http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...](http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/i210-ethernet- controller-datasheet.pdf)

The description of the various memory and configuration spaces starts around page 53. When compared to what's available in the 82574L this is clearly a substantial improvement.

However, as I say in my update, we still don't /really/ know why this issue manifested the way it did. Without knowing the true underlying cause anything I offer is speculation, as are your suppositions. With that it is unknown as to whether or not the improvements in the i210 would have eliminated or even ameliorated this issue.

As far as catching this exception in driver software? Possible, but doubtful. Working with Intel last fall they seemed to dismiss this possibility. Current drivers report a loss of communication with the PHY and the adapter seems to essentially disappear from the PCI bus until a full power cycle.

Neither Intel nor my board vendor reported these findings to me until this story broke last week. I reported this issue to them last fall: both of them claimed to have never seen this issue before (or since).

Meanwhile, as I've said before, other people have consistently reproduced this issue with different board manufacturers. We are pursuing a second source but I'm not going to be any more confident with the second source if it has 82574L controllers. I can't be certain it's going to be any different.

<comment><USER3> Thanks so much for the detailed response, and good luck in your hunt for better vendors. It seems that it's going to fall to _you_ to test and correct the EEPROM settings. You might want to keep your results to yourself in future; you could probably get some big-money consulting work with other companies forced to use these products. It's so shitty that neither party bothered to respond until you went public with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cross-posted at h-online.com:

I have a plurality of systems with _Intel_ motherboards which demonstrate the same kind of problems. The motherboards in question have two Intel ethernet controllers, one of which is an 82574L.

The systems connect to two different networks. When the systems attach to one of the networks (but not the other) using the 82574L interface (but not the other), that interface dies after some unpredictable amount of time.

I have tried posting comments to the Intel engineer's blog post (and PM-ing the engineer directly), but they do not appear. In fact, there seem to be no comments at Intel's site, despite the post having nearly 6000 views (at my time of writing).

Something is not right here.

<comment><USER4> This.

As I say in my updated post, this is a complex issue with clear combinatorial factors. More than likely it's not limited to one chip, one packet, or one EEPROM configuration. A quick reading of the web shows various unexplained issues with this family of Intel ethernet controllers randomly exhibiting the exact behavior I've described. Different controllers, different mobo OEMs, different EEPROM settings. Are all of these issues related to some kind of "packet of death"? Certainly not. However, are at least some of them? Almost certainly, even if they're not vulnerable to my (extremely specific) "packet of death". We still don't know exactly why this is happening (even in my extremely specific case).

<comment><USER5> I have another interesting (and reproducible) manifestation on Supermicro motherboards with two 82574L controllers. In this case, it is again true that we only experience problems on the first (as ordered by ascending MAC address) of the two interfaces.

That was the case, though I did not clearly state so above, on the Intel motherboard with one 82574L and one 82579LM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Company from Taipei flashes some Intel equipment, then it appears to function correctly, but can be bricked remotely with a specially crafted incoming packet.

Company has US branch that's a government contractor: [http://government- contractor.bizdirlib.com/ceo/Synertron_Tec...](http://government- contractor.bizdirlib.com/ceo/Synertron_Technology_Inc)

Charming.

<comment><USER7> I think you're reading way more into this, than there is to it.

Taiwan (Republic of China) is by the way, basically it's own country with it's own leadership and currency. I find it somewhat hard to put China (People's Republic of China) and Taiwan (Republic of China) together.

<comment><USER8> Just to clarify, there's a difference between a Special Administrative Region like Hong Kong or Macau, and Taiwan. While Hong Kong is largely self-governing internally, it's still part of the PRC. Meanwhile, Taiwan (the ROC) was founded by people ousted during the revolution. It's like saying North and South Korea are 'basically' their own countries. Politically they aren't even friendly.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, I guess I was a little too fuzzy in how I phrased myself in hind sight. Thanks - a good addition in itself.

I guess the only really suitable way of explaining the situation is "It's complicated.". It's a colourful situation and in no way is it neither black nor white.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Firmware images usually have checksums. Was this an Intel blob suffering from bitrot, or does Intel have some more or less error prone way to build your own FW images for NICs?

