No, ZFS really doesn't need an fsck tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6071-No,-ZFS-really-doesnt-need-a-fsck.html <comment><USER2> The whole fsck discussion seems baffling to me.

While I'm no ZFS expert, I've been using it for several years now and my understanding is this. Take what a normal fsck type tool does and build those features into the underlying FS and supporting toolchain. For what ZFS does and how it works, it really doesn't make sense to me _at all_ for it to have an "fsck," whatever that means. Really, it's hard to even imagine what an "fsck" would do for zfs. You'd just end up rewriting bits of the toolchain or asking for the impossible.

I asked this in the other thread, but I'll ask here again. Excluding semantics, what is it that people want fsck to do specifically that zfs doesn't provide a method for already? Seriously, the question to me seems akin to asking why manufacturers don't publish the rpm spec for SSDs. It's a really odd thing to ask and can't be answered without an exhaustive review of the mechanics of the system.

I can't help but get the feeling that a lot of people complaining about ZFS have very little knowledge or familiarity with it and/or BSD/Unix in general. ZFS is not like any Linux FS. It doesn't use fstab, the toolchain is totally different, the FS is fundamentally different. It was built for Solaris and really reflects their ideology, which is completely foreign to people who only have familiarity with Linux. Accept it and move on or don't, but I've yet to see any evidence to back up these claims other than "this is what is done in Linux for everything else" which is just FUD.

<comment><USER3> Yes, emphatically agreed. I co-founded Fishworks, the group within Sun that shipped a ZFS-based appliance. The product was (and, I add with mixed emotion, still is) very commercially successful, and we shipped hundreds of thousands of spindles running ZFS in production, enterprise environments. And today I'm at Joyent, where we run ZFS in production on tens of thousands of spindles and support software customers running many tens of thousands more. Across all of that experience -- which has (naturally) included plenty of pain -- I have never needed or wanted anything resembling a traditional "fsck" for ZFS. Those that decry ZFS's lack of a fsck simply don't understand (1) the semantics of ZFS and specifically of pool import, (2) the ability to rollback transactions and/or (3) the presence of zdb (which we've taken pains to document in illumos[1], the repository of record for ZFS). So please, take it from someone with a decade of production experience with ZFS: it does not need fsck.

[1] <http://illumos.org/man/1m/zdb>

<comment><USER4> Hi. rsync.net here. I wonder if you concur with us that ZFS _does_ need a defrag utility ?

I know you can (and we have) do the copy back and forth method to rebalance how things are organized on multiple vdevs inside one pool, but it would be nice if that were not a manual process, or could be optional on a scrub.

Or something.

People can and do run their pools up higher than 80% utilization. It happens. It's happened to you. There should be a non-surgical way to regain balanced vdevs after such a state...

<comment><USER3> Ah, yes -- now we're talking about a meaningful way in which ZFS can be improved! (But then, you know that.) Metaslab fragmentation is a very real issue -- and (as you point out) when pools are driven up in terms of utilization, that fragmentation can become acute. (Uday Vallamsetty at Delphix has an excellent blog entry that explores this visually and quantitatively.[1]) In terms of fixing it: ZFS co-inventor Matt Ahrens did extensive prototyping work on block pointer rewrite, but the results were mixed[2] -- and it was a casualty of the Oracle acquisition regardless. I don't know if the answer is rewriting blocks or behaving better when the system has become fragmented (or both), but this is surely a domain in which ZFS can be improved. I would encourage anyone interested in taking a swing at this problem to engage with Uday and others in the community -- and to attend the next ZFS Day[3].

[1] <http://blog.delphix.com/uday/2013/02/19/78/>

[2] <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.os.illumos.devel/5203>

[3] <http://zfsday.com/zfsday/>

<comment><USER4> We'll see what we can do. We have some ZFS firefighting that dominates our to- do list currently[1][2] but if we can work through that in short order we will dedicate some funds and resources to the FreeBSD side of ZFS and getting "defrag" in place.

I meant to attend zfs day and will try to come in 2013 if it is held.

[1] Space accounting. How much _uncompressed_ space, minus ZFS metadata, does that ZFS filesystem actually take up ? Nobody knows.

[2] extattrs + busy ZFS == crash

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting rant (from 2009). At NetApp the WAFL file system is also always consistent on disk, so it too doesn't need fsck. That said, WAFL had 'wack' (WAfl ChecK) which could go through and check that the on disk image was correct.

Unlike UFS or FFS or EXTn the file system couldn't be corrupted by loss of power mid write, but like ZFS it can be corrupted by bugs in the code which _write a corrupted version to disk_. So the tool does something similar to fsck but it is simpler, more of a data structure check rather than a "recreate the flow of buffers through the buffer cache to save as much as possible" exercise.

<comment><USER6> _"At NetApp the WAFL file system is also always consistent on disk, so it too doesn't need fsck."_

How does it manage to stay consistent if a cosmic ray strikes it and flips one or more bits?

How does it manage to stay consistent if you physically bump in to the drives and cause physical damage by having the disk head briefly touch the disk surface?

Wouldn't you need a filesystem consistency check and repair tool like fsck in these cases?

<comment><USER5> _"How does it manage to stay consistent if a cosmic ray strikes it and flips one or more bits?"_

At the time (and I think its still true) cosmic rays do not have sufficient energy to flip a magnetic domain on disk. Memory bit flips are detected by ECC and channel (between the I/O card and memory and/or disk) are identified with CRC codes.

 _"How does it manage to stay consistent if you physically bump in to the drives and cause physical damage by having the disk head briefly touch the disk surface?"_

The disks are part of a RAID4 or 6 group (RAID 6 preferred for drives > 500MB, required for drives >= 2TB) so physically damaging a drive results in a group reconstruction of the data on that drive.

NetApp has always had a pretty solid "don't trust anything" sort of mantra that has been tested and fortified a few times by various events. The ones I got to see first hand were an HBA that corrupted traffic through it in flight, drives that returned a different block than you asked for, and drives that acknowledged they had written data to the drive when in fact they had not.

Back in the early 2000's anything that could happen with a disk with a probability larger than once in billion operations or higher, they got to see once a month. It was an interesting challenge which requires a certain discipline to deal with. When I went to Google and saw their "we assume everything is crap, we just fix it in software" model it gave me another perspective on how to tackle the problem of storage reliability.

Both schemes work and have their plusses and minuses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. When there is a bug in the code that writes the ZFS stuff, why should the bug be addressed by the fsck code. This would assume, that you know of the bug beforehand, but then you could better fix the bug in the code that writes.

2\. When there is a bug in the on-disk-state it should be addressed by the code that reads the data , not by a fsck tool.

2.1. The correction of the bug in the on-disk-state should be done on the basis of the exact knowledge about the bug and not by a generic check tool.

3\. Repair is always based on assumptions. Those could be correct or incorrect. The more you know about the problem that led to the repair-worthy state, the more probable the assumptions are correct.

4\. What is the reasoning behind the argument "when your metadata is corrupt , that the data is correct" and so you could repair metadata corruption without problems. It sounds more sensible to fall back to the last known correct and consistent state of metadata and data, based on the on-disk-state represented by the pointer structure of the ueberblock with the highest transaction group commit number with a correct checksum . The Transaction Group rollback at mount does exactly this.

</comment><comment><USER8> I lost a ZFS pool once. The cause ultimately turned out to be a slowly failing PSU. (It was an expensive OCZ PSU, too, which is why I didn't suspect it as quickly as I probably should have. OCZ did replace it under warranty without argument.)

It was a development machine, so it wasn't being backed up. I thought it was just one disk going bad; by the time it was clear that it was something worse than that, it was too late. Most of the important contents of the pool had been checked into the VCS, but not everything. I wound up grepping the raw disk devices to find the latest versions of a couple of files.

Any filesystem would have had serious trouble in such a situation, of course. But I can't help thinking that picking up the pieces might have been easier with, say, EXT3.

On the other hand, I think it speaks well for ZFS that a slowly failing PSU seems to be almost the only way to lose a pool.

</comment><comment><USER9> So if you have an unmountable zfs pool, instead of reaching for fsck (which doesn't and won't exist) you can instead do:

        zpool clear -F data

And it will take advantage of the copy-on-write nature of ZFS to roll back to the last verifiably consistent state of your filesystem. That's a lot better than the uncertain fixes applied by fsck to other file systems. It even tells you how old the restored state is.

<comment><USER10> Why not ship with fsck.zfs="zpool clear -F data"? Then people would stop complaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A slight disagreement: the advantage of a ZFS online consistency checker would be to help ensure that there are no bugs in ZFS.

It appears that ZFS lacks a full consistency checker -- scrub only walks the tree and computes checksums; notably absent in this procedure appears to be validating the DDT. While ZFS claims to be always on-disk consistent--and I certainly believe that the intent is that it be so!--I seem to have tripped over some bug ( [http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- fs/2013-March/016...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- fs/2013-March/016627.html) ) which corrupted the DDT, and now I have no way of rebuilding it, so I dropped $$$ (for me) on a new disk array and zfs send | zfs recv so that everything rebuilt. That's sort of crazy, if I may be so bold.

