Goldman docs: Facebook income $355m, revenue $1.2bn (first 9 months of 2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70359V20110106 <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

"Facebook earned $355 million in net income in the first nine months of 2010 on revenue of $1.2 billion, according to documents that Goldman Sachs is providing to clients.

...

The Goldman customer said he received a separate six-page financial statement containing information on the social networking firm.

...

The financial statements were not audited and offered little detail about how Facebook generates it revenue, said the source, who did not want to be identified because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement."

<comment><USER2> what part of "non-disclosure agreement" he didn't understand :-)

<comment><USER3> Sounds like he understood it fine, since he requested to be anonymous.

<comment><USER4> That's not how it works. :P

<comment><USER5> Sorry, but that _is_ how it works. It is just not how it is _supposed_ to work. :-P

<comment><USER6> Maybe they wrote a different value on each document as a fingerprint of sorts. Or maybe they just expected this to get out.

<comment><USER7> Probably the second one. Financial documents are typically prepared by lawyers and bankers, not cryptographers.

Or he asked his friend, "hey, can I see your document... yup, they're identical" and then leaked with impunity. If the public really wants something, and you send a document with that information on it to a bunch of people, it's going to be leaked. I think Goldman is smart enough to realize this; the buzz is helping their business, but they knew they would get in trouble if they just announced the numbers. So they just gave it to random people with a I-did-my-due-diligence-NDA and let entropy take care of the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, assuming this is correct, then we extrapolate their yearly income to $474m, that puts their P:E at about 105:1

<comment><USER9> At that price, it seems like buying into them is a bet that they will be the first company to completely take over the Internet, even moreso than Google.

I'm not sure I can buy that, at least not at that price.

(Or, more accurately, a bet that enough other people will think so for long enough that you can unload your stock on them for a profit. I wouldn't buy and hold, I don't think.)

<comment><USER10> It's worth noting that that high P/E ratio means an expectation in growth in revenue, not just traffic.

While I think most people expect Facebook traffic to continue to grow for a while yet, it should also be clear that their moneterization efforts are pretty still primitive.

For example, did you know it's possible to get > 50% cheaper advertising on Facebook by selecting CPM rather CPC when you build your ads?

Even ignoring that, in my experiments advertising on Facebook is still hugely cheaper than on Google (taking the cost of a customer from acquisition to fulfillment). In any mildly competitive market (like online selling) that difference doesn't seem likely to continue.

Anyway, my point is that I think that while "completely taking over the internet" may be crazy, there are plenty of ways for Facebook to easily grow their revenue by huge factors.

<comment><USER9> I'm pessimistic about that. YMMV. (Note, I'm not saying you're wrong and I did upmod you. I'm just disclosing my pessimism.)

Facebook's basic play is to build a lot of value into their network by bringing as many people in as possible, make some pocket change in the process, then eventually figure out how to milk the surplus value which will certainly be a large amount of value. My skepticism lies mostly in the execution of that second step; I'm totally unconvinced there's an ad bonanza large enough to fund this. Maybe there is. I think somebody's going to actually have to sell something and it's not clear to me what will work on the promised scale. That or they're going to have to raise the barrier of entry and if they do that they'll trigger the open internet competition in a heartbeat, competition already coming together and will be ready to go when that happens. The act of squeezing the surplus value of the network is the exact same act that will create their decentralized open competition.

But hey, who knows. Sometimes you get MySpace, sometimes you get Google. You tend to only be able to definitely tell them apart in hindsight.

<comment><USER10> Have you tried advertising on Facebook?

It's pretty easy. You can select your target audience by gender, location, age group, and interest(s), and then select if you want to pay per impression or per click.

It is a good system (just as easy to use as Google's) and it gives good results. I've tried it, and that's why I'm bullish on them.

(It's worth noting that advertising has funded newspapers for hundreds of years, television for 50 years, and Google for 10 years and is proven to work in those cases. I shouldn't have to say it, but apparently some people continue to doubt that advertising is a reasonable funding model at all, regardless of the specifics of Facebook)

Another way to look at it: Do you think Yahoo or Facebook is more relevant to the average user, and what is the trend for each one, and what is the likely trend for advertising spend on each platform? (Note that Yahoo is currently worth $22 billion)

<comment><USER8> Advertising is a reasonable funding model, but when the expectations are unreasonable, then people will question whether advertising can be an _unreasonable_ funding model, in the sense of positive returns.

<comment><USER10> I've sort-of replied to this here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2077931>

Basically, I think there expectations aren't as unreasonable as the large numbers seem to imply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let's do Math!