<comment><USER2> I suspect NICs these days are tiny computers in their own right. As a motherboard manufacturer, you can probably program them to do all sorts of nifty, with the possible downside of strange things happening if you get it wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow up story on: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177815></comment>


A new licensing program to support the news industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-initiative/licensing-program-support-news-industry-/ <comment><USER3> > _... these events are happening at a time when the news industry is also > being challenged financially_

Yeah, and what's challenging to the "news industry" is the monopolistic situation on the web and the utter lack of action on the part of US antitrust authorities and their allies. I find it very worrying that _Der Spiegel_ , once the most frequently visited ad-supported news sites in the "old" German web, sees no other hope than partnering with Google. Sorry if I'm being too harsh, but the problem can't be solved by Google, when the problem _is_ Google. _Der Spiegel_ once more showing they completely outsold their journalistic punch and demonstrating basic media incompetence (which is the very last thing you want a credible publisher to do).

<comment><USER4> Actions like these start making a lot of sense if you start viewing Google and their friends as a bunch of hi-tech mafioso. Newspapers are essentially forced to pay protection money and then publicly kiss the ring, declare their allegiance and pray that the deal is not altered further.

<comment><USER5> Google doesn't compete with papers but link papers to readers.

<comment><USER3> GOOG, FB, and AMZN extract all value out of the web, the music industry, retail, IT/cloud, soon e-learning, and basically everything, with content creators getting nothing. In music, we've already seen the effect of no monetary feedback for too many years now; save for very few counterexamples, we haven't seen any innovation since the 1990's; instead we have raised a generation of YouTube addicts. _That_ is the problem to solve sooner rather than later; it doesn't matter how and why we got here, and it's not a question of whether Google or someone else did anything wrong. It's about how we can go on in a civil society with large public investments into eg IP networking, law enforcement, etc. to only line the pockets of very very few.

<comment><USER6> What's wrong with YouTube? I frequently find far better content there than anywhere in the traditional media. I think we're really lucky to have YouTube - it's one little ray of hope.

<comment><USER7> YouTube is the biggest site for music copyright infringement. Not even the pirate could've dreamed of such a massive music distribution network that doesn't remunerate artists.

YouTube is also a monopoly that wields its power with impunity. Content creators can be in business one day and out of it the next. Large corporations can claim nearly anything theirs and Google won't do anything about it while smaller content creators can see their IP infringed upon by the former and have no recourse.

<comment><USER6> > that doesn't remunerate artists

I think if you use copyright music YouTube detects that's automatically and gives them the ad revenue? That's what the Vevo agreement was.

<comment><USER7> It remunerates labels and copyright trolls way more than it does artists. It's also been known to incorrectly identify sources of copyright infringement and unjustly take away ad revenue. I long stopped following it, but I imagine there's a subreddit called /r/youtubedrama (or the like) that documents that quite well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just to get a sense for the crowd: am I the only one who doesn't care much about the news industry?

Keeping with what's new in society is important insofar as having an informed population is vital for the correct functioning of a democracy. But the "news industry" is 95% gargabe and contributes zero to getting people informed. I firmly believe that if the news industry disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn't be much worse off as a society.

That google is a bad player should be dealt with on its own. We shouldn't be using the "news industry" as a justification for breaking google up.

EDIT: In fact I had never thought about it, but even as far as keeping people informed, google is better than the "news industry". At least with google I can find links which I use as starting points for reasearching something.

<comment><USER9> I care about NEWS, factual reporting on current event

We no longer have a news industry, we have a propaganda industry filled with political commenters and activists not journalists (that is both left and right)

<comment><USER10> facts don't matter, stories sell

<comment><USER11> I would phrase it like but I agree with the conclusion.

> Facts matter but stories sell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No one forced all news organizations to dump their in house advertising for easily ad blocked versions.

They all had perfectly good reasons to not have to deal with the headache of losing money.

But that would require keeping the ad sales team they had on board and making a similiar product online.

But everyone got scared and lazy and saw a one quarter jump by dumping a bunch of staff.

