Ask HN: DAG Layout Using HTML and CSS - <AUTHOR> For some years now I've been using a visualisation tool to help me keep track of long running, widely branching discussions on Twitter and elsewhere.  A small example is here:
https://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chitter/1199951849769574400.png
I've been trying to work out how to use HTML and CSS to create a similar effect, but I've drawn a blank.  It would seem to me to be a commonly needed thing, but I've not found anything on the web that meets my need, despite several hours of searching.
So I must be missing something.  My gut tells me this should be a common thing, but all my search terms have failed.  I'd really appreciate a pointer.
The layout doesn't need to be dynamic, but it would be a useful thing if it was.  The nodes don't need to be clickable, but it would be a useful thing if they were.
Just ... anything to semi-automatically layout a tree or DAG of nodes with text and the arrows between them.
TIA. <comment><USER2> Here are a few that I found:

\- [http://sigmajs.org/](http://sigmajs.org/) \- [https://js.cytoscape.org/](https://js.cytoscape.org/) \- [https://visjs.org/](https://visjs.org/)

Sorry for the poor formatting. I don't know how to make the links appear as a newline delimited list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Re formatting:

* put blank lines between entries;

* start each line with a splat or dash;

* don't try to be too clever;

* full extent of formatting is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

Now I'm off to check out your suggestions ... thank you!

 _(... later ...)_

I've gone to check out your three suggestions, and I can't find anything in any of them that looks anything like the linked image. Either I'm missing something, or those suggestions aren't what I'm looking for. They are graphics libraries, yes, but none of the examples seem to do what I'm trying to do.

So I'm still lost, and still looking for more concrete suggestions.

I'm beginning to think no one has done this, and maybe HTML/CSS/js can't actually do it without programming everything "by hand".

<comment><USER3> Just looking through the examples on the visjs page, it can do the style of nodes and it can do hierarchical tree layout, which seems to be the display you want. But it renders to canvas, is that what you don't like?

Graphviz tools also can output SVG with nested HTML if you prefer that to canvas rendering. HTML/CSS alone aren't great to do this kind of thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> > ... visjs ... can do the style of nodes and it can do hierarchical tree > layout, ...

Thanks for the reply ...

I can't see anywhere on that site examples of nodes with text and hierarchical tree layout, so I guess I'm just not understanding the information that's there.

I've got this:

[https://visjs.github.io/vis- network/examples/network/basicUs...](https://visjs.github.io/vis- network/examples/network/basicUsage.html)

But that's not hierarchical.

What am I missing?

For reference, I'm new to all this. I'm a big-iron back-end algorithms person, and I find the documentation ... bewildering. I've tried reading it line by line and constructing examples as I go, but it always uses terms and phrases that don't seem to be defined anywhere. Colour me frustrated.

<comment><USER3> Sorry for replying so late!

I went mostly by their example page [https://visjs.github.io/vis- network/examples/](https://visjs.github.io/vis-network/examples/) \- the hierarchical layout + e.g. the HTML node style seemed like they'd probably do the trick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chitter/1199951849769574400.png](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/Chitter/1199951849769574400.png)

</comment><comment><USER4> Graphviz is a solid tool for this sort of thing

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is, and the image I link to was created with GraphViz. I don't seem to be able to make it create an HTML5/CSS layout, though.

Which is what I'm asking for.

Searching for GraphViz and HTML, or searching for HTML in the GraphViz documentation, gives results for the _content_ of nodes, and not rendering the layout via HTML. So I can't how it can be made to work.

If you can provide suggestions on how to make GraphViz do this I would be ecstatic, because I use GV all the time - it is usually my tool of choice.

Thanks.

 _(... edit ...)_

Here's the "raw" output from using GraphViz:

      X_1220658902322307072 \
        [ fillcolor="#f2cffff92",
          height=2.4028,
          label="label 1",
          pos="768,477",
          shape=rectangle,
          style=filled,
          width=3.0278 ];

      X_1220659282338811906 \
        [ fillcolor="#f2cffff92",
          height=2.4028,
          label="label 2",
          pos="768,267",
          shape=rectangle,
          style=filled,
          width=3.0278 ];

      X_1220658902322307072 -> \
        X_1220659282338811906 \
        [ pos="e,768,353.51 768,390.5 768,381.62 768,372.56 768,363.59" ];

If you can help me lay that out in HTML/CSS then I'd be done.

Cheers!

<comment><USER5> Export as SVG and use that in HTML

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply ... it serves to reinforce that I've not been entirely stupid so far, because I've tried that, and it achieves half of what I want. The problem is that I want links in the nodes - that's why I'm asking for HTML specifically.

I know I'm at risk here of asking for Y when actually I want to achieve Z and the best way is to use X, but seriously, if the nodes are HTML then I can do things in them already, but if they are SVG then I need to re-learn all the capabilities in a new language, and not leverage what I already know.

I want to have boxes with arrows between them. I want them laid out semi- automatically in a hierarchical fashion. The boxes should contain HTML, so I can put text and links in them.

However ...

It's looking like I need to generate SVG. I can generate plain SVG using DOT/GraphViz, but then I can't put links in the nodes. So I need to parse and post-process the SVG to insert the links, and it all just seems too hard.

I'm not saying it should be easy, but it should be easier than this. Someone _must_ have done something similar, there _must_ be a library. The art _must_ have progressed beyond he graphical equivalent of machine code, but it seems not even to have got as far as assembly language.

I can't believe people assemble these sorts of displays by hand ...

Am I asking the wrong question?

<comment><USER5> You don't need to learn much about SVG. I found some SVG output from GraphViz and simply put some  links around groups in the SVG.

[https://codepen.io/phillipseamore/pen/OJPqorm](https://codepen.io/phillipseamore/pen/OJPqorm)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fine for small graphs constructed by hand, but I need to construct graphs with a few hundred nodes, and editing by hand to put the URLs into them isn't feasible.

However, progress has been made, I may have a solution that's "Good Enough(tm)" for my needs. I hope to post about it later.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Y Combinator Q&A Session - New York edition - <AUTHOR> http://anyvite.com/events/home/actsntagvl

<comment><AUTHOR> Really excited for this. I didn't apply for Startup School so this is a great consolation. See you guys there!

EDIT: They're also going to be in Boston. Link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1769801>

</comment><comment><USER2> I really wish I could have gone to this, but I will be at school in upstate New York. =(</comment>


Negotiations with North Korea May Have Cyber Consequences - <AUTHOR> https://www.38north.org/2018/03/ameyers031318/ <comment><USER2> This article is kind of silly. It has a short description of an attack that has been attributed to North Korea, but there are serious doubts about whether they actually had any part in it and then includes a very vague description of a possible cyber attack. The title is attention-grabbing, but their only support for it is North Korea getting angry about something that is decidedly /not/ negotiations (sanctions).

Seems like someone just took the opportunity to fear-monger, which really isn't what we need.</comment>


Where Would You Draw the Line? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/opinion/privacy-survey.html <comment><USER2> interesting page but the place where i would draw the line, is not available as a choice so this is my threshold.

I am not in any way comfortable with social media disseminating any of my info. I would rather choose who gets what info on a case by case basis

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-i draw the line here</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

I'm [NOT]comfortable if a social media website …

collects detailed personal information about me, like my gender and interests</comment>


System performance analysis - the USE method - <AUTHOR> http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2012/02/29/the-use-method/

<comment><USER2> I've scaled systems from 500 to 1.5 million simultaneous users, and this is the ONLY concise, salient explanation of performance troubleshooting that I have ever seen. Bravo.</comment>


Show HN - Raw Signal - My Side Proj To Keep My Skill Sharp - <AUTHOR> http://tech.rawsignal.com

<comment><AUTHOR> btw, I'm not sure if it'll amount to anything big. My hope is someone will find it useful.

for me personally, it's a lot of fun to work on machine learning and algorithms. i had soooo much fun building it.

if anyone has any feedback, let me know.

</comment><comment><USER2> How did you choose what feeds to monitor?

<comment><AUTHOR> wow. that's an entire module in the system. we do several things that analyze feeds and decide if it fits a category. Basically, lots of text analysis and analysis of the web.

We get candidates from people submitting feeds.</comment></comment>


Early Celtic 'Stonehenge' discovered in Germany's Black Forest - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111011074624.htm <comment><USER2> "Whereas Stonehenge was orientated towards the sun, the more then 100 meter width burial mound of Magdalenenberg was focused towards the moon."

Reminded me the fact that in most languages (e.g. Italian, French) "sun" is masculine and "moon" is feminine whereas in German it's the other way around (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender>). I know Latin-Greek mythology assigned a female moon goddess but I'm not familiar with Germanic mythology.

Could this be why they the two structures are oriented differently?

<comment><USER3> I have no idea about the answer to your question, but in Norse mythology, the Sun (Sunna) is female and the Moon (Mani) is male.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Underwater Stonehenge in Lake Michigan [http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/stonehenge-beneath- wate...](http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/stonehenge-beneath-waters-of- lake.html)

<comment><USER5> Deep ones!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They've also got some snazzy henges on the east coast of the US (New Hampshire or thereabouts) if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a wood circle, no stones and no henge mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's oriented! For shame, ScienceDaily.

