What I Learned from Losing $200M - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/what-i-learned-from-losing-200-million <comment><USER2> Shortly before the crisis broke, Naseem Taleb came to the office to meet me and my colleagues. Hilarious character, and irreverent. He told us calculations were stupid and reminded us about ludic fallacies, narrative fallacies, and so on.

My colleagues still contrived to lose $250M over about 8 weeks, blowing up the firm and the investors. One investor lost his job immediately because of it. The money was lost in very obvious way, somewhat similar to what this guy was up to, a big options trade gone wrong, in a market that was not big enough for the biggest fish to escape.

What's sad is people understand the basic statistical principles. You don't know if the future will be like the past. Things move together in a crisis. The more independent tests you make, the more confident you can be in a result. (Ie if you can guess a daily coin flip right 55% of the time, that's better that being able to guess an annual coin flip 80% of the time.) And so on. But somehow investors are almost blind to everything other than recent return.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but it's totally rational, if you look at it another way. The potential upside is that I make $250 M or $2 B dollars and reap some kind of bonus, right? And the downside is that I lose my job and somebody ELSE loses the $250 M.

If you don't care about anything other than yourself, why _wouldn 't_ you make that bet?

I don't think a lot of the traders are purposely thinking this, but the incentives are set up so that people who act this way are rewarded and start to dominate the decision making process.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much of an analogy we can draw to raising outside capital to fund your own venture.

<comment><USER2> Fund:

You get paid if nothing happens, traditionally 2% but probably lower on average these days. If things go well, you get 20% of the high watermark profits. If they go south after that, you don't pay it back. You're always paid in cash.

VC:

You get paid a salary that's below what you'd probably get in an established company, plus you get equity. But the investors will typically try to get preferred stock, in case things go badly (liq pref). If things go well, you can sell some shares at each subsequent round, but of course you have less after each. And some of the investors will want board seats, which means a degree of control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain like I'm five, the trades the author made and how he turned it around to be so profitable? My understanding so far:

In 2008, he made a promise to buy Mexican Maya oil in 2009, at the 2008 price of Maya. The Mexican government presumably pays him some fees for handling this risk for them. In addition, if the price of Maya goes up in a year, he pockets the difference.

However, if the price of Maya goes down, he still has to buy at the higher 2008 price, but can only sell the Maya on to others at the lower 2009 price. To protect against this risk, he bought 'options' \- the right, but not the obligation - to buy WTI and Fuel (amongst others) at some strike price. This is where I get lost. How was he reducing his exposure by selling Fuel, had he bought options at some super-low strike price, thus letting him earn a profit when he exercised those options and sold the Fuel?

Then, what restructuring did he do with the Mexican government in a way that could benefit both Mexico and him?

He had also short-sold WTI - he had bet on WTI prices going down, by promising to sell it in 2009, at a 2008ish rate, allowing him to buy it cheaply off the market and fulfill his promises. This, I understand.

Then, he "accumulated a massive position in Maya", which "strengthened significantly" compared to his hedges. Does this mean that the price of Maya was recovering faster than the other oils that he had bet against, so he was able to sell his Maya at a profit?

<comment><USER6> > To protect against this risk, he bought 'options' \- the right, but not the > obligation - to buy WTI and Fuel (amongst others) at some strike price.

That would be a "call" option. He presumably bought "put" options, which carry the right to _sell_ at a specified price. Then when the market price fell, he could buy at the market price and sell at the strike price, pocketing the difference.

A call option is a bullish bet; a put option is a bearish one.

I don't know how the restructuring worked.

> Then, he "accumulated a massive position in Maya", which "strengthened > significantly" compared to his hedges. Does this mean that the price of Maya > was recovering faster than the other oils that he had bet against, so he was > able to sell his Maya at a profit?

That's how I read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the guy would be more upset losing $50K of his own money.

<comment><USER8> You don't think losing $200m of someone else's money hits you like a ton of bricks? Being in the industry he is, I think he could handle a $50k personal loss. It wouldn't be fun, but it wouldn't be life-ruining. Presumably, when the magnitude of this loss hit him, he assumed his entire career was over. That's a lot more than $50k in earnings, not to mention the personal and professional humiliation.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. Plus, the title doesn't imply it's his money. The second you find out his job you know he lost $200 million of others' money. The number plus losses by those who trusted his skill let the impact sink in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of traders have the "illusion of confidence," in fact most of them do. They have good year or two and think it's the result of skill rather than luck. That confidence causes them to place riskier bets which then implode. Hedge funds follow this curve all the time... that's why you hear about massive profits one year and then next year the fund implodes.

Beating the market (after fees) over and over again is something only a small elite can do. Most of the rest of the finance industry is full of people with vastly inflated views of their own abilities.

</comment><comment><USER11> The thing is, people believe these guys because they come up with sophisticated stuff that looks like science fiction. It's science fiction, then it must bring lots of money, right?

This stuff works this way:

1\. I come up to you and tell you that we can make risk-free* money by insuring (simplified all the BS) the price of oil for the government of Mexico. Isn't that sweet?

2\. I come to the government of Mexico and tell them that they can forget about price variation and the risk of it going down. We are going to insure it for you!

So what happens?

1\. The price goes up, or stays the same. We make money. I become rich. You make some interest on your capital. We celebrate. I write about it. I write a book about it. How we made lots of money and beat the hell out of the market.

2\. The price goes down, really down. You lose money. You lose your capital. Your money simply disappears. I don't celebrate. Maybe I consider changing careers. And sure thing, I'll write about it. "How it all went wrong". And yeah, I still become rich.

well. Quite a world we live in.

<comment><USER12> Not quite -- this guy didn't naked short a put option on Maya crude. The plan was to dynamically hedge the position -- putting on a trading strategy that continuously neutralized the first partial derivative of the payoff function. The problem was the the second partial derivative was left unhedged -- oops! To put it technically, he was delta hedged but not vega hedged. Thus when volatility spiked he lost money. Even worse, he insured 2/3 of Mexico's entire production, so when things got bad there wasn't even enough liquidity to maintain the delta hedge.

A better plan would be to come up with some sort of vega hedge using WTI volatility. WTI vol and Maya vol are correlated so some sort of partial hedge should have been possible, but it's very tricky. This is why other banks were not interested. It sounded like he was either too lazy or arrogant to believe he need to vega hedge and it blew up in his face.