<comment><USER13> Did the prices for ads not dramatically drop over time?

To me, it feels like it was just market forces driving those decisions. They could have kept the ad sales team and fewer ads, but that doesn't mean that would have worked out.

<comment><USER14> Don't think so. Ads should be a good dollar per thousand views. Maybe 3 dollar for videos. Well known newspaper may be able to get more given their reputation and how many ads they plaster per page.

I think it's the economy of scale that's difficult to achieve. An employee has to bring in thousands of dollar just to pay for own salary, that's millions of views per month. The costs and revenues don't add up to sustain a large company and it has to spam (low quality) content to survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If google actually creates a good system for paying news media through e.g. microtransactions or group subscriptions which is ONLY there to improve the internet and doesn't benefit google (Get more traffic, get more user data, ...) then this is a good thing. It would be like the google/apple teaming up on the BT proximity tracking apis in android and iOS.

If google gets any cut in such a system, or even gets a slight benefit, or even knows who has what subscriptions and uses that information - then I'm completely against it. But if they spend their own money developing platforms that they then have _no control over and no benefit from_ \- good! Otherwise - bad!

<comment><USER16> _> If google actually creates a good system for paying news media through e.g. microtransactions..._

They had something close to this with Google Contributor:

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

You add a few dollars to your online account, nominate which participating sites you want it to work with, and you would get an ad-free / paywall-free experience on those sites. The sites would determine the price per page - <USER2> only charged 1c, while some smaller blogs charged 5c. Some large Australian newspapers signed up, and apparently Mashable and The Onion were part of it at launch.

Ultimately every website I followed pulled out of the program. It seems that advertising revenue earns more for newspapers than anyone is prepared to pay for news. I never even used up the $5 I put into my Google Contributor account.

<comment><USER17> Isn't that the idea of Flattr?

<comment><USER16> Pretty much, except I don't think Flattr allowed content creators to set their own price & put stuff behind a paywall. Flattr is more of a donation / Patreon model. Contributor instead set an upfront price on accessing each article.

(I could be wrong, it's years since I last used Flattr. I'm surprised but glad to see they're still around.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will these news publishers also get "demonetized" when they report on something Google doesn't like? I'm not sure I like Google having this much power over (smaller) news organizations.

<comment><USER9> Google would never politically bias their service /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> >To start, we have signed partnerships with local and national publications in Germany, Australia and Brazil

Australia was/is gearing up to force Google to pay. Was anything similar brewing in Germany or Brazil?

[https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/making-facebook- and-...](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/making-facebook-and-google- pay-for-australian-news-is-a-wake-up-call-20200419-p54l7s.html)

<comment><USER20> Yes, Leistungsschutzrecht (ancillary copyright for press publishers).

They tried to force Google (and others) to pay, but instead of paying, Google asked "give us permission to use your content or we'll have to delist you", and many obliged, while other aggregators suffered.

I believe in Spain Google News just outright shut down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone remember Google Contributor? [https://contributor.google.com/v/beta](https://contributor.google.com/v/beta)

</comment><comment><USER22> Google News has degraded so much in the last few years that it's essentially useless. The combination of their updated material design (or whatever they're calling it) and AMP was a one-two punch. Click through to related articles is always wrong -- none of the articles are related, and there are many dozens more related that don't show. It's just a dead service.

</comment><comment><USER23> At first I thought this was about some central licensing body regulating and awarding credentials to journalists, just like is done in professional endeavours like medicine, engineering, and law. I was internally debating the merits vs. the dangers (self-regulated or government controlled? Do we want official state-approved press?).

Then I realized that it was purely about a distributor musing about paying content providers in the hopes they can influence it, at least ostensibly for "quality".

I see nothing wrong with the idea. Money is our way of measuring value, and information certainly has value and Google has been making mint extracting the excess value from information for a long time, to the point that little actually leaks through to the end consumer.

I thinks this move would increase the quality of news, but the consumer needs to understand that the product they are consuming is influenced by the media through which they consume it. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, as they say.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I cautiously applaud Google's reparation payments (that's how I'm reading these initiatives), but I'm very wary of the fact that Google is calling this next stage a licensing.