I suppose I could take the pool offline for several days and poke at it with zdb, but that is not really desirable either.

</comment><comment><USER12> The article doesn't ever consider that _ZFS_ might have bugs. Dodgy disks, bad firmware, power failures, yes. But no consideration that the ZFS code could contain problems.

If you are happy that the ZFS code is perfect, then it makes sense to rely upon its consistency checks, snapshot features, etc (and I'm not criticising those). But what if ZFS isn't 100%? How do you recover your data?

<comment><USER13> _Any filesystem_ might have bugs and you can't rely on fsck to alleviate that problem (in fact it might make it worse).

That problem is solved by having backups. ZFS dis not a replacement for backups.

Oh, and there's always zdb, the ZFS debugger, you can use it to walk the on- disk structures.

<comment><USER14> The fsck can't make it worse if you mirror the drive first.

Also, is "you can't rely on fsck to alleviate that problem" an argument for not having an fsck?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ZFS may not need fsck, but it would be great if Oracle would re-open-source it. I've considered using it, but I can't trust that it has a future.

I'm also rather confused by Oracle contributing to btrfs while also building ZFS privately. My intuition is that if they open-sourced ZFS and offered it under a dual BSD/GPL license, it would become the fs standard overnight.

<comment><AUTHOR> It has a future. FreeBSD and companies based on it like IXSystems have adopted it and developers are actively hacking it. In FreeBSD version 10 it will feature TRIM support as well as a new data compression scheme (LZ4): <https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD10>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And after a dozen paragraphs on how ZFS is unlikely to get corrupted, the meat of the conent: "my opinion is that you shouldn't try to repair it anyway".

 _Anyway: You do not repair the state last state of the data. And in my opinion: You should not try to repair it ... at least not by automatic means. Such a repair would be risky in any case. [..] In this situation i would just take my money from the table and call it a day. You may lose the last few changes, but your tapes are older._

This "you do not need an emergency repair tool because in an emergency I think you should just forget it" is exactly the claim that this blog post was supposed to be countering. Explaining why a do-the-best-you-can repair utility is not necessary, and the argument it boils down to is "because I don't think you should do that".

<comment><USER7> The basic problem of filesystem repair is the point that you repair the metadata, but it can do nothing about your data. So when your filesystem enables you to fall back to a known consistent state of metadata and data by the COW, you should fall back to a known consistent state. And not to something that is repaired by a generic tool. How do you know in such a situation that somewhere in you thousands and thousands of files the repair got something wrong. The copy on write behaviour of ZFS has it's advantages.

And as i already wrote in a different comment: If there is a bug in the stuff writing the on-disk state, the bug should be addressed on the exact knowledge of the bug in the code reading the on-disk-state and thus doesn't make assumption what could be halfway correct, but by some piece of code that does the correct with the incorrect on-disk-state.

<comment><USER16> Yes, I know you said both those two things, and I agree - ZFS has inbuilt error detection and healing. Any code that can detect errors and heal them should be there. And if you have corruption the only long term, safe, ass- covering advice to give is to restore to a pre-corrupt state.

But the argument went:

Detractor: ZFS needs fsck.

You: No it doesn't.

Detractor: ZFS creators attitude has always been "we don't think it should exist", but there's no more reason than this. It still corrupts so it still needs an fsck tool.

You: Here is a big blog post about why it doesn't: OK so it can get corrupted but I don't think an fsck tool should exist.

You know how useful it is to post on StackExchange "help I have this situation, I know conceptually there is a way out, but how can I actually do it?" and get the replies "you shouldn't want to do that"? It's not helpful at all.

<comment><USER7> When i leverage the copyonwrite-ness (which is more redirect-on-write) of the filesystem to recover from a defunct state of the on-disk state to a known state, a filesystem check is just a suboptimal solution. That what i wanted to express with the article. Of course - most filesystems are not COW and can't use it, and thus the notion that a filesystem check is needed prevails. But at the end a filesystem check is just about forcing a filesystem into a state of metadata correctness, without caring much about the data. I wouldn't count that as a way out, when there are better ways.

I think the situation is pretty much similar to the "shoot the messenger" problem of ZFS. Some people are annoyed that ZFS reports errors because of corruption and blocks access to the data (of course without having any redundancy). However the alternative would be reading incorrect data. What's worse. Knowing that you have to recover data or processing incorrect data without knowing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of when I introduce people to Linux and they insist that there must _really_ be a C drive.

</comment><comment><USER18> Been running it since 0.6.0-rc14 on a Proliant Microserver with ECC RAM and I am happy with it. 4x2TB RAIDZ internal, and 2x1TB USB3 zpools with SSD for zil and logs. Shared over GigE using Samba4 and AFP.

Performance is decent enough with lz4 compression and dedup off. Dedup on takes more CPU but nothing even the 2.2Ghz Turion can't handle. Main thing is stability has improved a lot too.

If you want the utmost performance may be this isn't for you but for NAS/backup/streaming type usage ZFS on Linux is nearly perfect.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I'm just tired this morning but I wish this article could just get to the point. I feel like I'm reading a mystery novel but I am never going to make it to the end and find out who did it.

<comment><USER13> This article explains _in-depth_ why ZFS doesn't need a fsck tool. It's very much to the point in its entirety. I'm sorry content-free articles posted here lately have diluted your expectations.

<comment><USER19> I agree this article in not content free but all these points could be made in many fewer and less convoluted words. And they buried the real news (at least to me) that the hardware is lying to the OS. Did not mean to offend.

<comment><USER20> It's in the first sentence of the fourth paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand why people think ZFS doens't have a fsck tool: zpool scrub

<comment><USER22> Probably because on at least two distros, fsck.zfs is just a symlink to a bash script that runs "exit 0".

That kind of threw me for a loop.

<comment><USER21> Thats to deal with the fact their init scripts blindly call "fsck.fstype", and zfs doesn't have a fsck nor needs one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> love the domain name

</comment><comment><USER24> It reminds me of how people used to think all filesystems needed to be explicitly defragmented because of design flaws in FAT, which was designed for floppies (and wasn't especially well-designed even at that).

[http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_do...](http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_doesn_t_linux_need_defragmenting)

[http://www.howtogeek.com/115229/htg-explains-why-linux- doesn...](http://www.howtogeek.com/115229/htg-explains-why-linux-doesnt-need- defragmenting/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Nope, it just needs to stop having wrecks.</comment>


Ask HN: Want a custom sticker for your start-up? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys!
I have a good friend of mine that owns a factory that creates custom stickers, signs, etc. If you are planning on creating some good cheap marketing material, please feel free to add some description in the comments below, or email me!
If you want a pack of 100 stickers with your company logo on it, or something, add it in below, or if you want a different variety of stickers of different start-ups add that in also.
Example: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/2472474888_acd152fd63.jpg
Email: email@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> Received two orders from two different start-ups. I'll be accepting more orders, please feel free to email me.</comment>


Ask HN: Any good alternatives to pen and paper? - <AUTHOR> I'm taking quite a few notes at work, sometimes just reminders, sometimes a quick scribble, you know the deal.
I think I've filled several notebooks this year and I wonder whether there's something better than putting ink on dead wood.
Does HN have any good alternatives? Possibly without some strange app which is coupled to a 3rd party service or something like that.
Full digitalization of the notes would be great, but I'm up to whatever you can recommend.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have a two media philosophy.

1) Physical: I use a TWSBI ECO fountain pen and a Rhodia wirebound 6" x 8.25" notepad. A good fountain pen on good paper is the most pleasurable means I've found for note-taking. Pleasure is important to me. The notepad has perforations on each page, so if I ever need to digitize something, I just tear the page off and snap a pic using Dropbox, which creates a nice PDF for me. The PDF looks beautiful. Beauty is also important to me.

2) Electronic: For digital notes, I just use Google Docs. I have a single continuous document full of thoughts, observations, etc., each thought separated by an em-dash (--) on a new-line. I've tried more complicated systems, but simplicity ultimately won out. Also I can access Google Docs on my desktop, work computer, phone and tablet. I've since learned that some of my favorite writers scribble their thoughts on Google Docs too.

Do the two systems converge? Sometimes. Sometimes I transcribe stuff from my Rhodia notepad to my Google Docs document, but often times I don't. In my philosophy, they don't have to converge.

Note-taking on Google Docs is about archiving information.

Note-taking on a notepad about training the mind. I remember things better when I write them. Being able to flip through pages helps builds spatial memory. I rarely go back to stuff I write on a notepad because I tend to remember them. If I really need to remember them long-term and make them searchable, I transfer them to Google Docs, and in the process, reinforce that memory.

