Negative Gross Margins - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2015/10/negative-gross-margins/ <comment><USER2> Reading this, an old joke and something Hemingway wrote come to mind.

The old joke is about a retailer whose margins were very thin but wanted to attract more customers, so the retailer decided to have a big sale. After looking at the proposed discounts, an assistant questioned the strategy, noting that they would lose money on each transaction. The retailer said, "That's okay -- we'll make it up on volume!"

The Hemingway bit is this gem from The Sun Also Rises: "'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked. 'Two ways, Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"

It's understandable for startups who don't yet have a business model not to make any money. In fact, that's what one expects of them. But unicorns are NOT startups; they're fairly sizable businesses that already have a business model, with large organizations, lots of overhead, repeatable processes, etc. It is _very_ risky for companies at such a late stage in their life cycle to still be losing money on every incremental dollar of revenue!

Someone should start a Unicorn Death Watch ;-)

<comment><USER3> > It's understandable for startups who don't yet have a business model not to > make any money.

I don't understand how anybody can value a company without a business plan and some idea of how to make money at anything higher than zero dollars. Do they even meet the qualifications for the traditional definition of "company" if they have no plans to make money?

It seems to me as long as venture capitalists are okay investing shit tons of money into silly "startups" that don't know how to make money we're just going to see bubble after bubble after bubble.

It's tempting to speculate that the people inflating this bubble are the ones who managed to cash out of the first dot com bubble before the crash came. Most "real" investors learned their lessons the first time around, and want nothing to do with it. It would explain why so many "unicorns" get such a tepid response when they finally IPO.

<comment><USER4> I like Steve Blank's definition of startup:

"A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."

So, by definition, you don't know how much it's worth using traditional valuation methods you'd use for "normal" companies, so investors use other indicators like growth, number of users, etc. (which can be gamed).

As the grandparent post states, "unicorns" are companies that already have a repeatable business model, so they should start to be looked at differently.

It's in the "unicorn's" best interests to be valued as a startup for as long as possible, that's one reason they cling to the title far after it's not applicable. It's also a status symbol :) , but it sounds silly when people talk about their "10 year old startup".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It'll be a sad (and pricey) day in San Francisco when everything starts costing the right price. (I'm looking at you, Lyft Line and Caviar and Square.)

<comment><USER6> If we could just get a VC-backend housing startup, SF would be utopia, until the music stops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It (sincerely) baffles me that Fred has to make this point, and that it's not treated as obvious.

People who are deeper into startup world than me, what is the thought process that makes you think you can scale up a money-losing venture and have the math work out? Is it based on the hope of raising prices, or being acquired before funding runs out, or pivoting?

There are a lot of smart people in this game, so there has to be some intermediate mental leap that I'm not understanding.

<comment><USER8> A guess: take Instacart.

Plan A: They know that people spend $x billion on groceries per annum in sf. They also know that a big chunk of that has to be very expensive real estate and relatively expensive employees who have to be able to afford to live relatively close to sf.

If you can build a warehouse an hour out of sf on dirt cheap land and recover the cost of grocery stores in sf, plus shave some off employee wages, maybe you can make a profitable business out of grocery delivery. This business will need a lot of volume to cover fixed costs. Why will they succeed when Webvan failed? More comfort with online shopping and delivery, cheap labor via exploiting underemployed people, including dumping infrastructure costs off onto employees by making them use their own cars.

Plan B: Google is in a death match with amazon. To first approximation, G's business is taxing ecommerce by owning discovery. If people start on amazon not google, google loses. So google is building out google express because if they don't, amazon ends their business. Therefore maybe instacart is strategic to google.

I don't think I believe A or B, really, but VC is a gamble. If someone can make it work, it's a $1.4T/year market [1]

Oh, and people don't earn billions by taking safe bets.

[1] [http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food- statistics...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics- charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending.aspx)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for writing this out. It's food for thought.

I will say that every bet is a safe bet when it's not your money.

<comment><USER8> Gambling with OPM is the best. Heads I get rich as fuck, tails you lose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf We're losing money, but we're doing it at scale.

</comment><comment><USER9> This reads like another iteration of a bubble alarm, which has been going off since 2007 at least ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9860603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9860603)). I like the sound of what Fred's saying, it gives my sensibilities about business a soothing caress, but the reality is that people have been expecting these businesses to start failing en masse for almost 10 years now and so far most of them are still around.

As long as there's no better vehicles for investment, these companies will probably be able to keep doing what they're doing.

<comment><USER10> Most of the businesses with negative gross margins from 2007 _aren 't_ around, a few managed to become profitable, some failed, and many were acqui-hired.

I think we are just starting to hit the point in the last year or so in which you can really say "bubble" but it could pop tomorrow or in 5 years... there's a famous quote about trying to invest by betting against a bubble that is roughly "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if companies like door dash/ instacart are operating at negative margins?

Uber tinkering with price too much has not gone down well with uber drivers in bay area either.

<comment><USER12> Uber is [edit: almost] certainly not operating at negative gross margin.

<comment><USER13> Uber makes a nice profit in mature markets, but that does not mean their current margins are sustainable. Its hard to imagine a future where they don't pay drivers more.

<comment><USER14> It's actually hard to imagine a future where they pay drivers at all. Uber is tailor made for autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER15> Then they will pay vehicle owners to lease their cars short term instead.

<comment><USER16> Evil... And I'm almost certain it's what they'll do. Owner pays for purchase, upkeep, parking, and insurance, covering all the capital outlay, depreciation, and risk, while Uber skims off the profit. It's sort of "insurance in reverse."

<comment><USER17> What is "evil" about instigating a more efficient use of capital?

<comment><USER16> Where do you get efficiency out of their plan? People tend to underestimate the true ownership cost of their cars, and Uber uses that to make them believe they're making a lot more per hour than they actually are.

<comment><USER17> Capital sitting idly in driveways is inherently inefficient. How is that hard to understand?

> People tend to underestimate the true ownership cost of their cars, and Uber > uses that to make them believe they're making a lot more per hour than they > actually are.

That isn't an argument about its efficiency though.

Maybe the marginal value of a car self-driving itself somewhere is $1 and the marginal cost of that driving is $0.99—it's still more efficient for that car to drive than not. Whether the owner thinks their profit is $1 or 1 cent doesn't really matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, yeah. That's what the current bubble is based upon, private equity speculation.

It should be pointed out, though, that you can't really analyse many of these startups by looking at their income statements in this fashion, because even their future monetisation strategies are being speculated about. That is, they aren't expected to have healthy bottom lines yet. They're doing this on purpose.

Ultimately, private and public investors _will_ analyse the bottom lines of these companies, but when that happens, there'll be bigger problems to face than a few orgs with unhealthy gross profits struggling, i.e. the bubble will burst.

Incidentally, I'm not sure why the article is specifically talking about gross margin. Especially since most of these company's costs relate to human resources and servicing debt and so on, and not inventory and production. It seems like operating profit or net profit would be a better single figure to focus on.

</comment><comment><USER19> The bigger problem I see is that all the service oriented startups are getting into a market that can't work. Yes, there obviously is demand for cheap services. But there is no way to provide cheap services at scale and turn a profit. The costs of providing a service don't go down as you get bigger. At some point you just can't drop wages anymore. At the same time, you can't just increase prices, since that would immediately kill demand. There is demand for cheap services. There is no demand for reasonably priced services. The problem is not that raising prices would allow the competition to undercut them. If they raise prices, people would just clean their homes themselves etc.

<comment><USER20> > But there is no way to provide cheap services at scale and turn a profit. > The costs of providing a service don't go down as you get bigger.

Unless you automate it.

Maybe Uber's plan at scale is to replace all humans with self-driving cars ([http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/28/5758734/uber-will- eventual...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/28/5758734/uber-will-eventually- replace-all-its-drivers-with-self-driving-cars)).

Maybe SpoonRocket's plan at scale is to effectively be mobile vending machines for hot food.

Obviously I'm speculating, but the general principle applies to a lot of what startups do already as they grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The example of this I've been benefiting from lately, is Jet.com. They keep handing out $x or 20% type discounts, to go with free shipping on items already priced for low margins.

I can't imagine how much money they must be burning right now. With Jet recently abandoning their business model, they're either somehow making enough on what they're selling as is, or they're in bad shape and desperate to bring in customers.

</comment><comment><USER22> It took Facebook quite a while before they became profitable. The issue is with the lack of lock in. The "on demand" and service type startups are easier to substitute. It's just another challenge though. I could see Uber reach a point where they raise prices by 25% and I'd still pick them over another service with fewer drivers available.

<comment><USER23> Comparing to Facebook seems like comparing apples to oranges. The article is about selling physical goods and services for less than it costs to produce them, which is different than allowing people to access a service that you don't yet know how you're going to pay for.