<comment><USER13> > _To put it technically, he was delta hedged but not vega hedged._

Delta, the first partial derivative on price of the Black-Scholes model of option pricing [1], is the rate at which the price of an option changes in relation to the price of the underlying asset. For example, a call option with delta=0.25 requires one own 1 unit of the underlying for every 4 options (keeping things simple) to be perfectly hedged, _i.e._ indifferent to changes in the price of the underlying. If you are running a leveraged operation, delta-hedged means well-hedged.

Unfortunately, as the price of the underlying changes delta changes. Yes, one can describe this relationship in terms of volatility (as the price changes, volatility will spike, which in turn feeds into the value of delta). But it is simpler to describe it in terms of the second partial derivative on price, gamma. Gamma is the rate at which delta changes in respect of price.

Non-derivative assets are delta=1 assets; for every dollar change in the price of AAPL the price of AAPL changes one dollar. Duh. Buying and selling delta=1 products helps one hedge delta. Gamma, being a second derivative, is non- linear. That means only non-linear products will aid you in your game against it. Options, and option-like products, are really the only ones with "gammaness".

Big operations gamma hedge as much as they can while trying to keep their delta contained. For example, if you sell 100 puts, you would keep yourself delta-hedged while you try to profitably buy 100 puts. Provided the price doesn't wiggle around too much, this works.

This strategy is problematic, however, if your counterparty is Mexico. Mexico wants LOTS of options. If you can't give Mexico LOTS of options, Mexico can't bother dealing with you. So you tend to want to provide Mexico with LOTS of options because LOTS of options commonly means LOTS of profits (and LOTS of fees).

But the market doesn't have a bunch of people buying and selling LOTS of options. Just lots of options. So whereas one might usually be 20 or 50 or 70 percent gamma-hedged, when one just booked LOTS of options, 2% seems like a pretty good rate for the first week after the sale. Sucks to be you if Libya or Iran or the Sauds decide crash the party in that time.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black–Scholes_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black–Scholes_model)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the explanation! The assumption that volatility is a random walk strikes me as a very poor model when shit goes south. I would guess people use more sophisticated models in practice? Do you know of any good books on the subject?

<comment><USER15> "Volatility is the wrong number to be plugged into the wrong formula (BS) in hope to get the right answer."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would say the author had an "illusion of competence" rather than an illusion of control. In this case, at least, experts could have explained to him what he was doing wrong in objective terms before the crisis; he just didn't have perspective on his level of inexperience.

</comment><comment><USER17> "What I learned from losing $200m"

It looks like a blank page to me. Is the site down or is he trying to tell us he learned nothing?

<comment><USER18> I got a blank too and that was what I thought :-) Voted!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think that this trader's recovery had a lot more to do with skill than others are giving him credit for. His key insight was the following:

 _" It occurred to me that Mexico might be willing to restructure its deal—selling us back the option it owned, and buying a new one—in a way that would lock in billions of profits for the country, while giving me a much needed windfall too."_

Many traders (especially inexperienced ones) suffer from a bias to sell their winners too quickly, so that they can lock in the satisfaction of making a winning trade. By putting himself in the other side's shoes, this trader was able to find one of the few ways out of his predicament.

</comment><comment><USER20> It all sounds like astrologists gambling in a casino with millions of people's lives on the line.

</comment><comment><USER21> as an independent trader through the crisis (and now), i can relate to the debilitating stress of watching the financial system unwind. the enormity of the trades these fools made and make still astounds me, and it's all a product of lazy / greedy regulators. that kind of leverage can't result in anything long-run outside of short term over-compensation and incentive to over bet, leaving the country and the world to pick up the pieces.

all of this started when investment banks were allowed to raise public money. if they were still private partnerships, you wouldn't see near the reckless risk taking we did and do.

<comment> D-Coder "it's all a product of lazy / greedy regulators."

Uh, I think it starts with greedy traders. If they weren't so greedy, the regulaters wouldn't matter.

<comment><USER22> You kind of have to assume they will be maximally greedy, though. That's the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> fun read, though the whole thing feels like a humblebrag

</comment><comment><USER24> _" The derivative I'd sold was an option, but it worked just like an insurance policy."_

That sums up the whole derivatives implosion.

Never mind that a rocket scientist had calculated that the foreseeable maximum downside was $30 million, this is why the insurance industry has relatively high capital requirements. Ibankers were writing exotic insurance contracts and, only because they were not called insurance, they were also flauting the capital requirements.

Those who claim "it's complicated" are making excuses. The ibankers running these deals should have been jailed for violating insurance regulations.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure I'm reading you right, but I think you mean flouting instead of flaunting.

<comment><USER24> You got me just before I corrected it. I don't even know how I typed "flaunting."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The model in US is you privatize the wins, and tax payers pick up the loses. Is very very nice.

Shall I link the Feinstein speech where she said on senate floor that 80% of voters _DONT_ want to bail out these gamblers? Than she voted to bail them out, against 'by the people'.

So if you can't beat them join them: win I win, lose you lose. Hello wall street, I'm all yours, need me to code up your derivatives, I'm there.

(I wonder what candidate running for office is against this? I know one, I'll vote for that one. Hint: You can tell since the corporate media hate on him.)

</comment><comment><USER27> Google's cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C81GXUo...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:C81GXUoqJbwJ:nautil.us/issue/31/stress/what- i-learned-from-losing-200-million+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) (scroll down quite a bit to read it)

</comment><comment><USER28> If only he had read The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb when it came out in 2007. It would have made him question all these faulty assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER29> Website isn't currently working, and google cached version takes a few mins to load.

<comment><USER30> try [https://archive.is/YdW7p](https://archive.is/YdW7p)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I felt too queasy to read the whole thing. Does he ever realize that his playful gambles caused millions of people's live to be ruined?

<comment><USER32> Maybe you should have read the whole thing. His customer (the Mexican Govt) netted $6B out of the deal in the end.

<comment><USER33> It's a zero sum game either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> salivating to know what the number is.. enough to retire, apparently</comment>


Japan Wakes to a Text Message: Missile Approaching - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/japan-north-korea-missile-warning.html <comment><USER2> I posted this to a friend's facebook when he asked, I need to re-write it better but the idea is there. No one wants DPRK to fall or KJU to die, its too many fucking refugees.

What you don't realize is that no one (I don't mean average person, I mean politicians and leaders) really cares what the DPRK (by extension the Kims) do to their own people as long as they are not a threat to anyone else. China likes having the DPRK there as a buffer against the American forces in South Korea. It also provides a distraction as China is claiming the entire South China Sea.

