Apple surpasses Saudi Aramco to become the most valuable company - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/apple-surpasses-saudi-aramco-to-become-worlds-most-valuable-company.html <comment><USER2> What I don't understand is not the value of Apple as a company, because I clearly see the value of their products directly as a customer for more than a decade, but WHY IN HELL they have so much actual cash piling up. I won't say they should split it with investors and blablabla but, really, why a company like that would have a cash stockpile so gigantic (around 200 billion USD) for so long without a long-term plan shared with stakeholders? It seems nearly impossible for them to use all that money with whatever comes up for half a century at least.

<comment><USER3> Look around at all the companies shaking taxpayers for loose change because they could not handle a moderate economic downturn. A responsible company needs a cash stockpile for the same reason a responsible person needs savings, to weather storms.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a prudent idea. On the other hand I'd worry about the macro economic effects if every company held large amounts of unproductive capital.

<comment><USER5> If money is in a bank it is being redistributed throughout the economy at 1 / the fractional reserve ratio. So $200 billion in their bank account could end up creating $2 trillion in additional money supply in the economy, originating from loans.

<comment><USER6> And when the recipients of those $2 trillion put that money into bank accounts, we're creating another $20 trillion in additional money supply. I sure hope they end up in bank accounts as well, so we can create another $200 trillion.

Hey, see that? I created an infinite money machine! Now that's a good argument for those original $200 billion being super useful when "put to work" by storing them in bank accounts, right?

<comment><USER5> The formula to derive it is an infinite series that already takes that into account, so no, it's just $2 trillion total. This is not considered a controversial economic formula, but maybe you are on to something that could win you a Nobel Prize.

Anyway, since the parent implied that "hoarding cash" (a.k.a. saving) was somehow bad, I wanted to clear that up. They would only be reducing the money supply if they were literally hoarding physical bills in a private vault.

<comment><USER7> [text deleted because mathematical claim from memory was wrong]

<comment><USER5> Here's a better explanation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Among all the big tech, I think Apple is probably the most resilient. The sort of brand loyalty and image they have, any company would love to have it. It makes even the less polished products from their stable escape the sort of ire and financial impact that most other companies face.

Take the example of maps, it was clearly a way inferior product to the best in market Google Maps, still a lot of users(my physical and social media circle at least) persisted with it. This gives them immense power to grow out products that can become really strong platforms in the future.

Also, their ecosystem lock in is really strong. I think in due time it is really going to stifle competition. For example, it would be really interesting to see how the headphone industry adapts to this where incumbent brands like Bose, Sennheiser with their own brand power have seen their market share erode very fast. Apple has already sold 100+ million airpods.

<comment><USER9> More than any of the others, Apple at least tries to have _values_. Not everyone agrees with them. But I challenge anyone to identify a positive value mainstream America would associate with Microsoft, Google or Facebook.

<comment><USER10> I think a lot of us view that as merely marketing. I don't think apple's values are any more concrete or "real" than the other companies you mentioned.

<comment><USER11> How do you distinguish between "mentioning your values in your marketing" and "your values are merely marketing"? Apple's stated value of customer privacy is pretty difficult to explain as "merely marketing." They clearly put a lot of work into it and in some cases even accept the product feature limitations that come with a privacy-first approach.

<comment> mickael-kerjean A "privacy-first company" wouldn't remove the VPN apps from the Chinese apple store, leaving their users with a device even Orwell didn't foresee.

<comment><USER12> Should they not follow the laws of the country?

Wasn't it just found in the large ElasticSearch hack that a number of no- logging VPN providers were in fact logging?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember when I sold all my Apple stock back at $250 (pre-previous-split) thinking "at this point they'd have to become the most valuable company on EARTH to go up much more!"

</comment><comment><USER14> I have the iPhone XR for almost 2 years and the uncased exposed metal rim is virtually flawless. It's details like this that make me love the iPhone and is part of why I'm a longtime investor.

<comment><USER15> I love Apple but I'm frustrated for a few reasons.

1\. I'm sick of charging everything constantly. I feel like my phone, AirPods, laptop and watch batteries are always needing too much attention. I would prefer larger devices with bigger batteries.

2\. The screens for these devices are too fragile. The devices are beautiful, but require ugly cases or regular, expensive repairs.

3\. There are too many missing devices in Apple's ecosystem. A pro computer under $3k. A TV. A smart speaker that isn't crippled. Smart home devices that don't suck. Apple should stop trying to compete (poorly) with Netflix and should focus on their ecosystem of devices and services.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, and that's the issue I have with the cash pile. They should be trying and failing quickly at a number of things, big things, including the small items you raised. Take a guy like Elon, give him a 500bn in cash and see what happens. The world would change in a big way.

Capital should be either sunk hugely into the R&D to change the world or should be returned to shareholders to better allocate it.

That said, These guys aren't playing the game 1 qtr at a time. Not even a year at a time. They play the 100+ year game and likely they don't see this money as "big".

<comment><USER11> > They should be trying and failing quickly at a number of things, big things, > including the small items you raised.

That seems very antithetical to Apple's fundamental approach to product design. Sure, they have some first-generation stinkers, but I think it's fair to say Apple tends to err on the side of waiting until they can release something to their standards.

<comment><USER17> Apple does seem to have a massive "hidden" set of R&D projects. I bet all the items the GP mentioned are in some phase of development. Famously the iPad was actually in development before the iphone! I suspect their culture of secrecy prevents internal accountability unless the particular project has internal visibility with execs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was scratching my head as to why Mac and iPad sales would've shot up 30% YoY.