<comment><USER9> Both are correct, actually.

<comment><USER8> Agh, I guess. But orientated sounds terrible.</comment></comment></comment>


Canon Releases Software to Turn Their EOS DSLRs into Webcams for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/you-asked-canon-delivers-the-eos-webcam-utility-beta-software-now-available-for-macos1-users-301066387.html <comment><AUTHOR> I just realized that Nikon does the same - albeit not releasing a specific software/firm but rather a guide for 2 options they listed there:

[https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/live- streaming...](https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/live-streaming- with-nikon-cameras.page)</comment>


Apple forgot to lock Intel Management Engine in laptops, so get patching - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/03/intel_management_engine_hole/ <comment><USER2> This article is over a month old and talking about an update that happened months ago. I am EXTREMELY slow to install any updates because this is my work computer as well as personal and I had it installed already (which is saying something).</comment>


Writing a Book: Part One (Ambition) - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/bookwriting1 <comment><USER2> Good read and some other interesting links on the site. He might go well to read Steve Pavlina's "Willpower" piece ([http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline- wil...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline-willpower/)) which describes how willpower is a short-term boost and should be used to structure the right environment for sustained work.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I begun to remember how much I hate business books..."

He's also illustrating the value of hiring a good editor.</comment>


Should People Be Paid to Stay Healthy? - <AUTHOR> http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/should-people-be-paid-to-stay-healthy/?hp

<comment><USER2> Hmm. Stupid people forget to take their meds, and cause the rest of us to spend money patching them up. Solution? Pay them to take care of themselves. It's cheaper than us paying to patch them up.

I propose a different plan. Rather than rewarding people for doing things they should be doing anyway, we punish them for not doing it. A computerized pillbox gives people $10 for each pill they take. Instead, why not charge them $300 for the pillbox (with 30 pills in it) and give them back $10 for each pill they take? It's cheaper for society, and it correctly internalizes the costs that these morons inflict on the rest of us.

(If they don't wish to do this, they are of course free to stop forcing the rest of us to pay for their medicine.)

<comment><USER3> Natural selection is a much better option than both of the ones proposed.</comment></comment>


Much more than a Sim. A WhatSim - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatsim.com/en

<comment><USER2> "With just €10 you can chat for free and without limits anywhere in the world for a year. And you can do it for always for just €10 a year. WhatSim has neither fixed costs nor monthly payments and it never expires."

How can €10/year be free? Also, no monthly payments -- but there are still yearly payments.

<comment><USER3> And to be able to receive multimedia messages you need "credits": [http://www.whatsim.com/en/rates](http://www.whatsim.com/en/rates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So it follows that one would need a phone to use exclusively for WhatsApp, no voice, no nothing else?

Also, do I understand correctly, this only works with public commercial WiFi networks (ex Starbucks) instead of mobile networks?</comment>


Google isn't the company that we should have handed the Web over to - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/the-web-now-belongs-to-google-and-that-should-worry-us-all <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703172)

<comment><USER3> Unsourced HN anecdote becomes Ars story becomes HN discussion.

[https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)

<comment><USER4> exactly. it's like money laudering, only for bad anecdotal information, or conspiracy theories. I'd sooner invoke Hanlon's razor than a single div tag that Edge's hardware acceleration should have been robust enough to handle anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of statements for and against this or that company having stewardship of the web, but the more important point is we should, IMO, strive for a web which cannot be controlled by any one entity. In this view, whether Google is a 'better evil' than MS or Exxon controlling the web is beside the point. The web has a good chance to approach the ideal of direct democracy rather than a representative one. Sure it might be a long road, but let's not give up and concede to the established paradigms on the web too, though some will say it is already too late.

<comment><USER6> Hear hear! The commons belong to us all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe Google should split Chrome and related assets (Chromium, Blink, are there others?) into a separate foundation that has control over the source with a board that has membership by major players such as Google themselves, Opera, and Microsoft. That way Google can put a wall between their direct influence in such a powerful and relied-upon piece of software so as not to have the undue influence we're all worried about.

<comment><USER8> Worked for Android, right?

<comment><USER9> Android's governance is entirely under Google/Alphabet for all practical purposes today, even as the OS is open source. Reasons for this are numeorus (licensing, Play Services, etc.) Chromium is in a similar boat. Parent is proposing that Google effectively spin off Chrome and related assets as a separate company or nonprofit entity, much like the Linux Foundation, to avoid potentially monopolistic behavior that such vertical integration may lead to. I think this is one possible way to a solution.

<comment><USER10> Though please not exactly like the Linux foundation, which is doing some pretty shitty things. Companies can become members of the Linux foundation and violate the GPL of Linux no problem, they are paying their membership fee after all. The Linux foundation is effectively the "Megacorps Linux user group". Its executive director Jim Zemlin famously doesn't use Linux himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> His arguments are really weak. He uses both SPDY and QUIC as examples of Google behaving badly. From my perception, Google basically said "this major web standard is inefficient. If we make these changes, the network is faster (especially for people with poor connectivity." They validated those hypotheses with real traffic on real devices over real networks, and then proposed standards based on that work. The standards bodies started there, and made adaptations until there was consensus, and new standards were minted.

What part of that is bad?

</comment><comment><USER12> _As another example, YouTube uses a feature called HTML imports to load scripts. HTML imports haven 't been widely adopted, either by developers or browsers alike, and ECMAScript modules are expected to serve the same role. But they're available in Chrome and used by YouTube._

At least in this particular case my understanding was that Google was pushing for the adoption of HTML imports as a web standard, which would have been better for all browsers, but other browser vendors balked and Google was forced to use JS module imports instead. AFAIK I know they are now discouraging any further use of HTML imports. This is a bummer because it's not possible to leverage web components without JS now.

I'm concerned about a web monoculture too but so far Google has mostly done a good job IMO. Even Mozilla has done some pretty dumb things when it comes to web standards (unilaterally killing WebSQL, for example). I certainly can't think of any other big tech company I'd prefer to see calling the shots on the web.

<comment><USER13> WebSQL's SQL spec was literally:

> User agents must implement the SQL dialect supported by Sqlite 3.6.19.

That's only a "standard" in the way that "Chromium-compatible" is becoming a standard.

<comment><USER12> Yeah this was the argument at the time. I still think it would have been better to formalize that spec instead of just pull indexdb out of some unmentionable orifice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem is that maintaining a browser engine is enormously expensive. There are so many features you need to maintain, security issues to deal with, etc. In the past Microsoft made money off of their operating system, and they made Internet explorer then Edge off of that, but now they make money off of the cloud and clients expect people to support Chrome. Microsoft was spending too much money they didn't need to for return. I think because of the expensiveness of maintaining a browser engine used by so many people, they were destined to be basically a natural monopoly operated by a few concerned actors. Of course, google as one of the two major internet giants, is the most concerned with supporting the development of a web browser.

</comment><comment><USER15> > even if Google takes Chromium in a direction that Microsoft disagrees with > or opposes, Microsoft will have little option but to follow along > regardless.

I keep seeing arguments like this and it doesn't make sense to me. Help me understand. My impression is that since Chromium is open-source Google cannot have a monopolistic wield over it. And now the fact that a bunch of Microsoft engineers will be contributing to Chromium seems to imply that Google and Microsoft will have the same amount of muscle mass to struggle for control. For example if Google tries to make a change in Chromium that will break Microsoft's products Microsoft can quickly respond to this. So why is the argument that Microsoft is ceding the web to Google, rather than trying to wrest back? To me it seems like the latter is at least as plausible as the former.

<comment><USER16> Google effectively has the right to veto patches into Chromium. In the worst case, Google could fork Chromium, and since Google controls the build artifacts, in a dispute between Google and Microsoft, it's Google who wields the power.

<comment><USER17> How is it Google? Anyone could just fork Chromium and do anything about it, it's open source after all. Microsoft could buy people from Google if they wanted to, they probably could buy an entire Chrome team. Google has some control over Chromium engine right now, but this control is fragile. It's the same control that Oracle has over MySQL. Abuse it and you'll have MariaDB instantly. Abuse Java control and you'll have plenty of companies forked Java and ready to provide real LTS for Java 8. It'll be the same for Chromium.

The best outcome would be to have some Non-commercial organization funded by Google, Microsoft, Yandex and other big players who benefit from Chromium which would have some kind of independence. But current situation is not that bad.

There are other things than just source code license. May be Google has patents for Chromium sources and could use them to forbid fork? Then it's a bad situation but I didn't heard about that point of view yet.

<comment><USER18> Your examples of successful forks are due to branding amongst technologists, who understand the concept of a fork and who were following the most-trusted of the descendents (another example being Hudson and Jenkins).

Consumer brands are not as easy to fork. If Coca-Cola opensourced their recipe and then faced a fork by Examplesucre, I don't think anyone will really be betting against Coke.

Similarly, the longevity of mainline integrity for Linux relies heavily on the fact that it is a trademark and that the trademark holder (Linus) is trusted with it. Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care.

Google's power over Chromium comes from its power over Chrome. If you don't think that's true, fork it yourself and prove us all wrong.

