Kong Raises $43M in Series C Funding - <AUTHOR> https://konghq.com/press-release/kong-raises-43-million <comment><USER2> Seems like many people are not familiar with openresty off which kong is based.

[https://openresty.org/en/](https://openresty.org/en/)

Kong is like an enterpise version of openresty, i.e nginx turbo-charged with luajit. A lot of really cool and performant things can be built on top of it.

At a previous place we wanted to implement an auth & rate limiting ingress to a consul based service discovery.

We looked at kong but in the end rolled our own using openresty.

No one on the team really liked the "centralised" approach used by kong. It's probably preferred in an older schooled enterprise setting tho (awesome project non the less!)

<comment><USER3> I once had to implement a giant ip address blacklist for an api in the fastest and cheapest way possible. Openresty and redis saved me that day. That has been my favorite project that I've ever worked on. Two amazing pieces of software. Kong is great, too. We were just unable to use it because its blacklist feature wasn't easy to implement.

<comment><USER4> What problems did you specifically encounter with the current bundled blacklist plugin?

<comment><USER3> This was about 3 years ago. We needed to get millions of IP addresses into the blacklist, with daily updates. We tried using Cassandra for the backed. Not sure if it's easier now but yeah that would have been more of a pain to accomplish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only "Kong" I know of is the one that makes rubber pet toys. I was very confused when I read this headline.

<comment><USER6> This was also my immediate thought. Naming is hard. Globally unique names that actually convey something about what you do, are recognizable, and sound pleasant to speakers of most languages seems even harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never heard of this company, but I'd like to say I really think the graphic designer who came up with the logo really nailed it.

<comment><USER8> No doubt!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes! I've been looking everywhere for a complex bundle of enterprise vaporware for my company to get permanently locked into. I love the crispy crust of enterprise complexity wrapped around a delicious warm gooey open source core.

<comment><USER4> Most of the Kong adoption is free and comes from the open-source version, which you can download for free [1] and perhaps even contribute to [2]. We support an extensibility framework [3] that the community has been using to extend Kong (more than 500+ plugins on GitHub), including about 30 plugins that are shipped for free in the open-source distribution [4].

Kong is modular by design so that we could walk away from bundled complexity, and that's really why we created the concept of Plugins. Plugins can be installed, distributed, and used independently and they can be removed anytime (not just disabled, but entirely removed from the actual runtime).

[1] - [https://konghq.com/install/](https://konghq.com/install/)

[2] - [https://github.com/Kong/kong](https://github.com/Kong/kong)

[3] - [https://docs.konghq.com/latest/plugin- development/](https://docs.konghq.com/latest/plugin-development/)

[4] - [https://docs.konghq.com/hub/](https://docs.konghq.com/hub/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I frankly have no clue about enterprise IT but the funding and their growth sound impressive. Would someone ELI5 to me what problem Kong solves (bonus points for business model because it sounds like Kong is Open Source)?

<comment><USER8> Disclosure: I work at Kong.

The simplest way to think of Kong is as a piece of software that controls traffic going in and out of an API. At its simplest form, it helps make sure that traffic gets to the right API, is secure, etc.

Where Kong really differentiates itself is its ability to support decentralized software architecture patterns like microservices, service mesh, etc as well as traditional monoliths, regardless of the underlying platform or hardware. Microservices make deploying software a lot faster, and we're the connective tissue that lets those microservices work together smoothly and with older legacy systems.

Kong is indesed open source. We also have an enterprise version that adds a lot of features that make managing kong in an enterprise much easier.

<comment><USER11> Even basic features like proxy caching is locked behind enterprise version. No thanks.

<comment><USER12> I think you are raising a valid point. What is considered a basic feature is a constantly moving target. The proxy-caching in Kong Enterpise is implemented as a plugin, and it is not that complex. All our new plugins are developed outside Kong open source repository. Some of them are public and some are private. Some of them we include in our default packaging. Ultimately this is a product decision. I think we have some features in open source that could have been enterprise only, and vice versa. I work mostly on developing the Kong core (open source), but at the same time, I think that having a healthy business, will help the open source too. Who knows, your wish of proxy caching plugin , we will endup moving from enterprise to open source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I didn't realize that Kong is far more than just a load balancer now. Given that are they basically an alternative to Istio then?

<comment><USER8> Kong is indeed a lot more than just a load balancer or proxy. We provide an ecosystem of functionality on top of high performance proxy core to allow you to better manage how your APIs, services, and applications interact with each other and with the world.

You could use us as an alternative to Istio, or you could integrate us with Istio. We provide additional control capabilities on top of what Istio does, and also service decentralized and centralized deployments. Basically, you could use Istio for a mesh (or use kong for the same mesh) and then use Kong to connect all your legacy apps and services into the same control platform. That way, you get global visibility and control at multiple layers - so you can get as granular as you want or as macro as you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a lot of people getting a lot of money from/via nginx lately...

<comment><USER15> Hopefully this isn't made into a problem that doesn't really exist ala elastic, redis, etc. To me this is a real opensource success story -- openresty / the lua bits of nginx that came out of taobao really upped the level of what you could do with nginx. Kong is a huge, nontrivial addition that builds on top of that work, the result of carving out a product focus area and really iterating on what businesses / enterprises need. This is really the best of open source, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any Kong as a Service? Is there any advantage to use it in front of VPS instances like DO or Vultr?

<comment><USER8> Kong Cloud is a SaaS version of Kong Enterprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to like Kong a lot but I noticed that it started under performing when they released version 1. I blogged about that in [http://glennengstrand.info/software/performance/springboot/d...](http://glennengstrand.info/software/performance/springboot/dropwizard)

<comment><USER12> Do you mean under performing as in proxying performance? We do know there are some code paths that need to be optimized. For 1.2 we will be working on those issues, and for many of them, we already have solutions (in many cases more than one approach). A warmed up Kong usually runs with sub-millisecond latency, the plugins can usually add more to it, but sure there are rough edges, especially in p99. We'll just need to pick up the best ideas that have already been proposed, either by us or our community. For some issues we have a public pull requests in place for discussion. And some of them we have developed in close collaboration with the community or customers. We sure want to be lean and fast. Especially now that Kong is used as a sidecar proxy in service mesh.

<comment><USER17> The load test would call kong which would proxy each request to the service being tested. Kong would be configured with the http-log plugin where performance data would get sent to another service that would collect that data then update elasticsearch in bulk.

Last August, I tested the Dropwizard service with this setup which recorded about 20,000 RPM on GKE. This year, the same setup sent about 4,000 RPM to the Dropwizard service and the http-log plugin sent only about 200 RPM to the other service.

<comment><USER12> Uh, that is a deep drop. Just thinking, could it be related to this: [https://github.com/Kong/kong/commit/de4a002565a1723bff9014cb...](https://github.com/Kong/kong/commit/de4a002565a1723bff9014cb268811b96688af6b#diff-42179ec4ac8902bb7c13b1999a071e5d)

Definitely something for us to investigate! Thank you for feedback (I'll collect this information to our backlog).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Using AI and Machine Learning to Automate the Full API and Service > Development Lifecycle, Kong Is Reinventing the Software Industry and > Accelerating Global Innovation Cycles

I Literally Have No Idea What This Is, Even After Reading This Word Salad Of A Press Release. But hey, they got $43 million...

<comment><USER19> neither Kong nor its infrastructure (i.e. nginx) have any future on the long term against envoy. Simply time is against them even if it is going to be very slow downfall. I guess that's the real reason nginx sold itself right in the peak of the economic cycle and before envoy gets the sufficient popularity

<comment><USER20> Based only on technical merits I agree; Envoy and other API type software/service should probably eat its lunch. At most enterprises though nobody will have heard of Envoy though and I don't know of anyone selling directly to enterprise in this space. However, investing in enterprise infrastructure software is hardly about tech at somme point. The investors must really like Kong's enterprise sales team.

<comment><USER19> there are already a handful commercial Envoy-based k8s ingress controllers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Where's the app hosted?"

"Kong."

"Hong Kong?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"Kong."

"You said Hong Kong."

"Kong."

"Where?"

"In Hong Kong."

</comment><comment><USER22> Seems like a lot of money for dog toys.

</comment><comment><USER19> >75+ million downloads

do founders really use these deceptive metrics in order to raise money from investors? most of these downloads (docker, git or even npm) are simply automated a zillion times by a much fewer number of projects

<comment><USER20> No the investors get the real numbers that we don't get. Number of customers, customer acquisition costs, revenue, trailing growth, churn, etc. etc.