Then saw that two weeks before end of quarter they started a "back to school" promotion (in June?) that throws in a free pair of AirPods with a Mac or iPad purchase. Details here: [https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/EN_US_BTS_FY20_TandCs.pdf](https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/EN_US_BTS_FY20_TandCs.pdf)

With a $479 iPad Air that's 33% of the price of your purchase.

New Apple products can easily be sold on Amazon or Ebay for close to face value, so this is a extremely easy and generous retail arbitrage opportunity.

My point is I didn't see any language around this promotion in their earnings report but suspect because it is so generous that both legitimate customers and resellers are taking advantage of this deal, thus disproportionately lifting sales for Macs and iPads vs other categories like iPhones which was essentially flat YoY.

Their surprise beat was then in part influenced by this big promotion and not necessarily totally organic demand...

Edit: They do something like this every year but this one started in Q2 unlike last year in Q3 and includes much cheaper iPads, and is for Airpods for the first time (a much more desirable freebie over Beats)

<comment><USER19> But AirPods have to be close to free for Apple to manufacture. Functionally equivalent clones retail for under $10 on AliExpress.

<comment><USER20> This is wrong in two ways. First, the 10 dollar clones are ass, if you've ever tried one.

Second, what the material cost is doesn't matter, at least on its own--a gifted airpod is one that's not sold. The opportunity cost is real, even if the material cost is low.

<comment><USER19> I agree, but that doesn't make my actual point -- that manufacturing AirPods is cheap -- wrong.

FWIW, I did buy a $10 clone. The hardware was actually astonishingly polished for the price point, but the software to control it was indeed "ass".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Wow_ , it's up over 10% since yesterday. At 1.84T, it's not that far away from 2T.

Though Saudi Aramco was the first company ever to hit 2T (back in December), so Apple wouldn't be the first, if it makes it.

<comment><USER22> Something like 30-40 years for the first trillion, and maybe only a few more years for the next trillion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this an artifact of under-priced dollar debasement? The Fed is now actively purchasing bonds for FANG companies, these companies could in principal simply buy back their own stock with this money at 0% interest.

This sounds an awful lot like the the situation where the imperial palace was worth more than California.

[https://amaral.northwestern.edu/blog/how-much-was- japanese-i...](https://amaral.northwestern.edu/blog/how-much-was-japanese- imperial-palace-worth)

</comment><comment><USER24> Just addressing the title a bit - Saudi Aramco isn't as valuable as is claimed. Back when the crown prince wanted to float it he wanted to get it on a real stock exchange and give up a real portion of it. However, this failed because they couldn't get the valuation they wanted and wouldn't give the transparency needed. As a result, it floated on the Saudi's own stock exchange, floated only 1.5%, and according to some reports signficant pressure was put on prominent people to buy shares. It was all very much a matter of marking your own homework. Aramco would absolutely not be trading at that level on the Nasdaq.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'll be curious how the growth exceeding expectations impacts Q4. Today I looked at ordering an iPad Pro, both the 1 TB and the 512 Gig and could not get either one until early September.

While I'm celebrating the great quarter, how much will blowing out Q3 impact Q4 by way of not having the equipment people want? They also announced a several week delay and in delivery of the next gen iPhone. Might be negligible?

</comment><comment><USER26> And all without constant long term SDC/Quantum/Space? hype.

</comment><comment><USER27> Use the cash to make global iphone only internet after buying spacex

</comment><comment><USER27> Technology more valuable than sand mud?

</comment><comment><USER28> Just goes to show capitalism is all about screwing your suppliers (developers), your customers, and using the government to enforce intellectual property.

Although I'd contend that the later is not capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER29> Amazon, Google will soon follow. I see amazon being worth $10-30 trillion eventually,,, bigger than apple.

<comment><USER30> Just for reference, $35T is the total market cap of the US stock market.

<comment><USER31> Wait, apple makes up 5% of the entire US stock market? That feels... weird.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Lorem Markdownum, my weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://jaspervdj.be/lorem-markdownum/

<comment><USER2> Awesome. This is actually going to be really really useful for my project.

Is there an API I can hit?

<comment><AUTHOR>
      GET jaspervdj.be/lorem-markdownum/markdown.txt?allow-headers=true&allow-code=true&allow-quotes=true&allow-lists=true&inline-links=true&hash-headers=true&asterisk-em=true&asterisk-strong=true

Let me know if you run into trouble. :-)</comment></comment>


Automatic Mechanical Self Replication - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/10298933 <comment><USER2> Very interesting. Thank you.

For more, see the 1958 paper by L. S. Penrose: <http://vxheavens.com/lib/mlp01.html>

or the shorter one authored with his son Roger Penrose [http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Authors/Computing/Penrose-L...](http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Authors/Computing/Penrose- LS/ASRA.html)

Seems like a fun shop project!