<comment><USER19> > Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care.

Last I heard, Android was doing OK…

Similarly, I should think that Microsoft still has considerable clout in what browser Windows users will use by default (although I'm not sure what exact legal restrictions they currently have to observe re: bundling of browsers).

<comment><USER18> Android is a better example of forking Java, to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People want innovation but ultimately they don't want companies to profit off them. In the beginning, everyone loved Google. Now that their innovation gap has increased so much over their peers for some areas, the consequences of that are starting to sting. I am not sure what people would prefer: for them to be less competent or to not to profit from it?

The truth is Chrome and their web team has been amazing in advancing and supporting web standards. (except AMP which is pretty bad in some aspects)

<comment><USER9> I think a less cynical way to phrase your (correct) idea is that people love the promise of profit as an incentive to create innovation. It's not a fully self consistent system. But the end goal isn't profit imo, it's innovation, and competition via promise of profit is a way to efficiently allocate resources to innovate. For what it's worth, I think the general arc of antitrust rulings bend toward the ideal over time and it's a fine enough way to deal with the self inconsistency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't forget where Chromium came from. KHTML lead to Safari lead to Chrome which lead to Chromium. It's been forked and obounced from open source to corporation to corporation to open source.

<comment><USER22> All thanks to the LGPLv2, I guess? Maybe we should have handed the internet over to RMS.

<comment><USER23> That'd be a nightmare.

<comment><USER24> Ads would be not as perfectly targeted as they are now?

<comment><USER23> They probably would, they'd just be named GNU / Ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Which one should we have handed the web over to?

<comment><USER26> It's the 'One Ring To Rule Them All' problem.

They are fine until you hand it over to them and then they are a problem :)

The pragmatic answer is firewalls between layers (i.e. browser separate from search), and competition in layers, plus decent legislation, plus some degree of decentralization.

<comment><USER23> > The pragmatic answer is firewalls between layers (i.e. browser separate from > search), and competition in layers, plus decent legislation, plus some > degree of decentralization.

A long-form way for saying 'unusable'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just a hypothetical.

Is it possible the way to fix this issue is to actually have all vendors do the same thing.

Should all the vendors including Mozilla switch to Chromium and then fork it, couldn't we look at this as a "rebasing" of the Web?

If the forks are true hard forks, then we shouldn't necessarily end up in a situation where one vendor has more power than the other.

On the contrary, all vendors would now be on an even footing with the same strong, highly-compatible core engine.

All the issues people have with Firefox and Edge would no longer be relevant, and the only thing left to judge one company from another would be their value-add services or their ethics.

<comment><USER28> The problem isn't really who has the engine itself-- I'd say for most purposes, most browsers are about as good for 99% of workflows.

It's more of the forces and plays each company has around their browser strategy.

IE wasn't the best browser and didn't have the best engine, but it came bundled with Windows and was free. Firefox was a better browser by some metrics back then, in spite of having a company with less resources backing it.

Today, Chrome isn't the best and doesn't come bundled with devices, but Chrome-only sites are starting to appear (YouTube TV notoriously was Chrome- only until just this August [1]. This article lists Google Meet and Google Earth as other Chrome-only sites, at least at launch [2].

Moreover, you hear stories like these [3]:

> "I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided > to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that > broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up. For example, they recently > added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware > acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). > Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well > ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant > they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance > over Edge on video-watching battery life."

So even if all browser engines were to be hard-forks of the same, each one would be developed different, and each company would play their cards differently to try to gain or maintain dominance. Google being such a big web company makes it difficult to compete against.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/5/17203192/youtube-tv- google...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/5/17203192/youtube-tv-google- firefox-browser-support-chrome-update-streaming)

[2]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16805216/google-chrome- onl...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16805216/google-chrome-only-sites- internet-explorer-6-web-standards)

[3]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824)

<comment><USER29> > Today, Chrome isn't the best and doesn't come bundled with devices,

I think you're forgetting the largest smartphone OS on the planet there. :)

<comment><USER28> Ah sorry, that's true. I take my statement back. Also, yikes, that's even more leverage for Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It feels kind of like a... Truism? Maybe that's the word?

Any company large enough to "hand the web over to" isn't a company we want to be handing the web over to.

</comment><comment><USER31> Google was the company I trusted to hand the internet at some point in time.

<comment><USER32> Hopefully you (and others who thought similarly) have finally learned the lesson that dictatorship is never the solution.

<comment><USER31> A benevolent dictatorship is really, really great and effective. It just never lasts :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yet I'd choose Google over Facebook, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon every time if I have to. Even though monopoly is always worse than competition, Google has managed to advance the web experience using Chrome/Chromium (e.g. V8, pushing HTTPS, supporting the latest CSS and JS features, GQUIC, WebP)

EDIT: to downvoters, what's your argument here?

<comment><USER26> Yes, we can trash Google but I can't think of many others who'd be better. Imagine if GM, Ford, Exxon or Dow Chemical ran the show :)

<comment><USER33> It seems people keep complaining that Google is "evil" but they forgot that until only a couple of decades ago, the business world was ruled by oil, banking and finance ultra selfish assholes who had no shame to bring their own countries and even the world if possible to its knees to make profits.

<comment><USER34> People also forget that when those companies were young they were hailed as tech innovators who brought economic prosperity, not evil monopolists destroying the planet with their unintended consequences. That part comes after

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is Edge?

<comment><USER36> Microsoft's replacement for IE, now with less horrible.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Throwpass – Transport passwords from your phone to a shared computer - <AUTHOR> https://throwpass.com

<comment> 97-109-107 Two-way would be nice too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but it would require a bit of extra user interaction to make it secure. Otherwise you might try to send something from the browser to your phone and it might actually go to the phone of an attacker behind you who also scanned it.

I think the solution would be to have the phone's screen turn green when it has successfully paired, and the user needs to verify that before sending to the phone. But everyone I've shown it to as-is hasn't been able to figure out how it works (except you). So I don't want to force any additional confusing steps on the user. In the future I might do it on a different site, without the focus on passwords.</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Democrat Channels Lincoln for Tech-To-Trump-Country Bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/10/ro-khanna-silicon-valley-tech-rural-america-bill-lincoln <comment><USER2> If these grants are such a good idea, why don't states just do them? Why do they need federal funding?

Sure, these are great for local communities when you take money from California and pass it to states with no income taxes.

If remote work is really going to take off, why would rural America be the beneficiary, rather than, say, Mexico, which has a fair amount of English speakers in the same time zone, universities, etc, and lower costs than rural America?</comment>


Why Snowden Asked Visitors in Hong Kong to Refrigerate Their Phones - <AUTHOR> http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/why-snowdens-visitors-put-their-phones-in-the-fridge/?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I just put my phone in the refrigerator and called it -- works perfectly. Then I tried the same thing with a microwave oven (following pilsetnieks's suggestions) -- didn't even lose one bar on the signal indicator. It did kill the Wi-Fi reception, so clearly the oven is blocking the 2.4 GHz frequency as it should.

Edit: Also tried a cookie can. (And anti-static bags -- see below.) Faraday cage my ass.

Clarification: I use a Nokia. Maybe the technique works only on iPhones? I've heard they have some reception issues.

<comment><USER3> Got an anti-static bag to try, as others suggested? Would be interested in your result.

<comment><USER4> An anti-static bag (even the metallized type) probably won't be the best idea. Faraday cages depend on the conductivity of the outer shield to exclude electric fields from the inside, but anti-static bags aren't very conductive (100k-10G ohm square resistivity[1]).

You might even be better off wrapping the phone in aluminium foil, but the problem is then going to be ensuring that all seams in the "cage" are actually conductive.

[1][http://www.esdjournal.com/techpapr/ryne/esdbags.htm](http://www.esdjournal.com/techpapr/ryne/esdbags.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope the fridge was off.

A fridge will act as a fantastic acoustic shield but probably not a functioning Faraday cage. I think this blog post has taken a few artistic liberties in suggesting its use was as a Faraday cage, especially as the article she links to doesn't mention the fridge's purpose as a Faraday cage.

Assuming this story isn't stretched and exaggerated (I have a hard time believing it isn't) and the fridge was on, this could be a fast way to trigger condensation to form inside the phone when the device is removed back into a warmer environment, depending on the ambient humidity. I just wouldn't dream of putting my phone in a cold fridge for anything other than the briefest time for this reason.

<comment><USER6> Why not on? Wouldn't the compressor improve the situation by adding background noise? Also if condensation is a concern you can put the phones in a plastic bag.

<comment><USER5> When a fridge is on it usually means it's cold! If it's off (and has been for a while) it could be expected to be around room temperature, eliminating the issue of condensation.

The compressor isn't on all the time. It turns on intermittently when the temperature inside the fridge exceeds a certain threshold. It would be unlikely of much use most of the time.