Reading anything other than the title in these types of posts are not worth anyone's time.</comment></comment>


Segway's New Electric Skates Are the Latest Volley in the Scooter Wars - <AUTHOR> https://www.racked.com/2018/7/25/17611988/segways-electric-skates-driftw1s <comment><USER2> Motorized Scooters go back on the streets and sidewalks of San Francisco today; the regulation blackout period has expired.

City still doesn't require licence plates to identify these powered vehicles to impacted pedestrians.

The War heats up.</comment>


Razorfish ports DaVinci interface to Kinect, makes physics cool (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/05/razorfish-ports-davinci-interface-to-kinect-makes-physics-cool/ <comment><USER2> What kinds of real work applications could/will something like this be used for?</comment>


Safety Meeting - <AUTHOR> https://thepointmag.com/literature/safety-meeting/ <comment><USER2> >We have safety meetings every Monday and Friday after lunch. Statistically, most accidents happen right after lunch, so the idea is to talk about it before it happens, as if talking is a kind of protective spell, a hex against fiery death, or crushing death, or the whirring blades of amputation, or decapitation.

A rather childish way to see it, but fair. Speaking as a full time "heavy" diesel engine mechanic for a small chain of midwest shops, I've been part of these meetings and ive even organized a few. talking about the issues, or identifying the risks, helps break you out of the 40 hour a week, hammer swinging, wrench turning hypnosis of shop work for just a minute.

I once started a meeting with an emergency contact form and a few dice. Everyone got to roll a dice, and that number 1-5 corresponded to a finger they couldnt use while completing the form. 6 meant they couldnt use their dominant hand. Needless to say, the point was made. You dont always get to choose what you lose when you play with safety.

<comment><USER3> I'm just glad there are diesel mechanics contributing on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The mention of oil refineries and safety brings to mind the US Chemical Safety Board videos analyzing various chemical plant disasters. These videos are surprisingly well done and I recommend them if you have any interest in this sort of thing: [https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB/videos)

<comment><USER5> These videos are absolutely fantastic. I've recommended them to many people, including non-technical friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I worked in light construction "safety meeting" was code for smoking weed in the trailer.

<comment><USER7> That's exactly what I thought this was going to be about :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Art isn't something you should protect from yourself. Just run towards it > full sprint and embrace how ridiculous your ideas are, how unguarded, how > close to something a child might think up, lying on their back in a field > overgrown with weeds. The sights and sounds of the rotating world revealing > itself to you, or not.

What a wonderful thought from a wonderful set of stories.

</comment><comment><USER9> _I wanted to quit the little league team, but I was too young to realize that I could just quit anything. I think I was waiting for WWIII to break out so all of Earth would die in nuclear fire so I didn't have to be catcher on the little league team._

Love this quote. Corollary is something I first heard at marching band leadership camp - despite any title you may have, you actually have no power over anyone else. So you'll have to convince them somehow that it's worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of a zine from the 90s called Dishwasher. Exceptional people working regular jobs and writing about it.

</comment><comment><USER11> >Sometimes people say things like, "It's cool that you work a real job, working with your hands…". The guys I work construction with all talk about working "real jobs" too, except they're talking about "not working here." It's the polar opposite.

That's the realist thing I've ever read.

Definitely getting this guy's book.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow... I got sucked entirely into that.

Thank your for the share mstats!</comment>


Mysterious Musical Stones of Ringing Rocks Park in Pennsylvania - <AUTHOR> http://strangesounds.org/2013/06/geological-oddity-the-mysterious-musical-stones-of-ringing-rocks-park-in-pennsylvania.html <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_rocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_rocks)

Contradicting the article:

« The boulders continue to ring when removed from the boulder fields. Myths have been developed by authorities to discourage the theft of boulders from the fields. At the current stage, however, most fields have been picked clean of small portable "ringers", and breaking of large boulders into smaller pieces releases the internal stresses—thus causing them to stop ringing (i.e., breaking a piece off of a large ringing rock will only gain a dead chunk of rock). "Small" ringers found today weigh over a ton and would have to be dragged out of the boulder fields using large equipment. »

</comment><comment><USER3> Found ringing rocks at the top of jagged limestone mountains in Vang Vieng, Laos a few months ago. Here's what they sound like: [https://streamable.com/yj916](https://streamable.com/yj916)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure these really are particularly mysterious. The rock resonates when struck in the same way than bells do. This is true of glass, metal and some crystals obviously so it doesn't require any strange mechanism to work in rocks as long as presumably the rock has a particular consistency and shape and you can hold it in such a way that it can resonate without you clamping the vibrations.

Musical stones or rocks are known in many places around the world. Here are some examples:

Africa - [http://www.namibian.org/travel/archaeology/musical- stone.htm...](http://www.namibian.org/travel/archaeology/musical-stone.html) UK - [https://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/28/the-original-rock- music...](https://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/28/the-original-rock-music-stones- that-sing/)

Stalactites often resonate beautifully when struck with a soft mallet. I've been in caves in France and in Africa where tour guides demonstrated this phenomenon.

Here's a recording of music played on a rock sculpture specifically designed to be playable like a xylophone -[https://www.amazon.com/Music-Stones-Stephan- Micus/dp/B000025...](https://www.amazon.com/Music-Stones-Stephan- Micus/dp/B000025ZXK)

This one is pretty cool, because it explains how a particular set of musical pillars in India were constructed so they play a scale. [http://www.phenomenalplace.com/2017/09/musical-pillars-at- ha...](http://www.phenomenalplace.com/2017/09/musical-pillars-at-hampi-india- how-do.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't approve of just randomly going and hitting them with metal hammers, you'll erode them to nothing that way.

<comment><USER6> This. What a bunch of yahoos destroying an interesting natural phenomenon with fucking hammers. The video even suggests wearing eye protection so rock chips don't hit you in the cornea, but makes no mention of damaging the very thing you find so interesting.

<comment><USER7> At the same time, it's just a regular rock until you hit it with a hammer. If nobody ever hits those rocks with a hammer then they might as well not exist. I don't think animals, plants, trees, fungus, bacteria or the rocks themselves care if they're smashed to shards. So they're purely for human enjoyment.

<comment><USER8> why not go all the way into solipsism and declare that all other humans also don't care and are just there for your amusement?

(I can guarantee you that at the very least, the animals care a lot whether they get smashed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been to Ringing Rocks Park in Upper Black Eddy, PA several times, [http://www.buckscounty.org/government/ParksandRecreation/Par...](http://www.buckscounty.org/government/ParksandRecreation/Parks/RingingRocks). It's in easy driving distance of my house.

I think visiting the park is a great experience for many people. But it could be dangerous for very young children, and difficult to inaccessible for people with mobility and balance differences.

<comment><USER10> Totally agree! I took my 4 year old and 2.5 year old recently and we had a heck of a time making sure we didn't get hurt. They did have fun though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So this was the inspiration for the Singing Towers of Darillium[0][1]?

[0]: [http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Singing_Towers](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Singing_Towers) [1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqE2onQUSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqE2onQUSk)

</comment><comment><USER12> I found a rock like this as a child (but cream colored, fairly flat, about the size of a dinner plate, and an inch or two thick), though I'd never heard of the phenomena from any other source until now.

I think I found it on a trip, but I'm not certain which. It's probably still sitting in my parent's garden, somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ancient India used similar tricks to make different sounds on pillars and statues of a certain building: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhoOA3pASy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhoOA3pASy4)

</comment><comment><USER14> There are several more of these in the local area that only the locals know about. I've spent time exploring this park and others. Is it really that rare?

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonolite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonolite)

</comment><comment><USER16> These rocks are present in India too

</comment><comment><USER17> Amazing. I think that's truly cool.</comment>


Do you really need machine learning? - intersect-haad https://www.symbilitysolutions.com/symbility-intersect/news-and-insights/really-need-machine-learning/ <comment><AUTHOR> simple and easy read. kind of clickbait-y title though.

> the rule of thumb is to have at least 9 different categories or dimensions > to get your data points from to make machine learning worthwhile (or in math > speak, n>=9)

i'm not an expert but is that really a thing?</comment>


New Health Culprit Carnitine Found in Red Meat - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324050304578408702646200088.html?mod=djemalertNEWS <comment><USER2> Here's some highlights from the article for those seeing the wsj paywall:

"Doctors have long assumed that saturated fat and cholesterol in red meat are what raise the risk of heart disease. But a study in the journal Nature Medicine fingers another culprit: carnitine, a compound abundant in red meat that also is sold as a dietary supplement and found in some energy drinks.