They didn't really go into details. Are we going to see "Google Licensed" news agencies now? That does not sit well with me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems Google is feeling a hot breath in the back of the neck since news and publishing orgs were lobbying for draconian interpretations/implementations of the Copyright Directive (which probably would be judicially questionable, still)

</comment><comment><USER25> I know this is still a very rough idea, but I truly believe the future of content monetization is having some kind of decentralized or even federated payment system and digital wallet that's provider-agnostic and allows people to do "micro-donations", whether it's through upvotes, claps, time spent on the page, or a combination of all of those and more.

If this depends on Google, or Paypal, or Apple, and you can only donate to a site if you have PayPal, or if you have Google Pay, or whatever, it will never reach its true potential.

It should be kind of like email, where everyone has email. Once everyone has an "email-like" digital wallet, and all of these websites accept "email-like money" through micro-donations, I think content monetization would work much better.

<comment><USER26> [https://webmonetization.org/](https://webmonetization.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Eons ago when Google started aggregating news they greatly damaged the news industry. This is because you could start seeing the bigger story and the bias in the individual reporting. This was damaging to Fox News obviously.

It got worse unfortunately, the journalists were caught faking scenes. [https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/media/abc-news-stage- live-s...](https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/04/media/abc-news-stage-live- shot/index.html?sr=twCNN110416abc-news-stage-live- shot0715PMStoryLink&linkId=30720260)

Then the fake news was discovered: [https://i.imgur.com/plF3WDu.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/plF3WDu.jpg)

Same newspaper, same story, contradictory reporting. Obviously this was done for different places.

People started discovering that news is heavily fake. Why buy something when they are outright lying to you? This is the reason the news industry is dying.

<comment><USER28> > Then the fake news was discovered: > [https://i.imgur.com/plF3WDu.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/plF3WDu.jpg)

> Same newspaper, same story, contradictory reporting. Obviously this was done > for different places.

I believe you are misinformed. A couple searches on the headlines tells a different story.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wsj-different-trump- headli...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wsj-different-trump-headlines/)

> Yes, the images represent two different editions, published at different > times, and the headlines represent the news at the time of publication — > before and after his speech.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-wall-street- jou...](https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-wall-street-journal- headlin-idUSKBN23V22J)

> While the two covers are both authentic, they were published at different > times on that day to reflect evolving developments.</comment></comment>


The Future of Facebook Advertising Isn't in the United States - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/01/04/the-future-of-facebook-advertising-isnt-in-the-united-states/ <comment><AUTHOR> Didn't realize the extent to which FB is (or soon will be reliant) on emerging markets. It has a huge established base in the U.S. -- no slouch there. But the growth rates are quite different.

>The point is that APAC and other "emerging markets" like India, Brazil and parts of Africa are growing a lot quicker for Facebook than the U.S. or Europe. In the first three quarters of 2015, Facebook added 73 million users in APAC; it added just 23 million across the U.S., Canada and all of Europe combined. Fast forward five, 10 or 15 years down the road and it's possible (probable?) that those emerging markets — the areas of the world where millions of people are coming to the Internet for the very first time on mobile phones — will be Facebook's most important markets.</comment>


Lost with a map - <AUTHOR> http://blog.geckolandmarks.com/lost-with-a-map

<comment><AUTHOR> Our CEO and geo-guru discusses why maps are not the answer to LBS needs everywhere.

This is something a lot of people in developed countries have a hard time grokking: Majority of the world's population really _cannot read maps_. But many of them still use cell phones, and even web services through their phone. And there is a demand for Location Based Services.</comment>


Home Computers Connected to the Internet Aren't Private, Court Rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/security/home-computers-connected-to-the-internet-arent-private-court-rules.html <comment><USER2> What's next, houses with doors or windows aren't private?</comment>


Is Facebook detecting and recognizing text in photos? [image] - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/7LxjfcR.jpg

<comment><USER2> The URL of the image :

[http://explosm.net/db/files/Comics/Rob/freakout.gif](http://explosm.net/db/files/Comics/Rob/freakout.gif)</comment>


How Much Trouble is Early Foul Trouble?  - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1736633

<comment><USER2> I just downloaded and took a look at the paper. I've got a problem with it -- it is only looking at data from 2006-2009.