</comment><comment><USER3> Watching that made me think the first Von Neumann Universal Constructor would be built by a carpenter.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you uploaded this, please de-interlace it (that's what's causing those horizontal stripes)</comment>


Antimatter Triggers Largest Explosion Ever Recorded in Universe - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/04/antimatter-supernova-the-largest-explosion-ever-recorded<comment></comment><comment>-----weve-recently-seen-the-largest-explosion-ever-recor.html

</comment><comment><USER2> These supernovae are counter-intuitive in the sense that normally people think of anti-matter as "bring it into contact with normal matter and it will explode". Here, it's the _production_ of anti-matter that robs pressure and triggers the collapse. But the thing that always baffles me is how something that is collapsing inward like that can explode without leaving a remnant. You have to somehow get all the mass out of the potential well, and it's not easy to take 10 solar masses of material falling inward at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light and turn it around and shoot it out...

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't the mass in the star's chewy nougat center* escape as energy at the speed of light?

(* IANAP)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _a super giant star two hundred times bigger than the sun utterly obliterated by runaway thermonuclear reactions . . . unleashed a cloud of radioactive material over fifty times the size of our own star_

Huh?

<comment><USER5> From the comments it seems that 'bigger' equals mass, and 'fifty times the size' refers to volume. I was confused too.

<comment><USER2> That's probably true, but there's also the fact that the majority of the mass of the star escapes as gamma rays and neutrinos, so mass isn't (locally) conserved in these events.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any of u guys thinking what I'm thinking? This (way cool) process MIGHT be a way to resurrect the Hoyle-Gold-Bondi steady state theory (<http://www.aip.org/history/cosmology/ideas/bigbang.htm>) - if this guy was 200 times the mass of our sun, who is to say we don't all live in the expanding after-math of just such a (albiet much larger) hyper-nova? Maybe the big bang was something similar to this, and has happened an infinite number of times before, and will again. Just a thought, but I never liked the concept of finite time, for aesthetic reasons. If I'm wrong, please (seriously) let me know how, since just naively it seems that the aftermath of this explosion, if scaled up, is similar to the aftermath of the so-called big bang.

<comment><USER7> This explosion didn't produce time or space.

<comment><USER8> And this explosion had a centre that you can find after the fact. The `centre' of the big bang was everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You'd think the largest explosion ever recorded in the universe would make the front page of CNN.</comment>


Survey about Free Software Documentation - <AUTHOR> This is an anoymous survey about documentation of software libre https://libredoc.limequery.com/494868. It is in spanish language. Be free to answer. It has only 5 question. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I don't know Spanish so well, sorry. Write in here (perhaps a comment) the questions in English.</comment>


Demotivating a (Good) Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://lbrandy.com/blog/2008/10/demotivating-a-good-programmer/ <comment><USER2> I assume this wasn't meant to be comprehensive, but I believe a big factor for many developers is their coworkers. Working with people that are your equals (or better, people you can learn from) is very motivating.

Will I have to deal with people that don't really know the language we use and ask me questions instead of doing minimal investigation on their own? Will my coworkers produce code that looks like something you'd expect from a freshman CS student? Will I spend much of my time putting out fires caused by incompetent coworkers?

<comment><USER3> I'm the only person on a frontend web dev team who knows:

* Semantic HTML

* Advanced (> Basic) CSS

* Stylesheet design

* JavaScript

* JavaScript libraries

* How to write a reusable function

* How to use a database

* Damn near anything outside of Dreamweaver

Sometimes I really, really think I need a new job, but someone would have to approach me because the market's too risky for me to justify a serious hunt right now. In the meantime, I get to teach everyone else as much as I can, create interesting work for myself, and take care of my responsibilities which is the easiest part.

<comment><USER4> If you want to be contacted, put your email address in your profile.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't fishing for anything, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt.

<comment><USER5> Why not fish if you aren't happy? People who are looking to hire regularly read this site.

<comment><USER3> Good point. In that case, anyone who needs a CSS guru/frontend development expert...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a point I wish were made more often:

 _The highly motivated people don't come to work to play xbox._

I so agree. For great programmers working on great projects the work itself is the fun. Far too much emphasis is placed on extraneous goodies, probably because they're visible and everybody (including managers and journalists) can understand them.

<comment><USER7> In my mind the foosball tables and video games are a way of demonstrating that a company cares more about your actual productivity than whether you appear to be busy all hours of the day. The times when I'm really productive are more on the scale of sprints than marathons, and it's valuable to sometimes do something other than sit in front of a computer if I'm not feeling productive. Personally I'd never play video games during the workday because they destroy my ability to concentrate, but I appreciate the sentiment.

<comment><USER8> Lenient-to-nonexistent dress codes and flex time can go a _long_ way here, too.

Sometimes, having foosball tables and video games around distracts the people who actually intend on doing work, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is entirely true, but as a manager of programmers, you immediately run into a dilemma. Business is boring. There's a ton of prosaic, mind-numbing work that has to be done by someone. Personally when it comes time for me to "hack in where I can" I make an effort to actually choose the most mundane, boring tasks available. But part of the reason I do that is leading by example. So if I'm willing to do the shit work, I expect other people on my team to contribute when the shit is piled highest.

I also think the foosball, xbox 360s, nice chairs, etc are an attempt to make those basic facts more palatable. And its also true that really great programmers can make the "shit" just disappear, if they're given enough freedom. I.e. they can elevate your department or company.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hacker News, author here.

I have a totally unrelated question about this post. Do you see the two trackbacks? One of them (the first) appears to be a totally legit blog, but also appears to be spam? What is the proper etiquette in this situation? What is your opinion on trackbacks?