Health reporter Melinda Beck points out a compound found in red meat, energy drinks and several other foods has been found to raise the risk of heart disease. Photo: Getty Images.

Carnitine typically helps the body transport fatty acids into cells to be used as energy. But researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found that in both humans and mice, certain bacteria in the digestive tract convert carnitine to another metabolite, called TMAO, that promotes atherosclerosis, or a thickening of the arteries.

The researchers, led by Stanley Hazen, chief of cellular and molecular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute, tested the carnitine and TMAO levels of omnivores, vegans and vegetarians, and examined records of 2,595 patients undergoing cardiac evaluations. In patients with high TMAO levels, the more carnitine in their blood, the more likely they were to develop cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, stroke and death."

<comment><USER2> Also an interesting note on vegans:

"One surprising finding, Dr. Hazen said, was how a long-term diet that includes meat affected the amount of TMAO-producing bacteria in the gut and thus magnified the risk. In the study, when longtime meat-eaters consumed an eight-ounce steak and a carnitine supplement, their bacteria and TMAO levels rose considerably. But when a vegan ate the same combination, he showed no increase in TMAO or bacterial change.

'Vegans basically lose their ability to digest carnitine,' said Dr. Hazen."</comment></comment>


The State of eCommerce 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://dejanstrbac.heroku.com/2010/05/21/the-state-of-ecommerce-in-2010/

<comment><USER2> I'd love to hear some actual ideas about how we can improve eCommerce; just saying "it's been the same, we can do better" doesn't really help much.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm the author)

One idea is implicitly expressed with the project we're working on SyncFu. Business is based on transactions towards individuals. Economies of scale are still in the scope of that individual transaction. Can this be changed?

Also, can business be done decentralized, so that it follows the crowd instead of depending on attracting it?

I am sorry if that wasn't clear, I wanted to stay as detached from own project while expressing general feeling. I think it's more clear in the "Our Introduction" post on the same blog.</comment></comment>


Health Care Just Became the U.S.'s Largest Employer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/health-care-america-jobs/550079/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> First the article notes on the difficulty of replacing line medical workers with automation, but then it mentions this:

"Recently, the growth in health-care employment is stemming more from administrative jobs than physician jobs. The number of non-doctor workers in the health industry has exploded in the last two decades. The majority of these jobs aren't clinical roles, like registered nurses. They are mostly administrative and management jobs, including receptionists and office clerks."</comment>


MoMath: Manhattan's Museum of Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2012/12/momath-manhattan-museum-of-mathematics.html <comment><USER2> Fun fact: One of the main guys behind this is George Hart, who happens to be Vi Hart's (of Youtube fame; look up her videos if you've missed them) father. I saw him talk about the museum a little while ago. If the fun he seemed to be having with this project comes through in the museum itself, it's definitely something I'd love to see.

<comment><USER3> (This comment is going to sound ill-tempered and persnickety, and I apologize in advance for it; but I am genuinely curious about the question)

What's the big deal with Vi Hart? I've seen a few of her youtube videos, and I guess it's cute– and I can understand why they are so popular, as they include many elements of successful internet videos (girl talking + manufactured whimsy quirky humor + the superficial "i love science lol omg" syndrome), but I don't get why they would elicit such a response amongst actual mathematicians, as they don't really bring much of educational/mathematical value to the table. I certainly don't get why they would warrant her being sought out so much by the Khan Academy, and what she must be doing there all day.

(again sorry for the bitterness of this comment; please explain and prove me wrong, as I genuinely don't get her popularity)

<comment><USER4> Her videos introduce mathematical concepts in a fun and entertaining way. The way math is taught usually quickly convinces people it's a very dry and boring subject when it doesn't need to be that way. Especially in high school/middle school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also, if you live in NYC or Boston, you can go to the Eames Mathematica exhibits at the NY Hall of Science and Boston Science Center.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematica:_A_World_of_Numbers...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematica:_A_World_of_Numbers..._and_Beyond)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for posting this. It's going right on my weekend to-do short list.

</comment><comment><USER7> A couple of years ago I went on a "math" tour of Manhattan with one of the MoMath's cofounders, Glen Whitney. It consisted of walking around and observing the geometric shapes of the cut and their practical purposes, such as how traffic was impacted by the traffic circle of Columbus Circle.

Whitney held these tours every few weeks, you just had to email and ask... I think he even paid for subway fare IIRC...he did these fun little tours to drum up attention for MoMath. Glad to see his dream become a physical reality</comment>


Financing Suburbia: How government mortgage policy determine where you live - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@devonmarisa/financing-suburbia-6076dae990f8 <comment><USER2> TL;DR:

1) create an artificial new definition of "subsidy"

2) blame all suburban development and urban flight on these "subsidies".</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone used YouTube ads? - <AUTHOR>

Launching a business soon and would like to get a lot of viral traction. It seems like YouTube ads could be targeted and – if done correctly – fairly profitable.
I have no experience with them though... would love to hear from anyone who's used them. Did they convert? How are they compared to regular Google Adwords? Would you use them again? Do you recommend YouTube ads for a viral campaign?
Would appreciate any tips. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I haven't used Youtube ads personally. But I've seen how and when companies typically use them.

Mid sized companies do 1\. Retargeting 2\. Demographic based ads(especially location based)

Big companies do branding.

Retargeting: If a user visits your website, you could ask google to add a tracking cookie to that visitor. You add additional information about that user like which stage of the funnel the user was in(eg., visited a product detail page, visited pricing page, went into checkout and dropped out, etc.). Based on this you could target a specific version of ad to that user, wherever he goes.

Most ads I see on Youtube are from companies that are in growth phase doing retargeting. Eg., Legalzoom, Zappos(and a few other e-com companies)

Demographic targeted ads: I saw that the set of ads I'm being shown have been changing drastically based on my location. And the ads I see also are different for me vs my friends who are slightly older. They mostly get insurance ads while I get beer ads.

To re-iterate, all this is empirical observation, and I don't have a first hand experience about this. But hope this helped

<comment><AUTHOR> That does help, thanks for the info!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why do you want a "viral campaign"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our business is gonna need massive growth relatively quickly.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ageism in Tech and Career Moves - <AUTHOR> I'm pushing 50 (although I don't look or act like it) and I am trying to get out of the consulting/sales rat race and back into actual engineering after a long stint working with enterprise IT customers and trying to get them to move to modern devops/SRE/data services in the cloud -- it was gratifying in many regards, but intensely frustrating from a management/ownership standpoint, since you're often thrice removed from the actual decision making and technology choices.
I considered going solo or starting a small company with a couple of friends, but I need a very steady pay check (even if smaller) and contract work is belittled in my neck of the woods (Southern Europe), so I'm currently running what passes for the tech interview gauntlet these days, with uneven results--I am either passed over solely due to perception (age, current role, etc.) or go through the entire pipeline.
Explaining that I'm not afraid of (re-)learning anything (and even with a portfolio of stuff and good references) and having a decades-old MSc seems to be looked down upon by fresh PhDs, and expectations towards specific areas of expertise seem to be unrealistically high sometimes, but I usually get through those and am eventually excused away because I'm too senior (often more senior than the interviewers or future managers, which I'm OK with but clearly raises a few eyebrows and I suspect is the main reason I'm turned away, followed by the "sales" thing).
I know there are a lot of folk like me around--how did you succeed in getting rid of the "customer facing" taint and doing a career move _back_ to Engineering? <comment><USER2> Have you explored options within your current company, or companies where former co-workers work? In my experience, the former is the easiest way to make a career shift, because they already know you. The latter is second best because they knew you. This has worked for me in the past.

Other things I would suggest (all assume you still have a job and can play the long game):

\- start blogging with a focus on where you want to be (engineering? That's a broad topic). Niche down. Is there a domain or tech that you want to work with?

\- pick an open source project and start contributing. Docs are a great place to start.

\- take a moonlighting gig or a week off and code something. You may be looking back with rose colored glasses. Coding is great, but nothing is without its warts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Generic advice, but can you make a project that is interesting for which you can share code with hiring managers?