A better analogy might be companies that manufacture video game consoles, where they almost always sell at a loss when a new console is first released, with the hope to make profit in the long term - but there you're locked in to some extent, as you pointed out.</comment></comment>


Prototyping 50 Games in One Semester - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml <comment><USER2> Some of these games (gravity head with friend's heads) could be adapted into social network widgets and may stand out because throwing sheep at the end of the day can get trite

</comment><comment><USER3> This was from 2005. Great article, regardless.</comment>


Create custom RSS feeds for iTunes Store content - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/rss <comment><USER2> Interesting. Anyone have an idea why I see the "genre" label in what looks like Korean? <https://skitch.com/buley/rtr3j/apple-itunes-rss-generator></comment>


Which CRM is better for business? - <AUTHOR> I run a small business and I would love some advice about the best CRM or other customer tracker type apps that work for you. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Spreadsheet is always a good start. Simple , free and works on a small scale. As you overgrow it, you will know why it is not working anymore and that will help you to find a tool that does what your spreadsheet stopped being able to do.

<comment><USER3> seconded....spreadsheets are almost everywhere. Even small tweaks can be scripted.

<comment><USER4> I agree. We've recently migrated to sales force. We like it. But we started with a mishmash of bugzilla, Trello, and google sheets for managing sales leads, production planning and service issues. As our needs grew it made sense to move to something like SF. But we totally did not need that on day 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HubSpot is actually pretty good. For starters, it's free. They have most of the tools you'd want to run an efficient sales process available as add-ons too. It's also gaining steam and likely to end up with the most third party integrations behind Salesforce. They also have a HubSpot for Startups program which can get you 90% off your first year.

Full disclosure: I used to work at HubSpot on the product team, but I didn't work on the CRM. In fact, I kind of built a competitive product to the HubSpot CRM internally for awhile, so wouldn't say it was good unless it really was.

<comment><USER6> +1 on hubspot. They also have nice APIs and their freemium package is very nice. API usage is part of the freemium package. We use it to send leads from our backend system.

I think their premise is that CRMs are a commodity and all the value is in upselling the type of features that they charge for. So making sure the baseline CRM is very good drives sales for that. Either way, it's a decent product.

<comment><USER7> I have to disagree on Hubspot CRM. We moved to it on the startup plan you mention about 7-8 months ago, and have found it very difficult to use in a fast, intuitive and streamlined fashion.

There are key areas that are missing basic functionality (EG: being able to see a list of deals that haven't been contacted recently) and if I could turn back time, I would not have made the decision to move to Hubspot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd suggest you to start with Google Sheets. Most of the needs would get fulfilled there. By the time it becomes a hassle you'll know exactly what extra benefits/features you need and which app solves them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Big fan of Pipedrive myself. Fairly lightweight, but with good features. Visual pipeline structure is nice. Easy to use interface (though text formatting is a weak spot).

</comment><comment><USER10> Shameful self promotion, but I am currently working on a user feedback collection crm at www.testimonly.com check it out to see if you might be interested.

</comment><comment><USER11> Intercom is quite good and also works as a customer support platform.</comment>


Ask HN: Who IS in the software industry or a hacker? - <AUTHOR>

I found the earlier post for non-devs and non-hackers fascinating: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154625
I thought it would interesting to have another thread which is the opposite.
So what type of software developer / hacker are you? What kind of company do you work for? How did you start off in the industry? What new technologies do you want to learn next? <comment><USER2> _So what type of software developer / hacker are you? What kind of company do you work for? How did you start off in the industry? What new technologies do you want to learn next?_

I've been developing software for a living since 2000, and before that I was working in IT since about 1995. I started out doing a lot of network admin (Netware 3.1 anybody?) and AS/400 operations stuff while I was still in school. I dabbled in programming when I was a kid (8-9-10'ish or so) but we never had a PC in my home, so I never got deep into programming until college. I took a programming class in college about 1992 and was immediately hooked. I bought a copy of Herbert Schildt's _Teach Yourself C_ , downloaded a shareware C compiler from somewhere, acquired a cheap PC and have basically never looked back.

Over my career I've mainly worked in Java, with some C/C++ before that, and now do a lot of Java and Groovy stuff. I've also worked with Visual Basic a bit a long time ago, and with Python a bit circa 2008-2009 or so. More recently I have some ambition to learn R, Prolog, Go, Clojure, Scala, Julia and a handful of other stuff that's on my "learn one day" list.

What kind of company do I work for? By day I work for Open Software Integrators[1], a boutique professional services firm in Durham NC, where we focus on helping companies apply "Big Data" technologies. One of my most recent projects was building a Hadoop data warehouse for a big pharma company that was doing some _really_ cool stuff that I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to talk about (non-disclosure agreements and what-not).

By night and weekend I work on a startup called Fogbeam Labs[2]. We are focused on applying Semantic Web tech, social networking, machine learning and related tech to create a kick-ass Open Source organizational knowledge management / collaboration system.

And like (many|most|some|???) hackers, I am also generally interested in tech beyond programming. I am a member of the local hackerspace in Durham[3], and I dabble in various things there. I've been learning to do some embedded / microcontroller stuff with Arduino, rPi, Beaglebones, etc., building electronic circuits from discrete components, started on building a coil-gun (but have kinda let that go dormant lately), and I have a goal to build a Mantis PCB mill at some point. I'd also like to build a 3D printer (maybe a rep-rap) someday.

I did dabble in the "black hat" hacking scene a bit back in the mid 90's, but was really more into phone phreaking stuff. My claim to fame from that phase of my life is that me and a couple of friends had admin level access to a phone switch owned by the local telco (I think it was a DMS-100) for a while. But by the late 90's I was getting into my professional career and it was becoming obvious that playing in that world was a fast path to either jail or at least a big hit to my career so I dropped out of that scene pretty much completely. I mean, yeah, I still read 2600 and Phrack every now and again, but that's about it.

[1]: [http://www.osintegrators.com](http://www.osintegrators.com)

[2]: [http://www.fogbeam.com](http://www.fogbeam.com)

[3]: [http://www.splatspace.org](http://www.splatspace.org)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a .NET developer working on contract, predominantly in the insurance industry. I do some client support and business analysis as well.

If I had more free time I'd learn node.is and properly get to grips with JS client side frameworks like Angular and Ember.

Computer Science BSc is my academic background.

</comment><comment><USER3> .net developer by day. Don't have the time to hack after work. Girlfriend and family time.

When I'm able I tinker with emacs, js2-mode, and skewer. It's fun to hack JavaScript in emacs.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The earlier I conversation for non-devs for reference: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8154625)</comment>


Teenage tech prodigy wants to fix Bitcoin's energy consumption problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/teenage-tech-prodigy-wants-to-fix-bitcoins-growing-energy-problem-2018-5?IR=T <comment><USER2> So fixing bitcoins energy consumption problem by shifting it to solar?? Hmm.. I mean probably 80% of people on HN were programming at age 10.. so "tech prodigy" sounds like a rather strong description?

<comment><USER3> 90% of articles talking about a "tech prodigy kid/teen" in the headline just aren't worth reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A zillion fake accounts upvoted this post. That will get your account(s) banned here, so please don't do that!

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

</comment><comment><USER5> I haven't been following crypto currencies for a while, but isn't most produced with renewable energy already?

</comment><comment><USER6> If I tell you that your distributed network is consuming as much electricity as Austria, probably your best answer shouldn't be to get that energy from renewables...

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice

</comment><comment><USER8> great we support</comment>


Apple Developer - a new community for developers and designers - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apple-developer/id640199958 <comment><USER2> No Android version, what a pity.</comment>


Top of Chinese wealthy's wish list? To leave China - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/top-chinese-wealthys-wish-list-leave-china-065826880.html

<comment><USER2> so true, so sad. besides emigrants, it was popular that rich people in the mainland went to Hongkong to labor their child. Hence the new born could become a citizen of Hongkong.

People in China are lacking in sense of secure. Our apartments and houses only last 70 years, government will take these back once the deed expire. The food is made of lots of weird stuff, only the imagination is the limit.

<comment><USER3> Some buildings are even literally made out of garbage - a wire frame encasing garbage covered in a thin layer of plaster.</comment></comment>


A detailed look at Ubuntu's new experimental ZFS installer - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/a-detailed-look-at-ubuntus-new-experimental-zfs-installer/ <comment><USER2> This is going to be available in linux mint, right? Using ubuntu was a horrible experience even with 4GB of RAM. Mint was nice though.</comment>


Ask HN : How to turn quote requests into paying clients? - <AUTHOR>

It's been a while since I am getting unexpected quote requests. The subject line states "quote". While most of them are with little info about actual work to be done. I have been quick replying those emails asking few questions about the work to be done, but couldn't get response. How do you handle such requests? How could we turn an unexpected quote request into a paying client?
Here is a recent one:
Hey there, We are looking for dev team that could provide programming and updates for some web apps we are planing to launch. If you are interested in long term business relationship let us know. <comment><USER2> I think the first step is to create a process or set of guidelines for which of these "requests" are worth pursuing. If you can quickly decide if a projects are worth pursuing you will cut down on a lot of wasted emails and only be left with projects that would be a win for your team. After deciding a project is worthwhile I have found that the best way to actually go from a RFP to a client is to develop a relationship with them. Ask for a in person meeting if they are local and if they aren't request a Skype call. Many people respond to you attempting to create that personal relationship and showing that you care about your clients and work. Many people just don't do this anymore and rely too heavily on email, building the offline relationship is still the key to creating new sales opportunities IMO.</comment>


High definition vinyl - <AUTHOR> https://hdvinyl.org <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the video disc: basically a record with analog video on it. It had a much higher data density than ordinary records. Couldn't be played on an ordinary turntable though.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting but such a blaring spelling mistake in the tag line is pretty poor

</comment><comment><USER4> No thanks. I'll take my digital audio, free of pops, hisses, and crackles.