South Korea while officially saying they want re-unification doesn't really want it. If and when the DPRK falls, you got 25 million refugees who are barely able to function in the modern world streaming to China or South Korea. China will not take the refugee in, they will either deploy PLA at the border and stop them or take over the DPRK as a puppet state. The economic cost to absorb the refugees is enormous. In the 20 years after West Germany and East Germany merged, over 1.3 trillion euros was spent on the former East Germany and its still behind economically the former West Germany. The GDP per capita for East Germany at the time of the merger was 10000USD (1990 dollars) and right now for DPRK it's less than 1500USD (current dollars). West Germany was also economically much stronger at the time then South Korea is now and has a much higher population (~60M West, ~15M East) compared to the Koreas (~50M South, ~25M North). South Korea doesn't have the money or the economic poweress help the DPRK like West Germany did with East Germany.

EDIT: read this instead, this guy explained what I said much better on Reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1etaxd/north_kor...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1etaxd/north_koreas_hidden_labor_camps_exposed_a_new_un/ca3mnrf/)

<comment><USER3> I don't know very much about geopolitical whatevers, but can anyone explain- like-I'm-five why everyone assumes that taking out the North Korean government has to involve 25 million refugees (which is the entire population of the country) streaming into China and South Korea? They're not going to nuke all of NK into inhabitability, people will still live there. I'm sure some people will want to leave now that they're not under pain of death for doing so, but probably the vast majority will stay. Did Russian emigrants overwhelm Europe when the Iron Curtain fell, or Germans when the Berlin Wall did?

(Not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious, because _every time_ this subject comes up, everyone starts throwing around the "China doesn't want 25M refugees overnight" argument, so I assume there's some background I'm missing.)

<comment><USER4> > Did Russian emigrants overwhelm Europe when the Iron Curtain fell

Not Europe, no - because most of them didn't have the legal status to gain any european citizenship. But million jews rushed into Israel, with a total population of 8 million, which greatly affected the country.

Given that South Korea officially 'wants' unification, they won't have any other choice but to grant citizen status to everyone - and I don't doubt that a LOT of north koreans will jump on this opportunity right away.

<comment><USER5> > Given that South Korea officially 'wants' unification, they won't have any > other choice but to grant citizen status to everyone

Of course they'll have the choice not to immediately grant citizenship to 25 million!

<comment><USER2> The comparison is East Germany vs West Germany, which did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> None of the people I know across various providers (iOS and Android alike) got the alert in Tokyo. Almost everyone I know in Gunma (around 75 miles from here) got the alert, though... and Gunma is a good 650ish miles away from southern Hokkaido. It's a mystery to us why some people got the alert and others didn't.

<comment><USER7> I don't know either, but I got the alert through Yahoo's 防災速報 app. I'm on an MVNO, so I don't think I would have gotten the alert otherwise.

<comment><USER8> If you're on iOS and in the affected area you should have received the alert.

If you're on Android you might need a device sold in the Japan market to get them (seems there are mixed reports on this, would love to hear from someone in the industry - does this stuff use standard GSM features and are these enabled on Android by default? could weird manufacturer skins disable them?).

You also need to be in the affected area to receive the message, although third party apps often let you customize the range or priority of messages to receive.

On my US-sold iPhone running on an MVNO I reliably receive earthquake/flood alerts. But I didn't receive the alert this morning since I live in the other end of the country where it was not broadcast.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, I assumed it was the carrier, but it might be the model. I have a Galaxy S7 which I got in Hong Kong. With this variant, I can't find the emergency alert settings anywhere. That might explain it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm in Ibaraki, my girlfriend received the messages but I didn't. Most people in my laboratory received the messages as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> Didn't get this alert here in Tokushima. However we are quite used to typhoon alerts. It's rather impressive when a room full of phones start alerting at full blast.

<comment><USER11> Does the alert override your volume settings?

<comment><USER12> Most alerts are designed to. It probably uses the same underlying system as the Amber alerts in California, which do override volume settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well could be worse [http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/16/world/meast/mideast- israel...](http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/16/world/meast/mideast-israel- rocket-app/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems Kim called the world's bluff on that missile "shield" touted ad nauseam whenever NK pops off a cracker. This thing flew basically through the middle of Japan's airspace and dropped in the drink on the other side. Getting the distinct impression that most of that American missile shield hardware is kept down with tent pens.

<comment><USER15> If the trajectory was measured and expected to miss Japan, there would be no need to use any defense system.

Those playing defense have a lot of incentive to keep their plans and capabilities quiet and uncertain until they are absolutely required. Once the defensive strategies are employed openly, the offense can more-reliably develop countermeasures.

<comment><USER12> It went over Japan. ICBMs are capable of adjusting their target mid-flight. There's no way to know it wasn't going to hit Japan.

<comment><USER8> From what I've read, the most reliable period to shoot down these things is on their down-trajectory. At which point it was probably already no longer over Japan.

edit: for instance this Reddit comment [https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/6wmnxp/north_korea_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/6wmnxp/north_korea_fired_a_missile_over_hokkaido_first/dm9a182/)

> The THAAD system that is deployed in Japan intercepts an incoming missile as > it is coming down on the target, with a maximum altitude of about 150 km.

Which gets you to reading [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense)

> Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), formerly Theater High Altitude > Area Defense, is an American anti-ballistic missile defense system designed > to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles in > their terminal phase (descent or reentry) by intercepting with a hit-to-kill > approach.

<comment><USER12> The most reliable time to shoot down a missile is when it is just lifting off. It's moving slowly, lots of fuel, etc. All it takes is a high powered laser hitting it almost anywhere in its cross section.

<comment><USER16> So you're saying all Japan needs to do is station high-powered lasers near all North Korean missile sites? Seems easy enough.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This NK situation is crazy -- seems like there is no good way to deal with this guy. If we silently ignore, he keeps testing until its too late. If we get aggressive, he pulls the trigger. And "diplomatic pressure" doesn't seem to be having any effect. We've already had years worth of sanctions -- and well, this just happened.

<comment><USER17> Is our only option to just surprise strike this guy into obvlivion and hope for the best, take casualties now? Assume that his capability is going to grow over time, just take whatever losses and assume eventually he will strike -- so best to eliminate the threat now while at the smallest point (but still obviously huge damage could be done to the innocent).

<comment><USER18> That is an extremely bad idea. It's easy to talk off-handedly about casualties, but remember these could be on the scale of _tens of millions_. This is not something which you just shrug and do. Direct military action has almost 0% of occurring, by initiative of the West at least.