This would seem to cut through the challenges that you described:

It demonstrates your ability to code, solve technical challenges, and work from the perspective of the "users/business" (in the context of your project). It also gives you something to talk about. Building rapport helps to bridge gaps in culture.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder whether the lack of replies is due to lacking first-hand experience of the HN community or if it is due to the difficulty of making that jump.

Nevertheless, I also would be interested in any anecdata surrounding this.</comment>


Ask HN: What was the best paper you read in your life? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I posted this a few months ago.. [https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/greatworks/shannon38.pdf](https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/greatworks/shannon38.pdf) Claude Shannon's 'A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits'

</comment><comment><USER3> I studied physics and literary theory, and I greatly enjoyed the paper at the center of the Sokal affair [0]: _Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity_. [1]

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

[1]: [https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2_noafterword.pdf](https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2_noafterword.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> The Sunday Boston Globe in 1998/1999 -- every week there were literally over 100 pages of help wanted ads, a large percentage of them software-related. (Some weeks the Help Wanted section was 150+ pages.)

<comment><USER5> Oh, I was confused by your comment at first. I was looking for the reference to the academic/scientific paper in your comment but got to the end and wondered if the comment was truncated or something. Then I got it, the Sunday Boston globe was the paper you were talking about. Nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not strictly a paper, but Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species.

</comment><comment><USER7> Computer Science as empirical inquiry : Symbols and Search. [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~kuipers/readings/Newell+Simon- cac...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~kuipers/readings/Newell+Simon-cacm-76.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Einstein's 1905 paper on special relativity.

<comment><USER9> Classic. Schrodinger's quantum biology

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Proof of an external world_ , G. E. Moore.

<comment><USER11> Have a link?

<comment><USER12> [http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/ana/MooreProof.pdf](http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/ana/MooreProof.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon defends staff as 'diverse,' even though it's majority white and male - <AUTHOR> http://news.dice.com/2014/11/03/amazon-diverse-staff-white-male/

<comment><USER2> There is nothing here - comparing the numbers is like comparing apples to oranges. Amazon's workplaces should reflect the local diversity that surrounds it in each location. These locations may not have a similar makeup to the united states as a whole, so the numbers are going to differ. It doesn't mean they aren't diverse, it just means they are relocating people into an area. Likewise, these numbers simply won't match up in any meaningful way to another company.</comment>


First U.S. Bitcoin Exchange Set to Open - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/first-u-s-bitcoin-exchange-set-to-open-1422221641 <comment><USER2> _" As is typical of most bitcoin/fiat intermediaries when promoting their products, the new exchange is being touted as a first and a means to bring legitimacy to Bitcoin."_ \- Qntra. We've heard that story many times before. Kraken makes similar claims. (Kraken uses the same address, 548 Market St, SF, as Coinbase. It's a mail-forwarding service. Few people know where either exchange really is.)

So what is this "licensed" thing? "Licensed" by whom? The US SEC? The State of New York? Some other state? FinCen.

There have been many exchanges registered with FinCen, the anti-money- laundering regulator, including Mt. Gox. That provides no investor protection. A few have been licensed as state money transmitters. That may provide some investor protection. Nobody as yet has been licensed as a broker, dealer, or exchange with the Securities and Exchange Commission, something every stockbroker and dealer in the US has to do.

Being licensed as a broker/dealer means SIPC insurance for investors up to $500K per customer, FINRA supervision (they fine a few brokers every month), outside audits, exams for personnel (even the people in a call center have to pass an exam, so they know what they can and can't do) and exams top management (yes, even top management at a brokerage has to pass an exam).

There are significant advantages for being a real broker/dealer. You can plug into the financial system at a higher level, and moving money around becomes much easier.

An existing broker/dealer could set up a market in Bitcoin if they wanted to. So far, no one has bothered.

When a Bitcoin exchange gets licensed by the SEC, let us know. Until then, it's just hype.

Edit: the article says they claim to be licensed in California. Here's the list of money transmitters licensed in California: [http://www.dbo.ca.gov/Licensees/money_transmitters/money_tra...](http://www.dbo.ca.gov/Licensees/money_transmitters/money_transmitters_directory.asp) Not seeing Coinbase on the list. Silicon Valley names on the list include Google, Square, AirBnb, Xoom, Paypal, Intuit, etc. No Coinbase, or anything in SF that looks like it might be them.

<comment><USER3> Is there any significant difference between this exchange and the upcoming Winklevoss exchange?[1]

Both claim to be "regulated," but it doesn't look like the Winklevoss version will offer SIPC protections either.[2]

[1] [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/winklevoss-twins- aim-...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/winklevoss-twins-aim-to-take- bitcoin-mainstream-with-a-regulated-exchange/)

[2] [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579346/0001193125132...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579346/000119312513279830/d562329ds1.htm)

<comment><USER4> The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust is not an exchange, it's an Exchange Traded Fund. Basically you can think of it as a shell company that exists solely to possess (approximately) 0.2 BTC per share; buying into it is _approximately_ equivalent to buying BTC (less the trust's expenses). It's no different in theory from precious-metal ETFs like GLD or PPLT, although I'd expect expenses to be lower since no precious metals need to actually be stored.

The operation of a trust like this is simplified by the fact that the Trust itself never buys bitcoins, and sells bitcoins only as necessary to pay the Trust's expenses. The day-to-day arbitrage that causes the price to track that of actual bitcoins is something that third parties do; they can exchange a certain number of bitcoins for a certain number of shares (and vice versa).

Anyway, it's a lot easier to run a trust like this than an actual exchange; you don't need to track lots of tiny transactions, allow every random person on the internet to open accounts, generate 1099-B forms, hold significant US dollar deposits, etc.

Heck, it doesn't even need a hot wallet; in that prospectus, exchanges of BTC for shares take three business days for settlement, which is more than enough time for a quorum of people to get their keys out of their respective bank safe deposit boxes around the country and sign a multi-signature settlement transaction offline.

The big advantage of this trust, though, is that once it is listed on a big stock exchange, you'll be able to go to any stock broker and buy an interest in bitcoin. Your accountant will be able to deal with the tax implications easily, since it's just a stock, and you'll even be able to do margin transactions through properly licensed and insured brokers. It'll take a lot of the infrastructure risk out of a bitcoin investment (although volatility risk will of course remain in full force).

<comment><USER5> He was not talking about the ETF he was talking about Gemini, the actual exchange that the Winklevii recently announced.

<comment><USER4> Ah, the prospectus linked was for the ETF, and the other link was paywalled, so I assumed that was what he meant to refer to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is this being billed as the "first U.S. Bitcoin exchange"? No doubt Coinbase will do a good job but it isn't the first or even the first regulated exchange based in the US. CampBX, Kraken, and Coinsetter are all based in the US and follow regulations.

If there actually is some distinction between what Coinbase is doing here and what the existing exchanges have been doing for some time I'd be interested to know what that is.

<comment><USER7> Co-founder of Coinbase here

You're right in that it's not the "first US Bitcoin exchange". However, it is the first US bitcoin exchange with some amount of money transmitter licenses (none of the companies you listed have them to my knowledge). If you're not familiar with money transmitter licenses, it's what you need from most state regulators to move or hold money for customers in that state. That's why we can't support all states at launch. You can see a list of the states we support here: [https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/178054...](https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1780543-what- is-the-usd-wallet-)

There hasn't been a US based exchange which has had meaningful volume in comparison to the larger international exchanges, so our hope is this gives people a US option that is both stable (both on regulation and security) and has reasonable liquidity.

<comment><USER8> >However, it is the first US bitcoin exchange with some amount of money transmitter licenses

Not true. There are definitely exchanges out there that have state MSB licenses. Perhaps you're unaware of their existence. I know companies can sometimes be secretive about this stuff, but exchanges like CoinX have MSB state licenses. Check out [http://coinx.com/money-transmitter- licenses](http://coinx.com/money-transmitter-licenses) for instance.

<comment><USER9> CoinX doesn't have a real product though do they? Does it count if you have the licenses but no exchange to use them with?

<comment><USER10> VP CoinX here: We do have an exchange, www.coinxtrader.com (it is mentioned on our main website, coinx.com). We were the very first exchange to obtain MTLs, that is the route we took when we established our company.

With respect to the second point, "real-product" We have a working exchange in addition to money-transfer services in the shape of coinhub.com (which goes live in a few weeks time).

<comment><USER9> I tried signing up and I keep getting this:

"Password must be at least 8 characters and must include at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, and one numeric digit"

even though my password meets the requirements.