> HD Vinyl can reproduce frequencies up to 100kHz

Pointless

</comment><comment><USER5> Anything released?</comment>


JavaScript parseInt() with leading zeros - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8763396/javascript-parseint-with-leading-zeros

<comment><AUTHOR> Node.js (v8) it seems automatically sets parseInt() base to 10 whereas spidermonkey doesn't. I got bitten when testing code in node.js before exporting it to Couchdb's map function.</comment>


Ask HN: What newsletter are you running? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for newsletter operators who want to get in front of a few thousand potential sponsors over at http://upstart.me<p>What newsletter are you operating? <comment><USER2> I run the Enlight ([https://enlight.ml](https://enlight.ml)) newsletter. Right now, it just delivers new project tutorials to 1k+ subscribers, but I plan on expanding that to other articles and interesting thoughts related to development.</comment>


Ask HN: How can i be the best frontend developer? - <AUTHOR>

I am working in a startup from past 2 years. I have done various types of work here that includes both frontend and backend development. But over the period of time , i realized i have interest in doing frontend and i am quite good at it .  Help me to be a good frontend developer by giving some tips, blogs to be followed, practices to be followed.<p>I love writing javascript but i mostly write with the help of jquery framework. Is it a bad thing in a longer run? <comment><USER2> Its not a bad thing to use jQuery. Basic understanding of the DOM should be sufficient, writing your own DOM wrappers gets old fast. Learn how to write good, idiomatic javascript. Read Crockfords "The Good Parts" and Steve Souders Blog. Learn about namespaces, closures, scope, hoisting. Understand how prototypes work. Try some script injection / module loaders like requirejs. Look at the source of some of the great front end frameworks out there, I always recommend backbone's annotated source [0]. Learn how to use build tools like grunt for minifying, testing and linting. Learn how to use chromes developer tools for debugging and performance, there is a great course on codeschool [1]. Maybe have a look at coffeescript. Javascript is a great language that is easy to begin with but hard to master.

[0][http://documentcloud.github.io/backbone/docs/backbone.html](http://documentcloud.github.io/backbone/docs/backbone.html) [1] [http://discover-devtools.codeschool.com/](http://discover- devtools.codeschool.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Angularjs rocks. Video tutorials: [http://egghead.io](http://egghead.io). I also recommend integrating Firebasejs: [http://firebase.com](http://firebase.com).

<comment><USER4> Also, check out Thinkster: [http://thinkster.io](http://thinkster.io). It's a good next step after the free Egghead tutorials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Learn core javascript without framework. Follow trends in html5 and css3. Dnt 4get to use other js framework like mootools yui dojo etc. Be creative and look at trending website to get inspiration

</comment><comment><USER6> Study design along with coding. You can be the best coder in the world but if you don't understand the fundamentals of design your work will not have balance.

</comment><comment><USER7> HTML5 and CSS are easy. Learn JS deeply, it will help you to achieve more using any kind of frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER5> Blog to follow eg jqueryrain.com 1stwebdesigner.con hongkiat.com css3.info webdesigndepot.com etc

</comment><comment><USER8> simple - JSIO.</comment>


Golang Echo v2 released - <AUTHOR> https://labstack.com/blog/echo-v2-released <comment><USER2> I've raved about Echo before on HN, but I'll do it again because it's is one of those frameworks that are just lovely to use. Very easy to keep API mapped in your head, code is simple and straight-forward, performance is great, and it plays nicely with standard handlers.

Thank you to all that worked on this release!</comment>


Untangling the RoR Assets Pipeline - <AUTHOR> http://blog.55minutes.com/2012/04/untangling-the-rails-asset-pipeline-part-4-troubleshooting/

<comment><AUTHOR> I had this issue when I copied over a a new application.css.scss - it wasn't being precompiled in development.

I found this an extremely useful troubleshooting guide. Thought those on Hacker News who are just starting out with Ruby on Rails (like myself) would find it useful!</comment>


Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46188/why-multilingual-people-have-healthier-more-engaged-brains <comment><USER2> Later meta analysis that shows this effect is not true and is due to publication bias.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29494195/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29494195/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been learning a second language, one that is very different than English, and it has been a complete mind fuck. I can see why knowing two languages would have a positive effect on your brain: another language is an entire other way of thinking about the world. Language is an artifact of the culture that created it, and it crystallizes the values and beliefs of that culture. By learning the language, you can enter into an entire other world.

<comment><USER4> Having studied a few languages, I don't agree with the idea that "another language is an entire other way of thinking about the world". That's not how it felt to me.

There's a linguistic-philosophical debate over this topic: Linguistic Relativity (or Sapir-Whorf) vs Universal Grammar (generally attributed to Chomsky). Though both theories are plausible, I find the Universal Grammar theory more convincing. There are good arguments on both sides.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps "another language is an entire other way of thinking about the world" is incorrect as long as that another language is another _natural_ language.

You might find [http://www.lojban.org/files/why- lojban/whylojb.txt](http://www.lojban.org/files/why-lojban/whylojb.txt) interesting.

<comment><USER4> Very interesting, thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought we pretty much agreed that's how it works for programming languages, and from my experience it applies to natural language as well.

My native language is Swedish. I've studied English since I was 8 (and I'm 42 now), German for 3 years in school and lived there for 4, two years of Italian and two years of Chinese. It seems the more languages I learn, the more interesting and worthwhile it gets to compare similarities/differences and the easier it is to learn new ones.

Learning a completely different language, such as Chinese coming from English, has similar benefits to learning Lisp coming from Java. It stretches the brain in exotic ways.

</comment><comment><USER7> In my experience, learning a second language has clogged my brain up a bit. Maybe it's healthier and more engaged, but it's sometimes hard to say if it's truly been beneficial from a cognitive perspective.

I've certainly been humbled and become more confident in pushing through mistakes made in public. It's also a really cool skill. But it often feels like my memory for words is like a unordered linked list. Sometimes I get the wrong language and must iterate over the list to find the correct language version.

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, I agree with you. I consider myself multisemilingal- English is my primary language, but I have up-goer 5 levels of proficiency in half a dozen other languages. I enjoy it, but I do not feel like it has been a net improvement in terms of cognitive function. If anything, more mental housekeeping is required when I sit down to write in any language, including English.

I think many people, even multilingual ones, fail to truly consider what they mean by 'multilingual'. Words and grammar are only the bare surface of what you need to learn- what actually happens is that you grow a different model of mindset and culture, one where the words of the new language have meaning. This only happens over a lifetime of immersion and exposure to the prosaic realities of the language in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That seems like a lot of wasted associations. I already have an (english) word for most concepts, and don't really feel like I need a second word for, say, "bread", although words for new concepts or concepts grouped in interesting ways might have some value. I like the Swedish word "lagom", which doesn't seem to have an English analog. It'd interest me to know what aspect(s) of multilingualism promotes a healthier brain so that I can get the benefits from doing something more productive or useful. Can I block out conversation around me and do math problems for the same benefit? Meditate? Stop and consistently reframe situations by some other world-view? My mind just balks at the need to learn a second set of words for concepts I already know, since the first set seemed entirely arbitrary to begin with.

<comment><USER10> There's been some research which has shown the reframing being effective, but they only studied whether considering eg. a trolley problem in any second language produced significantly different results compared to a native language.

Somewhat ironically in the context of _wasted associations_ , the article is in Spanish. But this is one link: [https://www.psicologosonline.cl/articulos/para-decidir- con-f...](https://www.psicologosonline.cl/articulos/para-decidir-con-frialdad- piensa-en-otro-idioma)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not clicking through to TED "everything will be solved with our optimism".

<comment><USER12> > _TED "everything will be solved with our optimism"._

At lot better to have dreams and plans and goals than "We've done nothing and we're out of ideas" which is the mentality in a few countries lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Might as well link directly to the TED-Ed talk instead of this two-paragraph article that introduces it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I foresee a lot of comments from monolingual americans and brits trying to dispute this.

<comment><USER15> Am I really monolingual when I'm fluent in multiple programming languages and endless niche industry jargon?

Jokes aside, I'd assume the context switching would be psychologically rather similar.

<comment><USER16> The context switching between programming languages bears no subjective similarity to human language.

As someone who knows 2 human languages and 6-8 computer languages, it's just not at all similar. They don't use the same parts of your brain, for starters. You can't describe a dream in Java.

<comment><USER15> I know French and English and several programming languages, and they do seem very similar to me.

>You can't describe a dream in Java.

Before you write any code, you first imagine how the application should work. So yes, a person can codify something from their imagination into Java.