<comment><USER19> I am not convinced KJU would fear a nuclear fallout. He has nothing to lose. If he were determined to survive, he is sure to have bunkers to protect him and he could almost certainly smuggle himself out of the country.

If he really valued the lives of his citizens, you would probably expect a different means of governing. I don't think you can treat this person as a rational individual when negotiating...

<comment><USER20> Nothing to lose, apart from wealth, power, luxury, the prestige of being the leader of a nation with a large nuclear-equipped military, not to mention quite possibly his life... all things I suspect he values quite highly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder why it's okay to not give a shit when it's non-white people suffering.

It's the same deal with holocaust. Worse things are going on in North Korea, yet the West seems more concerned about events that happened 70+ years ago. It's like you are automatically an anti-semite for saying what's happening in North Korea are equal if not worse than what Jews have gone through, as if Jews have suffered the most out of human history or something. Of course it's fucking horrid what Jews went through but it's time we start paying more attention to modern day holocausts happening around the world.

<comment><USER22> We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the Hacker News guidelines. Would you please stop creating accounts to do this with?

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


Arm is offering early-stage startups free access to its chip designs - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/29/arm-is-offering-early-stage-startups-free-access-to-its-chip-designs/ <comment><USER2> Hah... More importantly if you're a silicon startup and you need a CPU core for some brand new design, you are probably not tied to a specific instruction set.

The obvious one to choose in that case is RISCV because it already has a working compiler and Linux port, has a thriving community, and there are no paperwork delays to get a prototype built.

ARM is making its stuff free to try to compete with the free RISCV, in the hope that when that startup becomes a big company, migrating to a new architecture will prove too hard, and they'll be locked in.

<comment><USER3> RISC-V ISA is just a programming interface and non-physical IP.

The license fees for ARM Processor families are mostly for physical IP for microarchitecture.

ARM provides selection of 40+ highly optimized physical processor IP cores for different purposes. Maybe you get eventually similar selection RISC-V architectures but they are not free. It takes lots of full time work to test and optimize those cores. If you write processor core implementation in verilog and give it away free you have done just 10% of the work.

<comment><USER4> Physical IP for up-to-date silicon fab nodes is never free. But SiFive is already providing it for RISC-V - and other vendors could easily get involved too, seeing as good high-level designs (that can be simulated in FPGA with relative ease) are available with permissive licensing.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but from the pov of a startup that needs a core, the choice is whether you pay SiFive or similar, or ARM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This normally costs $75k/year. It's the "Entry" level of the ARM Flexible Access program [1].

It's limited to producing one chip per year. This seems low for a startup which needs to iterate.

They do not provide a DRAM controller. Startups will have to license one. There is a BSD-licensed controller: LiteDRAM [2].

This ARM offering helps with the first stage of creating an SoC. It's probably about 20% of the effort. The remaining 80% requires a lot of expertise and expensive software and prototyping hardware. University of Washington's Bespoke Silicon Group is developing free tools for the rest of the process: [http://bjump.org](http://bjump.org)

[1] [https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/products/flexible- access-...](https://www.arm.com/-/media/global/products/flexible-access- doc/Arm-Flexible-Access-Data-Sheet.pdf?revision=0ed48fce- bb33-43a3-804a-2b44deaa2665&la=en&hash=CF6B7355E089EF41207C0711997268B56F37A26E)

[2] [https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litedram](https://github.com/enjoy- digital/litedram)

</comment><comment><USER7> Slightly off topic - While I broadly understand cpu architecture and instruction sets, I've often wondered how advanced CPU / GPU chips are actually developed and manufactured? And why are there so few major foundries, like Intel and TSMC (the only 2 I know)?

<comment><USER8> Chip manufacturing has the problem of being

A) incredibly difficult

B) incredibly capital intensive

C) low margin

Theres smaller fabs out there, but if you're going to do a new start up, why would you choose to compete with these guys, unless you think youve come up with a new process somehow that will beat them? The other fabs out there are also part of huge companies that do lots of other stuff (Samsung) or were spun off from them (GlobalFoundries/AMD).

IMO any new major foundry would end up being a strategic geopolitical move with heavy subsidies rather than a pure business play.

<comment><USER4> Obviously this is the case wrt. the newest process nodes, but there's plenty of older technology that's perfectly usable for some applications. Even preferable in some cases e.g. for analog devices.

<comment><USER8> Oh totally. But I believe OP was mostly talking about the most obvious consumer facing stuff (phones, computers, GPUs etc)

I doubt the DIP packaged 555 timers I played with in college were using a 14 nm process :D</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I want to create new human faces with Deep Learning. Where do I start? - <AUTHOR> Is there some free or, way better, an open source repo/project that it's ready out of the box or just rough around the edges?
It doesn't matter if they're created "from scratch" from a large dataset or its just a mix of two or so faces.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> I bet if you poke around on Google for GAN and face generation you'll stumble upon some sources. I wasn't able to find any particular packages or pre- trained models but these types of papers are a good start and typically reference related works and other similar projects

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/42f6/f5454dda99d8989f981498...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/42f6/f5454dda99d8989f9814989efd50fe807ee8.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mixing: Google "opencv face morphing" (probably won't use deep learning, but _if_ you're in it for the results, that doesn't matter)

Better: [https://research.nvidia.com/publication/2017-10_Progressive-...](https://research.nvidia.com/publication/2017-10_Progressive- Growing-of) (source available with license "Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International")

</comment><comment><USER4> All of generated faces I've seen recently are based on CelebA dataset. So the results tend to be very good looking people. If you want to generate something more realistic you need to find of build a large dataset of "more realistic" faces.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://towardsdatascience.com/implementing-a-generative- adv...](https://towardsdatascience.com/implementing-a-generative-adversarial- network-gan-dcgan-to-draw-human-faces-8291616904a)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use documentation as a service? - <AUTHOR> My startup just pivoted into the technical writing space. Lots of companies will hire people to write internal or external documentation. Would you pay for it as a service? Check out trymaniac.com <comment><USER2> Do you have any examples the live on another website? Why doesn't your AI assistant reduce prices?

Probably not for internal documentation, too much sensitive information</comment>


Apple's First Mac CPU Will Cost $100/Unit and Will Be Built on a 5nm Node - <AUTHOR> https://wccftech.com/apple-custom-mac-cpu-cost-node/ <comment><USER2> Apple indicated at WWDC that the first Apple Silicon Macs will be available by the end of 2020, but this article has a heading that says: "Apple's First ARM- based Mac Processor Will Ship To Consumers In 2H21, With Wafer Input To TSMC Set For 1H21".