Having a two media approach sounds inefficient from an information collection perspective because your info is dispersed and exists in two disjoint forms. But if your objective isn't just to store information in a repository but to supercharge your own thinking, this turns out to be a surprisingly effective approach, I've found.

<comment><USER3> That's cool on the TWSBI ECO, that's what I use as well. Some questions, if you don't mind:

A - what ink do you use? I'm still looking for one that works really well. Main thing is I hate blead through the paper B - Do you use the Rhodia paper one sided or two sided? I'm looking for a paper that I can use two sided with no bleed through, but other than super thick sketch paper haven't found anything.

<comment><USER2> I wanted a really black ink, so I settled with the Rohrer und Klingner Leipziger Schwarz (~$11). It's black with dark navy tones. I really like how it looks on paper. Inks I tried that weren't black enough: Herbin Perle Noire, Noodler's American Eel.

Rhodia paper -- I use it two-sided with no bleed through (Rhodia Dotpad No 16, ~$6). Rhodia and Clairefontaine paper can generally be used both-sided with no issues. There's a Japanese brand, Profolio that I also like, and 2-sided is not an issue. The best paper I've ever written on is the Rhodia No 18 premium. It's $16 per pad (A4 sized) but the glide is smooth and the quality is amazing.

<comment><USER4> I'm a huge fan of A4 notebooks and fountain pens!

I'm currently partial to the Leuchtturm 1917 master series, at least in part because of all the beautiful colors there are to choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, this looks like what I thought of, but the price tag is... well... it's present. :-D

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

<comment><USER5> Looks interesting, but I clicked "buy now" to view the price, and there's just an infinite loop of a Javascript loading indicator...waited 4 seconds and dipped out.

<comment><USER6> starts at $499

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but with a cover and the "nicer" stylus, you are around $700. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After years of experimenting, I've concluded that it's not the medium, it's the ritual.

Things like meeting minutes I take electronically, but I still use physical notebooks as my main idea capture. I then go through and transcribe the notes onto the computer if I feel like follow-up action is needed.

I find that the most valuable part of the process is reviewing those written notes. Theoretically, I should be able to do the same thing with a program like Evernote, and I've tried that. In practice, I wound up taking shortcuts.

Going through and re-evaluating or adding to your original thoughts when moving from one medium to another is a valuable exercise.

</comment><comment><USER8> If money is not really a problem you could use the 3rd gen iPad Pro with 12.9" display and apple pencil. The default note taking app works well enough. It's kept my notes over the last several years. The pencil is pretty great for drawing diagrams and figures, so I would definitely purchase that with it. I found the 12.9" display works best for me, because I like to split the tablet window in half with 1 app on each side with my notes app usually being on one of the sides. The other apps I use alongside the notes are brilliant.org's app and pdfs of math or programming texts.

If your looking for something more around the ~$400 range you may look at a cheaper alternative. I've seen advertisements for this paper-like e-ink tablet Remarkable [1] quite a bit and it seems like it might be a nice alternative.

[1]: [https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable](https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable)

</comment><comment><USER9> I used an iPad 2 with a note taking app during my 2 years of engineering master in college. It was synced with my Google Drive, I didn't struggled with complex equations and drawings and allowed in text search (which wasn't that great at the time). I used a free pen given by a random company during a job fair and raised eyebrows to costly alternatives.

It was great however the battery lifetime and occasional bugs made me nervous sometimes.

Confort wasn't that great, I couldn't put my wrist on the screen and learnt to write without. The device was quite thick, which you suddenly notice compared to a classic paper when you take notes for hours.

Its the only notes I still have since I couldn't easily scan perforated seyes paper (often double pages) that I used at the time and I let my huge binders at my parent's home. Just for this, it has tremendous value. Maybe if I had to do it again today I would spend a few hours mastering LaTeX to being faster to take note of huge equations on a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER10> In terms of focus and tactile cues to help you remember your notes, unfortunately probably not.

I've used an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, iPad Mini with pencil, Microsoft Surface with that pen, and a couple of different dedicated notes taking tablets (though not Remarkable... yet?)

Dead trees and ink, plus an app to scan and keep track of indexes has worked the best for recall and social factors. Practicing taking dense notes helps the notebooks last longer, as does only using 240+ page notebooks. Actual Bullet Journaling, instead of Instagram-worthy nonsense even the creator hates, works pretty well.

Transcribing the notes occasionally to a markdown for Git was annoying, until I realized I was editing and adding a lot by doing so, to the point where I usually updated my notebook a bit during the process.

My 2c, your mileage may vary.

</comment><comment><USER11> You've already discovered the remarkable tablet so I'm just going to say that I'm a huge fan. I use it quite heavily for note taking. I can't recommend it enough. You may find second hand units for cheaper, since they've been around for a couple of years now and there exists a large majority of people who weren't really heavy paper users but bought it for the sake of novelty.

That said, if your primary problem is going through a lot of books quickly and you cannot afford the remarkable, even a used one, you may want to consider something like:

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

One of my colleagues uses it and seems to be pretty happy with it.

<comment><USER12> How does Remarkable compare with the new Sony e-ink tablet?

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't know since I've not used one. I didn't even know that they had a new model of the DPT. Judging by a quick google though, I think the biggest difference is the display and touchscreen. The Sony appears to have a "Electrophoretic display" and a "Projected capacitive touchscreen" whereas the remarkable has a proprietary 'Canvas display' based on E-ink Carta -- all that to say, I can place my hand on the remarkable display and write / sketch / highlight ..etc. I'm not sure whether that is true of the DPT. The biggest problems with the writing on regular touchscreens is accidental unwanted 'writing' by your palm instead of the pen.

edit: I should add that the remarkable runs linux and as such is pretty hackable. You can ssh into it and hack it in a number of interesting ways[1] if you're into that sort of thing. Although for my purposes just adding custom writing templates itself is worth the hack-ability.

[1] [https://github.com/reHackable/](https://github.com/reHackable/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really don't want to move away from handwriting notes. You learn better that way. Plus, most note taking apps suck, look the same, and lock you in to a proprietary system that's going to be obsolete when the devs release the next paid update. For my scripts and code I do take notes electronically, but just in .txt files stuck in relevant folders. The best system is very little system.

I nearly pulled the trigger on an e ink tablet but ended up bailing on it. Pen and paper is cheap and ubiquitous, and I can recycle it unlike the tablet that's mostly going to end up in the dump, and just another thing to charge or forget at home.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't think you can beat pen and paper. It's cheap, portable, it's easier to remember what you write vs digital input and it's easy to access. Given that, I think it can be improved.

I've used OneNote before and it's great at organizing note so I've started to take photos of my notes and organizing them in OneNote. In theory, it can OCR them but it's really wishful thinking given my handwriting.

I suspect that my notebooks will outlast my OneNote notes but only time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER15> A _fountain_ pen and paper.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found that putting ink on dead wood with a livescribe pen gave me all the advantages of paper and a lot of the advantages of a tablet. I can search through my notebooks from several years ago with the digitised copy on my phone.

The other advantage is that you don't get distracted by email and other things on it.

<comment><USER17> Does this work decently? Is text searchable? Do you write cursive? Thanks.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it does work as long as I don't write too small. But I don't do cursive so I don't know how it would fare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do you want somehow to digitalize your current notes or software to create your own?

I can recommend you Zettelkasten. I actually wrote software for myself, in my opinion you get the most freedom that way and second brain should be custom tailored for you.

New software that is getting praise right now is Roam Research, but I haven't used it

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I dream of some kind of eInk tablet/display thing which will do OCR on my crappy handwriting and will automatically create txt files or something like that and send them via mail. Or put them in a pre-defined folder. Maybe I could reopen those notes on the device, cross something out and it will get saved.

Pretty much like paper in the end, but without paper.

<comment><USER19> A yoga style tablet and Microsoft one note can be leveraged to do roughly the things you are describing.

It also has the advantage that when you add screenshots, those are also OCRed and searchable.

It's not quite as native feeling as grabbing a pen and paper though, so it takes some getting used to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Pencil and paper is _excellent_.

<comment><USER21> Sure it is fine. But sometimes you need to send the notes via email and it is easier if you have on digital format

<comment><USER22> Snap a photo, email it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm currently going down this route myself. I fill 6-10 notebooks a year and am wondering if there is a better way. For me it's specifically how can I take what I write and then make that editable text so I don't have to duplicate work.

My current test is an iPad Pro and Apple pencil with GoodNotes. It's not inexpensive and I didn't buy the tablet specifically for this reason, but it's a test.

It's good for some things: meetings notes, proposal work, things I need to send to other people.

It is not a replacement for pen and paper. For me I like fountain pens and paper. So I still have one or two notebooks that I'm using for daily schedule, etc.

<comment><USER23> This has been my go to for about a year now. I have set up a couple templates that I use as blank pages. I keep four notebooks: one for each my day job, my side projects, house renovations and one for notes at conferences or when taking a course.