<comment><USER10> You run an editorial style blog site, kill the one you don't like and call it a day. At the end of the day it is still your site and if you don't like the content of it and have not sold it as a user generated playing field then no one can complain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The one that usually gets me is what I call the interest curve -- the things you've already done a several times at a work place tend to become less interesting, while management tends to assign you more and more of that because you're the expert.

</comment><comment><USER12> While it is true that your developer won't mandate an Xbox, there are many interesting problems out there, and if your company offers interesting problems and an Xbox, good equipment, good co-workers, and good salary, it will be much easier to retain good help.

I'd rather work somewhere where I know that I'll be recognized as more than a wage slave and I think that everyone else is the same way. The people who are good at what they do will gravitate toward the companies that offer the best environment, all things considered, which includes salary, perks, "chill rooms", etc.

</comment><comment> a-priori For me at least, there is a major exception to #2 and #3: it doesn't matter how peripheral it is, or how many people use it, if it has a great educational value. Of course, prudence requires you to realize when you have extracted all the fruits of such educational projects. At that point, you need to stop and apply the knowledge elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER13> A couple more possibilities:

1\. Tasks that require a lot of repetitive, manual work, but which are difficult to automate. Example: UI testing.

2\. Creaky legacy projects using outdated tools/code/platforms. Some people like Software Archeology (I sorta do,) but most developers seem to hate it.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, but you see the problem with both of those is that they have challenges! How can I build a good UI testing framework? How can I turn this large mass of spaghetti into usable code? These are exactly the sorts of things that are good challenges for a programmer.

To give a real-life example, I was handed a project last week to create a new project - the source code mostly existed, except some glue, but I needed a new build environment. Now, I _could_ have passed a very boring week manually creating makefiles, or I could do what I actually did - create an optimised makefile format, then write a parser for it in Ruby. The actual generation of the build environment ended up taking about half a day, with the parser/semantics analysis taking up the rest of the time. It was fun work, and better yet, the next time someone asks me to do this, I'll just grab the tool that I developed this time, and it'll all be done in half a day. As an added bonus I got to play with a PEG parser generator for the first time in my life (way nicer than your typical yacc-style ambiguous grammar - thanks Chomsky, you bastard!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is so true, usually when I start a project and there are lots a problems to solve I'm hyper motivated but by the end of the product development I start loosing focus and it's a pain to do little bug fixes.

</comment><comment><USER16> Asking a Programmer to 'manage' client expectations.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is so true.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sources? Not even anecdotal evidence?

<comment><USER19> Once upon a time I was the development manager for a product that we took from $100K to more than M$10 a year in sales. The President of the company called a big meeting, congratulated everyone on the success, and then explained that to take a company from being "just a product" to a sustainable enterprise rested on farming its cash cows and investing in developing future star products.

So... He was forming a product research group to think up new products, starting with looking at the exciting new wireless "space."

Cool, I thought, and asked to get in on the new group action. "Why?" he wanted to know, "you're doing a great job where you are." he staffed the new group with managers and developers from other teams with less successful products.

Shortly thereafter, I joined a start up.

<comment><USER19> Re-reading this, I want to emphasize I am only telling this story to as an anecdote in support of the idea that the perception of being tangential is demotivating. The story should not be construed to suggest that the President was making a management mistake.

The product continued to make them a lot of money after I left, so it's not like they lost anyone critical :-)

<comment><USER20> _The product continued to make them a lot of money after I left, so it's not like they lost anyone critical :-)_

I think what this shows is that products are successful after they become successful. Once everyone has heard of your product and know that it's good, they want it ... regardless of whether or not the competition is "better".

If I were Microsoft and one day I replaced Visual Studio with vim, I'm sure people would like it much more than when it was called "vim".

<comment><USER21> And that, my friends, is _branding_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Allow me to add URGENCY for no good reason, it actually hit me once I saw it articulated on the 37 Signals blog . . . last big project I worked on, my goodness, I had the WORST neurotic and paranoid (I really do think she uses drugs) suit woman from hell as a project manager, no clue, all urgency, I would say "don't do this" or "do that" and she would do the opposite, thereby starting fires that I had to put out IMMEDIATELY of course, it was one thing after another, seldom did I ever get to complete a task before having 3 more hurled at me _ALL URGENT_ it was nuts! After almost a year of that, I felt burned out for like 3 months. Has anyone had similar experiences? This woman was crazy, she would call me on the phone 7-8 times a day, ask 90 questions one after the other (not letting me completely answer a single one before moving on to the next one of course) write me like 15-20 emails (more questions, or urgent requests) . . . she eventually ran the small company into the ground, totally crashed and burned, it was amazing, at least I made some money, but my goodness, it was insane. And underneath everything I think the most damaging thing was indeed the urgency.

<comment><USER23> So what you're saying is she liked urgency?

<comment><USER22> Yes, she did, and seemed to generate more situations that actually required it, apparently because she enjoyed it.

Funny thing was, she NEVER applied that sense of urgency when it was payday, or when it came to performing tasks that only she could do, yet she certainly loved to send me scrambling.

Suits are sick people, I actually feel for them at times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Be nice if this site was up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. You guys killed it :). Working with slicehost to get it back up now.

<comment><USER24> If Hacker News can kill your site, then it has problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't just hacker news. I disabled caching when messing with the style sheet and forgot to re-enable it. Wordpress sans caching was eating the low- end slice I had from slicehost. It should be fine, now.

PS. the slicehost guys were a big help, worth every penny.