<comment><USER17> > I know French and English and several programming languages, and they do > seem very similar to me.

I don't know, there are lots of obvious differences. I mean, just the fact that human languages have much larger vocabularies makes it so that learning a human language exercises the memory part of your brain _way_ more than learning a programming language.

(And yes, I'm pretty sure human languages have vastly larger vocabularies, even if you include things like standard libraries, etc. Especially since most programmers don't know most standard libraries by heart, as opposed to vocabulary.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the kind of news story that can be so incredibly misused once it gets into public discourse.

I would expect that while the study comments on an interesting data point for academics in the field, in reality the variance that you'll experience interacting with any one multi-lingual person or any one mono-lingual person will simply mean that it's trivia in day-to-day life.

Even in designing curricula for a large group where anything of significance in this study would be worthwhile considering, you'd still want to know how this compares to other fields of pursuit on some sort of outcome basis before yelling, "language programs for the win!" The thesis of the title and the short article (no I didn't watch/listen to the media) doesn't answer the relative merit question.

So maybe this research points to further study or is nice knowledge for knowledge's sake... but unless there's something more revealing in the linked YouTube video... I wouldn't read into it any more than that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting point about adults acquiring language through the left side of the brain vs. children acquiring through both hemispheres. I wonder whether that is nature or nurture -- does it reflect changes in brain structure in adulthood, or does it reflect the ways in which each respective group tends to learn languages?

<comment><USER20> That point is actually about emotions. I think what it means is that children are only developing brain circuity related to emotions and so develop emotional associations with the words in a second language, while adults already did and can understand, control and ignore emotions better and do not develop emotional associations with the words in a second language, or at least not as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot depends if it's the same culture ( eg. Roman)

I speak French, Dutch and English.

I understand German and can do simple things with it.

I can understand Spanish a little bit.

But I don't think my brain is different. The mapping is very similar between those languages.

An Asian/Russian language would be very hard for me to.

</comment><comment><USER22> As a data point, I'm bilingual, and have been for about 30 years (my first language isn't English), and I'm kind of an idiot. So there's that.

In all seriousness though, this is something that's only debated in very large countries with a dominant culture and common language (US, Russia, UK, France, etc). Growing up in a smaller country that has its own language, pretty much everyone has to read/write and speak English at some level.

</comment><comment><USER23> I often wonder if learning a dialect of a certain field has a similar effect. For example math terms or a complex programming language with things like monads

<comment><USER24> I would think so. I often find myself cross-germinating the concepts I've learned from new programming languages, paradigms, and mathematics to other problems and discussions. Most recently I learned TLA+ which plays heavily with set theory; in particular the construction of logical "filters" on infinite sets. Ever since, those ways of thinking have become part of my mental toolbox that I interject into other areas.

<comment><USER25> I think in mathematics and programming, you often are working with an abstract idea or algorithm, projected onto the tools you are using. Be that the syntax/style/limitations of a specific language, or a branch of mathematics.

In that way, it is the same phenomenon of trying to express an abstract idea, projected onto the language in which you are speaking, with similar issues of syntax/style/limitations inherent to that language.

However, a human language opens a whole dimension of culture and history that is somewhat truly inaccessible from the outside. In this way, math and programming don't appear to me to have an obvious analog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Although I'm bilingual, in practice I've become mostly monolingual in that I only ever speak English. I feel like this has resulted in my thinking becoming less abstract / conceptual and more verbal.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if this is actually language, or just that language requires so much of your brain that anything that requires the same amount would have the same benefits.

</comment><comment><USER28> What's the best way to learn a new language?

<comment><USER29> Immersion. Learn as many random words as you can, by pure memorisation, and then sit around people who speak the language so you can force yourself to learn the language.

I 'learned' 2 languages in school and by far the most important part is knowing as many words as possible, and actually speaking it with natives. Other than that, you wont get too much out of written exercises or duolingo or even books. Just stick to those two things.

However, the best way to learn random words is to play a game or read a book, and then google / dictionary search any word you don't know.

It should be easy to find people who can speak the language with you, but if you can't find anyone, well... why learn it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can speak 3 languages and can understand close to 3 more.

And I think I am the dumbest person at work, damn why is my Brain so slow? :(

<comment><USER31> Because ignorance is bliss. The more you know the more you know you don't know.

Which 3?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What is a language, anyway? Is that where you use symbols to represent grunts?

</comment><comment><USER33> Alternatively, people who know programming languages are on average smarter.

However, that would be confusing cause and effect

</comment><comment><USER34> survivorship bias I guess.

</comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow Tastier as well

</comment><comment><USER31> —. —

</comment><comment><USER35> yeah no shit. multilingual people usually have more money.

<comment><USER36> source? rationale?</comment></comment>


U.S. Senate Hearing – Data Security and Bug Bounty Programs: Lessons Learned - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerone.com/blog/US-Senate-Hearing-Bug-Bounty-Lessons-Learned <comment><USER2> > We __need __hackers. They are the immune system.

Powerful metaphor for the unenlightened.</comment>


Claypoole: Threadpool Tools for Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://eng.climate.com/2014/02/25/claypoole-threadpool-tools-for-clojure/ <comment><USER2> Up until now, managing a thread pool in Clojure still meant dropping back to Java and doing something like this:

[http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/01/java-thread-pool- exampl...](http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/01/java-thread-pool-example- using-executors-and-threadpoolexecutor.html)

Clojure makes Java interop easy, but I hate every moment that I have to use Java, rather than a library that offers me idiomatic Clojure.

If I understand Claypoole correctly, it removes the need to drop down to Java. No more ExecutorService.

To my mind, this is awesome.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author, and I'd be happy to answer your questions!

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a cool library but I'd be embarrassed to say I use something named after the dude from Primus

<comment><AUTHOR> Les actually spells it "Claypool", without the e. It's not named after him, I assure you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While this looks useful, the example is precisely the sort of problem for which threads aren't useful.

Parallel IO doesn't (necessarily) need to use threads and an explicitly async API is more flexible and usually easier to understand, especially with CSP like core.async.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true that parallel IO has less overhead with an asynchronous API, but I disagree about it being easier to understand. You have to set up callbacks or start your processes and then wait, and you have to work harder to manage the degree of parallelism.

If parallel IO was all we needed to do, asynchronous APIs would be the sensible choice, but for managing parallelism while chaining IO & CPU work, sharing pools across multiple simultaneous requests, Claypoole's a pretty nice tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I asked for something like this a few weeks ago in #clojure, nobody had a solution. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm really excited about this library -- thanks Leon and Climate for releasing it!</comment>


Why Financial Literacy Fails - <AUTHOR> http://business.time.com/2013/03/11/why-financial-literacy-fails/

<comment><USER2> I agree with the author when he says, "Fundamentally, you only need to know one thing: To build wealth, you must spend less than you earn." But there remains one other thing. To build wealth, you'll have to keep your money somewhere. That somewhere is going to be some form of investment. Hence, to build wealth, you must make more on your investments than you lose. Now ask yourself: had I kept my money under the mattress instead of investing it, would I have more now, or would I have less? How much more or less? Funny thing is, most people don't know. This tool can tell you: greaterthanzero.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone have any good book recommendations on the intersection of personal finance/behavioral economics that's not a self-help/manage-your-money-type- book?

<comment><USER4> <http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/>

Try the books at the end - Personal Finance (or Finance and Accounting too).</comment></comment>


"The Program" first results – how I used HN to launch a fiction podcast - I-M-S https://programaudioseries.com/the-program-results/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've not heard of this before. The premise sounds incredibly appealing to me, and I am going to try listening:

> For those who haven't heard (of) The Program audio series before, imagine > Black Mirror as a podcast. Every episode is a standalone story set in a > future in which Money, State, and God have been fused into a single entity > called the Program. The world of the Program is neither a utopia nor a > dystopia, as the new system produced both winners and losers - ordinary men > and women who are sometimes heroes and sometimes the villains of their own > lives. And to them, it is not this future they find terrifying - but our > present.

For what it's worth, describing it as a "fictional podcast" is quite confusing. I think it would be better described as a _fiction_ podcast. A "fictional podcast" makes it sound like you were promoting it as if it existed, without actually having made any episodes, i.e. the podcast is fictional rather than being a podcast of fiction.

<comment><USER2> I too was confused when I read the title. "Fictional podcast" meant that there wasnt actually a podcast - which piqued my interest. I am still glad that I clicked the link to find out more about this podcast!

</comment></comment><comment> I-M-S Hello HN! After unveiling The Program audio series on HN in June 2018 [1], and officially launching in November 2019 [2], I wanted to give the community a quick update how this unusual fictional podcast was doing. So I wrote a blog post containing the numbers and the story of the show's reception so far. Hopefully it helps someone (thinking of) undertaking a similar endeavour.

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback, either regarding the blog or the show itself. The discussions on this site are a constant source of inspiration for my writing, and I would be especially curious to hear of any submissions you think would make fertile fodder for future episodes (fun fact: episodes 8 and 10 contain comments that have been incorporated into the show almost verbatim!)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17425278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17425278)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704417)

<comment><USER3> The first batch is really great, sound quality, narrative and voices are top notch! The characters and the stories moved me a lot, I'm going to listen to the others for sure. Many thanks!