I used to carry at least two or three different note/sketchbooks and a small collection of pens. Now, just the iPad Pro and pencil.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'm still trying to do more on the iPad, and it's working well. At the end of the day, I really like the feeling of pen on paper, which is what it will keep me from fully going paperless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use onenote at work. As an editor it sucks for tables etc., but as an organisation and search system is alright, and for team collaboration it's pretty useful. I.e. I can promote personal notes to team ones easily.

</comment><comment><USER25> NEO2 - it's ancient but so well built. Buy used, there's no modern better product 'cause the NEO2 was so common and well made. Instant on. Neo makes a pen product now, if that's more appealing to you. But what I need now is software that auto sorts (according to tags) each note into the right place in my various notes documents. Now I'm doing that manually.

</comment><comment><USER26> Onenote.

For everything, literally capturing meeting notes, screenshots everything. A local notebook but can sync to the cloud

</comment><comment><USER27> Digitally, I use a variation on BuJo rapid logging, implemented in Markdown with plaintext. BuJo itself has become essentially scrapbooking for task management, but the basic idea of logging in bullet lists makes a lot of sense.

Markdown has three legal bullets for UL lists, which along with some sigils after the bullet/space is plenty for complex logging one line at a time. Here's the "key" at the top of each of my journals:

        #### Entry Key

        *   Event
        *   Project
        *   Planned Task
        +   New Task
        -   Note

        #### Event Status

        * ! Key
        * ? Maybe
        * % Cancelled

        #### Task/Project Status

        + ! Key
        + ? Watch
        + ^ Tracked
        + ~ Carried
        + $ Completed
        + @ Delegated
        + % Dropped

Sample log for a day looks like:

        ### Friday :: November 8, 2019

        #### Highlights

        -   This cool thing that happened!

        #### Planned

        *   Some event
            -   Meeting notes
            +   Action Item

        *   Some planned task I copied from OmniFocus

        #### Journal

        + ^ Follow up on so and so issue
        + ^ Make sure stakeholders aligned

        -   Reached out to Coworker
            + $ Wait for followup
            + $ Schedule lunch for Tuesday

        - ! Some great idea
        -   DJSON awesome for nested JSON
        -   To extract from logs, wrap with [""]

I use Keyboard Maestro macros to quickly create the header skeletons from templates as needed and I fill in "Planned" during my daily prep. From there it's just appending to the bottom. I also have Alfred workflows and other scripts that know how to append a bullet line to the journal file, which helps a lot for logging notes from anywhere.

Periodically, I search for "+<tab>" in the text file, and it finds all the new tasks I haven't marked with sigils in the gutter row. That lets me quickly move them into OmniFocus for longer-term tracking. Someday I'll script it.

For you, if you really only want notes, even simpler. It's just a day header and appending a bunch of - bullets!

But there'll always be times when it comes down to paper. When all that fails, I have a nice-looking aged-brass Fisher space pen in my front pocket and a Moleskine Cahier (the cheap cardboard ones) in my back pocket. If there's something important to catch unexpectedly the last thing I want to do is fumble with my phone. The notebook is by far the quickest option.

There are some really nice leather wallets for Cahier/Field Guide-sized notebooks, and it actually helps balance my sitting posture by having wallets in both sides. Here's an example of one wallet I bought--I bought both a Horween and Chromexcel version from this seller and they're both high quality.

[https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Horween-Leather-Moleskine- ref...](https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Horween-Leather-Moleskine- refills/dp/B01DTCYV2S)

If you make it nice enough to carry around, it quits feeling like a chore to do so.

</comment><comment><USER28> iPad, Apple Pencil, Paper-like screen protector & Notability

<comment><AUTHOR> I will look into this. Bonus would be that I could use the iPad for other things, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> hackers for hire : [https://www.hackerslist.co/](https://www.hackerslist.co/)</comment>


Surveillance libs in common smartphone apps collected data of 200M+ Americans - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/clinics-military-bases-aa.html <comment><AUTHOR> This refers to NYT article [0] "Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They're Not Keeping It Secret"

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/loca...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/10/business/location- data-privacy-apps.html)</comment>


Ask HN - Work Progression and Start-up Dilemma - <AUTHOR>

Current Employment Situation:
I am a senior developer on a team of about 25 other developers, and lead a team in the development of our core system. Work is decent right now but majority of my work is really on overseeing some of the other developers and helping with projects that are behind schedule ramp up to speed. The challenge is more on managing personalities rather than my own development skills. I would be promoted to a more senior role very shortly. I would rate the work as about 6/10, love having fun with most of my co workers, but I would love to work with some "A Type" players instead.
Other Employment Opportunity:
I also have opportunity to join a company that is more innovative and business oriented. The work will be more focused on emerging trends (which I love), a bit more prototyping and understanding opportunities and work with what I believe to be more "A Type" players. I suspect the demand physically and mentally would be much greater.
I have excellent trust and respect for each of my manager in both scenarios.
I also have a strong desire to pave my own success and work on a start up which I have done so thus far by working late at nights. Until my start-up is at a state where I can launch and be profitable, I would still like to be employed and potentially grow. Beta could be in a couple of months.
Which option should I take and why? This will certainly help me out in making a decision. <comment><USER2> Since you're asking this question on HN, you probably don't have much of an appetite for risk, or else you'd be launching your startup already. Stay with your current job.

I wish you continued success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback - one of my main consideration is how the job would affect my startup. On one hand, although the work is probably more intensive, the challenge and the nature of the work might inspire what I do outside of work.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is the "topcolor" setting new? - <AUTHOR>

Just noticed it in my settings. Is it a new feature? Or something you "unlock"? <comment><USER2> It's something you get access to once you have enough karma.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. I have a warm fuzzy feeling now. Time to cut out of work early and get a beer.</comment></comment>


Unlocked bootloaders: is "where possible" good enough? - mkr-hn http://storify.com/mkronline/is-where-possible-good-enough

<comment><AUTHOR> In other news, don't buy a carrier-locked phone and expect to have control over it.</comment>


After Every Mass Shooting, Americans Turn to Bogotá's 'Bulletproof Tailor' - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/after-every-mass-shooting-americans-turn-to-bogotas-bulletproof-tailor <comment><USER2> Some glaring editing mistakes here, like this:

 _The suede jacket I had on was level II, meaning it's certified to stop .9mm, .45mm, .38mm, and .22 caliber rounds_

Ouch. There's no such thing as a ".9mm": it's 9mm.

No such thing as a ".45mm" either: that round is .45 inches.

Same with the ".38mm".

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's bulletproof clothing for ants

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Odd to think that a simple undershirt (that costs $2000) could get you a couple months in prison in British Columbia, Canada:

[http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/free...](http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/00_09024_01)

<comment><USER5> That seems even more illogical than banning encryption. What is the rationale for a law that makes it illegal to protect oneself from attack?

<comment><USER6> Long time BC resident here, but this is the first time I've heard about this law. According to this [1] CBC article, the official rationale is:

> The intent is to deny criminals a protection that might make them more > likely to engage in violent behaviour, Heed said.

> "Police see it all too often. The gang member or organized criminal is out > on our streets and in our neighbourhoods while hiding behind the added > protection of bulletproof vests as innocent bystanders remain unprotected > and vulnerable," Heed said.

> "By taking away criminals' sense of security, we decrease the potential for > violence in public settings."

But that seems like a pretty weak rationale to me. Quoting from the article, "gangsters who ignore gun laws weren't likely to obey body armour laws".

[1] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/body- armour-t...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/body-armour-to-be- restricted-in-b-c-1.780821)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you look at the valuation of Bonobos you quickly realize this could be a great start up idea. Assuming you can lower the price for the average consumer where they can wear it as daily wear. It would greatly protect consumers against potentially fatal situations such as knife fights, drive by bullets, cross-fire bullets, and shrapnel from explosions.

<comment><USER8> Best part is, the media does your advertising for you by convincing terrified citizens that they're going to get taken out in a mass shooting at any second, while the actual odds are substantially less than those of getting struck by lightning.

Hmm, perhaps these clothes could be paired with a special lightning rod hat?

<comment><USER9> 'the actual odds are substantially less than those of getting struck by lightning'

Better move to Europe, where the odds are even lower...

<comment><USER10> And the odds of being mugged are even higher, depending on who you ask.

Meanwhile, in Europe, you're carded for butter knives. In the US, laws vary, but generally speaking you can buy cooking equipment without having to undergo a background check.

Some laws are helpful, others are harmful, and sometimes they're just plain silly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People in Asia really really really like babies - <AUTHOR> http://alastairphilipwiper.com/blog/people-in-asia-really-really-really-like-babies/

<comment><USER2> Why the heck this guy is giving his baby to anyone to hold?</comment>


The hype about an incoming wave of tech IPOs has underscored SF's tensions - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/in-san-francisco-tech-money-doesnt-buy-happiness <comment><USER2> Good snapshot!

SF, in the post IPO-3.0 glow is sure a short place. It's in transition.