<comment><USER25> I'm considering using slicehost. What do you mean 'killed'? What happened? How'd you learn about it? How are they helpful? I'm quite curious as to what the parallels are to a 'real' physical server, like the one I have now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed my server was sluggish. I ssh'd into it just in time to see some out of memory errors and notice my top was loaded with apache children. My ssh terminal became unresponsive.

I went to the slicehost chatroom and said "uh oh" and they told me to use their local web-based console. It got me to the machine just in time to see an endless loop of 'out of memory' spam.

They told me I was swapping like crazy and having memory problems. They asked me about my mysql/apache config.

As per their suggestion, I rebooting the machine to try to get into apache and lower the number of children, and the machine crashed after reboot before I could do anything, with more out of memory spam.

They suggested the best next step was to do an upgrade on the slice from 256 to 512, which I did. It took about 10 minutes. It's prorated, so I only pay the higher price for the amount of time I'm at 512. Once I upgraded, the machine was stable enough for me to re-enable caching.

Now that the crisis was averted, all the extra apache threads died off, and my machine went back to normal. They gave me a bunch of links showing how to more properly configure apache/mysql for low-ram VPSs.

<comment><USER26> Can you share those links?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://forum.slicehost.com/?CategoryID=7>

...especially..

[http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=853&...](http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=853&page=1#Item_0)

Here's another I dug up: [http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/configuring-a- lightweight-apac...](http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/configuring-a-lightweight- apache-mysql-install-on-debian-ubuntu)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I Want to Make "The Chronicles of Amber" into a TV Series. How? - <AUTHOR> I am a journalist. I write articles about gadgets, web, science, technology, space, and the like. And I love to read fiction books. My favorite book is the "The Chronicles of Amber" by Roger Zelazny. It's a magnum opus of 10 volumes about life and adventures of a supernatural mythical family. And for a long time I had a dream – to make this book into a movie.
And at some point I realized, that it should not be a movie, but a TV series! They are becoming more intense and complex, and attract a big audience. There is even a very popular series based on the famous multi-volume fantasy saga. Yeah, that one. When I realized this, I quickly wrote the screenplay for a pilot episode. I think that it came out quite good. I've registered it with the Writers Guild of America, and can send it to anybody who can help me.
Next I found the agency and discussed this subject with them. The agency took its time to figure out who I am and what do I have. Finally, they told me that at the moment someone allegedly bought an option for a screen version of the book. But, reading between the lines, I realized that they just do not want to work with an unknown person. So I began to think about what to do next.
I found out that the book was turned into an audiobooks by TV actors Alessandro Juliani ("Battlestar Galactica", "The 100") and Wil Wheaton ("Star Trek: The Next Generation", "Eureka"). I found their managers' contacts and exchanged letters with them to find out if they are interested in supporting the film adaptation.
One of the managers was kind enough to explain to me, that his client is not engaged in producing activities, so, basically, when I'll have the rights and the financing for the project, they will be happy to listen to my proposal.
I've created a blog at https://9amber.wordpress.com/ with additional information about this problem in a blogpost (I had to cut this message at HN down to 2000 symbols), and a contact page. So feel free to contact me. <comment><USER2> I too am a huge fan of the Amber series. I don't think Zelazny's estate has managed that asset very well though. See the Bettencourt novels and the controversy relating to their publication as an example. Or how rarely one will find Zelazny's works on the shelf at most brick and mortar bookstores compared to his contemporaries.

I wish you well in your quest! I'd love to see this series get a second life.

<comment><USER3> +1 on "not managing the asset well". Other than the Bettencourt books, they aren't even on Kindle, which is basically leaving free money on the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If in some stage you'll want to create some kind of PoC, consider making a radio-play and some visual story boards, they relatively low in production costs, but can deliver a feeling that one will have experiencing end product, or can be a good medium in itself. Good luck with your endeavour.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting – I was thinking about the storyboard myself. Since I'm no visual artist at all, maybe I could find such a person, who can help me visualize this story. Thanks for your answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I quickly wrote the screenplay for a pilot episode. I think that it came out quite good"

Not trying to be a jerk here, but unless you're a seasoned tv writer (and if you were, you wouldn't be asking this), it's pretty unlikely that something you dashed off quickly turned out that well. Maybe it is good, but to get produced it needs to be great. Have you read the Game of Thrones pilot script? That was pretty good, and without an option or a name writer attached it has to be better than that.

Also, you did this in the wrong order. You get the option first, then you write the pilot, unless it's a pure spec not intended to be produced, e.g. written just as a writing sample to get a staff job.

Almost every writer and showrunner in hollywood has a "passion project" like this that they would love to get made one day. And just as often, they can't do it even with a few shows under their belt and tons of connections.

Not sure why you're asking this on a startup news site. If you want, put on your flame-resistant armour and ask this again at in the forums at donedealpro.com. Post some sample pages there for critique. You'll get a lot of flak, and there's a lot of trolls on there, but you'll also get some good advice from people working in the industry.

All of that said, I hope you prove me wrong. You're right about one thing, it is a great series and would be a perfect fit for TV (well, except for budget, some of those settings would be unfilmable due to expense).