Frankly? These guys don't know what they are talking about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive. I know that AMD is on a 7nm process with Ryzen and Intel is pretty much stuck at 14nm right now and working towards getting to 10nm. Does anyone know why Intel is so far behind in this regard?

<comment><USER4> Is there any reason to think at this point that "5nm" is better than the others, just because it's a smaller number?

I mean, I'm not arguing that Intel _isn 't_ behind, but is there anyone normalizing these to something that can actually be compared?</comment></comment>


Anesthesiologist trashes sedated patient - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/anesthesiologist-trashes-sedated-patient-jury-orders-her-to-pay-500000/2015/06/23/cae05c00-18f3-11e5-ab92-c75ae6ab94b5_story.html <comment><USER2> Clincians are a bit different to customer service agents. A doctor can kill you.

This court case is not about enforcing rules (we know that rules based cultures leave plenty of room for abuse). It's about driving values. Have some mechanism for blowing off steam, but when you're with a patient you give that person the best care you can.

When clinicians let their empathy slip you get real, severe, abuse.

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

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

[http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20060502043818/htt...](http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20060502043818/http:/healthcarecommission.org.uk/_db/_documents/cornwall_investigation_report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> The article claims $200,000 in punitive damages... which means the claim was $300,000 in actual damages? It's hard to imagine what damages the patient suffered besides embarrassment.

It seems very pat. It sounds like everyone in the theatre was ripping into the guy, which suggests a backstory in pre-op. And then the recorder was accidentally left on.

I wasn't in the room, obviously, and there's probably much more information that influenced the jury. But still, weird.

Edit: the recorder wasn't "accidentally" left on, the patient turned it on _before_ the operation to capture _post-op_ instructions.

<comment><USER4> This sounds like more of a case where the money awarded wasn't to compensate the plaintiff for any physical harm, but to punish the doctors. Which, to me, is just fine.

<comment><USER5> That's the $200k in punitive damages part. The other $300k is compensation for harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've done this before (after checking state law of course). I only made a recording because of simple curiosity. When I listened to it afterward, I discovered that nothing was said during the procedure other than that which related to the work being performed. (What was hilarious though were my attempts to speak after waking up.)

Sometimes it's not possible to do this in an elaborate surgery where you have to remove all of your clothing.

I couldn't care less about the surgeon's personality (bedside manner) or what he/she thinks about me personally as long as he performs his job well.

I think a much bigger problem in the medical field is the lack of performance review. I remember reading one study that provided video recordings of gastric bypass surgery to a panel of experts (professors, top-rated surgeons, etc.). The experts did not know who performed the surgeries, but they gave each surgery video a "quality" score. After a year, the outcome of each patient was compared to the quality score, and strong correlations were noted.

Yet despite rankings of universities, professors, cars, computers, books, and anything else one could possibly rank, you won't find rankings of how good surgeons or anesthesiologists are at their job. Oh sure, you'll get some subjective metric of how people _feel_ about the doctor (sites like HealthGrades), but it's been shown this really corresponds to how personable the doctor is.

<comment><USER7> > what he/she thinks about me personally as long as he performs his job well.

Those two things go together most of the time though. Someone who doesn't like you will simply not do as good of a job. People are not robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How could any jury listen to those comments and think they were serious and therefore constituted slander? Then there's this from a juror: "we have to give him something, just to make sure that this doesn't happen again." That's not how law works! Either they committed libel or not; it's not your job as a juror to be a parent.

Just because language is disagreeable does not mean someone should pay for it.

<comment><USER9> Well, they did write some of it on his chart, and they told other people, so apparently the entire surgery staff avoided him in post-op.

How would you feel if you went in for surgery and met the doctors and nurses, and afterward none of them will even talk to you?

Also, it sounds like the jurists are as cynical as we are. Maybe they were facing a "12 angry men" situation and were compromising with each other to get it over before dinner?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The part of this article that most interests me is that Virginia is a "one- party consent" state for audio recordings, meaning that only one party has to consent for the recording to be legal.

It seems like that's a law that's going to be more important as recording devices become ubiquitous. Will Virginia change to a "two-party consent" state, or will other states join Virginia? Or we just remain a landmass where recording others is allowed in some places but not other places?

How soon until we have an iWatch that's always streaming audio and video to a cloud server? (Dependent question: How much energy is used to record an image from a sensor, process, frame, and route over Wifi or Cell?)

Also, there's the moral question of recording another's audio without their consent. How do we decide (or re-decide) what the moral rules for recording should be?

<comment><USER10> Q: Does it still count as "one-party consent" if the 'consenting' party isn't involved in (or, for that matter, even aware of) the conversation s/he is recording?

One-party consent certainly wouldn't apply if, for instance, your friend made a call using your telephone and you recorded the ensuing conversation. Does this situation differ simply because the patient was physically present?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like something right out of "Dianetics," is the patient a Scientologist by any chance?

</comment><comment><USER12> Hopefully our robot surgeons and anesthesiologists won't be programmed to be such horrible assholes.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's worth remembering that most people who work in customer service have been around the block so many times they hate the people they have to deal with by default. Most folks I know who work in retail or the hospitality industry will openly state they hate you just for walking in the door.

Professionalism be damned, whether you're a disgruntled barista or a disgruntled anaesthesiologist, everybody needs to be able to vent by ripping into their customers sometimes.

<comment><USER7> > these disgruntled people need to be able to vent sometimes.

That's what the break room is for. But not when on the clock.</comment></comment>


Zignout.me: a tool for Signing Out - <AUTHOR> http://zignout.me

<comment><USER2> Sorta neat, but I wish there'd been a landing page that explained it, and said "click here to signout!". Because now I have to sign back into everything...</comment>


What is a startup? - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/12/17/what-is-a-startup <comment><USER2> Eric Ries has a good definition in the Lean Startup:

"A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty."

Is every new company a startup? No, lots follow templates within fairly known parameters, such as Restaurants. The uncertainty isn't there to the same degree, and the offering is known. They are a new company, but not a startup company.

Is every old company not a startup? No, many have to deal with the innovators dilemma and as their main business face competitions are forced to confront uncertainty and create divisions to reinvent themselves, these divisions would be considered a startup.

Eric defines a startup by the uncertainty factor, and by the creation of a new offering from that uncertainty.

Edit: typo corrected

<comment><USER3> Typo: I think you meant to type UNcertainty. The quote from the "Lean Startup" book is:

"… a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty."