Also, something seems off. There has to be a reason that you guys aren't used that isn't being acknowledged. I have never heard of anyone using your platform, ever, and when I search for images of the trading interface all I can find are stock photos of lame graphics. Seriously, what's up? There has to be a reason, right?

<comment><USER11> Could you please email support with your issue so we can take care of it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Coinbase and Winklevoss ETF are acting more like new commodity exchanges than currency exchanges. A commodity (like Gold) has value attached but it is not a currency, and its value invariably fluctuates (like Bitcoin).

To date, crypto currency remains a technology topic. If you want to change finance, first understand it. Take your corporate finance, capital market, macro economics classes, and understand government's role in currency and economy. Learn about the history of how commercial banking, investment banking, currency and payment worlds have evolved over the last 100 years.

In short, figure out how bank and capital flows work before prescribing any solutions like Bitcoin, otherwise it will just prove the rightful criticism - that crypto may point to the right problem, but it in itself is just a technology looking for a problem to solve, and that even if it eventually finds its purpose, the chance that the problem will be small or a better, simpler solution comes by remains high.

Financial system as it's built today is an equally sophisticated system vis-a- vis the digital world. Most of those system designers (from say Banking Act of 1933) have left this world. Tech-hackers are many, finance-hackers are fewer. Even fewer understands both. This is why if you ask the view on crypto, you will have very conflicting views between the tech and the finance worlds. And rest to be sured, we are dealing with a problem that's more finance (including financial regulatory) than tech.

Almost anyone on hacker news understands how a full stack software system works. But do you understand how a financial "full stack" works? If you're interested in tackling the problem in a new way, we are hiring and welcome your input.

HN sn = Gmail sn

<comment><USER13> FWIW aarondu appears to have posted an identical comment on three different bitcoin related hn threads.. and is associated with [http://boomerangwallet.com](http://boomerangwallet.com). Not sure why this info not on his/her profile page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And Google now tracks Bitcoin as any other currency.

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=CURRENCY:BTC](https://www.google.com/finance?q=CURRENCY:BTC)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=50btc+in+usd](https://www.google.com/search?q=50btc+in+usd)

<comment><USER15> How new is this?

<comment><USER16> Implemented in June 2014 [1], [2].

[1] [http://cointelegraph.com/news/111786/both_yahoo_and_google_f...](http://cointelegraph.com/news/111786/both_yahoo_and_google_finance_now_include_bitcoin_pricing)

[2] [http://blog.coinbase.com/post/88679063982/coinbases-api- brin...](http://blog.coinbase.com/post/88679063982/coinbases-api-brings- bitcoin-ticker-to-google)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I assume it's related to this: [https://www.coinbase.com/lunar](https://www.coinbase.com/lunar)

Wonder if wsj breached an embargo releasing this early?

</comment><comment><USER17> Does this exchange offer insurance against catastrophic insolvency?

Someone went from millionaire to poor overnight when Mt. Gox failed, so it's a real concern. No one should keep their coins in any wallet except their own, and they need to make sure they have the technical understanding of how to properly manage their wallet. If your personal wallet isn't encrypted and backed up, it's not managed properly.

If you want to store coins on someone's exchange or webwallet, never store more than 25% of what you're comfortable with losing. (It turns out that "what you're comfortable with losing" is way, way more than the reality of waking up one day and realizing you've lost it all.)

This is an interesting move, but I'm worried that these new exchanges will increase the attack surface of Bitcoin's reputation. If the new ones fail, it will shake the public's confidence in Bitcoin yet again. Not that that matters, since Bitcoin seems to go along fine whether or not people are confident in it.

I don't know whether it would even be possible to insure against losing all cold storage reserves, but nobody should trust large sums to any webwallet (including Coinbase's current website, BTC-e, Bitstamp, etc) until protection against that worst-case scenario is in place.

EDIT: From the paywalled article:

 _The exchange could bring needed legitimacy to the currency, which isn't backed by a central government and is traded over virtual exchanges, primarily overseas. Coinbase said it has insurance, offering traders some assurance that their money won't disappear._

Until details about this insurance are released, do not trust large sums to Coinbase or anyone else. And unless the insurance protects against every coin disappearing tomorrow, never trust them at all. Trusting them is equivalent to gambling your savings for no benefit.

<comment><USER18> "No one should keep their coins in any wallet except their own"

That's just not going to fly if Bitcoin becomes mainstream. There's too much dogmatism around this in the Bitcoin community. Sometimes a hosted wallet is the right solution for a particular user.

<comment><USER17> It's not about whether it's going to fly. It's certifiably insane to trust your coins to any third party unless you either have multisig control to prevent those coins from leaving, or they have insurance to replace your coins. Do not ever trust anyone, or you'll lose your money like I did. They won't replace it unless they're legally obligated to replace it (insurance) or they're technically incapable of losing it (multisig).

Anything else is magical thinking at its most dangerous, since it can ruin lives.

<comment><USER9> This is a religious view speaking. More bitcoin has probably been lost due to people thinking they should handle it themselves, and doing it wrong, than has been lost to all the big hacks including Mt. Gox. A survey from a while ago reflects this likeliness: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2bjefu/results_of_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2bjefu/results_of_a_3000_person_bitcoin_survey/)

<comment><USER17> I didn't say everyone should manage their own bitcoin. I said people should manage it themselves _if_ they have the technical ability to do so. For everyone else, stick with banks. If you're borderline unsure whether you can store your coins in an encrypted wallet and make regular backups and not lose those backups, then keep your money in an FDIC-insured bank.

But sticking your coins into a webwallet like Coinbase without multisig control is a recipe for unmitigated personal disaster. A mental exercise is useful: "I've lost all my money." How would that affect your life?

I strongly disagree with anyone who would push the view that it's okay to sweep the issues under the rug in the name of making Bitcoin more popular. Putting people's fortunes at risk is almost equivalent to putting their lives at risk, because your quality of life is directly proportional to your fortune.

If Bitcoin sounds risky, that's because it is. No amount of regulated exchanges will change that. What will change it is giving consumers multisig control over their coins, or insuring against a total loss of all coins including cold storage.

There's literally no other option. One of those two things must happen, or you must not use the services. Or if you do use them, don't put in more than a quarter of what you're comfortable with losing. If that's $100, then never deposit more than $25 in BTC.

Remember, Bitstamp just lost $5 million USD to hackers, or half their most recent investment round. It's unknown whether they're currently insolvent. Everyone thinks they might have enough money to cover the losses, but nobody knows for sure. They could currently be a fractional reserve.

So Mt. Gox wasn't a one-off. Nobody is safe from hackers, technical issues, or even rogue employees that want to become millionaires. Due to the untraceable nature of Bitcoin, all exchanges and webwallets are extremely attractive targets.

<comment><USER9> The problem is that people who think they have the technical ability to do it right is astronomically higher than reality, not because people overestimate themselves, but because they underestimate the difficulty of "rolling your own bitcoin storage." I mean, you can make these arguments, but the history proves that so far centralized storage has been safer than self storage, on average.

Further, Coinbase _does_ give users access to their private keys with the multisig vault, so one of your two criteria has already been met.

<comment><USER17> Are most Coinbase users using multisig? Since it's not the default, I'm pretty sure the answer is no. So unless multisig is the default at their new exchange, all of those people are at risk. Few are helped by multisig if few people use it.

Since Coinbase has a large cold storage reserve, and since multisig-protected coins can't be put into cold storage, the answer is pretty clear: Coinbase protects few people.

It's a false dichotomy that coins must be stored in a personal wallet that users mess up, or a webwallet that exchanges mess up. There's a third option: Convert those coins back into USD and stick it in a bank. As long as you're storing less than $500,000, you're guaranteed to have it.

Anything else is pure greed. As someone who has been burned by greed, my misfortune stands as a warning to others: please don't make my mistakes.

The reason I lost coins is because I was tempted by Mt. Gox. Their 2FA auth made it seem very unlikely that my coins could go anywhere, just like Coinbase. If I'd researched Mt. Gox, I would have discovered a history of technical problems. Yet if you research Coinbase right now, you'll discover they've had a history of those too. There have been at least two or three high-profile Coinbase incidents over the years which were featured on HN. And if you research Bitstamp, you'll see they just lost $5 million.