If you want, email me 5-10 pages from your pilot and I'll be happy to give you honest, constructive notes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I've tried to buy an option first, before writing the script. And after I was denied, I decided to write it and try to find and convince somebody with an influence in the area to help me buy this option. I'm sure that the option is available, they just don't want to sell it to somebody they don't know. And I thought that it would be easier to convince somebody, if I have something to show to them. I've asked this here because by my observation there's a lot of different smart people here with totally different areas of expertise, and even if someone wouldn't help me right away, he can tell me in which direction I can look. Like you just did, pointing me to the donedealpro.com It's very nice of you to offer your time to review my work, and I'll send it to you right away. Thank you for the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Finally, they told me that at the moment someone allegedly bought an option > for a screen version of the book. But, reading between the lines, I realized > that they just do not want to work with an unknown person.

Maybe they were just trying to blow you off, but if someone else already owns the option on the original material you're stopped before you even get started. You're definitely welcome to have written your screenplay adaptation, but until you get the TV rights to the original material from whoever owns them, you don't really have a legal leg to stand on for making a commercial adaptation. If I were you, I'd try to track down who owns the rights, and see if you can't sell them your adaptation. Or try and negotiate purchasing the rights.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I understand that if someone owns the option, that's it. At least, until they fail to produce the show in time and option will close. And after they told me that option was sold to someone, I've asked the agency to provide me with the buyer's contacts, or even give my contacts to the buyer so he could contact me. The facts that not only they didn't tell me that option was already sold right away, but they also denied my request to help me to contact the buyer, made me think that actually they didn't sell anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You're in a tough spot. The more interest that you build in the series, the more likely that someone with more money and better connections will decide to take your idea and run with it. Further, it's not like you can simply start creating derivative works to demonstrate your abilities - you might get sued out of existence.

I'd suggest creating a website that talks about your plans, how you would approach the TV show making process. What are the types of things that you would do, what are some plot lines, how would you show the story's "card mechanic" visually? Build a community so that there is fan devotion not just to the idea, but to you and your implementation of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a good advice, and I was thinking roughly in that direction myself. I'll try to make it work, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am a indy film producer in the DC area. I have produced a web series, 2 short films, and a handful of music videos. What you are looking for is much bigger than what i am capable of giving you. Regardless, I'd love to help in any way i can. We are currently seeking funding for 1 feature whilst trying to pitch 2 TV shows.

email me @ the address on my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, the mail is sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've had the same dream for many years. Please, whoever does it, don't mess it up.</comment>


Show HN: Gurn – Use words, not bookmarks - <AUTHOR> https://www.gurn.io/ <comment><USER2> That's what Firefox' awesome searchbar does. There I just input "jira $projectname" and I get the correct URL. If this does not work, I simply bookmark the page and give it tags. Then entering the tags in the search bar gives the same result.

<comment><USER3> Firefox also has the little-known keyword functionality. Bookmark [https://bugs.example.com/issue/%s](https://bugs.example.com/issue/%s), in the bookmark manager give it the keyword `bug`, and then typing "bug PROJ-123456" will take you to [https://bugs.example.com/issue/PROJ-123456](https://bugs.example.com/issue/PROJ-123456). (On some search fields there may be an "Add a Keyword for this Search…" item which helps with creating the bookmark with keyword, too.)

A quick look around [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/WebExtensions/AP...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/WebExtensions/API/bookmarks) suggests that it's not possible to control the keywords and tags from an extension in Firefox; this is a sad omission: I'd _really_ like an extension which imported all of DuckDuckGo's !bangs as bookmarks with keywords, so that you could type in _exactly the same stuff_ and have it bypass duckduckgo.com.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1276817](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1276817) is about adding that, but weird stuff is happening there. I'm going to follow it up, because I'd _hate_ to see this functionality lost. I use it for a number of things.

<comment><USER4> Adding a keyword used to be more prominent and easy to do - you could right click any search bar and "Add as Keyword" \- or you could edit the Bookmark link manually when bookmarking a page. They "simplified" bookmarking to where I need to navigate through several layers of menus to access the Bookmark Manager where I can finally edit the bookmark to add a Keyword and update the link to what it needs to be.

I have no idea why they made bookmarks so much more difficult to work with and I'm not sure when it happened - as I updated from FF39 to FF60. Using Quantum for the last few weeks - I'm pretty sure I'll be going back to FF39 as it's simply _more_ usable. Especially since add-ons that were a large part of my workflow actually work (or even exist at all...)

<comment><USER3> "Add a Keyword for this Search…" is still there in the context menu.

<comment><USER4> Checked on my work computer and you're right! Something must be going on with my userChrome.css back at home that's inadvertently hiding it from me, since I hide useless context menu options like "Set as Desktop Background...", "Email Image", etc. Something I'm hiding must be hiding "Add as a Keyword for this Search..." on accident.

<comment><USER3> And debugging those things can be nasty!

I wish :contains() had stayed in CSS Selectors Level 3, or that you could use XPath in stylesheets.

Hmm… #contentAreaContextMenu actually looks pretty sane. They all have IDs, which I really should have expected anyway. I'm going to add some rules to my own userChrome.css. Thanks for the idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The current workflow in Chrome is, CTRL-D, Name it something memorable, CTRL- SHIFT-O, search your bookmarks.

You can even save all your currently opened tabs with CTRL-SHIFT-D.

I'm just surprised this service doesn't allow sharing of bookmarks to other people, I figure that'd be the one thing that's still "hard". EDIT: I see that it's on their todo list.

EDIT2: Upon further reflection I think the "team" aspect is the right thing to sell to. Synchronized link sharing is still hard, and just having a company wiki most of the time, doesn't make it easier.