Assuming most readers know what you meant, but just had to correct it, for the record.

<comment><USER4> I like Eric Ries' definition. To me it implies the startup is trying to figure out some hard stuff and that if they nail it it could be HUGE! A non-startup reminds me of any ol' business that is just making money and is boring on a day to day basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From PG's "Want to start a startup?"

"... a startup is a new business designed for scale ..."

more in context:

"... The first component is particularly helpful in the first stage of a startup's life, when you go from merely having an interest in starting a company to actually doing it. It's quite a leap to start a startup. It's an unusual thing to do. But in Silicon Valley it seems normal. [3] ...

[3] Starting a company is common, but starting a startup is rare. I've talked about the distinction between the two elsewhere, but essentially a startup is a new business designed for scale. Most new businesses are service businesses and except in rare cases those don't scale.

"

The actual article: <http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> My definition: A startup is a 1-5 year old company that has a potential to grow up its enterprise value by 50X within the next 5 years and has a business that can scale up quite easily.

This would filter out all the usual suspects Facebook, Twitter, 37 signals, while keeping Path, Instagram and all the YC funded companies. It would also cut out the new neighborhood bookstore, most service businesses and that sweet home business. Also it would cut out companies that have already reached $1-2bn in valuation (as they cannot realistically grow to become $100bn companies in 5 years).

<comment><USER7> I was planning on commenting along the same lines but you've nailed it.

I get sick of these 10 year old successful companies constantly referring to themselves as startups. That's similar to a thirty year old calling himself a teenager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let me start-off by saying that my notes on this are basically thought-up on a whim and should probably be considered as light remarks. My knowledge on what is and what isn't a startup is limited.

Notes on your definition:

You could exclude apple as an outlier by changing "in the next few years" to "in the first few years".

Concerning the significance of growing by a large factor; you might want to consider changing the absolute number to a recurring value. 500 users in the first year which turn into 5000 after five years is hardly significant. 500*5^5 = 1.562.500 is starting to feel significant. The actual growth factor per year might need to be altered.

"repeatedly grow by a large factor (5x or more)"

Ambitions and plans could be refactored to "aims"; if you're aiming to do something you probably have the ambition and you sure as hell need to have some plans or your ambitions won't go anywhere. Although it might be better to explicitly mention ambitions and plans.

In conclusion, my refactored definition would be

"A startup is a business which aims to repeatedly grow by a large factor (5x or more) in the first few (1-5) years.

</comment><comment><USER9> My personal definition of a startup is a company that is not yet a business. Which then brings up the definition of business. To me a business is a company that produces a stable profit, maybe 6-12 months profit.

Personally i think calling very well established businesses like 37signals a startup is quite insulting, as to me, its saying they're not successful, which they clearly are.

</comment><comment><USER10> The key differentiator addressed by both Steve Blank and Eric Ries in their definitions, is that a startup is innovating. A company taking an existing, proven business model and attempting to build a business based on it (whether in the tech space or elsewhere), does not qualify as a startup, even if it is aiming for hyper growth.

</comment><comment><USER11> I actually don't think I've heard "startup" used outside of the tech sector. A new oil company is basically a startup (they take VC, have few employees, and are trying to grow dramatically), but they're never called that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Scaling is the key here. Startups are able to scale, whether at 5x, 10x, or 20x really doesn't matter. The point is that they can scale much faster than other types of businesses. This usually involves technology and automation, but not necessarily.

I like PG's "make something people want" It describes a successful startup. So successful startups make something that people want that they can scale tremendously. As swombat points out, big companies just can't keep making the magic happen, so by my definition they stop being a startup.

<comment><USER13> People dont know what they want. You can create markets.

<comment><USER12> The intention here is not that a person has some specific idea of what they want and then you make it, that's thinking of the test backwards. The intention is that when presented with something you have created, a person will want it. So yes, you can create markets. Or you can chase markets. It works either way, because it's the meeting of product with potential consumer that matters. Along those same lines, you might invent a cure for cancer, but if nobody sees it, you really haven't done much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think of a startup as a hypothesis, much like you'd find in science. Take problem X, apply Y solution, and make money by doing Z. The process of failing fast and often is akin to performing different experiments on what works and what doesn't. The major difference is that science is science and the results are clear cut and objective; with a startup, your results will depend on the quality of your team, the original idea, ability to get funding, market timing, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've always felt that a "startup" was any business which was not yet profitable or had not yet reached a certain 'scale' appropriate for their industry and ambitions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's my post from 2008 where I ask my readers to help me define what a startup is - I also list some companies wondering if they are startups: <http://www.centernetworks.com/startup-definition>

If we go with the TC definition, Facebook is still a startup :)

What I really want to know is what is the difference between "startup" and "small business"?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is easily applied to software but not necessarily services, which cannot scale the same way. Unless you mean to say that no services company could ever count as a startup.

I think it has more to do with the current state of a company - that is, immature: still figuring out internal roles, processes, possibly no finalized monetization strategy, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure this part works: "to grow by a large factor (10x or more)".

Most businesses I come across that describe themselves as startups and fit the rest of the definition, haven't yet got themselves to a point where a 10x improvement over the next year would make them that significant.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm specifically thinking of participants in accelerator programes like YC, TechStars, Start-Up Chile and SeedCamp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> a word

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like your definition and after reading this, I can't help but think I might have been that person who argued about your definition. If I am, I am very flattered that something I said got you thinking along those lines.

However I'd argue with you about Apple. Like you said, Apple didn't hit the time-frame requirement. Wouldn't you also agree that a true startup needs to have the requirements you listed but at the same time start from zero. Companies that just start out, have the growth you talk about in the time frame you talk about would definitely be startups. Companies that have been around for a while and suddenly have explosive growth and hit the other requirements only resemble startups. Google, Apple, and Facebook _feel_ like startups but have certainly grown out of that phase. Being a startup in my opinion a one-time phase that you cannot go through again once you're established no matter how explosive your growth is.

In any case I like your definition and I think it's important that we have one. The word startup is easily overused in an attempt to attain that cool factor some companies have and to ride a trend instead of getting by on the companies real merits.