The common denominator is that exchanges and webwallets aren't trustworthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Buttercoin, based in Palo Alto and open to US residents only, has been operating for a while. See the 'Legal' section of their FAQ:

[https://buttercoin.com/#/faq](https://buttercoin.com/#/faq)

</comment><comment><USER20> What about kraken.com, wasn't that the first one ?

<comment><USER21> [https://poloniex.com/](https://poloniex.com/) is a US based exchange

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "!st ever"... cmon

</comment><comment><USER23> campbx.com is also US based and has been around for a while

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have a non-paywalled version of the story handy?

<comment><USER25> An easy way to get around the paywall is to search for this headline on Google and click a link from the results.

<comment><USER26> or take the URL and prepend it with the search operator "site:"

site:[http://www.wsj.com/articles/first-u-s-bitcoin-exchange- set-t...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/first-u-s-bitcoin-exchange-set-to- open-1422221641)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8933218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8933218)

<comment><USER28> Your link is about the Wilkevi's exchange. This article is about Coinbase.</comment></comment>


Tesla Working with LAPD to Retrofit a Model S for Patrol Duty - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecountrycaller.com/60444-tesla-motors-inc-tsla-working-with-lapd-to-retrofit-a-model-s-for-police-patrol/http://www.thecountrycaller.com/60444-tesla-motors-inc-tsla-working-with-lapd-to-retrofit-a-model-s-for-police-patrol/ <comment><USER2> Model 3 is not good enough for the LAPD? I guess when you get used to patrolling in tanks, a Model S already feels like a major downgrade.</comment>


I will build a prototype for you in two weeks for $4,242 - <AUTHOR> http://nateglonthoc.com/4242

<comment><USER2> Your second link doesn't work, just syas connecting to server and never returns, so you lost me there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be working for me. It's connecting to a WebSocket server; any chance your network blocks outgoing connections to port 3000?</comment></comment>


Rust 2020: GUI and Community - <AUTHOR> https://raphlinus.github.io/rust/druid/2019/10/31/rust-2020.html <comment><AUTHOR> There is some discussion on Reddit: [https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/dpurlj/rust_2020_gui_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/dpurlj/rust_2020_gui_and_community/)</comment>


How Did Paul Krugman Get It So Wrong? (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/ecaf_2077.pdf <comment><USER2> The original Krugman article can be found at [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html). I remember reading Krugman's article at the time it first appeared and thinking that his analysis was right on point. Cochrain's article is worth reading although it is short on economic theory and long on _ad homineum_ commentary.</comment>


Visualization: Guy-to-girl ratio of every bar and restaurant in SF/NYC - <AUTHOR> http://weeplaces.com/ratiofinder/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure this data is very good. The Lexington Club is marked as having 7% more male checkins. I live right next door to the Lex, and it's a lesbian bar. Women outnumber men there at least 10-to-1.

<comment><AUTHOR> We could've probably normalized this data better. The fact of the matter is that guys use foursquare nearly twice as much as girls do, so _every_ venue will have dramatically more guy check-ins. A 7% male edge actually makes it one of the more female venues in the city.

<comment><USER3> Does foursquare publish male/female ratio user base stats? Based on the people I know, it seems like only males use apps like foursquare.

<comment><USER4> It may be the "early adopter" effect. In some cases, over 95% of (self- reporting) early adopters might be male. [http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/08/26/who-are-our- firef...](http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/08/26/who-are-our- firefox-4-beta-users/)

Anyway, here's one "female" who uses foursquare: <http://twitter.com/#!/Snubs/status/26996595662> :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we correctly label datasets please?

Visualization: Guy-to-girl ratio of foursquare/gowalla/facebook checkins for every bar, restaurant and other random location in SF/NYC frequented by foursquare/gowalla/facebook places users who remember to check in.

There are so many baises in there about the only solid fact you can take away from any of this is the relative popularity of locations with people who feel the need to broadcast their location.

<comment><USER6> I have to agree - the first thing I did on the site was to try to figure out where the data was from. But I can't find it anywhere (or even an "about" button that explains it). I assumed it was foursquare (same principle as wheretheladies.at, right?) but would have liked to see some background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not interested in Guy-to-girl ratio (I get the right ratio for me at every nerdish meetup I attend), but now I know there are 3 Whiskey Lounges in SF.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a known guy/gal differential on Foursquare in these cities? If so, it might be nice to have the ability scale these scores to reflect that.

In other words, if 2/3 of SF's Foursquare users are female and 2/3 of a particular SF bar's Foursquare users are female:

1) It's true that the guy/gal ratio is 2:1, but

2) It's also true that there is no enrichment of women at this bar relative to the null expectation.

 _Edit_ : A collection of presumably neutral places (e.g., Bay Bridge) might help achieve such an estimate.

<comment><USER9> carbo,

all percentages shown are deviations from our calculated average per city, so there is an average of about 2 male checkins per 1 female checkin in SF. hope that clears it up a bit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do they normalize for the strong possibility that in general, guys check in more than girls? I'm assuming this is the case.

Or for that guys are more likely to want to check in and advertise that they're at a bar rather than a beauty shop, or even a coffeehouse? And vice versa?

<comment><USER9> we've thought about that a bit — it's probably harder to study that aspect [who wants to broadcast which where] but it is fascinating. strip clubs probably being way more male and the lex probably being way more female...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the "Bay Bridge" is 24% more girls to guys, then I think there is a problem here with reporting information that's not statistically significant, because that seems very unlikely to me.

<comment><USER12> It's on the way back to downtown from the baseball park; SF has done well this year; SF girls like baseball.

<comment><USER13> Are you getting the Bay Bridge confused with the Third St Bridge?

<comment><USER12> No, there's a spot at Embarcadero & Harrison with an unobstructed view that seems to be very popular for taking photos with the bridge in the background, or just to stop and look.

After a game the trains are so crowded it's usually easier to walk the 1/2 mile back to Market street, so you've got several thousands going past there ~80 evenings a year. The last time we were there my wife referred to previous HN conversations about SF's social gender distribution and observed the abundance of single female giants fans.

Also, there's a Gordon Biersch right across the street, so that probably helps too...

<comment><USER13> So people check in "at the Bay Bridge" when they're just looking at it from a mile away?

As an East Bay resident I am offended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> (Late to the game, but I assume zain has been working to fix the kinks.)

Right now, the #1 highest female ratio is showing up as... 1887%. Without making a dumb joke about how your math may be off (duh), I will say this: from a business perspective, if you're going to err on one side or the other, it may as well be this one. Haha.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not serious statistics, but very cool visual nonetheless.

Now, so long as everyone realizes the 'woman at the bar' scene in A Beautiful Mind isn't actual game theory, feel free to go nuts.

<comment><USER15> And if anyone genuinely IS interested in attempts by the dismal science to suck the soul out of romance, check out Gary Becker's 'A Theory of Marriage' papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool visuallization, but "Tropisue\u00f1o", really? ;-)

<comment><USER17> Tropisue\u00f1o has epic burritos. They haven't quite figured out how to get the right thing to the guy who ordered it. The burritos, though, whether or not you ordered them, make up for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So, very few bars in SF have more girls than guys. Sigh...

</comment><comment><USER19> yet another site that fills the stereotype of "hyperlocal" and "location-based service". Both of these seem to be a euphemism for "NYC and San Francisco"

<comment><USER20> Probably because such apps are dramatically more useful/viable in highly dense cities

<comment><USER19> That's partially true, but I think also it's a sign that they're more interested in seducing investors than they are in making revenue.

If you could get a large enough population involved, you ought to be able to make this work in small towns in Ohio as well; however, you've got to produce a service that's got the wide appeal that Facebook does, not something that appeals primarily to 20-something technorati singles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd like to see this same data, but normalized for the total number of checkins per group. Right now all it tells me is that of the people going to bars, guys are more likely to check in than girls, not necessarily that there are more guys at the bar.

</comment><comment><USER22> There may be problems, as others have pointed out, but it still seems like a valuable tool for me. After all, I don't need it to be perfectly accurate.. just ballpark accurate in order to take advantage of it.

Please do Austin. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> The filtering might be a bit off on that data set...Sephora is a beauty retail outlet, which hardly qualifies as a bar or restaurant and its the #1 place for women in NYC.

<comment><USER20> pick "nightlife" instead of the "shops" filter

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How did the authors of the visualization get the checkin data for every venue in SF and NYC? I have been trying to do the same for another project, and it is not supported by foursquare..

</comment><comment><USER25> On behalf of my single friends that I forwarded this to: "Thank you".