<comment><USER6> Hey, I'm one of the engineers on Gurn! So we do have sharing actually, we have lists to collect keywords (sort of like a bucket) and you can invite others to these lists either via their email or username.

We're also working on Organisations at the moment which will make this even easier and allow you to group together users and lists under one roof. Checkout this link for some more info on list roles [https://gurn.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/360000...](https://gurn.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/36000017428-what- do-the-list-roles-of-admin-contributor-and-member-mean-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be wary of using a service built by a company (Gradient Ltd) that among other things provides, "Effective Attribution, Web Tracking, Analytical Insights".

From [https://www.gradient.co/#products](https://www.gradient.co/#products) (scroll down 1 section).

"Attribution and identity stitching of users across multiple channels is complex and confusing – we provide a platform that does it all in one place."

"With Kintra you can prove how effective a social campaign was and visualise the full customer journey down to an identifiable individual – simple."

<comment><USER8> From their Privacy Policy ([https://www.gurn.io/privacy- policy/](https://www.gurn.io/privacy-policy/)):

      4. We may collect the following Data, which includes personal Data, from you:
        ....
        l. A list of URLs starting with a referring site, your activity on the Website,
           and the site you exit to (automatically collected);

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi jlogsdon,

This clause exists as we run Google Analytics on the main gurn.io webpage. It was a standard clause suggested by our lawyers here in the UK to ensure our users are fully informed about the possible data collection being conducted by the GA analytics.js tracking code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think Finda ([https://keminglabs.com/finda/](https://keminglabs.com/finda/)) fills a similar need, runs offline, and indexes lots of other stuff as well. Although I think it is not possible to assign additional keywords.

(Not affiliated in any way, just a user)

<comment><USER10> Mac OS only btw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool! This looks like go/ links, the internal URL shortener that Google uses and which a lot of other tech companies subsequently adopted (I wrote about it here: [http://blog.goatcodes.com/2018/04/18/go- origin](http://blog.goatcodes.com/2018/04/18/go-origin))

Full disclaimer: I built goatcodes.com to be a hosted version of go/ links, short links for teams. It serves a similar purpose to Gurn, albeit in a slightly different way. Think bit.ly, but you have to log in before the redirect.

</comment><comment><USER12> After reading the privacy policy I know that I don't want to use this app.

[https://www.gurn.io/privacy-policy/](https://www.gurn.io/privacy-policy/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi nloa,

I'm Simon, one of the founders of Gurn.

Can I ask what in particular about our privacy policy concerns you so that I can address your concerns? It's a fairly standard privacy policy developed with our lawyers here in the UK. I have already addressed others concerns further down the comments about referer / ip collection which is required wording as we use Google Analytics on our main website. If there is anything else of concern I'd really like to understand it so I can try to work with our lawyers to address it.

Thanks

Simon

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks nice. I've asked myself, what advantage this tool has over using simple bookmarks with keywords. If I understand this correctly, the answer is about being able to share the bookmarks with your team (and across browsers). I would make this point much more prominent.

Here's a shameless plug for my tool StaticMarks [0], as I try to solve a similar problem, but for a different audience (mostly developers). The "marketing" page explaining exactly what the tool does is still a work in progress, though.

[0] [https://staticmarks.com/](https://staticmarks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> What's old is new again — AOL keywords!

Here's an article from 2010 talking about AOL keywords at the turn of the millennium:

 _How many of you remember watching TV about a decade ago, and seeing commercials for large, well-known companies (and I mean really large ones—say, for example, Proctor & Gamble) and hearing "visit us on the world wide web at www.tidedetergent.com, or type in AOL Keyword: 'laundry'"?_

 _I was thinking about this the other day… AOL was way ahead of the curve on this. They were so far ahead of the curve that it didn't catch on. I know some people just slightly younger than me might say "AOL? Who's that?" But the fact is, AOL was really a cutting-edge company in the dot-com era. I suppose in one sense, you can't even call them a dot-com company, cause they provided the framework for the dot-coms without really being one themselves. (Plus they're still around!) In a way, they actually ushered in the internet age, and survived. Funny thought._

 _But here's what I've been thinking about… keywords were an idea so brilliant, we just accept them as a fact of life today. But at the time, AOL was the only one even thinking like that. I never knew what their policy was on how they assigned different keywords to different companies [does anyone know? was it auction-style? or just first-come-first-serve?], but I do know that they were attempting to make our online search efforts easier by coming up with simple, streamlined, logical one or two-word keywords that we could type into a special box in the AOL browser and, Voila! We would end up at exactly the most logical website for that type of word._

[http://www.ronstauffer.com/blog/remember-aol- keywords/](http://www.ronstauffer.com/blog/remember-aol-keywords/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Check out Keypirinha if this workflow looks appealing. [http://keypirinha.com/](http://keypirinha.com/)

Alt+Space brings up an edit box. Then type to perform some action. Actions can be as simple as opening a bookmark or launching an application. (Keypirinha indexes the bookmarks in all installed browsers, the Windows start menu and a whole lot more.)

Keypirinha will be familiar to users of Launchy or Find And Run Robot. (But Keypirinha is better!)

Keypirinha is one of the first bits of software I install after installing Windows. I can't recommend it highly enough!

<comment><USER16> Do you know how it compares to Wox? I like the design and UX of Wox, but it's a little bit slower than Launchy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Watching the animated demo on the home page, this looks a lot like how I use Vimium ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en)) to handle bookmarks - give them memorable names, then press 'b' and type until you see the one you want, and press Enter.