Putting the phones in a bag does nothing to solve the issue of condensation. What happens is the phones would cool down substantially in the fridge. When they're removed, the cold surfaces (inside and out) would cause moisture in the warmer air to condense into water droplets, possibly causing issues with the battery and the other circuitry. Hong Kong is quite a humid place and it appears that he was at an acquaintance's home at the time of the frigid phone incident. It's unclear how well air conditioned this acquaintance's home was, which could lead to some especially nasty condensation issues. It's also unlikely this acquaintance's fridge would have been brought up to room temperature just for the sole purpose of storing phones for a couple of hours. This is why I'm inclined to believe the anecdote is BS.

<comment><USER7> "The compressor isn't on all the time. It turns on intermittently when the temperature inside the fridge exceeds a certain threshold."

Modern, high-efficiency fridges have compressors that operate continuously. It's more efficient than cycling. My fridge draws about 60 watts continuously.

It's still thermostatically controlled, of course, so if the doors are left open, it will kick up higher.

<comment><USER5> I'm not exactly a fridge nerd but I had no idea such fridges existed and I'm somewhat curious as to why it's more efficient than cycling. Perhaps it's the ease of which to maintain a constant temperature, rather than a fluctuating one?

What fridge do you have out of interest?

<comment><USER7> I have an Electrolux.

Here's a report about variable-power compressors:

[http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/includes/pdf/invertercom...](http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/includes/pdf/invertercompressors- improvingefficiency.pdf)

I was introduced to refrigeration nerdery by talking with a friend who designs the cryocoolers for JWST ([http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/cryocooler.html](http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/cryocooler.html)) who nodded sagely and said "more efficient that way" when I mentioned my new fridge did not cycle on/off. Now that's a fridge nerd!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly tangential story. My first assignment on my first job was building a knockoff TEMPEST enclosure ([http://www.jammed.com/~jwa/tempest.html](http://www.jammed.com/~jwa/tempest.html)) to isolate spectrum measurement equipment. The original use of the enclosures was (somewhat ironically given the article) the NSA's paranoia that foreign intelligence would spy on government computers by picking up their EM radiation.

So if you're worried about the government spying on your computers via RF and want something more convenient than a fridge, drop me a line...

<comment><USER9> if you're feeling like a profiteer why don't you just start selling a faraday cage phone case

<comment><USER8> The real money is probably in building faraday rooms.

<comment><USER10> You're right, there's lots of money being made by contractors in the faraday- room business: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Informa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information_Facility)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used to develop nintendo DS games and once received a very memorable bug report - something to the effect of "got error [error message] when playing the game in a microwave".

We weren't handling lost wifi connections gracefully so the user would get the wrong error message if their wifi dropped. The tester was simulating this by placing the DS in a microwave.

</comment><comment><USER12> Someone once came to us and asked us to design a wireless thermometer for a freezer. We told them it wouldn't work, because the freezer would act like a Faraday cage. Then they showed us a similar device that worked just fine. Embarrassing.

We test a production device here that makes a LOT of noise, and we put it inside a mini-fridge to dampen the noise so it doesn't drive the testers crazy. Works quite well. I doubt you'd pick up any outside conversation if you were trying to eavesdrop (especially if the freezer was humming).

</comment><comment><USER13> Shouldn't a microwave oven be the perfect household Faraday cage? It certainly has the shielding to contain 2.4 GHz waves, so the 800, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz cannot be that far off.

<comment><USER14> Less soundproofing.

<comment><USER15> How about putting phones inside the microwave and then putting microwave inside the fridge?

<comment><USER14> I favor putting the phone in the martini shaker, and the shaker inside the dishwasher while washing a big load of clanky dishes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, that's not going to work as a Faraday Cage. I guess you'd have to put the cellphone in the microwave, _then_ put the microwave in the refrigerator. That's going to look weird. :)

I used to do a bunch of micro-sites -- small websites targeted around specific topics. One I did a few years back was [http://gps-cell-phone- tracking.net/](http://gps-cell-phone-tracking.net/)

I really learned a lot setting that site up, and it was one of the reasons I became such a privacy freak. Our cell phones are basically tracking devices the government monitors which we happily adorn to our bodies each day. Weird.

To get to my point, one of the questions on the site was whether your phone could be tracked, either location or having the audio monitored, without your knowing it. Location is easy -- yes. Audio was a bit weirder. Obviously you'd have to install an app, and who would want to do that?

Then I learned that cell providers will "help" governments by putting tracking code inside the auto-update of the phone. They can even push it at night and have it install without your having any knowledge at all.

As far as I know, pulling the battery still kills things, but then somebody said most phones have a dual battery to keep the memory refreshed. Somebody even said something about the possibility of "illuminating" phones from a distance and picking up audio that way. Of course, "somebody said" doesn't count for much, and with all the secrecy in place good luck figuring out what is what.

Fun stuff. Since the micro-site business didn't take off, maybe there's a future in selling tin-foil hats?

</comment><comment><USER17> I won't speculate on eavesdropping since I haven't tested this, but what I hear when I heard his method is more of the security risk that he could possibly be pinpointed. A red flag would go up for me, hearing multiple people (the lawyers) clustering to one location.

Smartphones are a beacon of constant info...GPS and signal pinging can get your coordinates (at least general area), and Wifi can triangulate the position [0]. Cameras and microphones are just icing and still require a device to be compromised, whereas signals, require carrier network access...which is what PRISM revealed [1].

[0] [http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/03/26/what-exactly- wifislam...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/03/26/what-exactly-wifislam-is- and-why-apple-acquired-it/)

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57589100-83/nsa- whistleblow...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57589100-83/nsa- whistleblower-u.s-has-been-hacking-into-china-hong-kong/)

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Verizon uses an 700MHZ and 1700/2100MHZ signal on their 4G network which will give you incredible penetration. People brag about how you can be in a basement of an office building (lots more concrete and steel than a refrigerator) and still get great reception.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Wireless#Radio_Frequenc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Wireless#Radio_Frequency_Summary)

If they were using a carrier in Hong Kong, most of the carriers use a higher spectrum, usually around the 1800-2100MHZ range. While it doesn't give you great penetration in buildings like the lower frequencies Verizon use, I'm guessing the overall density of the towers is significant which would help this issue.

If he said they want into the basement of a building THEN put the phones in the refrigerator, it would be a little more believable. Just putting it in the refrigerator probably won't do a lot to block the signal.

<comment><USER8> Its not the mass of concrete and steel, but the faraday cage effect of a continuous closed loop of conductive material.

Though aas has been pointed out, a fridge probably isn't electrically continuous at the door gasket. Depending on the construction, you could replace the rubber gasket witha rubber core metal mesh gasket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I usually tell the lawyers to put the phones in their a--. It's not more effective, per se, but it's certainly funnier.

<comment><USER18> Okay, I admit that I deserve a downvote for this...But I couldn't resist :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I used to work as a phone tester and sometimes had to test things while the phone was in a unreceivable location. I tried many things, like a safe, fridge, cookie jar etc, but the only thing that worked was wrapping the phone in 2 or 3 layers of tin foil.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hard to imagine a worse Faraday cage than a refrigerator. The rubber seal would create a nice slot antenna running 3/4 of the way around one side.

The microwave oven would be much, much better.

<comment><USER21> The rubber seal is a better audio seal though, which is more important.

<comment><USER20> Probably best to put the phones in the microwave, and leave the microwave in the bathroom with the shower running to create masking noise.

Or just turn on the microwave for a few seconds. :)

<comment><USER22> Wrap the phones in tinfoil, put the wrapped phones inside the stainless-steel martini shaker (see other thread), put the martini shaker inside a microwave, put the microwave inside a refrigerator, and put the refrigerator in the bathtub.

Now turn everything on "high", including the shower ("hot & steamy"), and run.

Snowden's guests will have done that a while ago of course...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We need to crank our paranoic creativity up to 11, people.

The fridge itself had a false back. Snowden's associates in SPECTRE/Wikileaks then used their covert physical access to the phones, for the duration of the dinner, to copy the phones' contents and install new malware.

Now, they know what the lawyers know -- including whether any are double/triple/etc-agents.

<comment><USER24> Jeez, I missed this when I posted my reply. It looks as if we're the only two paranoid enough to see the danger and stupid enough to point it out and draw attention to ourselves.

I'm sleeping in the bunker tonight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is absolutely NOT a piece designed to make Snowden look slightly odd.

<comment><USER26> Actually I thought the article put him in a better light than most of the other pieces about him. It makes him out to be more in tune with the ways the gov could track him. If they wanted to smear him then NYT could just come out with a short piece saying "Snowden made his Lawyers put their Phones in the Fridge", and then just spend the rest of the article speculating about his growing paranoia and questioning the decision.

Instead they explained the logic behind the seemingly unreasonable request. How is that being malicious?

<comment><USER25> I'm from the UK. We have tabloids. They will take a fact like (made up example) Snowden wanted all phones turned off, and simply make up the rest. 1) to demonize the subject, and 2) to put a more sexy sounding story in the paper. So, my natural default is to hope to believe the simplest "fact" in the story, if that.

Maybe you have faith in your newspapers, and to be totally honest I don't actually know how Americans feel about their news papers. But you do have Murdoch floating around, so Americans are being manipulated somewhere. But I sure as hell dont take them at their word. For me, newspapers are as accurate as "the internet".

But to me, that read like a slightly more sophisticated that a UK tabloid smear job.