Regarding ideas: \- I was wondering what HN would be like under the Program, what transformations would occur? (related to the threads about moderation, or the ones thanking the community) \- would the Program have "cognitive" biases like the current machine learning models? \- would Apple still create iPhone SE ? How would the company react to a Steve Jobs bot created from all the digital content we has from him? (related to a thread about bots speaking like dead people made from analyzing all digital content)

Thanks again!

<comment> I-M-S > related to a thread about bots speaking like dead people made from analyzing > all digital content

Could you please send me the link to this? It sounds like that Black Mirror episode ("Be right back"), but I never liked how they treated the subject and was thinking of giving it a go myself

<comment><USER3> I cannot find the HN thread, but here is an article on the topic: [https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence- memo...](https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial- roman-mazurenko-bot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for the detailed account of what you did and what worked. I had to skim through some parts of the post, but I came off more informed than before about podcast promotions. I will be checking out your podcast even though I'm not a regular podcast listener.

</comment><comment><USER5> I really loved this podcast, but I had listened to it on your website and thought it had concluded. Had I not read this post, I would not have known there were 4 more episodes out, and 2 more on the way. Definitely subscribing in a podcast app now.

<comment> I-M-S Curious, why had you thought it concluded? I'm getting similar reactions from some people now that I got to episode 10. I'm confused because the story was never supposed to wrap up or anything

<comment><USER6> Not the OP, but I mentioned this after your last relaunch post - IIRC your initial post had one podcast feed and your relaunch had a new feed. I think ideally you should have kept the same feed, or published a short clip episode telling people to resubscribe. I came very close to missing the new eps myself if your relaunch post missed me. Hindsight is 20/20 :)

Thanks for all the work you and your performers have put in. Can't wait to listen to the new eps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want to give this a shot but my podcast app on the iPhone has a bug: it tells me I need to enable explicit content to subscribe. And whatever I do (enable it or disable it, allow explicit content in iOS restrictions etc) it will always tell me I have blocked explicit content.

Has anyone had this issue?? How to fix it?

</comment><comment><USER8> fictional -> fiction

<comment><USER9> indeed. my parsing of the title (and description on the site) was "a podcast that does not actually exist"

which is a pretty cool concept all by itself.</comment></comment>


The Apple App Store Graveyard - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/the-apple-app-store-graveyard/ <comment><USER2> My first attempt at publishing an app with Apple for (at that point) the iPhone 5 was met with extremely limited exposure in the app store itself. Based on our web referral metrics from the main website and client usage our downloads were driven (in over 90% of cases) by web referral to the app store, and not by app store searches natively. The app itself was quite successful and served its purpose, but the app store alone is not the best way to gain exposure for a new app, it really needs a combination of web advertising and active endorsements elsewhere.</comment>


Why Linux Is Spelled Incorrectly - <AUTHOR> https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/why-linux-spelled-incorrectly <comment><USER2> The whole article is based on the x in Linux being wrong because Unix should have been called Unics seems thin. The 2017 interview with Kernighan makes it sound like it was Unix from very early on.

[https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7035](https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7035)

</comment><comment><USER3> Who else thinks Lunduke should double down and change his by-line from former Linux Marketing Guy (tm) to former Linucs Marketing Guy (tm)?</comment>


Flattr does not work on smallish blogs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dispatched.ch/2010/10/31/flattr-does-not-work-on-smallish-blogs/

<comment><USER2> Why doesn't flattr just give people a javascript bookmark? Just click on the bookmark and it will register that site as being flattred, once a site has 10 (or a hundred) flattr hits flattr the company can attempt to contact the site owner. The problem with all these micropayment sites is that only 0.01% of site visitors use them and only 0.01% of websites use them, so the odds of actually coming across a micropayments site, even if you have a flatter account, is so low that it is silly.

Also, there should be a public aspect when I flattr someone, I should be able to do it privately if I want to, but if my friends are following my flattr. That does two things, it makes it transparent that flattr is not just a scam, because if there are 1000 people that flattr a xkcd comic and xkcd comes out and says that he never got a dime then criminal charges can be pressed. The second thing it does is it shows which sites are actually worth checking out.

I assume that there is going to be a long tail of flattrs, to handle that flattr should keep a pool of money set aside that earns interest, that way they can give someone the net present value of their flattrs when they finally get their cheque 3 years later.

<comment><USER3> Great suggestion/comment (and example with xkcd). Have a look at the public Flattr wishlist which includes a bookmarklet to drag-n-drop for people to use -- <https://flattr.com/wishlist>

We'll try to contact as many people as possible (more straightforward with specific websites/pages, harder to achieve for say comments on a blog post, etc). Please keep the feedback and suggestions coming!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, it's kind of obvious why it doesn't work. I visit a lot of blogs and can't remember that I ever stumbled across a flatter gadget. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have noticed anyway. Still, I believe the idea behind flattr is valuable. It will probably be a long time until it gains any traction, let's hope they hold out that long. Because chances are Facebook WILL copy this and it will be an instant success then.

<comment><USER5> Paying to hit "Like"? That is a really good idea actually. Wouldn't it also make sense if Flattr-ing something also "liked" it on Facebook? Something like posting "XYZ Flattrd foo.com" on XYZ's wall. That would also bring marketing to the Flattr concept.

<comment><USER6> They already do that on both Facebook and Twitter. Connecting your account is optional though.

<http://twitter.com/#search?q=flattred>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Flattr fascinates me, but it has this big problem. A site like the one I work for isn't going to use it because the Flattr user base isn't big enough to make it worthwhile. They need big sites onboard, though, or they'll never get the coverage necessary to make it worthwhile.

I think the title for this could be "Flattr doesn't work because there aren't enough Flattr users".

<comment><USER8> Sounds like a very difficult wall to get over. I imagine most people will hear about Flattr through a blog or some service accepting payments with it. Only if they're curious enough about it will they go find out what it is, and then once they understand that they work of registering is so that other people can have their money, they have to still be compelled to signup and use it.

Unless each blog/service using it makes it explicit that they're accepting flattr donations, but nobody wants to be that site sounding like they're begging for handouts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that this blog hasn't received any Flattrs in 10000 pageviews doesn't mean that Flattr does not work for other types of content.

I have used Flattr for a while on <http://freeciv.net> and have received over 200 flattrs recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you made some revenue and/or publicity via flattr. But may I say that I pointed to that in my article:

"By no means does my experiment imply any significant validity for the general public, but I see no reason to keep the advertising buttons on my blog, either."

BTW: Thanks for that link. It has been quite some time that I played FreeCIV. To make it playable online is a nice feat. Thanks for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to work reasonably well* on my small blog :) anecdote, data etc.

*With reasonably well I mean I make about break even, which is good enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish I could show Flattr button only to Flattr users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! If that were possible, I'd put them back online.

It wouldn't "spread the word", but hey - right now I'd be doing advertisement without benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I had to redirect traffic from my WP installation to posterous. My server was not able to take the load. Thanks HN for the interest in my humble thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER12> I really think Flattr is misapplied to blogs, to be honest.

I don't want to go around giving micro payments to bloggers to be honest. The things that make me want to Flattr are, well, THINGS.

Applications, tech demos, pieces of art. Things that make me have fun and feel appreciative, rather than things that make me go "Oh, that is useful information" or "Oh, that is an insightful comment".

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think flattr will work just because this type of service needs a huge user base and a huge customer base to work. IMO the best thing that could happen to flattr, is being bought by Facebook. Facebook has the users and the range to actually make this work, though I doubt the overhead is worth it for them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Extrapolation does not work on smallish sample sizes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know about that and pointed that out. Anyway, do you mathematically see a good reason to keep advertising a service from the sample it does not work in?

<comment><USER14> I'm afraid I don't understand the question :/ My issue was with the submission title, mostly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As I don't see any flattr gadget on the dispatched.ch blog, maybe the author forgot to enable it explains the lack of results?

<comment><AUTHOR> "but I see no reason to keep the advertising buttons on my blog, either"

I disabled them today, just before posting. Thanks for letting me know, anyway^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> <http://notch.tumblr.com> uses it too.</comment>


Tell HN: Scala + Play are easy, and I'm a PHP dude - <AUTHOR>

My team is using Scala + Play. I'm not doing much programming, but I know some PHP, and I'll edit a Scala file here and there now and then to make some quick changes (a small logic change, some spelling correction, etc.). It's easy to read, easy to understand. The way Play is setup is easy to. I can also read the code to see what is actually going on, without having to ask the programmer "how this works".<p>I could never feel comfortable editing Java, or understanding what goes on there. <comment><USER2> I've read some goods things, and did some personal research and came to the same conclusion.

BUT I've been trying to get it working all week. Spent an entire day on it to no avail. I can get scala running fine, I can get play running fine with Java, but I can't get the two of them working together, I keep getting IO errors on my PC, and missing library errors on my mac.