Does this offer more that I'm missing? Or is the target market not the kinds of people who would use something like Vimium?

<comment><USER18> It looks to be targeted at teams, with a key feature being the ability to synchronise bookmarks.

[https://www.gurn.io/business/](https://www.gurn.io/business/)

<comment><USER17> Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious if this is any better than a well designed custom landing page, which could even be set as the new tab in a browser. Everyone is already familiar with links and webpages yet using the navbar in this way is pretty rare, the only other case I can think of is duckduckgo's bang feature[0].

0: [https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

<comment><USER6> Hey, I'm one of the engineers building Gurn. We've actually thought a lot about this, almost creating a personal home page for your browser which could be a starting place for navigating to common groups of urls etc. We're still figuring out how this might work and how it could fit into the product at the moment but stay tuned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thinking of bookmarks and then thinking of history, what I really want is a personal search engine that only searches things you've browsed. Where was that article I read on $subject? I recall the snippet $snippet. Where is that funny picture I saw a few months ago about the old man? It would be perfect in this chat.

A good personal search engine might further alleviate the need for bookmarks.

<comment><USER20> Something like a full site cache combined with a full text search through said cache?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I found it interesting that self hosting costs more than cloud. I'm sure there are lots of reasons. @gurn engineers, can you share some of your reasoning behind this? I'm curious the % of self host vs cloud.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Matt,

I'm one of the co-founders of Gurn.

We make it cheaper to host in the cloud as there is significantly less burden upon us as a small company in supporting our cloud offering. When we use the term self-host we are actually talking about on-premise clients, think places that might operate under an air-gap such as financial institutions, government departments etc. We've found that these organisations don't particularly enjoy the fast-paced development and release cycles that you can deliver in a continuous deployment environment such as the cloud and we end up with fragmented versions in use across clients. As such we want to encourage as many businesses to stick to the cloud environment as possible and price accordingly.

To date, our largest installations are on-prem, as companies we've dealt with are still getting comfortable with the cloud.

We also have the concept of on-prem/off-prem where we can spin up a dedicated cloud environment should the company require it, but again this involves an extra cost to us and is factored into "self-host" price.

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the explanation. That was my thought. Assise from the support issues, on prem may be more valuable to those customers. Definitely charge more for things that are more valuable to customers.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You had me - but then the "Get Gurn" button didn't work...

<comment><USER6> Oh snap! We're taking a look now.

Edit: it's all working now, apologies for the broken link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why aren't bookmarks added to Google search results?

I save a lot of high-quality articles in Pocket, and it would be extremely helpful to have them show up on Google when I search for related stuff.

</comment><comment><USER24> Umm, don't most browsers have a keyword based/parameterized bookmark feature nowadays?

<comment><USER6> Yes they do, we're focusing a lot on sharing and collaborating which browsers don't provide. This way you could be using a keyword happily and if you notice it goes to an out dated resource, you can update it and others in your team will get that update instantly without having to do it themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You mean like using… domain names?

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool product, unfortunate name - [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gurn](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gurn)

<comment><USER27> "Gurn" is actually in the English dictionary and it's meant "to pull an ugly face" _long_ before it was linked to drug taking. In fact the World Gurning Championships have been running since the 13th century.

Frankly though, if your naming requirements are " _must not appear in Urban Dictionary_ ", then people might as well just give up naming things now. UD pretty much has every real and imaginary word in its database as well as half of all the possible acronyms in the world too.

<comment><USER28> Hey, I'm one of the co-founders of Gurn... Yeah the name is definitely a talking point!

In the UK, you're spot om, it does have the connotation of pulling an ugly face - the exact same type of face all our colleagues used to pull when they couldn't find the web resources they needed! Outside of the UK people tend to see it just as a short and memorable 4-letter word :-)

Using Gurn as the name is also a pun on how the tool works - you type 'go' in the address bar, followed by a keyword. The Keyword acts like an old school URN... So you 'go urn'... hence Gurn :-)

<comment><USER29> Nice woody sort of word, "gurn".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why would I want social features added to my bookmarks? Not everything needs to have social nonsense bolted on to it. No thanks

<comment><USER31> Think about this in the context of a company. You may want to allow people to quickly search for bookmarks flagged by others at the company.

For example: 'hr vacation policy' or 'project foo'

<comment><AUTHOR> You've hit the nail on the head :)</comment></comment></comment>


Painless NP-complete problems: an embedded DSL for SMT solving - <AUTHOR> http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/painless-np-complete-problems-an-embedded-dsl-for-smt-solving/ <comment><USER2> Anybody on HN actually doing a product that needs sat solvers? They're currently in vogue in software security; they solve search and reachability problems on modeled instruction streams.

<comment><USER3> I believe they're also used for verifying potential new compiler optimizations: <http://blog.regehr.org/archives/247>

Check out the SAT competition for state of the art solvers: <http://www.satcompetition.org/>

<comment><USER4> They can also be used to do the actual optimizations. For example most formulations of the register allocation problem are NP-complete. SMT formulas can be used as a very powerful abstract domain in abstract interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have nothing insightful to say about this topic but I'll comment anyway and ask: Is there a way to bookmark threads without commenting?

<comment><USER2> If you vote it up, won't it show up on your "saved threads"?</comment></comment>