This is an issue, because of the way that benching starters has become conventional wisdom over the last 25 years. In fact, the foul out rate is down over 40% during that period ([http://www.pistonpowered.com/2010/12/nba- players-are-fouling...](http://www.pistonpowered.com/2010/12/nba-players-are- fouling-out-less-often-and-other-interesting-facts-you-didnt-think-you-wanted- to-know-about-fouling-out/)).

So on one hand, yes, playing a starter in foul trouble could cause them to be less aggressive. On the other hand, I suspect there is VERY strong cultural bias that magnifies this.

I would imagine that an NBA team that has either veteran players or a very strong culture of understanding advanced statistics would be able to play as well when in foul trouble. (Think San Antonio, Boston, Dallas and Houston). I would also imagine that the evidence would not be as strong when looking at other time periods.

So it's an interesting observation, but it makes sense that coaches approach this issue on a case-by-case basis. Play Tim Duncan, bench Blake Griffin.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been hugely interested in doing some related interest in the sport of Football. I've found that the official stats provider of the NFL, Stats Inc, charges about $40,000 per year for API access to their stats.

Also, the paper reads like academic research, but the layout and citations look rather simple. What gives?

EDIT: Their data source is listed, skimmed over it.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to add the main author's page:

<http://philmaymin.com/home>

Looks like he has quite a bit of credentials and a huge interest in basketball. Very impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Abstract:

We use a large dataset of play-by-play NBA data to determine when yanking foul-plagued starters is optimal by applying insights and tools from finance. We find that a team performs significantly worse if a starter with foul trouble is allowed to remain in the game, and that this effect is strongest in the third quarter. We use a novel win-probability technique that is sufficiently general to be useful for other questions simply by appropriately redefining the state variables. Thus, our two contributions are to introduce the new approach and also to demonstrate its usefulness by solving the problem of early foul trouble that had remained unaddressed in the academic literature.

<comment><USER5> Given the financial stakes at play in professional (and even amateur) athletics, I find it hard to believe that an analysis of optimal "play or sit" strategy wrt player fouls has "remained unaddressed" though a cursory search on Google Scholar didn't turn up much of anything in the way of a counter- example.

<comment><USER6> It's likely that an analysis has been done, but isn't public. Teams keep lots of advanced stats to themselves as a competitive advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't read this paper, but I never understood why players who get into foul trouble are pulled from games. I guess the only explanation is that players play differently after a few fouls. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to take someone out so that you don't have to take them out in the future.

<comment><USER8> Few basketball games are blowouts. The logic of sitting your best player(s) in foul trouble is to hope that your bench can keep the game close so that your best player can win the game in the end.

<comment><USER9> Why not keep them out there and get a lead sooner, then hope to keep the lead if they do foul out?

<comment><USER10> I think the idea is that having a lead early versus late gives the opposition a more clear goal with the time to come back.

Basketball games and seasons are very long. Players won't be focused in the entire season or for entire games. Having a deficit to come back from, with the time to do it, gives them a clear objective to focus in on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I am starting - Indian firm based on the YC framework - <AUTHOR> http://iamstarting.com/

<comment><USER2> Feedback : I would like to know the team behind "I am starting" before I can trust you with my ideas. It's exactly as you say : "people & ideas, in that order". First, I need to know who you are, and then whether "I am starting" is for me or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @Debug point taken will work on that section today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. src="<http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.1.min.js>. Use [http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.1/jquery.min...](http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.1/jquery.min.js)

2\. $(document).ready() twice in the same document. Use only one.

3\. id='pagewidth'. Use id='about'.

My intention is not to point technical problems for the sake of it. But you should seriously treat this site itself as a little startup, invest your seed fund (your lowest band of 50k is enough. I know can do it for that amount :) into it and then start attracting other techies to join you. As part of knowing more about you, first thing any potential startupper will do in a browser (at least me) is press ctrl+u.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seriously? It doesn't mention who you actually are, there's spelling problems all over the place, and the header looks like you're pitching kindergartners. You should take down the site, nuke this thread, get your stuff together, and relaunch in six months.