While I can't use this myself it's definitely helping a friend make plans for the near future.

</comment><comment><USER26> To me the surprising thing is that ANY women check in to venues.... I can't think of any of my mates that do. But that might be a Manchester, UK thing.

</comment><comment><USER27> is the male/female ratio of foursquare comparable to the society or did weeplaces at least try to interpolate them?

</comment><comment><USER28> Pretty cool, but I'm a fan of the more macro version of the idea, as based on census data: <http://www.xoxosoma.com/singles/> (also a really awesome design)

</comment><comment><USER29> What was used to create the map visualizer? Any open source library in flash?

</comment><comment><USER30> I understand that the statistics isn't completely accurate, but it still should give a rough idea. Think we could get the data graphed for more cities? (I just moved to Columbus, Ohio:)

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, this is one of those "why didn't I think of that" ideas. I could see this getting very popular over the next few weeks. Even if the data is not reliable, it's a very fun idea.

<comment><USER32> Totally agreed. I'm in NYC right now -- my first night of many, hopefully, as I'm here for the week interviewing -- and this is totally awesome. Going to have to play around with it, and maybe mine some data myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm going to need an iphone app for this, like right now

</comment><comment><USER33> Can't see a thing. Flash?

</comment><comment><USER34> AKA Map of gay/lesbian bars</comment>


Chancecoin: a decentralized casino built on top of Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://chancecoin.com <comment><USER3> These aren't games, they're just random number generators. Things that hold peoples attention give the illusion of more depth than P(payoff).

The Bitcoin protocol already has a blockchain-validated (non-Turing) scripting language. You could probably write genuinely interesting games in it, that are financially self-enforcing, without any new protocol needed.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script)

(Digression: are there any technically-interesting protocols built on top of BTC script validation?)

<comment><USER4> This is BIP-level stuff only, but fwiw BIP 0011 ([https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0011.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0011.mediawiki)) is kind of interesting.

It would thence (uh, can i use that word this way?) be possible to e.g. implement three-party escrow using 2-of-3 signatures (second bullet point under Motivation, etc.) Two signatures would be enough to conduct a fund transfer from buyer to seller. If either buyer or seller defects (or there's some kind of a problem), there'll be <=1 signature present. The third mediating/escrow party would then choose whether to place their own signature or not (thereby validating or nullifying the transaction, accordingly.)

iirc there's also some BIP-level stuff (or an idea to implement it using bitcoin Script, anyway) to have things like NashX[1] work within bitcoin. Basically a Nash equilibrium based transaction scheme with no human 'escrow' party required - everything is formalized. If either the buyer or the seller fails (i.e.: if any of the two report 'failure'), all funds are burnt (e.g. sent to some provably bogus bitcoin address, whatnot.) _Both_ parties have to chime in so that the risk is distributed accordingly/appropriately. There are nuances and gotchas here to be had, of course.

[1]: [http://nashx.com/HowItWorks](http://nashx.com/HowItWorks)

<comment><USER5> Our for-contract bitcoin dev team already uses 2 of 3 multisig escrow for all bitcoin payments.

Its better than anything else I've ever used cross border. The weekly price volatility is currently lower than the cut any good professional escrow service would take. Furthermore the transaction goes through in an instant.

Once crypto assets which track USD, Euro, Yen, RMB pop up with turing complete scripting build in... man that's going to be a different world.

<comment><USER4> > _Our for-contract bitcoin dev team already uses 2 of 3 multisig escrow for > all bitcoin payments._

Nice!

> _Once crypto assets which track USD, Euro, Yen, RMB pop up with turing > complete scripting build in... man that 's going to be a different world._

Gonna be quite a ride. Generalized financial derivatives? oof.

<comment><USER5> The crazy thing is that nobody really knows what team/technology will win the race. There several blockchain 2.0 projects out there, all with different technological inovations. Bitcoin itself will almost certainly be eclipsed in a few months/years.

I have a hunch that we'll see Bitshares DPOS consensus algorithm partnered with Ethereum's turing completeness combined in one DAC. Open Transactions will most likely become the equivalent of the web browser to TCPIP.

We're still at the veeery early stages of the blockchain development. Our team is extremely excited to have caught the wave so early and to work with such great startups and people.

<comment><USER4> (If it's not a total secret, would be interesting to hear what your team is doing / up to!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is just another scam coin. Not decentralized at all: "Chancecoin uses New York Lottery Quick Draw numbers to resolve bets."

There's no reason you couldn't get randomness from the blockchain itself - <USER2> act of finding blocks is itself a random number generator. Using an external source is incredibly centralized, and advertising this as decentralized is scammy.

All the alt-coins - even the most legit sounding ones - have this incredibly scammy side to them. Dishonest claims, premines, etc. Yet people pump their money into them anyway. Apparently this coin raised $265,000. All you need to do to get rich in alt-coin land, is come up with a half baked, poorly implemented idea, and ... duck! because people are going to THROW money at you.

edit: their homepage states "There is no central point of failure." \-- Uhm, how about violating the NY Lotto's terms of service? The client is just getting a http (not https) feed from nylottery.ny.gov, I wonder how long until they add a captcha? What happens to the value of your chancecoins then? :)

</comment><comment><USER7> > The government can't shut it down. It's owned by the people.

So noble. A societal ill that's owned by people.

<comment><USER8> There's no question that gambling addictions are very destructive.

But that applies also to: alcohol, smoking, drug use, eating, sex, extreme sports, working out, investing in the stock market, climbing mountains, entrepreneurship, there are probably even a few people so addicted to HN it's ruining their lives.

If you seek to eliminate sources of destructive behavior, you're also going to eliminate a ton of genuine life experiences for those who are capable of moderation, maybe even until there's nothing left. Lives are ruined when people die climbing Everest after all.

I'm not interested at all in gambling, but I'm very concerned with where the slippery slope is headed.

<comment><USER9> It's not just that gambling is very destructive to some people, it is that the costs are deemed to far outweigh the benefits. This is the approach society takes to banning any activity.

And a ban is only the most extreme form of regulation. For example I would like to see a trial where gamblers must register and would be blocked from betting after losing more than 50% of their salary. Perhaps such a system would best weigh the pleasure of responsible gamblers against the pain of compulsive gamblers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't holding bitcoin already gambling?

<comment><USER11> Speculating is more accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do it for online poker and take over the (poker) world.

<comment><USER13> Not so. I tried something similar to this with poker and it flopped. 4 months of coding down the drain. Turns out, gamblers are generally addicted to action, not profit. They don't really care about whether or not they have an opportunity to run a table and profit.

<comment><USER14> poker is more difficult, because everyone has to trust that the game isn't rigged. Until someone figures out a way to do a decentralized poker game, it will be difficult to get people to play your cryptocoin poker game. Even if it is run fairly, how can you tell a fair game from an unfair one? I think it flopped because it seems like a scam and you can't provide assurances otherwise.. with the simple random dice games happening on the blockchain, at least everyone can see the game is fair.. (which is why people play it)

<comment><USER15> Work on it has been done:

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

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/16sue5/decentralise...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/16sue5/decentralised_poker_site_that_guarantees_player/c7z30zt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would be very careful about hosting that website as the website itself is illegal. Sure it isn't a gambling website, but in the eye of the law, a website used to download a gambling application would be just as illegal as a gambling website. I hope you took the precautions necessary to ensure that you won't have legal issues incase of Chancecoin becoming popular.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is it legal for US residents to play at sites like [http://www.betcoinpoker.com](http://www.betcoinpoker.com) ?

I think the laws that banned online poker were mainly against Casinos, and now that they can be funded in btcoin, what prevents US residents from playing?

<comment><USER18> No. The laws actually target intermediaries processing the financial deposits.

<comment><USER17> So it's completely legal for us to play bitcoin poker?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It actually looks pretty interesting and potentially fun. Only criticism would be to improve the site design and functionality. It could use a cleaner look and a more fun atmosphere.

<comment><USER20> And the ability to minimize the awful chat in the bottom right that's blocking most of the interesting statistics I'd like to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty generous house to provide even wagers:

> 0.01 CHA 1% 99X -0.01 CHA

<comment><USER22> Except that 99X means that if you win, you get a 0.99CHA payout, for a gain of only 0.98CHA, making it worse than even.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Blackjack, Roulette, Video Poker, Hi-LO & Sports betting:

[http://casinobitco.in/index.php](http://casinobitco.in/index.php)

</comment><comment><USER24> The first decentralized casino crypto coin,no cheat,control by yourself,great Innovation.