The big battles to IPO and get paid for all that delayed gratification, are over.

These unicorns are made real in all their off-white reality, trailing glitter scintillae as they trot in fresh mud. Of course, not all the IPOs are mainfest, but all can see them coming.

It's like waiting outside the classroom for your friends after your last final of the year, in that early evening light of May, but before they are out of theirs'. The party is coming, but you are very tired from cramming, and your friends are still crunching away. So you sit, watch others plop out of the test, have a cigarette to pass time, enjoy the sun-warm concrete seep into your feet and thighs, and take a nip out of the flask.

That's the feeling I get out of SF now, out of this article. The exhausted biding of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of the problems described in the article are the direct result of the city's refusal to allow adequate housing construction to keep up with demand.

<comment><USER4> Right! And she laments old obsolete buildings being torn down to make way for apartment projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The store displayed high-end kitchen and grill tools, sets of cheese knives, truffle-flavored potato chips, wine, small-batch chocolate, Wagyu beef jerky, buckets of flowers, and a variety of small, high-design jars containing the sorts of transactional condiments and ephemera that often circulate as hostess gifts: preserved lemon paste; pork lard; red-pepper jam; hand-poured candles. Chunks of pink Himalayan salt were packaged with miniature graters near a Scandinavian-looking guacamole press."

San Francisco has become a parody of civilization. This paragraph reads like a description of an Earth-themed tourist stop. A collection of shallow signifiers of what it's like to be a human, that you can take home and show your friends and family to prove you visited.

<comment><USER6> These are from a brand of "human & open luxury". In Silicon Valley, you're not supposed to be driving around a Ferrari or going on cruises like a rich boomer. Instead, you're supposed to have friends on every continent, cooking ingredients (not kitschy souvenirs) from your world-wide travels, a marathon- ready body, and an everything-is-okay smile, deriving from your material self- contentedness and awareness of your luck. It's about becoming a vessel for temporal and social experiences, not someone leashed to a big TV. It's about signifying that you're open to the "best" of what every culture has to offer without sharing any of the pain or trying to make it better, aside from minor improvements to buttons or trying your hand at a hair-brained get-rich-quick scheme couched under a messiah complex. The idea is that these experiences and contact with other cultures are "human", but they're also a shallow way to both show off material status.

<comment><USER7> I'd wager a simpler explanation: People in SF especially are increasingly purchasing every-day items online.

This means retail shops need to capitalize on discovery and unique items. Especially items that are unique enough that people can't just snap a pic and order/price-compare it online.

<comment><USER8> Bingo. This is it.

OP's hatred of San Francisco blinded him to the simple truth.

<comment><USER9> Not really. Normal people have basically no interest Himalayan salt.

<comment><USER8> Himalayan salt is sold in Costco. It's not just an SF thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the title is a little misleading, I was expecting an article demonstrating that there is little correlation between top salaries or stock payouts and happiness; seems more just a nostalgia rant for the way SF used to be.

<comment><USER11> Nostalgia is a powerful driving force. I'm convinced Nostalgia, more than fear or hope is what got Trump elected, and why he'll win again. People seem to be desperate to always want to return to 'how things were'. It's fascinating.

<comment><USER12> And sometimes things were actually better. Of course it is surprising that people want to go back to something like coal. But it isn't surprising that people want to go back to a time when their communities had a purpose and a future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ooh she spoke with a 15 year resident, at the pie shop, the twee pie shop that took over the flower shop that had been there for 50 years. I got mine, now everyone else leave.

And in passing she name checks Philz as part of her listing all that is gone is replaced by start up millions spiel. I'm not a fan of Phil personally, but thats between me and him. Whats interesting is the story of Philz. He had a corner store on a corner with 2 other corner stores. His wasn't doing any business. Phil, I assume he's an immigrant, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He experimented with coffee and figured out the whole pour over deal. He got a good mention in the SF Weekly back when weekly papers were still vibrant. Word spread. I went to Philz to see what the fuss was. He had one pour over station. The store still had metro racks with canned goods and a cooler with soda pop. Phil made my first drink at Philz. The interesting part is how Phil turned a dying corner store into a growing business with backing. In the passing example of Philz by the author, she shows how shallow and superficial her article really is. She knows nothing really about Philz. She only knows he's backed by millions. Philz is a classic american success story. And so are many of the tech businesses.

</comment><comment><USER14> This felt like a dispassionate ramble on San Francisco's roots in 60s counterculture while also ironically offering no help to the problem of big money flowing into the Valley (and in a way, being part of the problem she identifies from the technocrats). I found it difficult to get through.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. I read about half way through and the op still hadn't made his/her point. Too much set up for too small a conclusion.

<comment><USER16> It's The New Yorker. They believe in "It's not the destination, it's the journey" as a writing style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A fair amount of my friends are on a way to become IPO-millionaires this year. All of them live in SF, obviously. I'm curious to see how this flood of new- made riches will affect the city and its socio-economic and political issues.

</comment><comment><USER18> IT doesn't buy happiness in Seattle either. Prevents abject sadness at best.

</comment><comment><USER19> For what does it profit a city to gain tech tax revenue, yet forfeit its own society?

</comment><comment><USER20> I've never understood the line: money doesn't buy happiness.

Yes, money sitting in my bank account doesn't make me happy.

However, my Porsche makes me quite happy. The townhouse I lived in brought me peace on the weekends. Buying plane tickets to wherever on a whim makes me happy. Buying nice clothes and wearing them makes me happy. Spending money to further my knowledge just because makes me happy.

<comment><USER21> You don't understand it because the mental model as presented by the statement is too simple.

Money can make LOTS of people VERY happy, up to a certain point. Supposedly after 80k$, after you've been relieved of basic stresses like rent and finding food, more money will make you less happy per increment.

If you are an unhappy person with a minimum of 80k$, then the bottleneck to your happiness is not money.

Merely more money doesn't make ALL people happy ALL the time.

<comment><USER22> The cutoff is definitely much higher than $80k in the Bay Area. You would basically be homeless at that level of household income.

<comment><USER23> I make 80k in Austin - a city that's still relatively high in terms of living costs, compared to the rest of the country.

On that I can afford to live in a very comfortable apartment without roommates, eat out at decent (non-fast-food) restaurants for basically every meal if I want to, have an active social life and hobbies, and still put about 10% into savings each month. I can easily say that making more money would not have an impact on my happiness.

The Bay Area is so non-representative of the U.S. that it's not even funny.

<comment><USER24> well said</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startups with a goal of absolutely no VC? - <AUTHOR>

For a long time I always felt like one of my goals was to start a business that I could raise some VC for and then grow into something enormous.. I can admit, that I'm a 37s fanboy, and over time have grown to loathe the idea of raising VC.
I'm working on something right now, that I think could be pretty big - but I'm much more concerned with creating an amazing product, growing slowly, having it cover its own costs, and becoming profitable as soon as possible - rather than even consider raising VC.
Just wondering what percentage of HNers are on the same page with me when it comes to starting a business, or are on the other side of things looking to raise capital? <comment><USER2> A few years ago I was reading "Growing a Business" by Paul Hawken[1], in which he shares his experiences in entrepreneurship (which are quite dated, but interesting). One thing that stuck out to me was that in his first business, he used $1000 to get up and started, and in the latest one at the time of writing, had used over $100,000. He said in the first he would have felt uncomfortable with more than a grand in the first experience and uncomfortable with less than a hundred grand in the last example.

I took away the point that the amount of funding needed to start a business is variable, and so are the needs of the founders. Founders shouldn't deal with more or less than they are comfortable with. Personally, I lean more in the direction you do, wanting a business to be cash flow positive before I took any outside capital. But that would be extremely difficult in many situations, and limiting yourself to having a product that is very small profitable now may limit your ability to build a product that is hugely profitable in the future. My thinking is that a founder needs to take time and evaluate carefully whether they should seek investment or bootstrap.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Business-Paul- Hawken/dp/067167...](http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Business-Paul- Hawken/dp/0671671642)

<comment><USER3> I agree with everything you've said, but want to add that for new entrepreneurs, it's wise to start your earlier ventures with the minimal amount of money and grass-roots types of efforts. From this, you grow to understand your strengths and weaknesses. A good entrepreneur may not learn great marketing techniques as a result of doing self-marketing, but may learn that he is not a good marketeer, which is just as valuable.

Serial entrepreneurs like to start with more money because, in part, I think they already know what types of endeavors it makes sense to pay somebody else to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having a goal of not raising capital seems like a silly goal to state. I think you better addressed it in your actual post:

"concerned with creating an amazing product, growing slowly, having it cover its own costs, and becoming profitable as soon as possible "

I took amazing product and becoming profitable (same as covering costs, no?) as self explanatory and not needing explanation. However, growing slowly needs a reason in my mind. There may be some justification, but you haven't stated why. I also don't like limiting ones options for arbitrary reasons, you might need a big pile of cash to take your product to the next level despite being profitable. VC could really important at that point because the opportunity might be time sensitive.