</comment><comment><USER5> Alright no more criticism about designing although I am a web designer.

Now over to serious stuff. The background of the people behind this endeavor should be the main selling point. I am more likely to share my idea with someone who has had similar experience, that is of starting and managing a startup. Money is important and I do find your investment range will go an extra mile in India but give some reasons to the entrepreneur to believe in you guys.

Just one advice: Put some more info about this venture and the people behind this.

</comment><comment><USER6> "I am starting is a new kind of venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups "

who are you..? Would be beter to know you before thinking of applying...

Chirag..is it your own venture ?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my venture by my friend. and actually this thread was to just to let people know there is this firm if Indian start up need investment.

<comment><USER6> and what is your friend name/profile ?

<comment><AUTHOR> names have been updated, i am working on a small bio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given that you are already in News.YC, I take that you know about YCombinator and why it is different from other similar firms. (Hint: PG & team) As others have suggested, having a brief profile of people behind this venture would greatly help.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's good that someone is trying a YC like format in India and I hope you don't have crappy rules like iaccelerator. However, you seriously don't inspire any confidence or trust with that website and I would never take funding from someone who can't get me to trust him.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a website you don't inspire trust from a web-page, trust is usually a function of a human interaction.

<comment><USER9> _you don't inspire trust from a web-page_

You do, actually. It is one of the core skills in building B2C websites, since a) you'll typically want your user to take some action that requires trusting you, like putting in their private information or paying you money and b) at B2C scales, one-on-one human interaction with all users is typically neither possible nor really desired. If the website doesn't inspire trust, the business is pretty much doomed.

For example, for my site, I take pains to make sure the language I use matches the language my customers use, that the graphical design communicates professionalism, etc. If I don't do this, they'll lump me in with all the "scam artists and viruses on the Internet."

This fundamental truth might be a good thing to learn prior to investing in or advising Internet businesses. Just my two cents from a very, very small B2C business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i understand you don't want feedback on the design, and i like the relaxed approach, but the inconsistent indentation on the third title (Finally...) really bugs me. i'd suggest moving it to the right to match the other two (and "What..." could go left a few pixels too).

also, it's "you can be A student, ..." and "we reply TO all our...". and it's easier to read if you have "corporate-like, so" (with hyphen and comma).

</comment><comment><USER11> Basically seems like a new pseudo-VC who's roped in a bunch of rich civilians into this great-YC-idea-you-know-small-stakes-small-investments-but-BIG- returns Fund.

This is one of the cases where 'Launch Now, Fix later' doesn't really work out at all with your target audience.

</comment><comment><USER12> It may be good to add some more detail to the "Who we are" section.

The names and expertise are fine, but perhaps something on the projects/companies these people have worked with. How much experience they have in the respective fields. E.g who is into economics, who is into technology etc.

If you have founded (or funded) any startups, perhaps that can be mentioned. It would make you seem more accessible.

In case of YC, PGs views and history where well understood and respected. You may want to highlight what value you bring to the table (other than the money).

</comment><comment><USER13> It's about time. India has everything going for it and I'm excited to see what this will produce.

Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER14> Ah the css is so well commented to teach others/waste some bandwidth. +1 Hey guise so in the reset.css can we also replace

"html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6,.... { ..."

with a single * ... you know like -

* {

       margin:0;
       ...
    }

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> All,

Thanks for your passionate inputs this is my friends ventures not Mine. All these inputs are conveyed to concerned teams.

BTW, I am working for NetApp, as a Marketing Manager :).

Don't have a start-up yet. I can understand your anger, I am also an engineer.

</comment><comment><USER15> The blank gif shows in chrome as a missing image (really ugly) <http://iamstarting.com/Blank.gif>.

Looks very unprofessional overall - invest in a designer first and relaunch.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Folks we are not looking for any more comments on the design and how it can be improved. This just works for us.

If there are more ideas/feedack on rest of the content you are welcome.

Thanks.

<comment><USER16> This is 2010. How come you think image/brand is not important and expect someone to take you seriously if you don't invest a few dollars in some professional graphic design?