<comment><USER25> Such gamble. Wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> All crypto currencies area form of gambling. This just allows people to gamble while they gamble.

<comment><USER26> Very clever though.</comment></comment>


Next big consumer app or nah? - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/114599121

<comment><USER2> Look like fun, and the video is pretty well done. What's the plan to get people actually using it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Typical YC strategy. Seak very deep appeal with a small number of users then eventually compound growth. The Vme Facebook page is super active with video meme posts that are doing pretty well.. as well as the third party "Mr. Video Memes" facebook page.</comment></comment>


I turned my Tesla into a pickup truck - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKv_N0IDS2A <comment><USER2> You know it's bad when the queen of shitty robots makes a better truck.</comment>


Twitch is currently down - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitch.tv/

<comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/LizardSquad/status/504416785194434562](https://twitter.com/LizardSquad/status/504416785194434562)

It's obviously suspect considering the source. Twitch dev on reddit said they were looking into it 2 hours ago and hasn't come back to the thread yet.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/2eoeab/twitch_down/](http://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/2eoeab/twitch_down/)</comment>


Ask HN: Could you run your startup from China? - <AUTHOR>

Every time China blocks another website I get a little uneasy about the prospect of moving to China and running a software business from there. I love being in that country & sure, a VPN helps out, but the political/business implications make me uncomfortable.
I've been making this little mental list of 'minimum requirements' of products/services in order to run a business. Currently the google/twitter/facebook triad from that list has been blocked. I used to fear the day that more essential services would be blocked. That day came yesterday (Dropbox).
So, which are the products/services your startup can't live without? Which websites, when blocked, would hurt your business? <comment><USER2> I'm in the Philippines and certain sites get blocked here also. It doesn't cause me much problems because I use my VPS as a proxy, but I don't really have high bandwidth needs. I have family in China though, I hear the internet connection is slow because of the filtering. That would be a concern of mine also.</comment>


JavaEventing - An easy to use eventing library for Java - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/javaeventing/

<comment><USER2> The main EventManager class synchronizes on triggering a new event. Then every event gets its own brand new thread. Then each newly spawned thread turns around and synchronizes to wait for the right to dispatch to the event's handlers. Then each handler gets its own brand new thread.

For m events with n handlers, that's mn+m threads. 100 events w/ 5 handlers? That's 600 new threads.

If you have frequent events or your handlers take any time at all, you're dead. This will simply grind to a halt under any kind of real load.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your views on the project. Creating new threads may not be as expensive as you seem to think, -on a standard desktop computer you get between 5000-1000 executed events per second, which is probably sufficient for most situations. This use of multi-threading is used to achieve full asynchronisity. The opposite, as you are implying, is to execute the events sequentially, within the same thread. I apprechiate that you would sometimes prefer the latter, but this can in fact be very easily achieved by using a fixed size thread pool, and adjusting its size to your preferences. Setting the size to one, would ensure sequencial execution of all events. Maybe I should include a threadpool in the next version, allowing its size to be specified.

<comment><USER2> _you get between 5000-1000 executed events per second_

As a point of comparison, I put together a quick Python script that defines a simple single-threaded event dispatcher and then does the same thing as your testPerformance() test, and it handles over 296k events/s on my machine (where javaEventing handles 3.7k).

 _This use of multi-threading is used to achieve full asynchronisity_

The way that you're currently synchronizing, the only concurrency you're seeing is for your handlers. You only trigger and dispatch out to handlers one event at a time.

There are two scenarios where threads are always going to be unavoidably slow: high contention, and processor-bound tasks with more threads than processors. Your current synchronization policy pretty much assures you're going to run into high contention, and if you're using this for processor-bound tasks, you're going to pay a severe tax for the number of threads you're generating, as well.

Put in the threadpool. Take a look at ConcurrentHashMap and CopyOnWriteArrayList. Work on your synchronization policy. High throughput concurrency and eventing is hard, but Java actually has a lot of nice building blocks to work with. If you want a good overview, you should check out Brian Goetz's Java Concurrency in Practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> The updated version (from 1.3.0) of the library uses a thread-pool, and yields between 50.000-100.000 events/second. While I apprechiate your focus on performance, for most actual use this would be academic. In most cases, even 10.000 events per second would be sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kind of neat, but what is with all the static methods and inner classes? Makes things kind of ugly, and very hard to write independent tests.

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, thank you for your thoughts on my project. As Pohl points out, the anonymous handler-implementations are chosen by design, and are in my opinion very well suited for these types of situations. But I'm thinking maybe you're not bothered by the anonymous implementations, but by the fact that classes like the Event-interface and the GenericEventHandler classes are made as public inner classes within the EventManager class? My thought was that, as they are so tightly coupled to the use of the EventManager class, they might as well be defined inside the EventManager as inner classes. However, if you have any reasons for why they should be defined elsewhere, I'd apprechiate your opinions.

As to your concerns regarding the static use of the EventManger, I can apprechiate your point of view. I'll put it on my todo-list for the next version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious, having been away from Java for a few years, are there competing libraries that I should be aware of before using something like this?

</comment><comment><USER5> it looks cool/useful at first glance?

Anyone have any production level experience with this library?

How is it's maturity/stability?</comment>


Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines (Marvin Minksy, 1967) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/media-lib/science_lib/blob/master/books/Computation_Finite_And_Infinite_Machines_by_Marvin_Minksy.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> > Man has within a single generation found himself sharing the world with a > strange new species: the computers and computer-like machines. Neither > history, nor philosophy, nor common sense will tell us how these machines > will affect us, for they do not do "work" as did machines of the Industrial > Revolution. Instead of dealing with materials or energy, we are told that > they handle "control" and "information" and even "intellectual processes." > There are very few individuals today who doubt that the computer and its > relatives are developing rapidly in capability and complexity, and that > these machines are destined to play important (though not as yet fully > understood) roles in society's future. Though only some of us deal directly > with computers, all of us are falling under the shadow of their ever-growing > sphere of influence, and thus we all need to understand their capabilities > and their limitations.</comment>


The Earn IT Act Puts Us All at Risk - <AUTHOR> https://cdt.org/insights/the-earn-it-act-puts-us-all-at-risk/ <comment><USER2> There's a lot of very biased entities behind CDT, which is a political lobbying organization: [https://cdt.org/financials/](https://cdt.org/financials/)</comment>


The case for banning gold mining - <AUTHOR> https://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-case-for-banning-gold-mining.html <comment><USER2> An issue is the definition of a "gold mine". Many mines that produce gold are composite ores, other valuable metals are extracted at the same, usually silver or copper but occasionally other metals. Mining of pure gold ores can be pretty clean as heavy metal mining goes, it is the other elements that tend to drag along messier chemistry.

That aside, gold mining has been moving outside of the developed world for decades, most operating mines in the US (and the US produces prodigious amounts of gold) were already grandfathered in under prior laws. You'd have to ban gold mining in countries that aren't going to play along. Also, even in the developed world, there is a lot of opportunity for black market gold production. A large fraction in the US is small producers and reserve studies are incentivized to be heavily sandbagged. For example, while the US produces a lot of gold, the origin of at least 30% of it is not entirely clear. Laundering off-book gold ore would be a piece of cake. It is a fascinating business.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't care much about Musk mission to mars but with the cost declines in rocket launches in the next few years I really hope asteroid mining becomes a thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea of developed countries banning gold mining.

<comment><USER5> Harmful, dangerous industrial activity is always best relegated to undeveloped countries. That way it can kill the largest number of exploited workers and produce maximal environmental damage.

<comment><USER6> I think that the idea is that developed countries have no "need" for it, while developing countries could and will benefit from maximally exploiting their natural resources to develop as quickly as possible. There's a good point in your comment (that the process exploiting natural resources is more harmful in developing countries, and so might not be worth the tradeoff for faster development), but it's buried under sarcasm and lack of charity. We could have a more productive discussion without it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Baia_Mare_cyanide_spill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Baia_Mare_cyanide_spill)

</comment><comment><USER8> Two words: arsenic, and tailings.

</comment><comment><USER9> This ignores the useful industrial applications of gold and understates the probable black market that would develop.

<comment><USER10> There is a World Gold Council that puts out stats on use of gold each year and by far the biggest use is for investment. Jewelry and industrial uses have been on the decline for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Parallels to cybercurrency?</comment>