Let's see if the $50B valuation is as outrageous as many seem to think. :)

Projecting earnings to $500m for 2010 gives them a P/E of 100.

I agree that a P/E of ~100 is high for a mature company: GOOG is ~24, YHOO is ~22, AMZN is ~75, EBAY is ~14.

Obviously Facebook isn't a mature company at the moment, though, but what their earnings would have to be to keep the $50B valuation with a P/E of 30? $1.66B

Earnings of $1.6B is a lot of money, but Yahoo had earnings of $1.4B last year, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that Facebook will be earning more than Yahoo within a couple of years.

<comment><USER11> "Obviously Facebook isn't a mature company at the moment"

Mature in terms of what? They are a 7 year old company with 500 Million users and 3000 top tier workers.

"I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that Facebook will be earning more than Yahoo within a couple of years."

With that logic, I don't see why Yahoo can't earn more than Google within a couple of years. All they need to do is to 'focus on monetizing', just like Facebook can (if they only put their mind to it).

Anecdote: Google converts 15X more than Facebook in my circle of peers that have used both.

<comment><USER12> No-one disputes search converts more than social ads, the question is cost. As long as CPA makes it viable people will invest in Facebook ads.

Facebook can improve monetization hugely and they're clearly working on it.

Look at how the new profiles encourages people to list employer and job title, Facebook have learnt from Linkedin that allowing advertisers to target by job/industry is hugely valuable. They're going steal a hugely valuable ad market from Linkedin.

Furthermore local advertising on Facebook is vastly under-utilized, there's a whole cottage industry springing up of local affiliate firms who act as brokers buying ads from Facebook and selling leads to local firms.

<comment><USER11> "They're going steal a hugely valuable ad market from Linkedin." Why? Facebook isn't known for career/jobs. It's for users to look at fun photos, chat, and play games. I contend it would be hard for Facebook to be known as a professional site (let alone have the credibility for advertisers to migrate en masse)

"Furthermore local advertising on Facebook is vastly under-utilized" If we both already agree that search converts better than social ads, why would local advertisers switch from Google to Facebook? If it's only about price, Google can undercut Facebook in an instant.

EDIT: If anything, the recent attempt to add job/career to profile page for Facebook smacks of desperation. Like trying to go after an established market.

<comment><USER12> Advertisers don't care if it's a professional site or not. Look at the Oracle ads in consumer news magazines. Companies will advertise where they can reach their target market.

Right now on my Facebook page I have two professional ads (one for a CRM system and one for a business IT news site) and two Facebook game ads.

On top of that Linkedin is truly awful when it comes to targeting. Their job categories are ridiculously broad, if you want to target Software Engineers or Aero Engineers, you can't. Instead you have to target "IT" and "Engineering" - categorizations which combine together barely related roles.

It would be very easy for Facebook to offer more precise targeting, that alone would be a killer feature over Linkedin.

Search has a higher CTR but not a higher eCPA, a well designed Facebook ad can convert much more cheaply than buying targeted keywords, you'll need to buy many more ads, but the end cost is what matter.

(Incidentally most local companies don't advertise online at all, it's not a case of stealing customers from Google, etc. but rather a case of persuading them that it's worthwhile. Hence the rise of local ad brokers who buy CPM and sell CPA, as it's much easier to convince a local business to advertise through you if they don't have to pay you until after you generate business).

<comment><USER11> Most advertisers don't have the budget/time/patience to run and manage ineffective ads across multiple sites. Especially when you know your Facebook users have a mindset of 'fun', i.e games, chatting, photos. Sure, some companies have huge budgets (oracle), and some companies are just trying their luck (small CRM company), but that's no way to have a very profitable advertising platform. Sooner or later these advertisers will leave for greener fields. After all, what good is ads targeting, when the users ignore the ads to play games/look at photos?

As far as cost for ads is concerned, I don't think Facebook stands a chance. Google can undercut Facebook anytime with their 30 billion dollar cash reserve.

<comment><USER12> Consider it from an advertiser prospective if you make $5 per customer, and it costs you $1 to get a customer from Facebook, then you'll quite happily keep paying Facebook $1 for as long as you keep getting customers. If Google undercut them and offer you ads for $0.50, you'll buy both !

I currently buy ads at Google, Facebook, Linkedin and PlentyOfFish. Find me another source of effective advertising and I'll advertise there too.