So I'd appreciate some links if your team has them incase I'm missing a step on either machine. And I'm sure other here would appreciate it as well if they want to try. I'm not quite prepared to give up just yet :)

Bookmarked myself I have:

Installation instructions:

play <http://www.playframework.org/>

play-scala site <http://scala.playframework.org/>

Installing scala on windows: <http://www.scala-lang.org/node/310>

Installing scala on windows: <http://just-thor.com/2009/09/02/installing- scala-on-window/>

Installing Scala on snow leopard [http://arvinderkang.com/2009/09/01/installing-scala-on- snow-...](http://arvinderkang.com/2009/09/01/installing-scala-on-snow- leopard/)

Installing scala on OSX <http://paradox1x.org/2009/06/very-quick-star/>

Installing Scala for .net [http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/2009/01/getting- started...](http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/2009/01/getting-started-with- scala-on-net.html)

Scala tutorials:

Building a MUD [http://www.kotancode.com/2011/06/03/building-a-mud-in- scala-...](http://www.kotancode.com/2011/06/03/building-a-mud-in-scala- step-1-the-echo-server/)

Scala tutorial <http://scalabound.org/?p=323>

Scala for C# programmers [http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/2009/01/scala- for-c-pro...](http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/2009/01/scala-for-c- programmers-part-1-mixins-and-traits.html)

scala actors tutorial <http://www.scala-lang.org/node/242>

More on scala actors [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1251666/scala-actors- rece...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1251666/scala-actors-receive-vs- react)

<comment><USER2> After doing some reading it appears the main branch may be broken in github. So I used an earlier version and it appears to work fine. Specificallyplay framework 1.1.1 and installing the scala module 0.8</comment></comment>


How did Apple's AirPods go from mockery to millennial status symbol? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2019/feb/10/how-did-apples-airpods-go-from-mockery-to-millennial-status-symbol <comment><USER2> Memes are a very bad metric to measure what is or isn't a "status symbol"

</comment><comment><USER3> Because they work pretty well?</comment>


Ask HN: 2011 Predictions - <AUTHOR> As we near the end of the year, one realises how busy 2010 has been. There is already a post to show off what has been done, but I am interested in what changes and trends you predict will happen in<p>-the general IT fields (mobile hardware, net neutrality and other broad topics)<p>-your domain specifically (ie, what disruption can we expect where?)<p>-your life (what are you working on?) <comment><USER2> Camera and facetime for the iPad.

iPads and macbooks coming in colors.

Web of things will kickoff with arduino and programmable toys that can be controlled from and ipad/iphone.

Geolocation businesses are the new black. One can possibly disrupt eBay or craigslist.

Facebook IPO will be the best evar in terms of hype and money made. Just to deflate at the end of the year and leave the tech world in ruins.

Google IS the cloud.

Mac mini 'soapbar'. More power that fits in your hand.

Firefox 4 will never catch up to Chrome. Too late. Too sad.

Ubuntu thinks about re-branding in order to pass the 10% market share. They are that good.

Apple TV? They slowly got the trademarking and patents issue solved. They'll go for a screen now, a real TV that streams and record your shows/movies.

But not until 2012...

<comment><USER3> Firefox 4 beta is already faster than Chrome.

<http://arewefastyet.com/>

<comment><USER4> I don't think OP was referring to JavaScript speed, but to user adoption. Chrome is rising _fast_ and Firefox share is pretty stable. Chrome's got the momentum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Software: I expect Android to become a very widely-implemented operating system and to become popular in not only phones and tablets, but more types of embedded devices and netbooks, even if this isn't what Google intends.

I expect Flash to become very insignificant, much in the way Java currently is on the web: good for a few complex applets here and there and on legacy sites, but most people could care less.

The Web: I expect the governments to try to continue to gain more control over policing the web, as well as corporate back deals.. but I don't think web will be much more different from now until next year except that more of it will go over cell networks instead of through the home broadband connections.

Hardware: More people will opt for Tablets and phones for the majority of their computing needs.

Programming: I can see projects like Google App Inventor leading to a plethora of new applications and interest in development.

<comment><USER6> It's could _not_ care less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> General IT

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=

* I think the biggest trend is we'll see computing further redefined. As tablets, Chrome based netbooks and more advanced smartphones flood into the market we're going to see a bunch of people who realize they just don't need a home PC anymore.

* In business I think we'll see a big increase in user-focused design. Too many corporations are running into problems with employees using web based solutions on their own to avoid the cumbersome software the company used (that was built based on corporate requirements rather than user friendly ones)

* In startups I think you're going to see the VC industry try to self regulate in the hope of preventing a bubble. So you'll start to see a coordinated effort to lower valuations and force startups into business plans that become profitable faster. </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

My Domain (Mental Health Care & Education)

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

* Mental Health: I think you'll finally see the cloud start to move into solutions that are HIPAA compliant (meaning they meet privacy standards).

* Education: Schools are reaching a cross roads where the teachers unions can no longer bully the districts into keeping teachers they can't afford (because there's simply no money left). With those schools trying desperately to teach more kids with fewer teachers I think you'll see a boon for technology.

</comment><comment>===

My Life

</comment><comment>===

My professional goal for the next year is to push more and more cloud based solutions (which I believe in more and more) and to try to use my connections to get cloud solutions to support the above mentioned confidentiality rules.

My personal/professional goal is to play around with the Kinect and try to find a way teachers could use it to give more interactive lectures (we already have projectors so if the teacher could control the content while lecturing I'm thinking there's a lot that could be accomplished)

<comment><USER8> dude i am with you on this one not only teachers but stage presentation in general

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> \- General IT

I see phone apps becoming more important than they are now. Apple TV will flop again, but the concept will start to gain traction with cable boxes (BT, Sky and Virgin Media already have this in the UK - I see them integrating the ideas into their set top boxes to cut people like Boxee out).

\- your domain

Next year will be the year of cybersecurity. All the boxes you saw this year that deal with identity management will be rebranded as cybersecurity boxes next year. Bruce Schneier will eventually learn the difference between CNE and CNA and will finally start to talk sense on the subject (it took him about two to three years to get airport security mostly right, he's been doing cyber for about a year).

Someone will release a big bug in something important. A bunch of information will be stolen from somewhere. We'll all act like it's something new, when it's not really.

Sorry, I'm highly cynical about my industry.

\- your life

I'm hoping to work on iuguy 2.0 once minklinks is out of the way. With luck and the will of the FSM I may well spawn before the year is out. Minklinks will go live at worst in 2011. iuguy 2.0 may follow in 2012.

</comment><comment><USER10> the wakemate will finally ship

<comment><USER11> Will a copy of Duke Nukem Forever be included? Word on the street is that it will be released in 2011 as well.

<comment><USER12> My prediction: Duke Nukem Forever will NOT be released in 2011.

(would be cool if it did though)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This post got me started thinking about computer hardware, and I made some predictions for the next five years, along with technical explanations of what they mean and why they're likely:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970884>

tl;dr summary: More cores; optical off-chip interconnect; network-on-chip interconnect; 3D integration for better yield, as well as memory bandwidth and latency; tighter integration of CPU and GPU. Widening gap between server and desktop/mobile processor designs. Also solid state drives, but that's pretty obvious.

</comment><comment><USER14> 2011 is going to be the another year all about web 2.0. I think there is going to be an increase in popularity for mobile web development using html5, css3, javascript and frameworks such as PhoneGap and Sencha Touch. The ever increasing number of mobile platforms will have developers looking for ways to maximize their exposure with minimal effort.

I also think there is going to another generation of social networking apps that build on top of Facebook and Twitter giving us new ways to analyze and use social data.

Overall I would say get yourself into some web development

</comment><comment><USER15> 2011 will be the year of the dealpool.

Myspace deadpools. Digg deadpools. Flickr deadpools/shut down by Yahoo.

<comment><USER16> Myspace? Sure. Digg? Maybe. Do you care to elaborate on Flickr though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> \- A solid Android powered iPod Touch competitor in the ~$200 price range. Amazed nothing like this has taken off yet

\- A new Zune HD, this time powered by full Windows Phone 7 without the phone stuff. Only makes sense to compete against the iPod Touch (which vastly increases the reach of iOS and the App Store).

\- I'd love to see Apple make an unlocked iPhone 5 starting at $229 or so for the base model and drop the iPod Touch. If you really don't want a phone, you could just use it without a sim or new plan. This would also give them a leg- up against Android or Windows Phone 7 based iPod Touch competitors. Sadly, though, I don't think this one is very likely to happen.

</comment><comment><USER18> PCs are going to be like trucks: [http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d8-steve- jobs-on-the-iphon...](http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d8-steve-jobs-on-the- iphone-origin/3BBFA695-DC39-4834-9E39-7097C9CE1243)

</comment><comment><USER19> A new paradigm / abstraction in programming languages, like macros, OOP, closures, will be adopted by early adopters in the industry. Will improve coding productivity by 50%.

<comment><USER20> The curious thing is that they are already here, e.g. Python/Ruby vs Java. According to Clayton Christensen it takes a paradigm shift of over 5x improvement before anyone notices.