</comment><comment><USER5> I see it similarly--not really looking for VC investment. I don't really focus on 37S; my goal to create a product that has sufficient value that people/users (at least some) will pay for it. Short-term, of course, it's more challenging to bootstrap, but in addition to coding, I've thought through a fairly solid revenue model. We'll see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER6> Raising capital isn't like dusting crops, fanboy :-)

Given this venue, there are a lot of VC minded developers. Going that route isn't a requirement to being successful. Ive started several companies without taking any outside money, and most of my clients are the same. No matter which way you go though, if you try to do everything yourself you are more likely than not to end up with a failure. Find one or two others who share your vision, who also bring critical skills to the table.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes it is not about the money, but more about exposure, mentorship, and helping you execute your idea better. 37s did the same with Bezos...

</comment><comment><USER8> Not interested in raising any VC. I've been part of a startup dealing with VC's and had a second startup fail to get the required VC investment. In both experiences, it was not fun.

Its far better create a product and grow the business. I also like owning the whole business and calling the shots. I'll take a 50% chance at a moderate success over a 1% chance at a huge success.</comment>


Billionaire's breakup plan would chop California into six states - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/15/us-usa-california-breakup-idUSKBN0FK03P20140715

<comment><USER2> I love how he says 'it would solve the water crisis' without saying how. It's not like California as a state somehow makes things difficult -- you don't all of the sudden gain water supplies by chopping everything up. There's a battle of LA vs farmers vs everyone else, and only so many aqueducts and sources.

Basically if you did this you'd end up with a poor northern California with no economy, farm land with little educational prowess, and then the cities that turn into states. So yah if you live in a city-state that economically does well then things are good, just expect the prices of food/water/power/education to increase.

Wonder what would become of the UC system?

</comment><comment><USER3> Incidentally, this would also change the balance in the senate...

</comment><comment><USER4> Didn't this play in the news cycle a few weeks or months ago already? Why is it back?

<comment><USER5> Because they have enough signatures to put this on the ballot and present it to the voters.

When it came out earlier, it was because Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State, gave Draper the go-ahead to gather the necessary signatures to put this on the ballot. They had a deadline of this Friday, 18 July. Draper announced on Monday he had enough signatures and would be filing them on Tuesday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Proponents say the division would help create a more business-friendly environment, solve the state's water issues, and ease traffic congestion."

Ummm, so if you re-name places on a map, the cars will go away? Wut?

<comment><USER7> California currently has tax, labor, and real-estate regulations that run counter to his interests (and in some of those cases against ours as well). Unfortunately, California also has a labor pool and other resources that he wants to take advantage of, giving it enough leverage to stay the course. As a shrewd businessman he understands that if he were to chop California into 6 pieces its collective bargaining power would dramatically decrease as he would be able to play each chunk off of the others. It would most definitely be a pro-business move. Whether or not it's in your or my best interest or the interest of the citizenry of California is another matter entirely.

<comment><USER8> I'd argue that it would be in the interests of the citizens.

Big governments are more easily susceptible to corruption and therefor inevitably benefit big corporations.

<comment><USER9> Bull pucky. Have you ever been to Louisiana?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/most-corrupt-states-and- terri...](http://www.businessinsider.com/most-corrupt-states-and- territories-2013-9)

and

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population)

If the big government effect was large then California, with the most people in it should be the most corrupt. Check out Mississippi. With a paltry 2.9 million people it should be a bucolic bastion of upstanding government... And Alaska, with only 0.7 Million people must be the shining light of sanity in our world... ( ranks 5th in corruption, remember senator Ted Stevens? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Stevens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Stevens) )

The big government theory doesn't hold water.

<comment><USER8> Heh, I love the use of "bull pucky".

Anyways, its quite a long shot to claim the "big government theory doesn't hold water" because of the specific examples you pointed out. Moreover, I'd argue that most of your examples aren't devoid of the influences of big government as all these states are under the increasing central authority of D.C.

To clarify, it seems it might be pertinent to explicitly point out that there are many factors involved with corruption: some chance, education, culture, geopolitics, etc. Size of government is what I'm arguing as an important factor. Your examples are NOT without influence of the factors mentioned.

Actually, I find the capacity and likelihood of smaller governments being less susceptible to corruption as being quite intuitive as well. Though I'm not arguing by merit of intuition alone. Government theory is exclusively based on human understanding. My understanding of humans is that societies can feel abstracted away from large beuracratic governments. And indeed this is an observation as well.

There are logistical issues with large governments as well. Its far more difficult to voice an opinion to large governments because they inevitably fall into the trap of bureaucracies. So when a handful of thousands of people petition online for something it often gets ignored and rejected by some clerk of a secretary working for some office for some congressmen/women. Lots of smaller issues go unchecked by the people.

So, though its not an explicit part of the 3 branch government check system, I don't think we need to argue about the fact that the general public is an important, if not the most important check on the government.

And if we recognize the fact that the general public has the most crucial responsibility the in the role of the government, then it shortly thereafter follows that it easier for smaller populations to agree, argue, deliberate, process, charge, incriminate, build most suitably.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Monsanto corn linked to organ damage - <AUTHOR> http://food.change.org/blog/view/is_monsantos_corn_destroying_your_internal_organs

<comment><USER2> I've followed this story from its beginning. Some university publishes a study and a scare headline about genetically modified corn.

But other researchers aren't able to replicate the research and in time the university withdraws the report.

[http://www.scidev.net/en/editorials/butterflies-gm-crops- and...](http://www.scidev.net/en/editorials/butterflies-gm-crops-and-social- responsibilities.html)

Its becoming a huge problem in science where researchers begin with a political position on something and then try and conduct research to prove something is bad. To no surprise they get the results they were seeking.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scientific Journal Article: <http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm></comment>


Twitter Cuts Off JustSpotted's (formerly Scoopler) Firehose Access - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/14/twitter-justspotted/ <comment><USER2> So it's Gawker Stalker, worldwide?

I mean...

Well.

These are real people, with dreams and ambitions and parents somewhere. They want to make the most of their startup and their tech with this pivot. I wish them well because what they're doing is hard and I admire it.

They are bigger people than I. I don't know how I could be excited to get up in the morning and advance the state of the art of something as insipid as realtime celebrity tracking. _Anything_ around celebrity is almost always bereft of decency or lasting value. Celebrity masturbation's inconsequential place in the grand effort to move humanity forward, relative to the amount of time, energy and money it receives, fills me with sadness and exhaustion. I try not to think about it. I try to forget it exists. This story has pierced that shroud a bit.

May I be declared an idiot when People Magazine buys them in two years and they're set for their next venture. I just... could not do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> We actually weren't using the firehose from Twitter for JustSpotted. That relationship was for Scoopler, our real-time search engine which we shut down on Tuesday. We're using the public APIs for this new site. Basically, everything still rocking.

<comment><USER4> >>>everything still rocking<<<

 _Sigh_.

I wonder what happened to changing the world?

<comment><USER4> Is it wrong to wonder why they're throwing something as meaningful as live data integration at this massive scale on tracking human beings as if they were animals? Sure, the startup was about to sink and they wanted to make the most of their money, but surely there could have been better uses for that technology than violating someone's privacy?

Can you imagine what it must feel like to be some xyz celebrity right now? Just how unsafe something like this is for them? What right does anyone have to tread on someones life like that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My head is going to explode from the number of times "pivot" is mentioned in that article.

</comment><comment><USER6> Golden rule for startup: do not build your entire model on the back of a giant like Twitter. Outcome: They will buy you off (rarely), they will cut your oxygen line off or they replicate your service; in most cases your screwed.

<comment><USER7> I think this is a risk, but Facebook and Twitter both have very large ecosystems of startups having success on those platforms. (See: Zynga and Twitpic)

The lesson here is more of proper strategic planning. Just because you have access to a firehose doesn't mean you should just start waving it around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Next up: Google Maps withdrawn.

<comment><USER8> lol

From Google Maps TOS (<http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/help/terms_maps.html>)

[...]

you will not: (a) defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others;

[...]

I believe this is why Gawker Stalker is no longer around.</comment></comment>


Ben Horowitz: We Like Dropouts, Insane Ideas, Tiny Markets, No Way To Monetize - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/20/ben-horowitz-at-dld/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I lack vision, but I think there's still interesting programs that will never achieve startup success.

For example, I'm currently writing a Lisp program that uses an LSTM neural network to compose Scottish fiddle music. As a Scottish fiddler (and composer) and AI enthusiast, this is an intensely interesting project to me. And it's certainly an insane idea with a tiny market and no way to monetize. And that's how it will remain. Scottish fiddling will always be an obscure niche, even within that community there will never be much demand for new music (and there's so many buried gems from the 18th century that this will virtually never change), and any existing demand can be easily fulfilled by the scores of people--including myself--who compose fiddle music the old-fashioned way.