<comment><USER20> You were one of the people in the argument indeed, I linked to it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3356517></comment></comment>


Taking responsibility - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/12/5/taking-responsibility

<comment><USER2> _Which brings me to the final point of this article, one which most of the self-help books out there fail to cover: taking responsibility, getting involved, throwing yourself into the thick of things and making decisions_

Personally, I'm thankful most self-help book don't do this. The last thing the world needs is self-help book addicts who have a mandate to insert themselves in peoples' lives more. But then again, I don't think they would be self-help books anymore if they did this. They'd be _other_ -help books, which is a very interesting idea indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a very well written piece of article. But I also believe that we cannot control everything that happens. It's OK to sometimes lose control and go with the flow. It might lead to newer horizons. Having said that, it's a call of the person and the situation. Going with intuition is perhaps the best solution in such circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER4> At the London Hackspace, there's a saying that gets used a lot. When someone has describes a great idea for improving the space, some excellent idea for how to categorize the book sin the library or whatever, the stock response is "Great! Well volunteered!". It's to the point that there have been posts to the mailing list consisting of only the letters "wv".

And that's an excellent way to think, and I find it seeping into the rest of my life. If you decide something should be done, the vast majority of the time, if you put effort into it, if you take responsibility for it, it can be done. There's not many bars to achievement once you decide to do that. In a startup environment, there are so many things that need solving, that are crying out for people to take responsibility for them. The only way they'll get done is if you decide it's you that'll do them, not if you assign them elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> Atlas shrugged.

</comment><comment><USER6> This was great and very motivating but my only little squabble with it was where he talked about excuses. I'm one who firmly believes that there is no room for excuses I'm anything you do but when you fail and try to point out why, that isn't always an excuse. We need to try to understand everything as humans and sometimes our theories on why we fail are off base and can sound like excuses. Some things are just out of our control. Those who are making excuses know it deep down inside but sometimes you fail and you really jus can't control it.

        we let the decisions be taken by the faceless system of default behaviours that composes the world.

I love that line. Not sure why but it really got to me.

        The default outcome for life in the western world is being normal, unremarkable, unnoticeable.

This one got to me more. So well put. So many people who want to cry about life not being fair and things not going how they want and it's because they accept the default. I find myself having to tell people something similar though far less eloquent all the time.</comment>


Show HN: I designed an optical disc solution for the new Mac Pro - <AUTHOR> http://numac.co/blog/hello-world/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 24yrs old, this is my first business. I conceptualized the design myself. Did the web design myself, the packaging design myself, and now I'm trying to do the marketing myself. Any feedback is greatly appreciated :)

</comment><comment><USER2> I think it's a great idea. How would it look "out of" the mac pro?</comment>


DoJ and FTC oppose Apple's walled garden - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/the-government-is-thinking-different-about-apples-platform-lock-out-on-ipad-and-iphone-2010053/ <comment><USER2> Apple is now the 3rd largest company in the US by market cap, behind Exxon and Microsoft.

Given the scrutiny and convictions that Microsoft has undergone as a technology company, Apple is now a natural candidate for inquiry by government.

The underdog label is gone.

<comment><USER3> It's past Microsoft FYI, only behind Exxon now.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft: 267 billion

Apple: 237 billion

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=aapl%2C+msft>

<comment><USER3> I guess MS went back up, but Apple had pulled ahead at one point recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love how he takes pot-shots at Adobe:

      By the way, Adobe's shares dipped two percent the
      day Apple published that piece.

As if the dip in stock price somehow validates his pro-Apple attitude. If anything, it validates the concerns about anti-competitive practices coming out of Apple.

</comment><comment><USER6> To quote from article: """ Probe Microsoft because Windows doesn't run Linux apps?? """

The author of the article has got no CS knowledge. What are the qualifications for being a geek? Apple Logo and Star Wars?

I can write better articles than this guy.

<comment><USER6> This guy clearly does not knows anything about cygwin and mingw. Yet still there are some programs which you cannot run but that is due to lack of features in windows (signal and ptys) rather than an evil Microsoft scheme.

What the author does not understands is that this clause (3.3.1) was originally absent from the agreement and was added for sole purpose of pissing off Adobe. That is anti competitive for sure. IMHO its equivalent to what MSFT tried to do when it started distributing IE for free.

<comment><USER7> Yes,

And an application framework might, maybe lead to substandard application. But Apple can and supposedly already does control for application quality, so the only reason for the further restriction is ... monopoly control.

Both Microsoft and Apple created an skewed playing field in the application space to further their agendas. Microsoft did this by having secret APIs that only they and their friends could use. Apple did this by including extraneous requirements to the App Store.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft has Secret API??? Can you name a single product which benifitted from it???

Let me remind you its Apple which didnt allow access to GPU to flash dev.

<comment><USER7> Ever heard of Microsoft _Office_?

This page has a link to Andrew Shulman's testimony; [http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20070208195343...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2007020819534335)

 _"The source code for Windows XP and Microsoft Office provide additional bases for opinion #21 in my June 2, 2006 technical expert report ("Microsoft Office uses (and copies) undocumented DirectUI APIs")."_

Andrew Schulman, btw Author of "Unauthorized Windows 95" - IE, foremost expert on Windows Internals outside of Microsoft...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I give you the most suitable outfit to wear depending on weather - <AUTHOR> https://www.fashion-frog.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> How do you decide what to wear when you wake up, or when you're planning to go on a romantic weekend getaway? I made an app for that called Fashion Frog, who gives you the most suitable outfit to wear depending on the current weather condition and the time of the day relevant to you.

I learned a lot while coding this little side project app on Android and iOS, like using the OpenWeather API.

I created the algorithms to propose the suitable outfit for the day anywhere in the world. It took some time to assembly and think about the looks and the illustrations. But I want to talk to you about my biggest pain: the timezone module.

It was very difficult to get the app working on every timezone of the world. Indeed, I wanted to give weather from morning to night but I needed to know what time was at every town of the world (to display only 4 simple informations : morning, afternoon, evening, night). At fist, I wanted to use the Google Timezone API but it was very expensive.

My first solution was to use Kevin Robert module called city-timezone, it covered 80% of the users requests. Sometimes the city is not found, in this case I choose a timezone list from the web that I parsed, then I used another list for the towns of the world with a timezone indication code inside. So I was able to match the town with the timezone when a user select a town. And finally, if the timezone of the town is still not found, I use timezonedb API (link below) who let me cover at the end almost all the town of the world.

I also set things to not call too much the weather API (like if you want to get the weather 8 mins later at the same position, I didn't call again the API, I save it for 10 mins inside the app).

The app is still in progress, because I want to add an Inspiration section and to create a more complex outfit proposition algorithm (I like it so far, but I think it can be improved). I already got design feedback by a UX/UI designer that helped me to think about the future experience inside this little app. I also used the Humaaans illustration base and recreated clothes on top, it was very creative and fun to do.