I dont think the shift will be programming language based because the decision makers dont pay attention to programmers. (I'm speaking the enterprise world here, not startups.) But I hope you're right, not me. :-)

<comment><USER19> Right, I'm thinking that X will happen to Python/Ruby like Python/Ruby happened to Java.

A 5x improvement is a lot to ask for...I don't think that Python/Ruby offers 5x over Java, and to get 5x over Python/Ruby will be very hard. Even describing software in reasonably precise English probably doesn't offer 5x over the state of the art.

On the other hand, 50% is definitely feasible. The form this will take is a combination of, among other things:

\- Moving away from the dynamicism of Python/Ruby: by sacrificing just a little bit of the dynamicism (like assigning to a variable by string name) you can gain a lot in terms of what IDEs can do and what compilers can do to optimize.

\- New constructs that replace the dynamic metaprogramming in Ruby/Python with static metaprogramming, like Lisp's macros and F#'s type providers.

\- Merging OOP with functional programming by unifying FP's abstract data types and pattern matching with OOP's classes and runtime dispatch. The resulting system will be something like multimethods or predicate dispatch.

\- Testing tools will get more powerful. Randomized testing will play a more important role. We'll get statistical analysis in IDEs that can sometimes pinpoint the line that's causing a bug by running the randomized tests and computing the correlation of "line n was executed" with "the test failed".

\- Last but not least, the days of ASCII based programming are over.

> I dont think the shift will be programming language based because the > decision makers dont pay attention to programmers. (I'm speaking the > enterprise world here, not startups.) But I hope you're right, not me. :-)

I agree. As usual the enterprise world will lag a few years behind...around the time they adopt Python/Ruby/F#/etc, the startup world will have new languages and tools.

<comment><USER20> Actually I agree with you completely. The 5x improvement is what it takes BigCo management to notice you. However startups are getting the 5x advantage all over the place. Nimble platforms plus smarter people plus stripped down organizations give you your 5x.

I have been inclined to think for quite a while that a good IDE / compiler combination would achieve a lot with a language Python. (I've been doing my Python development with an ordinary editor.) Python 3 allows type specification, but doesnt do anything with it. Have the IDE get feedback from the execution profile to advise the programmer on possible type errors.

Testing tools: I would like a tool that can read a method and some annotation to generate a set of unit tests.

Given your list I think it results in way more than 50% improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Gamification is going to take off.

Everything in your life will be quantified and if you want recorded.

You can see actual stats and progress in your life.

A lot of boring things including our jobs will become more fun and merit based rewards at work will accelerate in growth around the world.

We talk a lot about this on our wiki at <http://gamification.org> .

</comment><comment><USER22> I expect something big from Microsoft - something really really big.

<comment><USER23> I don't understand why you say that. If the last ten years are any indication then nothing big will come from ms.

<comment><USER22> Last ten years are indication to me that something big should happen right about now, or else... the spiral from the top down continues.

All of the competition aside (across various spectra in competes in), let's just look at Microsoft itself. It's a beast with huge muscles that lost focus. It's numerous heads are biting all over, but with lost focus and strength. It needs to toughen up and straight it's shit together, and now is the time more so than ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> id rage will ship 2011 and it is going to be huge

</comment><comment><USER24> Green energy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Next year austerity and rising interest rate will take root in major economies, forced by runaway inflation in food, gas and commodity prices - caused by massive printing by US/Europe/Japan/China. This will result in money in flight from risky investments (emerging countries, startups, expansions) to safe investments, which will cause job losses in many of those sectors. Healthcare and Food industries will grow. Entertainment, Advertising, Construction and Transportation industries will wither.

<comment><USER20> This is a curious expectation, but it feels right to me (with a degree in economics). Recessions are usually preceded by inflation, not followed, However, wars are usually followed by inflation. Since 1960 inflation has been over 600%, energy about 850%. My expectation, is that a huge amount of money has been pumped in to the economy to pay for the wars and the bail-outs. The money is being absorbed by the wars and the trade deficits. I think the current situation is unstable and it will blow up, perhaps in 2012. Certainly any austerity program that hits the middle class hard, and all the Rep. proposals do, will trigger political thrashing and immense hardship, something approaching the severity of the Depression, or we will get the typical end of war inflation.

<comment><USER26> I agree with you, but I think your terminology is inexact when you say:

"The money is being absorbed by the wars and the trade deficits."

Wars do not absorb money, they absorb wealth -- money is paid to make a bullet, and after the bullet is shot the money remains to decrease the value of all money, and the bullet is gone.

Trade deficits can move accumulated wealth (or money) around, but they also don't absorb it; a foreign country might absorb money, if they decide to stockpile it.

<comment><USER20> It felt awkward when I wrote it. You are right. The wealth is absorbed/destroyed, but the money is still there with fewer goods to purchase, hence inflation (eventually).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> General IT: Sales of MSFT's Kinect will surpass XBOX sales.

Web Development: Python will get a library/framework that is a paradigm shift in writing apps for real-time clients. Something that ties together Twisted's reactor with Django's approachability with socket.io.

Personal: I will finish building my house, then focus on shipping a single side-project.

</comment><comment><USER28> IT:

\- Increasing success of Android

\- New FB feature of being able to split up who your messages go to by groups, massive profit for Facebook.

My Domain:

\- A lot of move in fashion towards more sustainability, the biggest changes will be in five years though, not one:

\- I've written about it at changingclothing.recojeans.com, more specifically changingclothing.recojeans.com/eco-friendly-clothing/</comment>


One petabyte in 1RU (one rack unit) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZaEbpnhoNM#t=5m20s <comment><AUTHOR> Intel 3D Xpoint (Optane brand) non-volatile memory technology, claimed 1000 times faster, 1000 times durability, and 10 times denser than SSD.

One terabyte in 1.5mm thick device, 15TB capacity in the usual 2.5 inch SSD form-factor.

Byte-addressable, unlike block-based SSD. Optane could nicely complement burst-buffer implementations in HPC.</comment>


Show HN: Python Books of the Month - <AUTHOR> https://pythonbooks.org/book-of-the-month/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, creator of PythonBooks here. PythonBooks is running since 2017. During launch, it was on the front page of HN [0]. Thanks to the HN community for showing so much interest in the website. There has been steady traffic ever since and I have tried my best to keep the website updated with the latest books. Starting this month, there's a new page which lists the best Python books published every month - based on popularity, topic and novelty. I thought that it could be an useful tool for Python developers to cut through the noise and keep abreast of the best recent books. Feedback is welcome :-)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14769317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14769317)

</comment><comment><USER2> These are just affiliation links with commentary ripped verbatim from Amazon without attribution.</comment>


Forth Methodology Applied to Programming (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Or "Forth Methodology vs Agile"? Coding is the 9th step and the easiest one.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended CI System to run on cloud server - <AUTHOR> I'm the single developer of a medium sized project. Currently I'm using a Centos 7 droplet on DigitalOcean to run a collection of scripts using systemd services which makes up the CI system.
I'm looking to expand to use a more extensive CI system such as Jekins/Buildabot, so I can more easily visualize the status of jobs and results, and improve robustness and transparency of the system. I've currently got about 5 "jobs" and am looking to add more hence this seems like a good time to migrate to a pre-rolled CI system.
Are there any other (free) CI providers I should consider for my (relatively simple) needs? Any issues I should be aware of for running a CI system on a cloud server? I've got 4-core/4GB RAM droplet, so resource availability for the jobs themselves is potentially an issue if the CI system is too bloated.
I want the web interface to be totally invisible to the public, but I imagine I'll be able to set up some rules on the server itself to reject web traffic except from my own IP. <comment><USER2> As someone else has already mentioned, Drone is really nice.

We have a self hosted gitlab instance at work, so I use gitlab's ci fairly heavily, and I really like it as well. And since hosting an entire gitlab instance just for ci is overkill (just use Drone in that case), you can just install the runner on your servers, and use Gitlab.com (you can make everything private). Which is a good option if you don't want to setup & maintain something, as all it takes is adding the yum repo and yum -y install gitlab-runner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, drone doesn't support AWS CodeCommit where my main repo is hosted, so I don't think I can even consider it.

Had a look at self-hosted GitLab, there is immediately a warning at the top of the installation page that there should be at least 4GB of free memory. I could upgrade my droplet, but I don't really want to. > 4GB RAM + 4GB swap supports up to 100 users but it will be very slow"

It's looking like I will probably go with BuildBot...

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth, I had a Gitlab instance spun up on DO for a little while, and the droplet it was on certainly had less than 4GB (as well as running other shit). It wasn't the pre-built droplet you can select from DO though, I just used the docker image.

It'll definitely eat the shit out the ram though, none of my droplets have used as much ram as it did, but it was still usable for just my personal usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Drone.</comment>


My Obsession with Chess - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/chess/chess-one/chess-one.html

<comment><USER2> If anyone hasn't read Understanding Comics, it's a fantastic book. [http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible- Scott-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott- Mccloud/dp/006097625X)

And for the HN set, it is actually really good for UX inspiration.