I do how ever accept that my UK perspective on the press might well be very different to a US one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Comments on this story illustrate the difference between Hacker News and other news sites. Most people say "That's cool" or maybe share links related to the research. People on HN said, "Okay, now that all our phones are locked in the freezer, let's compare data." :)

</comment><comment><USER27> So the mic in your phone can be used as a bug when you arent using it?

<comment><USER28> yes

[http://news.cnet.com/FBI-taps-cell-phone-mic-as- eavesdroppin...](http://news.cnet.com/FBI-taps-cell-phone-mic-as- eavesdropping-tool/2100-1029_3-6140191.html)

[http://hackaday.com/2009/09/14/disabling-your-cell-phones- mi...](http://hackaday.com/2009/09/14/disabling-your-cell-phones-mic-for- security/)

<comment><USER29> Has anyone ever actually found NSA spyware on a feature phone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am pretty sure that if someone wanted to they could easily construct a faraday cage, instead of using a fridge!

[http://www.disaster-survival-resources.com/faraday- cage.html](http://www.disaster-survival-resources.com/faraday-cage.html)

By the way, it's also useful against solar flares...

<comment><USER8> If you want something NSA scale, you can do better than that. I used to use Copper-Beryllium mesh and gaskets ([http://www.sealingdevices.com/metal-emi- gaskets-and-becu-ber...](http://www.sealingdevices.com/metal-emi-gaskets-and- becu-beryllium-copper-springfingers)). Choose mesh size based on the frequencies you expect to deal with (and harmonics).

If you want to keep your computer in there you also have to be careful designing the ports for wires coming in/out.

<comment><USER30> Why do you say that about the ports?

<comment><USER31> Every wire is also an antenna that is attenuated to the appropriate frequencies related to the length of the wire.

A 2 meter cable also receives on 144 MHz any spurious signals (amateur radio band). If that was an EMP, it would send a voltage spike up the port and blow out whatever it hit.

<comment><USER30> Oh, I thought you meant that the faraday cage would interfere with the wires conducting electrical signals

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I bought some EM radiation blocking cloth from LessEMF and stitched it to the inside pocket of my jacket which I rarely use. If I'm feeling paranoid (or if I'm not arsed to turn on airplane mode to save battery) I just put it in that pocket instead of the normal one and zero communications can get in (especially my mother)

<comment><USER33> curious. Do you notice decreased battery life if you do this? I would think you would chew through battery like a mofo if you block carrier, but leave the phone on. It's gonna try hard to hit a tower non-stop, I expect.

<comment><USER34> My phone does. If I ever take it to an area with zero reception and forget to turn on airplane mode, the battery dies in 2-3 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I just tried putting my cellphone in a stainless steel martini shaker and it definitely worked as a faraday cage.

<comment><USER36> That's some real James Bond shit, right there!

(sorry, couldn't resist :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> My initial reaction was that the phones-in-the-fridge rule was meant to muffle sounds. Can anyone comment on whether or not a phone in a fridge can pick up sounds from the room the fridge is in?

<comment><USER38> Seems like the kind of thing that you could test empirically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Isn't just wrapping the phone in aluminium foil (as many layers as needed to make you feel comfortable) enough to act as a faraday cage? And leaves the cellphone still portable, you can unwrap if/when needed. And then bury it in a pile of clothes in another room (as the article suggests somewhere) for the soundproofing. The refrigerator I feel serves neither of these purposes well (as mentioned in this discussion), and ruins everything when it's time to make a sandwich.

<comment><USER40> I just tested this, aluminum foil does seem to block signals coming to my phone. At least, the wrapped cell phone doesn't ring when I call it with my house phone. The wifi signals may still be getting through, I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So given that Snowden would be in the know about such things, this would confirm the legend of phones being remotely controlled for listening devices.

Were there any iPhones in the fridge?

<comment><USER41> Why would it confirm it? "Correlation does not imply causation".

He may be pulled in by the same rumours as everyone else and being overly cautious. Just because he does this doesn't indicate he has confirmed or denied the existence of a slave microphone bug.

Just that he believes strongly enough in the possibility to be cautious.

<comment><USER42> Correlation may not boolean-logically imply causation, but it's evidence of causation. [http://oyhus.no/CorrelationAndCausation.html](http://oyhus.no/CorrelationAndCausation.html)

The actual cases I've seen (some linked on this page) are of specifically targeted individuals having their phone receive a command to turn into a bugged phone. I don't think all phones are bugged by default. This fits with Snowden wanting people around him to sound-proof their phones as they might be targeted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> You would think instead of stashing them in the fridge, he would ask visitors to not carry a GPS receiver right into his hideout. We complain about the gov possibly bugging and tracking us, yet we do it to ourselves willfully almost 24/7.

</comment><comment><USER44> The real answer: he looked around the house and decided it was the best place. lots of metal, and a hum to drown out noise.

The NSA leak was important enough, we don't need to pretend like he's some kind of privacy McGuyver.

</comment><comment><USER45> Couldn't he have just put the phones in airsafe mode? Plus if they were tracking the lawyers then they'd probably have seen them arriving at the location even if the signals went off when they arrived.

</comment><comment><USER10> Obama has his own Faraday tent: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-12810675](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12810675)

</comment><comment><USER46> Would taking the battery out simply suffice, too?

<comment><USER47> They address this at the bottom of the article (read the whole thing).

 _Battery removal can be equally deceptive. Even once one figures out how to extract the primary battery, there may be additional power sources within the apparatus. "Some phones use an additional battery for memory management; it's unclear whether this battery could be used by logging and /or tracking systems such as Carrier IQ," Mr. Harvey explained, referring to software that monitors mobile phone users._

<comment><USER48> I suspect the OP is claiming that Carrier IQ tracking could still be active, in low-power/sleep modes, that still could represent a privacy risk if the battery is removed. When the battery is re-inserted and/or the phone is turned on, then the data is transmitted to the cell tower, then Carrier IQ servers.

<comment><USER49> What would that be collecting when the main application processor and baseband processors are not powered? The battery referenced in the article is likely to backup a RAM chip and isn't even used in most modern phone/smartphone designs, which use Flash EEPROMs instead. There have however been phones which have a small internal battery powered by the external battery which has to be charged to operate the radio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> An anti-static bag should work just as well.</comment>


OpenBazaar: What Happened to Bitcoin's EBay Killer? - <AUTHOR> https://shitcoin.com/openbazaar-what-happened-to-bitcoins-ebay-killer-app-436b52aaff93 <comment><USER2> This author didn't seem to realize he was reviewing the testnet alpha release of OpenBazaar 2.0 rather than the current 1.0 release that is available for easy download on openbazaar.org.

Since version 2.0 is entirely separate from 1.0 and about to transition from the alpha testnet to the beta livenet, those listings he tried to view are old and don't work anymore. It won't be a problem once beta is officially launched this week and while the effort is appreciated, this review is premature. Users are encouraged to revisit OpenBazaar later this month when the full release of version 2.0 is available!

<comment><USER3> > I'm surprised with how unstable the OpenBazaar project is after this many > years of development. Yes, the OpenBazaar client is in "BETA". It's like > that one store on your street that's had a "Sorry for the mess!" sign up for > 5 years.

I'm the author</comment></comment>


Andrew Mason at Startup School 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272030648

<comment><AUTHOR> Starting from minute 20 is hilarious when he talks about how Gmail shortcuts make him happy :)</comment>


A $9T corporate debt bomb is 'bubbling' in the US economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/21/theres-a-9-trillion-corporate-debt-bomb-bubbling-in-the-us-economy.html <comment><USER2> _Over the past decade, companies have taken advantage of low rates both to grow their businesses and reward shareholders.

Total corporate debt has swelled from nearly $4.9 trillion in 2007 as the Great Recession was just starting to break out to nearly $9.1 trillion halfway through 2018, quietly surging 86 percent, according to Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association data. Other than a few hiccups and some fairly substantial turbulence in the energy sector in late-2015 and 2016, the market has performed well._

"Reward shareholders" is code for stock buybacks - the practice of a company using ultra-low interest financing to buy its own stock on margin. It's an unsustainable way to manipulate the price/earnings ratio, and thereby make a company look like a better buy than it is.

Buybacks in turn have been a major source of funding for the stock market's unprecedented run:

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4156578-buyback-bubble- will...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4156578-buyback-bubble-will-end- badly)

I suspect those looking for a soft landing here haven't considered the reversible nature of this debt-fueled stock market rally. Nor have they considered the amplifying effect of debt on the upside and downside.

<comment><USER3> I keep an eye on a lot of tech stocks, and I think it's crazy how much crap companies like IBM and Oracle got 3-5 years ago for their stock buybacks [1] contrasted to how praised stock buybacks are now [2]. The impact back then was the market was great but IBM/Oracle/etc's share prices weren't doing great. The impact now is the market is _not_ doing great, and stock buybacks are a band-aid over the inevitable decline.