Unless your margins are razor thin and you have tiny volumes, it seems unlikely that the extra time you have to spend managing your ad campaigns would justify not using them. After all just because the CTR of Facebook is smaller than Google it doesn't mean you have to invest more time into it because your ad has to be seen 100x more often to get the same CTR.

<comment><USER11> That was a mispeak. I should've used 'money-losing' instead of the word 'ineffective'. My point is there are only certain ads that is money making on Facebook, thus my reference to users' mindset of 'fun'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> personally I think that the 50 billion valuation is just a negotiation tactic. They start off at 50 billion, so that when they actually IPO at 25 billion, everyone will think they are getting an awesome deal that will double their money in no time.

</comment><comment><USER14> In pitching as much as $1.5 billion in stock in the closely held social- networking company to wealthy investors, Goldman Sachs disclosed that it might sell or hedge its own $375 million investment without warning clients.

Source: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-07/goldman-efforts- to-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-07/goldman-efforts-to-burnish- image-may-be-undermined-by-facebook.html)

</comment><comment> joe-mccann So based on $133/million per month in revs is ~ $1.6 billion this year.

Current valuation on SecondMarket = $50 billion

$50 billion/$1.6 Billion = a 31.25 multiple.

5 to 10 times revenues seems to be a reasonable way to value startups/private companies nowadays (for the most part). But a multiple of 31.25? Wow.

<comment><USER15> I think the logic of a growth investor differs from the logic of a P/E chaser.

Dividend yield is probably 0%, too, so if that's what one is after, it would seem like a crappy deal.

<comment> joe-mccann True but I'm not mentioning earnings at all; simply based on revs seems like a LOFTY valuation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So it seems that Facebook is generating significant profits, unless something funky went on in the last few months, so why take such a large investment?

<comment><USER17> It's a win-win for Goldman and Facebook. Facebook gets a sky-high $50 billion valuation, and Goldman gets dibs on underwriting a potential Facebook IPO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Assuming no growth; risk free + equity risk premium = 8% + company lasts infinitely (or for a long time): 355 _1e6/.75/.08 = 5.91_ 10e9, or 6 billion.

Let's assume they grow to five times their current income over the next five years; and, ooh, I am busy - just multiply the previous number by five to get an approximation.

</comment><comment><USER18> 350M income, $50B valuation? So with today's facts you get your investment back in 142 * 3/4yr = 106 years?

<comment><USER19> Assuming flat income for that period. You think this is a safe assumption I guess?

<comment><USER20> Good point, but the valuation is supposed to go higher when Facebook IPOs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Still undervalued. Goldman got a good deal.

<comment><USER22> Well tried, Goldman!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, a P/E of 100 isn't that outrageous, especially given their growth rate.

<comment><USER24> Their growth rate can't be expected to continue. They have to have peaked, just given how many people are really using the Internet (excluding China, natch). They've likely saturated the US, which is by far the most valuable advertising market. Any further growth will suffer from diminishing returns.

Facebook's financials are nice, but I'd really like to see their usage and growth statistics, broken down by country. I don't think they can count on growth for much longer; they're going to have to monetize better. They're trying to do that by developing facebook as a platform, but the future in that regard is far from certain.

Google's P/E is ridiculous, but they have solid profits from ads and they're expanding hugely in mobile. Google's growth can be expected to continue, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't think we can say the same of Facebook with any degree of certainty.

<comment><USER25> Their growth rate in new users can't be expected to continue but their growth rate in revenue might be justified. Clearly Goldman thinks their plan for revenue is quite good and they expect Facebook's revenue to greatly increase while maintaining a sufficient profit margin. I expect we've only seen the beginning of their revenue growth.

<comment><USER24> I don't think Goldman's investment can necessarily be taken as a sign of their confidence in facebook's financials, or its future ability to justify its $50B valuation. Rather, it should be taken as a sign of Goldman's confidence in their own ability to profit from the deal, both from the private $1.5B sale of stock, as well as its favoured position come facebook's inevitable IPO.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. Look no further than subprime if you doubt this. There is no group more expert at (knowingly) inflating a bubble for their own gain. And they take no risk because they get 0% loans from the Fed and are the definition of "too big to fail". This is dangerous behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So if you bought the whole company at a $50b valuation, and assume that this $355m/yr profit rate for first 9 months held constant and therefore turned into $473m total by end of year, and then that rate held constant each year on forward, and that all profits were always and evenly distributed to all shareholders, then you'd recoup your investment (merely break even, anyway) after 105 years.