Fun fact: I wanted to create this app at the beginning only for Men living in Paris, France because it was my actual pain: what outfit I should prepare to look my best throughout the full day? And now, my biggest users this month (51%) are Women living in US and UK. It took me a huge amount of time to create english speaker and Women version of the app, but it was a great idea to offer the app to as many people as possible from the beginning, because my target users revealed itself.

LINKS : \- Weather API: [https://openweathermap.org](https://openweathermap.org) \- Timezone module: [https://github.com/kevinroberts/city- timezones](https://github.com/kevinroberts/city-timezones) \- Timezone last chance API: [http://timezonedb.com](http://timezonedb.com) \- Humaans illustration library: [https://www.humaaans.com/](https://www.humaaans.com/) \- Google Timezone API: [https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/in...](https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/intro)

<comment><USER2> Nice job, I didn't find a good weather app on Android yet, it's exactly the infos I want to know in the morning.

Do you plan to allow for personnal preferences? People generally have a different sensitivity to temperature.

It would be nice to be able to swipe between T, T+1 and T+2 instead of going to settings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi @Fradow, thank you so much for this kind message. Yes I planned to allow for personnal preferences with the creation of a Closet section inside the app. But in the way you say I didn't think about it yet, it's true people can have different sensibility to temperature, I will try to get this information for my little algorithm to adapt the propositions. Yes the swipe is something that could be awesome! I really want to implement it in the next version of the app. Thanks again for your feedbacks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why does it have to be yet another app I need to install? This can easily and better done on a website

<comment><USER4> I think most people use their phone before putting on their outfit, not their computers. Generally I agree that more things should be mobile-friendly websites, but in this case I think an app is a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @arman_ashrafian, thanks for your message! I share that thought with you. Btw, I made this app in a PWA way, so if one day I see that a lot of people prefer to use it on web, it's still possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea chap but a word of caution - don't spend any money advertising in the UK. The weather here is generally hot, sunny, raining - mild chance of thunderstorm, hail and snow with a 50% chance of wind. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi @michelinman, thanks for the advice! It's funny because I have a lot of people from UK but I totally get your point ahah

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool, but I tried to find my city (Santa Maria, BR) and didn't work. Probably it was hidden past the current list limitation (5, I guess). P.S: There's two cities with this name in Brazil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi @vcoelho! Thanks for your message. Yes I put a limitation to 5 for now because my search box is really an MVP one, really sorry for that issue. In the next version of the app, I should be able to do a better filter method! Best. Théo.</comment></comment>


As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls - <AUTHOR> http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/09/as-twitter-regains-footing-competitors.html <comment><USER2> I was one of those using Plurk when it reach popularity at the end of June, and did indeed enjoy it as it growed in popularity as some web celebs joined it to play around.

However, familiarizing myself with the site, they kept promising an eventual public API, but they haven't done so even to date. There were some functions available to the user, but there was always something missing. People wanted apps, and app developers wanted to create them. It just wasn't to be.

Twitter has the API, has the app support by now, and has the friends you want to follow. No one wants to be the first one on sites like FaceBook or Myspace. They want to join for the people.</comment>


GitLab melts down after wrong directory deleted, backups fail - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/01/gitlab_data_loss/ <comment><USER2> (obviously?) a dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13537052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13537052)

<comment><USER3> No new information in the article itself. But articles in The Register usually have some good comments. E.g. this article there has 141 of them, at least some of which are good. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've never actually experienced a work situation where needed backups did work. I fear this is the norm, not an aberration.

<comment><USER5> Really? What have you used for backups?

<comment><USER6> You may be surprised at the average success rate for Backup Exec 2010-2012 across a common enterprise environment. It is _entirely normal_ to look at failures and state "it's working 50% of the time, we should be happy". Their own support team would look at that sort of log and say things like "you seem to be having really good luck with our product".</comment></comment></comment>


Who is behind Dart? - <AUTHOR> https://www.blossom.co/blog/who-is-behind-dart

<comment><USER2> "When you look at Ruby you will find Matz and DHH".

This is wrong. Matz (and only Matz) is the one you will find. DHH wrote a web framework with Ruby, but he hasn't contributed to Ruby at all. Ruby existed 10 years before Rails came into fruition.

<comment><USER3> > _Ruby existed 10 years before Rails came into fruition._

And had 1/10th the popularity it had after Rails.

<comment><USER2> That's true, but it's irrelevant to the point. Listing DHH as one of the "creators" of Ruby, like this article does, needlessly spreads misinformation. Frankly, it's not fair to Matz and the Ruby dev team to list DHH as a creator of the language. DHH invented a web framework that greatly popularized the language, true, but Ruby was single-handedly created by Matz.

BTW, not everyone who uses Ruby uses Rails. Ruby is a general purpose programming language that is used by many people for solving many different problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The list of people I covered is just the tip of the iceberg that makes Dart (not even talking about the broader community!).

It's always fascinating to learn about the people behind a technology as well as who the early adopers are whether that's Dart or Clojure or Elixir.

You have this set of people who create something new and this set of people who want to and can adopt it. It's fascinating.

<comment><USER4> tosh, I have become more and more interested in Dart recently and was wondering where you use it in the company?

I have read Quire's ([http://www.quire.io](http://www.quire.io)) article on using Dart to develop their application and it seemed very positive. I just wondered about your experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we use Dart for the desktop browser optimized version of Blossom and for a bunch of command line/build tools to manage things like building, testing, release tagging and deployment.

We're super happy with the language and platform. DartPad ([https://dartpad.dartlang.org/](https://dartpad.dartlang.org/)) is a great way to get a feeling for the tool support of Dart (semantic autocompletion, helpful warnings etc).

I'll write more about Dart and how we use it at Blossom ([https://www.blossom.co](https://www.blossom.co)) going forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great article! very excited to what we will see at Dart Developer Summit 2015

</comment><comment><USER6> Dart has a very talented team but they have not filled its potential yet if one is judging by popularity and perception.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's still early days for Dart. Go was started in 2007, Python in 1991, Ruby in 1995. It takes some time for a platform and ecosystem to become established.

<comment><USER7> Go was an evolution of a language developed years earlier, but with a new name because it was different enough or because the inventor got a new employer/copyright-holder

<comment><USER8> > a language developed years earlier

Are you referring to Limbo?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dart is nice. I wish Dart and Golang teams had more intersection...

</comment><comment><USER10> Dart is never take off as long as is competing with TypeScript.</comment>