Anyone who doesn't see that is going to be caught off guard when the money runs out, the buybacks stop, and the market crashes "overnight". In reality, the market is crashing _right now_ , it's just hidden behind trickery designed to artificially inflate the value of the market. It's like if I lost my job but kept financing my same lifestyle out of my savings account. Eventually that savings will run out and reality will hit like a ton of bricks, and no one will have seen it coming.

[1] [https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/05/share- buyb...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/05/share-buybacks-are- killing-ibm.aspx)

[2] [https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/12/09/why-investors- shou...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/12/09/why-investors-should-cheer- facebooks-stock-buyback.aspx)

<comment><USER4> Companies with low growth have a few options (assuming strong cash flow).

1\. Distribute cash back to shareholders via buybacks or dividends

2\. Increase R&D spending on new initiatives

3\. Acquisitions

Buybacks are at least much more tax effective than issuing dividends. Large acquisitions tend to fail and I imagine it could be hard for an established company to regain the "growth mindset" of a startup.

Should a company load up on debt or pursue buybacks way above intrinsic value? Probably not. But, if a company is paying a 4% dividend, and can borrow at 3.5%, buying back stock reduces the dividend payout, and the company avoids lowering the dividend per share (something that is considered sacrilegious in America).

<comment><USER5> Why does a company have to grow, if it's doing what it does well, workers are happy, and customers are happy, and growth is not occurring naturally?

Could it be that the expectation for all companies, everywhere to grow at a constant rate is not reasonable?

<comment><USER4> I get your rationale, but you have to remember that this hypothetical company would probably generate a fair amount of cash. The question then becomes, what do they do with that cash? Say a company has a steady state $10B revenue, $2B profit and requires $1B of reinvestment capital with a market cap of $20B. After 5 years, the market cap becomes $25B all things being equal due to an additional $5B of cash on the books. Eventually, the company's value would start to be primarily cash. In a low interest rate environment, it could be hard for this company to make money on this cash, and investors are probably more interested in the company executing its mainlines of business versus turning into a hedge fund to manage of huge cash position. A stock buyback is one way this company could "grow" in revenue and earnings per share, but not have to try and grow top line revenue.

<comment><USER5> I guess I don't understand the mindset in which having extra cash is some sort of problem to solve. Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Qualcomm, etc. all have large stockpiles of cash and no one thinks of them as hedge funds, right?

<comment><USER4> Apple actually does have a quasi hedge fund to manage its cash position:

[https://qz.com/393093/the-mysterious-fund-in-the-desert- that...](https://qz.com/393093/the-mysterious-fund-in-the-desert-that-manages- apples-cash/)

Too much cash can also lead to behavioral finance issues down the road as well such as companies making ill-fated acquisitions such as Microsoft did under Ballmer's helm.

<comment><USER5> Excuse me if this sounds tongue-in-cheek, but is "behavioral finance issues" another way to say that the people placed in charge of the large pile of cash can't be trusted with it? Are you saying the solution to that is to just not to hold any cash?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The market cap from US companies has grown from 19 to 32 trillion in the same period. [0]

It's not accurate to look at single variables in isolation. Problems happen when the aggregate debt in an economy exceed the assets behind them, or the capacity to pay them down. [1] If we are there it's because of govt and consumer (mortgage) debt. On the corporate side I think it's just balance sheet efficiency. (Can write off debt payments)

[0] [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.LCAP.CD?start=20...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.LCAP.CD?start=2007)

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

<comment><USER7> Of course another variable is whether there will be another bailout if this goes off.

<comment><USER8> Considering how many wealthy (and not so wealthy) voters are invested in large public corporations, I assume bailouts will happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've come to realize that debt (at the macro level) really doesn't matter at all in our system. In fact higher levels are better because it means people are doing business. It's a completely different thing than personal debt. The direct cause of the depth and breadth of the Great Depression was seeing money as a "thing" that actually exists and must be conserved, rather than the fed QE policies of Bernanke, which saved us during the Great Recession. If anyone can point to a place where a sovereign democracy with reserve currency status ever went bankrupt or suffered ill effects from too much debt, I'd like to see how that worked.

<comment><USER10> It's not that debt doesn't matter. It does. But at the macro level, it works in counter intuitive ways mostly because of the fact that every dollar of debt is someone else's saving (the person the debt is owed to). If you reduce debt by $1T you necessarily reduce savings by $1T. Whether this is good or bad depends on finer details that are rarely discussed in internet forums and that seem only to be fully grasped by the best economists.

<comment><USER11> I don't suppose you could give us a detailed example of some particular company's/country's debt situation? (Just, since it's rare to find people who can explain that depth)

<comment><USER10> Well, I'm not an economist and a detailed example would be a lot of work. But here are some points to consider:

\- Aggregate financial liability is the flip side of aggregate financial assets. Net financial savings/debt is zero for the economy as a whole. Because of this, looking at particular companies or sectors is very different than looking at the economy as a whole.

\- When looking at entire countries especially large ones, there are important aggregate effects so depending on what you are trying to understand, it often makes sense to take an aggregate perspective where this net savings/debt are zero (ignore international imbalances, cross country debt etc. ) .

\- Debt is usually denominated in a currency, government debt is particularly intertwined with the behavior of its currency, so it makes sense to take into account central bank regimes, the effect of inflation etc.

-When taking the aggregate, whole economy perspective where net financial assets net to zero, it's important to keep some focus on the non financial assets that makes up the residual non-zero net positive. This is the stock of economic capital: physical intrinsically valuable forms of wealth such as inventory, stockpiles, infrastructure, factories, machinery, tools, knowledge, land, natural resources, production capacity, energy, technological advancement etc... The financial assets, the debt, is just indirect claims on this capital and on the future production you might get from it.

-Since economy wide financial crises are about claims on things, about coupons, about promises that net to zero, they can pretty much always be resolved smoothly through sufficient central banks accommodation that, through inflation, readjust the real value of all these claims to be in line with what is actually reasonably redeemable in a timely manner. However, this can result in some unfair redistribution or painfully high inflation (It's still much less unfair, and much much less painful than widespread defaults and gridlock in the investment and labor markets).

-Central banks are often not competent enough to maintain stability and readjust properly. I don't know what can be done about that. The ECB's performance for example, has been pathetic. It was so procyclical as to almost bring down western civilization IMO, emboldening foes such as Russia and China and utterly destroying Greece and Italy, those poor Europeans. The US Fed has also been somewhat bad, failing to hit its inflation target for years after the financial crisis, a time when it should have been overshooting a little, but has recently been doing better. On the flip side, the Canadian central bank was great during the financial crisis, and saved Canada from a large part of the downsides. Marc Carney who was heading the Bank of Canada, then moved to head the UK's Bank of England and saved the British from Brexit turning into a massive disaster that brought unemployment in the tens or twenties of percents. However, the UKs proximity to the eurozone resulted on some splash damage from the ECB. Australia's money supply has been competently managed. Japan was horrible in the 90s but has been doing better in the last decade. BTW Japan is an interesting case to look at from a debt perspective because its government has by far the highest level of debt per capita.

-The assumption that savings must always have positive real returns, that interest rates must be positive, is one of the most weirdly persistent fallacy in economic debates. Historically, negative real returns on stores of value were the norm. Before financial systems existed, almost all investments had negative returns if you didn't put work and energy into them. To store value, you had to accumulate stuff, buildings or land. Most options either had high maintenance costs, were subject to risk of damage from natural causes and theft, were very volatile or required hard labor to get production out of. Even in societies with financial systems, getting low risk, hassle free, liquid, positive real returns has been difficult for a large part of history. This just reflects the natural laws of thermodynamics that tell us that everything tends to decay without a constant supply of work and energy. In general, most things require maintenance to keep their worth. The 20th century was probably the most notable exception. Because of unprecedented demographic and technological growth, positive risk free real returns were easy to find. The effect of recency on our collective minds probably explains some of the confusion people have about this. It is possible that under favorable conditions, wealth can have positive returns and even compound into very good long run returns but it is not a guarantee and there is nothing natural about it. It may not continue forever, particularly amidst an aging and retiring population in a world no longer as rich in easy to exploit natural resources. While people are used to get negative returns on very short term purchases, you buy fresh vegetables at the supermarket, even if they degrade over time, many can't seem to accept the normalcy of negative returns on longer term assets. In nature, squirrels' nut caches have a certain percentage of losses from theft and spoilage. Real returns tending towards the negative is natural even if they can seem unusual for people just out of the 20th century. There are good reasons to keep government debt low enough but long term possibility of repayment is not a huge worry when market real interest rates and safe asset returns are very low or negative. In the latter case, you can just wait and let the real debt evaporate through inflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _There 's one worrying trend where companies on the edge of the investment- grade universe lose their standing and turn into high-yield or junk, sending rates — and defaults — significantly higher. And there's a more positive case where the U.S. continues to outperform the rest of the world and corporate debt problems are limited to overseas and specific companies that aren't systemically important._

My money is literally on the optimistic outcome. Just check old headless from 2009-2017 of all the failed predictions of crisis. Odds are nothing will happen. Profit margins for multinationals are at historic highs. Bondholders of investment-grade debt should have little to fear. Junk debt however is riskier obviously and would avoid it.