Your about section doesn't even have a link who is backing up this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Design can be overhauled later, and this is not a priority.

As for spelling mistakes @colinplamondon, seriously. I give you a venture firm and all you can see it spellings, brilliant?

The purpose of this site is to serve as a 2/3 para about the idea, not in for the webby folks.

<comment><USER4> My company's profitable and I'm American, not your audience.

You aren't a gift, you're a business- your business is making entrepreneurs think you can further their business. Your website is unprofessional and doesn't mention who you are, and who you are is the most important.

TechStars and YC aren't about the 15k- most of the companies who get accepted these days don't need it. TechStars and YC help people build successful products because the people behind both programs have a background of launching successful products, with rolodexes to match.

Right now you're some guy with a website. No one cares. To make them care, you have to show why you're someone they _should_ care about. That's marketing, and right now you aren't marketing. That's why, in your current incarnation, you're fucked.

Rethink, redesign, relaunch, and then hopefully you can get this off the ground.

<comment><USER17> Don't sweat over it. It's all because of an attitude which is typical to Indian pseudo-VCs. They think they are doing startup-ists[sic] a big favour by investing in them.

So @Chirag is not too queer if he thinks that he can pull off a YC in India by putting up a stupid website with crappy content, bad design and some random names of totally unknown people.

It's OK, it's all right. Kindly adjust :)

PS - I am an Indian startup-ist a$$hole.

<comment><USER18> First, a bunch of jokers attempt a YC clone with IAccelerator and now another bunch of jokers manage to do it even worse.

"You aren't a gift, you're a business- your business is making entrepreneurs think you can further their business. Your website is unprofessional and doesn't mention who you are, and who you are is the most important."

Engrave this on a wall and read it aloud every day.

"It's all because of an attitude which is typical to Indian pseudo-VCs. They think they are doing startup-ists[sic] a big favour by investing in them."

Amen! And we wonder why the world laughs at us. I am an Indian developer and all I can say to this "venture firm" is .. I wouldn't be caught dead within a 100 miles of you. I would love to see who would, really.

YC works because of PG and his team, not the 20 k $ (or whatever the amount is these days) that they invest in a startup. Unless you have a fraction of the credibility he brings to the table, you have no business being a _YC_ "inspired" firm.

<comment><USER12> > First, a bunch of jokers attempt a YC clone with IAccelerator and now > another bunch of jokers manage to do it even worse.

So whats the deal with IAccelerator? This is the first I have hear of it. And the two comments I see in this thread are no so positive about it.

<comment><USER18> "So whats the deal with IAccelerator? "

<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=842150></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jim Cramer says it's possible Bitcoin could reach $1M one day - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/07/cramer-says-its-possible-bitcoin-could-reach-1-million-one-day.html <comment><USER2> "European banks are frantically trying to buy bitcoin so they can pay off ransomware, Jim Cramer says."

I'm writing a book on Bitcoin/Blockchain - and I tried tracing the 2016 flurry of press on the subject back to its source. Literally all the press traced back to a single Citrix 2016 press release. They didn't even release the survey data itself that I could find, just the press release.

[https://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2016/ransomwar...](https://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/jun-2016/ransomware- risk-could-cripple-british-businesses-with-many-not-r.html)

Citrix released another press release yesterday. These two PRs are the only actual sources for the claim - it makes good headlines, and you can get people to comment at length on the implications of it, but the source material is literally just two press releases.

[https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2017/06/06/ransomware-in-the- uk...](https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2017/06/06/ransomware-in-the-uk-one-year- on/)

I commented on the new press release on the Citrix site asking if they can detail how the sample was selected, and what the precise wording of all questions was - same as you'd expect from _e.g._ a political poll.

I'm not saying the claim is made up, but I am saying that I want to see the wording and how the sample was selected before allowing any great claims about British IT or that preemptively buying up bitcoins is even a non-negligible phenomenon at all.

<comment><USER2> A commenter on the 2017 post says he personally knows of financials in Europe preemptively buying Bitcoins, though obviously he can't supply details.</comment></comment>