<comment><USER3> If you're doing any sort of visual storytelling, especially animation or games, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

<comment><USER2> I'd argue that any UX is visual storytelling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> About this comic:

 _My Obsession with Chess

1998-1999

My fourth online comic seemed to strike a chord with many readers, despite requiring side-scrolling as well as down-scrolling (which I'll admit, can be pretty annoying).

This one's autobiographical; an account of a childhood obsession with "the most violent game" and how that obsession returned in my late twenties. It's all true, but pretty weird, 'cause I was, um... a weird kid.

I visited the legendary Xerox PARC shortly after completing the comic and they offered to print it for me on their humungous format printer. In 2008, the print-out was exhibited at New York's Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art and Bowling Green University as an artifact of webcomics history.

Anything more than ten years old is like the dead sea scrolls in webcomics._

From <http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/chess/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> <nit>All my copies of 'My System', say Aron Nimzowitsch</nit> Great obsession though, pretty easy to relate to as well. Glad he found comics...

<comment><USER5> Thank you, I was about to look for the book and this saved some confusion. Not sure why you were DV'd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonderfully captures the obsession many of us chess players have shared with the game.

</comment><comment><USER7> Love the ending.

<comment><USER8> I had a very similar experience as the author did in the ending when playing World 4 of Braid. For several hours I felt like walking back in the direction I came from would cause time to move back as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bobby_fischer_against_the_wo...](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bobby_fischer_against_the_world/trailers/) Haven't seen it yet but plan too! Looks like a pretty good chess related film.

<comment><USER10> The first chess-related work of fiction that comes to mind is "The defense", by Nabokov. The main character is similarly obsessed with chess and comes to see everything in terms of chess. There's a movie adaptation called "The Luzhin defense", with John Turturro and Emily Watson, which I thought was OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What does this comic gain from the strange layout of otherwise regular squares? I got frustrated of trying to figure out where the next square was as I scrolled down.

<comment><USER12> It's about chess; it moves horizontally, vertically, diagonally, like moves on a chessboard. The individual panels have black and white backgrounds, like a chessboard, which combined with the movement, gives him the chance to affect the mood; if he sticks to diagonal moves on black, you get a sequence of dark, moody frames.

He also wrote, in the introduction to the comic (<http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/chess/index.html>):

      My fourth online comic seemed to strike a chord
      with many readers, despite requiring side-scrolling
      as well as down-scrolling (which I'll admit, can be
      pretty annoying).

It sounds like this was something experimental; remember, this was the early days of webcomics. He was experimenting with what you could do in a new medium. It turns out that this choice was kind of annoying; but it was a nice experiment, and it's a good comic despite the somewhat annoying scrolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sleep paralysis is terrifying.

<comment><USER14> It's only terrifying if you let it terrify you.

I get it on a regular basis, and don't mind.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it takes some concerted effort to realize its happenning and to relax back into sleep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How can u post that link again? Is HN not blocking old links?

</comment><comment><USER17> Boring teen angst.

<comment><USER18> This probably won't matter to you, but the entire point is that it's _not about_ the angst.</comment></comment>


On HN, do you read the comments before you actually click on the link? - <AUTHOR> On HN, do you read the comments before you actually click on the link? <comment><USER2> I usually click the link first. But sometimes I'll read the comments first. And, on occasion, I've skipped the story altogether because the comments made it clear that the story was not worth the time to read.

</comment><comment><USER3> I skim the comments. Then I read the article.

I always read the article before I comment. I try to read all the comments before I comment.

</comment><comment><USER4> I usually decide whether or not to read the link by reading the discussion it generates first.

</comment><comment><USER5> I always skim the comments first to make sure the link isn't just worthless click-bait. I don't like to reward manipulative and deceptive tactics.

</comment><comment><USER6> It depends on the link. If it's far outside of any of the domains I specialize in but it could still affect me, I usually check the comments first just to note any specific objections people have.

For example, when that new space engine (the one that uses just electricity and no solid fuel) a lot of the objections were fundamentally "this violates our current understanding of the universe", which in my mind is not really an objection on its own, especially when there's empirical evidence that shows otherwise. So I was free to read the article and consider what the implications would be if it turns out to be a feasible propulsion system. If there had been some claim like "this guy was convicted of fraud in 2003" then I would be looking for some explanation of that in the article before even considering the possibility of spaceships.

<comment><USER7> I probably wrote that comment.

> _especially when there 's empirical evidence that shows otherwise._

It's very difficult to explain how hard is to do a good measurement to someone that has never been inside a physic lab. If you have 5V electrical signals up to 100KHz you can be quite confident in your measurements, everything else is more complicated.

It's easier to compare this with another experiment: the faster than light neutrinos.

It was a experiment run by a more serious group, with a lot of specialist and a lot of published papers in that subject. They got FTL neutrinos, and most of the comments here explained that it would break the physics laws and give a alternative explanation of the source of the error. I think I upvoted the wrong explanation :(.

They have a wrong measurement, and a few months later they realized that they have a problem with a fiber optic cable. (Protip: Always check the wires again.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nearly all of the time, the link is checked by me and only if I am interested in other people's opinions about this topic (what happens very often) I read the comments. In my opinion it is better this way since you should be educated about the topic people are discussing. Se the short answer: No. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I never click on the links. That's asking for trouble. The comments are the value of HN.

<comment><USER10> How is it asking for trouble?

I don't read the comments first as I always assumed that one was supposed to read the article first in order to understand the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes - on the phone, it can be easier to click the comments link first.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes. The comments are usually more interesting. Same for reddit.

</comment><comment><USER13> The more unlikely the title, the more I check the comments first.

</comment><comment><USER14> usually,yes

</comment><comment><USER15> Not always, but quite commonly I do.

It upsets me that "We're Hiring" notices don't permit comments. Sometimes I don't really have a comment, I just want to ask a simple question, for example it's not always easy to find out where the company is located.</comment>


Is "always use /dev/urandom" good advice in an age of containers and isolation? - <AUTHOR> https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/186086/is-always-use-dev-urandom-still-good-advice-in-an-age-of-containers-and-isola <comment><AUTHOR> I'm inclined to think that the answer is "no", but it's also interesting to me that getrandom hasn't become more popular yet.

Interestingly, for the purposes of generating randomness in Python, as of PEP 524, os.urandom() no longer uses urandom, but instead uses getrandom.</comment>


Using Wikipedia page view counts to predict market movements. - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantopian.com/posts/deriving-trading-signals-from-wikipedia-page-views-new-feature

<comment><USER2> If this works Google will own us all.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "if" and "will"?

<comment><USER2> Well then yes, Google stock is like $900/share, But is it currently pre-split $9000/share? No. Google processing `metadata' is arguably not insider trading. Google gets to openly play in Mr Market, NSA does not. Game over.

<comment><USER4> Is that true though? What prevents NSA employees from participating in the market? It's still basically legal for members of Congress to participate in insider trading. It seems like a public corporation would be more likely to be required to play by the rules.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Another fatal Tesla crash reportedly on Autopilot emerges - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2016/09/14/another-fatal-tesla-autopilot-crash-emerges-model-s-hits-a-streetsweeper-truck-caught-on-dashcam/ <comment> the-dude Animated GIF is a bit misleading, complete video shows a car in front moving out of the lane at the very last moment.</comment>


Show HN: Slap – a command line client for Github Gists - <AUTHOR> http://showterm.io/12ae7fe3c4811e9c1d889

<comment><USER2> What are the differences between this and the more common client [1]? This seems to support a subset of the functionality.

[1] [https://github.com/defunkt/gist](https://github.com/defunkt/gist)

<comment><USER3> I was going to ask the same. I usually just pipe my content to the gist command/tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a way to specify which account the gist should go to? Many people have more than one github account (personal, client1, client2, etc.).

<comment><AUTHOR> currently, no. that would be a simple addition though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't you show the full help message when the command is run without options?

<comment><AUTHOR> good idea, I will add that as an update

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> bitbucket project page can be found here

[https://bitbucket.org/crowell/slaprb](https://bitbucket.org/crowell/slaprb)

can be installed with "gem install slap"

<comment><USER5> woah looks cool,

any reason you choose bitbucket over github? just curious...

<comment><AUTHOR> I originally started the project on bitbucket, and never ended up moving it to github. I should probably do that, seeing as it is targeted to a github project.</comment></comment></comment>


Launch: Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://launchsiliconvalley.org/index.htm

<comment><USER2> _In its 3rd year, Launch: Silicon Valley is now firmly established as the premier product launch platform for cash strapped startups._

Odd that I've never heard of it then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. And to think that Guy Kawasaki is involved it's more odd.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "In its 3rd year, Launch: Silicon Valley is now firmly established as the premier product launch platform for cash strapped startups. The event, co- presented by SVASE, Garage Technology Ventures and Microsoft, provides the next generation of emerging technology companies with the opportunity to pitch their products to, and network with, an audience of Silicon Valley's top VCs, Angels, corporate business development executives, prospective customers and partners, bloggers and media."

"Companies that are interested in presenting their products at Launch: Silicon Valley 2008 should send an Executive Summary of no more than 2 pages to firstname.lastname@example.com by latest May 9, 2008"</comment>