<comment><USER12> ==Just check old headless from 2009-2017 of all the failed predictions of crisis.==

You could just as easily check the old headlines from 2006-2008 that told us we were in a "Goldilocks" economy and would live in an endless bull market.

<comment><AUTHOR> but there are far more failed predictions of crisis than failed predictions of prosperity and growth. A broken clock is right...

<comment><USER12> Yes, corrections have historically happened far less frequently than growth periods. Unfortunately, they tend to have much greater impact on people's livelihood as they come fast and hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP)[a] as of Q1 2014.

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

</comment><comment><USER14> Corporate bonds mature and the principle is paid back. Unlike publicly traded stock, the bond asset never has to be sold on the open market to get rid of it so this part isnt a concern.

If there is a threat that the corporation cannot pay back, or if the corporation merely feels like it, they will issue new bonds and use the proceeds to pay back old ones. Yes it is exactly what it sounds like and there is enough investor appetite for it.

When the corporation's bond offerings are no longer investment grade then there is less of a chance of their being investor appetite for a future bond rollover and the corporation should try to pay the existing bond.

Therefore the SIZE of the corporate debt outstanding is only clickbait.

This article talks about how there are signs that some companies historically wouldnt be able to tap into bond investor appetite to issue new bonds to cover their cash shortfalls on current bonds. Investor appetite may still be there or the company puts more resources into paying back current bonds in full before they mature, YEARS from now.

Notably this article didnt talk about maturity dates.

</comment><comment><USER15> here's a much better article on the subject of corporate debt [1]

basically the total amount of corporate debt has jumped, but corporate debt defaults have also decreased sharply

aka corporate debt has become safer, and investors are buying it up because it has been relatively safe and provided attractive returns

if interest rates begin to rise, corporate debt defaults could start increasing, potentially severely. mass defaults could trigger another crisis

"New McKinsey Global Institute research finds that one-quarter of corporate bonds in Brazil, China, and India are from companies that are already at higher risk of default even at today's low interest rates.

If interest rates were to rise by 200 basis points [2%], that share could rise to as much as 40 per cent. In advanced economies, most corporate borrowers are in good financial shape, but there are pockets of acute vulnerability, for instance, among speculative-grade borrowers, and in certain sectors like energy and retail...

Is the next global financial crisis at hand? We do not think so. Unlike the subprime mortgages that sparked the previous financial crisis, defaults in the corporate bond market are unlikely to have significant ripple effects across the system.

While mortgages were packaged into securitised assets and multiple layers of synthetic securities were built upon them, the same is not true of corporate bonds. Losses will therefore be sustained by the direct bond owners, but the systemic risks seen in the previous crisis are minimal."

i agree, and a 2% increase in interest rates doesn't seem anywhere near possible with today's current combination of low productivity growth, low global capital demand, and easy liquidity (granted QE is starting to wrap up in the EU at least and the US is toying with the idea of raising rates against Trump's will)

of course this is a McKinsey economist/investment manager somewhat talking their book, so draw your own conclusions, but the FT article on the state of the corporate debt is much more well-researched and written

PS subscribe to and read the FT, you won't regret it. this CNBC coverage is complete garbage

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/bc1d327a-91c1-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca...](https://www.ft.com/content/bc1d327a-91c1-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546)

<comment><USER16> > are unlikely to have significant ripple effects across the system.

Was said about the mortgages too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do bombs bubble?

Why not "bubble is growing"?

"Volcano is bubbling"?

"Bomb is ticking"?

<comment><USER18> Bubble is a commonly used term in financial circles

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

<comment><USER17> I mean, yeah, but then it's not a bomb.

My comment is lighthearted - I'm just saying they mixed metaphors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Economics is ecology + psychology.

</comment><comment> time-domain0 Sorry, but it's a doomsayer, tinfoil hatters' failure to understand MMT. Here's one of Bernie Sanders' economic advisers explaining it:

[https://youtu.be/5baKgv7Zl5g](https://youtu.be/5baKgv7Zl5g)

[http://www.usdebtclock.org](http://www.usdebtclock.org)

<comment><USER20> _> , tinfoil hatters' failure to understand MMT._

I wasn't the one who downvoted you but as a fyi... this particular article is about _corporate_ debt. MMT is about _government_ debt.

When _non_ -government entities such as businesses and consumers take on too much debt that they can't service, bad economic things happen.

<comment> time-domain0 Obviously, Sherlock. The govt with the Fed are (or should be, if things don't spiral out of control) the economic governors. You can't talk about either one in isolation because they are symbiotic, not mythologically-utopian, hermetically-closed model boxes that can exist without the other.

The Fed will be pressured to reduce interest rates because corporations are playing Russian roulette too-big-to-fail brinksmanship and will expect a bailout as per usual.. an action the majority undertake will always be excused in a democracy because of political pressure.

<comment><USER21> But can we be kinder to each-other in these discussions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am eagerly awaiting the next bubble. I hope it will be the worst since the great depression. I will probably lose my job but that's OK - It will be worth it; all the bankrupt corporations and the jailed executives will need replacements which means more opportunities for everyone else.

<comment><USER23> Did you sleep through 2008? Only poor people experience recessions now. Corporations put up record profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Debt with interest is inherently destructive. Inevitably the demand for debt owed exceeds the actually supply of money. To put it in very simple tangible terms, if the US economy was say $100,000, and say all that money is lent out at a simple 10% interest rate due back in one year, then a year from now the demand to be paid back is $110,000. Where is that extra $10k coming from? It doesn't exist. Lending with interest is designed to fail. The only "solution" is to keep printing more money.

<comment><USER25> I think you are implying the companies and people borrow money for shits and giggles. The reality is that most companies borrow money only when the availability of extra capital would help them generate more revenues or capture addtional market share. So they would take into account the cost of servicing the debt and repaying the loan.

However, there are cases like IBM raing debt to buy back shares and boost share prices. I have no idea how that will work out for them.

<comment><USER24> >I think you are implying the companies and people borrow money for shits and giggles.

Nope. I was just using an example. It could have been $100k and only $50K was lent out. You sill would need $105k at the end of the year to satisfy all debts and have an equilibrium within the economy. Where is the extra $5K coming from? Magic??

> The reality is that most companies borrow money only when the availability > of extra capital would help them generate more revenues or capture > additional market share.

This doesn't change the fact that the demand back for money will exceed the actually money supply.

It is simple math really. The fact that they are using the cash to, hopefully, generate more revenues is irrelevant.

Private companies have no control over the the supply of money. This is a central banking problem.

<comment><USER26> >You sill would need $105k at the end of the year to satisfy all debts and have an equilibrium withing the economy. Where is the extra $5K coming from? Magic??

this makes very little sense. You are not lending the entire economy and then demanding more than the economy be paid back. You only lend a portion of the money supply so that a slightly larger portion is repaid.

Even if that were the case, isnt that what QE does?

<comment><USER24> >You are not lending the entire economy and then demanding more than the economy be paid back.

You are right that you are not lending the entire economy, I was just making the example as simple as possible. But, the second interest is being charged then the demand of money back exceeds the actual money supply. What companies and investors do to increase revue for 1 particular organization has no effect on the money supply. All companies are doing are vying to try and redistribute the money that already exists in their favor, they aren't creating money (if they are that is called counterfeiting and is illegal).

> Even if that were the case, isn't that what QE does?

Yes, QE increases the money supply. I am not saying that the money supply doesn't get increased (by the Federal Reserve), merely pointing out the fact that once you get on this treadmill it just goes faster and faster and faster, and there is no way to get off without a disaster (bubble).

<comment><USER27> Jax, I'm sorry but this is just fundamentally incorrect. The economy is not a zero sum game. Clearly there is annual economic growth, and that growth compounded over many years has lead to orders of magnitude growth in the size of the US/World economy.

Companies borrow money in order to invest in their own growth. Borrowing allows increased growth rate and in turn increased spending which has follow- on effects downstream (this is called the money multiple).

I very much enjoyed taking the intro Micro and Macroeconomics classes as part of my Econ degree. There are probably even great courses online for free now. I'd highly recommend it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shellshock, a spaceshooter game written in Bash - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/b01t/shellshock <comment><USER2> Whao that is impressive, honestly I would not have believe that shell script is this powerful.</comment>


Open Source Is Old School, Says The GitHub Generation - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/05/15/open-source-is-old-school-says-the-github-generation

<comment><USER2> Soon there will be a major land grabbing frenzi by some big software companies and they will put anything that is up for grabs into their propritary licencing vault, making it difficult for anyone else to write any sensible software without being sued into oblivion.

So stupid and wasteful, they learned absolutely nothing about how the world really turns. Really a wasted software writers generation, only a small minority of superstars and well networked developers will be transfered along with the code to that vault, the rest can look for another job, good luck with finding any that has not been automated already!!

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this really a thoughtful movement toward no licensing? Or is it just people neglecting to specify licensing?</comment>


PDF Miner - <AUTHOR> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pdfminer/20090330 <comment><USER2> If anyone wants to use this for something public-service oriented:

Chicago is running for the 2016 Olympic games. About a month ago they released their official "bid book" in PDF form. The local papers gave it a look and wrote some fine stories, but a bunch of local journalists (myself among them) would like to extract the thing out into a Wiki so people could discuss and annotate it instead of just reading it in PDF form.