Unlike Altair BASIC, this isn't a case of somebody creating a product in a growing industry people don't realize they need yet. Even I--the "founder"-- don't see any potential and realize I'm providing free labor. I'm just in it because it's a great hack.

tl;dr - Distinguish between "anticipating public demand" and "doing something only for yourself".

<comment><USER3> Flash Forward seven years - tsm is now the CEO of the world's largest machine- generated entertainment consortium, with their LISP generated performances routinely topping the charts across the planet.

<comment><USER4> Exactly - music in the future will be algorithms. (Edit: to clarify, I mean instead of something like an MP3, you could download an algorithm that creates music on the fly. Why bother with recordings when you can have the live composer?)

<comment><USER5> There's something about that last statement that blew my mind. your own personal composer, writing your own personal theme music, specifically designed to catch your current mood, or even modify it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to call this "Black Swan Hunting".

The idea seems similar to purchasing (wholesale) a crate full of swans (some of which might merely be dyed black) in the hopes that one of them will be a genuine black swan.

In many ways, this isn't a new idea. How many car collectors have dreamed about answering a classified ad for an "old car in the barn" only to have it turn out to be a Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic? But the reality is that 99.99% of the time, it's a rusted out Buick.

It's true we need these "diamond in the rough" hunters out there, and I must admit that if I had many millions of dollars I would probably set up just such a "Black Swan Fund", but I've always imagined that I would style it after the various X-Prize-type competitions that became popular starting around the middle of the last decade. It seems to me that most such ideas can be funded "a step at a time".

The other way to do this would be to consider it as artistic patronage. That way you wouldn't expect a return on your investment other than the creation of something that might not have been there before. Of course you still keep a nice chunk of any potential earnings just in case you get lucky. :)

<comment><USER7> > _I would probably set up just such a "Black Swan Fund"_

I think that's what venture capitalists already do.

They place lots of "small" bets. They lose money on most of them. But a small percentage do very well, and those investments "make the fund" -- that is, they cover all the other losses and create an overall profit.

I remember when Andreessen Horowitz launched, to great fanfare.

What was their revolutionary plan? To focus on investing in companies that would turn them a profit.

And people were slapping their foreheads as if this were some great revelation. "Of course! VC has been run as a charity!"

It's like saying "I am going to start a horse racing fund. I will only bet on the winning horses".

That's not a statement of investment strategy. It's a statement of wishful thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actually it was not argued early on by analysts that Amazon would have a hard time being profitable. It was argued that they would be a lot more profitable than traditional bricks & mortar because they didn't need the physical stores. That was supposedly one of their great competitive advantages. This was an almost universal claim during the early years of Amazon when the bubble was in full sway.

It was only years later, toward the end of the bubble and after it, that the claim began that Amazon could / would never make money.

Amusingly, both of these popular analyst points turned out to be false.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sounds more like "We like to invest in college dropouts with insane ideas going after [currently] tiny markets [that have the potential of growing many orders of magnitude] with [currently] no way to monetize."

Isn't this basically another way of saying "we only care about home runs, not singles"?

</comment><comment><USER10> The interesting thing is how he says "Airbnb, for example, sounds like a crazy idea" - when I heard about it I did not think about it as a "crazy idea". It sounded as a great idea - but hard to execute (hotels, regulations, fraud control, etc.).

But they were not doing one more social network, so it had to sound as a "crazy idea" for any VC.

It seems definition of "crazy idea" for VCs is "not doing the same thing as other startups are doing".

<comment><USER4> I don't get it even now - weren't there already b&b sites before AirB&B? So what's so crazy - the air part, which they threw out anyway?

<comment><USER11> The crazy part was renting out an airbed in your livingroom.

<comment><USER4> Which isn't really their business model now, or is it? That's all just a hype PR story.

<comment><USER11> Nope, but when they started their business model was literally "hey we can sell airbeds in livingroom as an alternative to regular Bed and Breakfasts, and hotels for sold out concerts, shows, and events".

They just pivoted to something more traditional after spending 1-2 years trying to make the original idea work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The three companies cited as having 'figured it out' in Q3/2012:

        Amazon     -$274m
        Facebook   -$59m
        Twitter    ?? (private, supposed not profitable)

They make loads of money regardless, but it's interesting to look at.

<comment><USER13> Amazon is sort of an outlier- they could be profitable if they wanted to be, but they would rather eat the world.

<comment><USER14> That is some memorable phrasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What a horrible strategy. Proof that it is better to be lucky than smart.

</comment><comment><USER16> All these guys do is make noise. It's been a long time since we can point to a shrewd investment they've made.</comment>


The problem, really, is this thing called "disruption" - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/disruption-is-how-silicon-valley-eats-its-young/ <comment><USER2> Disruption is nothing new; it's been happening for millennia. I think the _pace_ of modern disruption is much faster than in the past -- but IMO this has more to do with global population levels. Technology was an enabler here, but really what we've seen is that world population has grown so much that formerly "niche" markets are now quite viable simply based on sheer numbers. A higher number of viable niche markets means more adjacent markets to try to disrupt bigger markets from, leading to a constant cycle of disruption.

In many senses, "disruptive" simply means "a greater share of revenue goes to the shareholders". This allows "disruptive" companies to win in price- competitive markets, but it has the side effect of consolidating economic wins in single layer of the economy at a macro level. Advances in capital finance without accompanying advances in worker protections led to this; but again, thanks to the population mentioned above, there's not exactly a worker shortage and thus no pressure for worker protections from the political class.

</comment><comment><USER3> Partly (even mostly), this is a rant about hyperbole and cliche.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I've heard title "President" was selected specifically for its understated connotations (as opposed to pomous titles like prime minister). It escalated.

A lot of the tech cliches start as understated ways of being hyperpolic. Paradigm a fairly an abstract term. Disrupt is an understated term for revolutionize. But when they reach ciche status, they get annoying.

There's an art to understated but ambituous, and an appeal to it. Musk pulls it off at times.

I was about to accuse America for this and quote soft words and big sticks, but....that's an americanism ain't it? I dunno. I do think american tolerance for hyperactive positivity is in play somewhere.

All that said, disruption deos happens, but is hindsight it usually seems like a technological or societal disruption, not a company led thing. I mean, news has certainly been disrupted.

<comment><USER4> If we're talking about how startups and journalists use it, then yes (and since English is what English speaking people speak, then that usage _is_ a definition of the word).

But "disrupt" has a technical meaning, and pretty clearly defined by Christensen - a product/service that's worse for the main use of that category, but has other qualities valued by other customers for some other use; over time it improves, and while the category leader also improves it eventually "overshoots" what people need, whereas this new thing becomes acceptable AND it has those other qualities - at that point, it is dramatically replaced by the newcomer, completing the process of "disruption". Seminal example: 8 inch disk drives had (and have) greater capacity; but are bigger and less convenient, and a smaller diskdrive has _enough_ capacity. Same thing happened to 5.25", 3.5", those tiny laptop ones, and now SSD. Same pattern. It's an industry/category event, not a company event... but some companies benefit from it.

But it's not very predictive (even thoigh the pattern seems legit in hindsight); Christensen himself famously dismissed the iPhone with about as much aplomb as Cmdrtaco dismissed the iPod. TTBF, while smartphones _are_ disrupting PCs, it's not that absolute; about as much as netbooks did. PCs are still going strong for games, development and business. It was a different story when PCs disrupted workstations.

<comment><USER3> True.

It started with a fairly specific pathway to "revolutionize". Thus always with cliches. They start as meaningful terms, with some interesting insights rolled in. Then literally becomes literally: People who don't understand the joke still use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also, "changing the world". Sorry, your messaging app isn't doing that.

<comment><USER6> Right. Messaging apps like Twitter didn't change the world.

<comment><USER5> I didn't target Twitter or WhatsApp or any other app. Sure, some did. But most of the startups that say they "change the world" use the phrase very casually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think one thing is disruption the other is unprofitable disruption. Newer better ways of doing things is great. The problem is when Uber & Amazon disrupt the old ways with cheap capital and unprofitable prices. Once the old shops/taxis have died they can raise prices. That isn't fair.

</comment><comment><USER8> Asking companies to be honest in their copy? Not going to happen.

<comment><USER9> People who use buzzwords think they are being honest. Or, they look at honesty differently than some others.

I think the biggest case of "false advertising" is that anyone has ever been held to account for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is just the normal lifecycle of the internet or just humans in general. We loved the word disruption a couple of years ago, and now there's a shift to hate it. We loved apps, now we hate them. We loved IoT now nobody talks about it. Deep/Machine learning is all the rage.

</comment><comment><USER11> The original brainstorm/paper for Amazon was "the everything store." He started with books and planned to expand in to everything... so yea he actually did set out to disrupt the whole industry.

Is it the fact that they don't say what they're thinking? Or that they didn't "honestly think" their companies would disrupt industries?

</comment><comment><USER12> VC's respond to marketing. Founders use advertising language. Engineers annoyed.