Link to the bid book: <http://www.chicago2016.org/our-plan/bid-book/bid- book.aspx>

We were thinking of using MediaWiki as the wiki engine. One of us is currently running (the excellent) Chicago Elections Wiki over at <http://chicagoelections.pbwiki.com/>

We'd host, promote, annotate and fill out the wiki, the important thing is to move this from a pdf to an interactive, scannable, hypertext format so people can tear it apart.

We'd been talking about sneaking into PyCon and asking around if anyone there would be interested in working on this. It looks like this PDF miner is the start of something that could do this.

<comment><USER3> For a one-off use, writing code (and finding a coder) might be overkill. I have been impressed by the results produced by <http://www.pdftoword.com>, which would render to Word or RTF from extremely weird pdf formatting. You should be able to safely convert from there.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link. I agree with you there. I was thinking maybe a general PDF-to-MediaWiki/PBWiki script might be of use for this and other projects.

There's an open government hackathon this week at PyCon here in Chicago and it looks like at least three of the proposed ideas are PDF-to-Text apps.

<http://feedback.sunlightfoundation.com/hackathon/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used it recently for analysis of PDF articles.

It's quite good, though as it is written in pure Python, it's rather slow (especially compared to command line tools written in C/C++).

I strongly recommend using Psyco [1]. Adding few lines of code cut my PDF->HTML conversion times by half.

Also, be warned that markup it produces can be very heavy. Depending on how PDF is structured, you can finish with huge amount of DOM elements.

\-----

[1] <http://psyco.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER5> For our startup we had a huge integration project with an industry-specific PDF and so I ended up writing a PDF importer that sounds like it does something similar to this project. The best part is that I couldn't figure out how to get my reader to determine what page a specific set of coordinates was on and it looks like this library supports it - thanks for the link!

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks interesting. Any good ruby alternatives?

<comment><USER7> Not sure. However there is a well established Perl one... <http://search.cpan.org/dist/CAM-PDF/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice stuff. So many public documents are released in PDF format instead of an easy to work with plain text format.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know if something like this exists for C? It would be nice to be able to call it from $LANGUAGE.

<comment><USER4> You could use innards of some open source PDF viewer (most of them are written in C++).

I managed to get away just with using command line PDF->TXT tool that came with Xpdf [1].

Also MuPDF is awesome [2]. Its bare bones demo PDF viewer replaced Foxit as my default PDF handler.

If you have some more serious budget, there is also PDFlib TET [3], a nice commercial solution with bindings for many languages (C, C++, Python, Ruby, Perl, .NET, and many others).

\-----

[1] <http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html>

[2] <http://ccxvii.net/fitz>

[3] <http://www.pdflib.com/en/products/tet/>

<comment><USER10> VimTip: You can integrate xpdf with vim to view PDF's directly in your editor.

        autocmd BufReadPre *.pdf set ro
        autocmd BufReadPost *.pdf silent %!pdftotext "%" -

<comment><USER5> Unencrypted PDF files can be opened in any editor, they are plaintext.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> AAAAAAGHFGUREH!!! I had to write my own a few months ago, which sucked. If I had known about this, I could have been saved a lot of effort. Noooooo!

Technology moves forward, I see.</comment>


Leap Motion's Augmented-Reality Computing Looks Stupid Cool - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/leap-motion-glimpse-at-the-augmented-reality-desktop-of-the-future

<comment><USER2> Hi HN, I was one of the engineers who worked on this. It was just a hackathon demo, but we're really excited about improving the way you interact with your computer.</comment>


Trump asks for tanks, helicopters at military parade for July 4th - <AUTHOR> https://beta.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/trump-asks-for-military-tanks-on-the-mall-as-part-of-grandiose-july-fourth-event/2019/07/01/e9d274ee-9adc-11e9-8d0a-5edd7e2025b1_story.html <comment><USER2> Please don't post garden-variety politics to Hacker News. There needs to be an intellectually interesting angle for such a story to be on topic here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Because burning tax payer money for a parade is a great use of funds

<comment><USER4> Taxpayers should get to see what their money goes to buy.

<comment><USER3> By wasting more money helping some wannabe dictator?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An Abrams M1A2 tank weighs 69.4 tons.

I suppose they plan to repave the street later.

<comment><USER6> I saw one in a parade. It left tread prints, but the road still worked.

Even if the road didn't work, repaving isn't that big of a deal. It's a small price to pay for seeing a massive tank roll down the street.</comment></comment>


Malaysian Whiskey Timah Bags Silver at San Francisco World Spirits Competition - <AUTHOR> https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/malaysian-whiskey-timah-bags-silver-at-san-francisco-world-spirits-competition <comment><USER2> Given the aftershave flavoured muck that the Americans try and pass off as "whiskey", I'm not sure how much of an accolade it is, to be given such an award there.</comment>


I work at a startup and I am BROKE. How do I make some extra money? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Well, it isn't really all that satisfying, but I've taken to tutoring, specifically SAT tutoring. This has good points ($40-$50 / hour, not very difficult) and it has bad points (relatively mindless, highly repetitive, can be a lot of driving). Still, it is a flexible solution to a very stressful problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well you've got the www.rentacoder.com type sites. www.odesk.com is another. And then you've got whatever you can dig up on your own through independent consulting. Just be sure not to break any agreements with the startup with respect to IP, competition, etc.

And then there's always waiting tables. A bit of a shot to the ego perhaps, but that'd be a good break from coding perhaps. If it's good enough for every budding actor/screenwriter/director in LA... :)

</comment><comment><USER4> My cofounder works this way and I have all the respect for him for being able to carry this out without it having an impact on our development.

Still you have to be very careful it does not take your focus away at any point. My partner had freelanced before so he knew what kind of projects to take and not take. Best projects are those that pay for some straightforward coding without much mental work.

</comment><comment><USER5> A while ago, I remember reading on Emanuel Derman's blog (<http://www.wilmott.com/blogs/eman/)> a comment along the lines of "Time and the right to choose have value".

So while I'm sure you can find some job to pay the bills, consider how much time (and in what state mentally/physically) it will leave you to focus on your startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally, if I was ever in this situation I think I'd go for a mindless job like becoming a Starbucks barista or something. I find it's harder to have good ideas at home after doing something that involves thinking all day.</comment>


Ask HN: Black Friday tech deals  - <AUTHOR>

gadgets, software, books.. any recommendations? <comment><USER2> Apple's black friday deals: [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/24/apples-black- friday-sale...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/24/apples-black-friday-sale- goes-live-internationally/)

Although with a student discount most things are cheaper unless you want to buy an ipod/iphone/ipad..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Themify has a 40% off on wp themes, memberships <http://themify.me/blog/black- friday-long-weekend-sale></comment>


Sequoia has emergency meeting, tells startups to try to survive downturn - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/10/08/report-sequoia-has-emergency-meeting-tells-startups-try-survive-downturn

<comment><USER2> My advise to startup CEO's, whatever you do, don't be an optimist. This is not the end of the beginning; this is the beginning of the beginning. Things will get a lot tougher for a lot longer than you can ever imagine, much worse that the last one in 2000 which I fortunately survived. The timing of the $700B bailout last week is similar to the $3B inventory writedown by Cisco in Q3 of 2000. Until then, every CEO knew that things were tough but everyone thought that recovery was in sight. But when John Chambers threw in the towel, it really marked the beginning of the beginning. If you are the CEO of a startup that is not yet profitable and survives on VC money, you are screwed. If you are the CEO of a startup that has just achieved profitability, you might not be anymore. The best advise that I ignored in 2000 was "your money is your most valuable asset". Do whatever it takes to cut down on your fixed cost. Unfortunately, now is the time to reduce your headcount. Stretch your runway. This one will last at least four years, if not longer. You have no idea how hard this is going to get. I have been there. I know.

</comment><comment><USER3> The average Sequoia startup raises a lot of money, so it makes sense for them to sound all kinds of alarms, if you started out being frugal and efficient you're already trying to survive. If you're a mega startup with Aerons, yeah okay.</comment>


Show HN: CloudParty – play games with friends in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://cloudparty.io <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: we are very alpha.

TL:DR; We are building a service were users can easily spin-up private game servers to play with friends.

Basically we support launching VM on multiple cloud providers (mainly thanks to jclouds), then we provision a game server via docker container on a vanilla ubuntu 14.04, finally the user can get the IP address of the VM and play.

Game servers are launched with pre-defined configurations, but the user can override the command line flags of the game server and restart it, directly from the control panel.

With this platform, we would also _love_ to help multiplayer indie developers to host and sell their shiny new game server to users.

If there are HN gamers reading this, feel free to suggest any game that you should be available.</comment>


Christian Friedrich Schönbein, the chemist who discovered ozone and guncotton - <AUTHOR> http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/Schonbein.html <comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://gizmodo.com/this-badass-19th-century-chemist- sniffed-...](http://gizmodo.com/this-badass-19th-century-chemist-sniffed- ozone-and-inve-1737618963), which points to this.</comment>