Words mean things, but words also have a context. execute means something different to a programmer than it does to a death row inmate. It's nice to imagine a world where there is only one true language that is sufficient for every case, but that's wrong.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Ex Googler says founders need to stop using the word disruption

i'm a bit unclear on the relevance of 'ex googler'. apparently the author of the wired article was once employed by google, but that doesn't seem germane to the piece.

edit: looks like the title was updated.

</comment><comment><USER14> Where is the bar for disruption? The timeline they give is "years if not decades" which to me says the bar is really high. But there is such a thing as local disruption which can be a good thing and the bar for that is lower than Earth shattering disruption.

While I agree we should stop using this in marketing copy, I think they are useful to use as aspirational internal goals.

They give software engineers, designers, and product owners something to aspire to. Which is a good thing.

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

>These founders who actually have disrupted industries and markets were not grandiose when they started out.

They did not appear grandiose from the outside. But the founders were very ambitious. With Newmark as an exception among the mentioned examples.

</comment><comment><USER16> The main thing that needs disruption right now is conglomeration.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can we stop using all the buzzwords? It will improve synergy.

<comment><USER17> >Can we stop using all the buzzwords? It will improve synergy.

Can we stop using all the buzzwords going forward? It will improve synergy with our deep learning big data blockchain cloud platforms.

FTFY

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's not the title of the article at all.

<comment><USER19> It's been fixed. Original HN title: "Ex Googler says founders need to stop using the word disruption" has been updated to match the article title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Please don't put all companies in the same basket.

There's a big difference between Instagram and Google.

<comment><USER21> Facebook and Google make most of their money from ads. That's a big similarity. I'd even say that they are each others biggest competitor.

<comment><USER20> Their business model has NOTHING to do with the legitimacy of a "disruption" claim.</comment></comment></comment>


"Theire Soe Admirable Herbe": How the English Found Cannabis - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/how-the-english-found-cannabis/ <comment><USER2> And despite this history, cannabis extracts like CBD are classed as "novel foods" in the UK.

'A Novel Food is defined as food that had not been consumed to a significant degree by humans in the EU before 15 May 1997, when the regulations were introduced.'

Sources:

[https://www.healtheuropa.eu/recognition-of-cbd-as-novel- food...](https://www.healtheuropa.eu/recognition-of-cbd-as-novel-food-could- have-industry-ramifications/95264/)

[https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/eu-novel-food- regulatio...](https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/eu-novel-food-regulation- cbd/74422/)

<comment><USER3> The Englishmen in this article found _cannabis_ not industrially produced CBD concentrates/extracts. Just because we discovered that apple seeds contain arsenic a few centuries ago doesn't mean that selling 10mg pills of arsenic is safe by default.

<comment><USER4> Cyanide, rather than arsenic. (Strictly, amygdalin, which turns into cyanide.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also amusing, the first trip reports for nitrous oxide, from 1799:

[https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-nitrous- oxide-...](https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-nitrous-oxide- experiments-of-humphry-davy)

</comment><comment><USER6> "Medieval Christian and Muslim travelers such as Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta expected to find marvels along the edges of their mental maps, spinning tales of roc's eggs, "mellified man", or elixirs of life."

And down the rabbit hole I merrily go:

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

<comment><USER7> It's funny because the Chinese apparently thought it was the Arabs that had elderly willing to submit themselves to mellificetion, so it would seem Ibn Battuta discovered that what he was looking for had been back home the whole time.</comment></comment>


Congress grills Facebook, Twitter, Google on shells hiding election meddlers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/31/election-inference-shell-companies/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tctwreshare&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&sr_share=twitter <comment><USER2> This article is confusing and badly written, but the content is important to be aware of.</comment>


GCHQ CanYouCrackIt Solution explained - <AUTHOR> http://gchqchallenge.blogspot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This guy has some very good problem solving skills!! These videos show the process he went through to solve the problem listed on this site: <http://www.canyoucrackit.co.uk/></comment>


Tesla in Autopilot sped up before Utah crash - <AUTHOR> https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/police-report-tesla-autopilot-sped-utah-crash-55424283 <comment><AUTHOR> Data from the Model S electric vehicle show it picked up speed for 3.5 seconds shortly before crashing into a stopped firetruck in suburban Salt Lake City, the report said. The driver manually hit the brakes a fraction of a second before impact.

The driver of the vehicle, Heather Lommatzsch, 29, told police she thought the vehicle's automatic emergency braking system would detect traffic and stop before the car hit another vehicle.

She said she had owned the car for two years and used the semi-autonomous Autopilot feature on all sorts of roadways, including on the Utah highway where she crashed, according to the report.

Lommatzsch said the car did not provide any audio or visual warnings before the crash.

<comment><USER2> This is consistent with the other crash, in which the radar detects stationary objects, but ignores them because it doesn't sense on the Y axis, and a parked fire truck looks just like a metallic overhead sign.</comment></comment>


Intel offers Parallel STL implementation to GNU libstdc++ - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2017-11/msg00112.html <comment><USER2> If Intel freely released their compilers that would rock. Does the money Intel makes selling compilers outweigh the benefits of having hella optimized code on Intel hardware? The lock in benefits seem to outweigh the few hundred bucks they get selling ICC or whatever. They already have free but-don't-expect- support versions of MKL and such.

Edit: freely released

<comment><USER3> I remember finding ICC produced some very fast binaries about 15 years ago last I tried it. But at this point I can't imagine a 3rd major open source compiler for C++ thriving, and I imagine that the specific optimizations in ICC would be difficult to merge into Clang or GCC.

<comment><USER4> One area they really target is the scientific market, which has more diversity in compilers (see also, Cray, Portland Group etc). icc/ifort/icpc still produce some of the fastest numerical code on Intel hardware and tend to support some of the more exotic and cutting edge features first.

They also package it as part of an ecosystem, with MKL, TBB, Advisor, VTune etc that help with high performance code. So it's not just compiler optimizations, it's a whole suite of tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And to clang's libc++.

[https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2017-11/msg00113.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2017-11/msg00113.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not to look a gift horse in the mouth but this has to have something to do with Intel trying to stay relevant in the age of GPU computing. Yes? No?

</comment><comment><USER7> So they want TBB be part of gcc?

<comment><USER8> From the footnote:

> But the Parallel STL implementation itself does not require TBB</comment></comment>


Reuters: Cheaper iPhone story withdrawn - <AUTHOR> http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/01/11/reuters-cheaper-iphone-story-withdrawn-after-substantial-changes-to-china-report <comment><USER2> its kinda true that since a majority of manufacturing of electronics has moved to China, its quiet possible to get cheaper versions of electronics on the gray market. They are cheaper due to a direct-to-customer transportation, and evasion of company's expenses other than production ones.</comment>


AideRSS + GoogleReader = solve information overload  - <AUTHOR> http://gr.aiderss.com/ We launched a new firefox extension which intergrates PostRank into GoogleReader. Would love to hear some feedback. First come, first serve invites: http://gr.aiderss.com/?ycomb <comment><AUTHOR> We launched a new firefox extension which intergrates PostRank into GoogleReader. Would love to hear some feedback. First come, first serve invites: <http://gr.aiderss.com/?ycomb>

</comment><comment><USER2> I just began working on a very similar idea :) anyway, how do you score the posts, using bayesian filtering?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not quite, it's more of a customized statistical function at this point -- Postrank. We're working on a whitepaper which will delve into the internals..</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Assistance determining seed round equity for advisors/angel investors - <AUTHOR>

I would like to know if there are any spreadsheets I can use which have prefilled cap table calculations to help me determine equity distribution to investors and advisors during the seed round.<p>For example, say you determined to give out 15% equity for your seed funding but you are obtaining the total amount of funding from multiple investors, what can I use to assist me in making sure that I do not give up too much equity to each investor. <comment><USER2> When we raised our seed funding, I used several cap tables - none of which worked for me because they all made certain assumptions and didn't allow for reverse-calculations, which is what I needed. I found that a simple spreadsheet worked best in the end, but I had to review it a few times to make sure I didn't mess up the numbers.

In our case, the investor said: we value your company at X, we're willing to invest Y, and we need ESOP of Z%. From that, I had to reverse engineer the percentage and number of stocks that all involved would get.

The method that worked for me was to convert everything to number of shares and price per share before and after investing, and then calculate percentages based on shares / total shares for each party. This way, it's easy to calculate how many shares the investor gets based on the valuation (which determines pre-money share value), and final percentages based on total number shares after all is said and done.

A few things make a generic spreadsheet hard to create, and you should keep in mind: \- Is the investor paying based on % or share value? \- Are the ESOP stocks issues before or after the investment? (you get ripped off if it's before) \- Are you issuing new stocks or giving up a percentage of existing ones?

I hope this helps.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Capitalization tables are commonly used for VC deals, ie: Series A, B, etc. What I am looking for is something similar that would be suited for an initial seed funding round.</comment>