Add in an unpredictable future growth rate. Add in the fact that they're probably approaching a hard cap on users in the next year or so. Add in bubble-ishness. Add in a big unknown as to whether they find ways to better monetize their users. And all this adds up to telling me either this is a bad investment, or, maybe just maybe it will at least break even within your lifetime. Can't say. But from this data I think it is not clear that this is a slam dunk buy at all. Either bad or meh.

<comment><USER28> Goldman have a _lot_ of other ways of profiting from this other than simply taking a share of FB margins. For a start, they get to be in charge of the entire IPO process. That alone will be _very_ profitable for them.

There was a bunch of other stuff like this discussed in the threads on the goldman investment itself.

<comment><USER27> agreed. plus Goldman can profit on the Greater Fool effect. i was just assuming that, if you weren't Goldman, and weren't going to take advantage of the Greater Fool effect, etc., and you wanted to buy-and-hold rather than buy- and-flip, then, the numbers don't look too compelling at the $50bn valuation.

but yeah, anything can happen, and there are lots of factors involve.</comment></comment></comment>


Chimpanzees and animal medicine (2002) - <AUTHOR> https://www.primates.com/misc/index.html <comment><USER2> A friend of mine used to work on research in this area, which is really fascinating from the outside. In practice it meant she spent much of her time trudging through the jungle collecting primate feces, but on the other hand she got to say she was a zoopharmacognosiologist, which IMO is one of the cooler job titles out there.</comment>


ASP.NET Core with Docker in Linux and Windows Containers - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExploringASPNETCoreWithDockerInBothLinuxAndWindowsContainers.aspx <comment><USER2> One thing that would be nice, would be for docker on windows (linux containers) and docker for windows containers to get along better, so that I can easily launch either with the same tooling... doing so is really unclear, I've also been on the insider channel, so may have borked my configuration... upgraded from Windows 7 to 10, and haven't done a clean install of 10.

Previously, I'd just used cifs/samba shares to run in a linux vm, and ssh from windows with a gui editor, which had worked well enough. Had wanted to play with Linux Subsystem for Windows and the Docker with Windows Containers, and now neither seem to want to work right with anything else, so caveat emptor.

I do hope that in the long run, the LSW shims get to a point that docker for windows containers can also support linux containers, which will be close to the grael for me.</comment>


TwitterDrive : Author Interview - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2009/04/01/9525555.aspx

<comment><USER2> You know what should be invented? A method of hiding information that encodes the messages in the grammar or spelling mistakes of a bunch of twitter accounts. Break that, CIA!</comment>


IPython 0.13 released - <AUTHOR> http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/rel-0.13/whatsnew/version0.13.html

<comment><USER2> <disclaimer: I work at msft>. It's been a pleasure working w the IPython team to get it working on Azure (engine on Linux or Windows VM) and Visual Studio. In case you want to check it out: [https://www.windowsazure.com/en- us/develop/python/tutorials/...](https://www.windowsazure.com/en- us/develop/python/tutorials/ipython-notebook/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking forward to trying out the updated notebook interface.

Any experience with it?

I tried to install and discuss the previous version with friends but failed. I couldn't find examples on the web, and installation with matplotlib wasn't working out of the box for Mac or Windows (not complaining, just observing it was not simple enough).

<comment><USER4> It was definitely a pain to get it running in the previous version on OSX, but entirely worthwhile. It's a really nice system that can replace mathematica and matlab for a lot of the work I do. In case this helps, here are the instructions that I ended up following to get the previous version running on OSX (using homebrew as my main package manager):

brew install zeromq

brew install qt

(add the following to .bash_profile):

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python:$PYTHONPATH

Download SIP 4.13 and PyQt4 from [1] and install with:

python configure.py

make

make install

Then do:

easy_install pygments

easy_install tornado

easy_install ipython[zmq,test]

easy_install --upgrade ipython

(from within ipython):

from IPython.external.mathjax import install_mathjax

install_mathjax()

[1] <http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/sip/download>

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With NotebookCloud, you can now run a fully featured IPython server on EC2 and set it up from your browser in a few clicks. This comes with support for inline plots, R, Octave, Cython, statsmodels and a ton of other features out the box. And it's free to use the service.

notebookcloud.appspot.com

</comment><comment><USER6> The R magic is going to be a real win. Great job.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, but it's really a short-term win. Long term, python will need to (and I think it will) get better statistical libraries, that make R so great.

Statsmodels is a step in the right direction.</comment></comment>


XBox One's uturn on content delivery - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/20/xbox-one-uturn-was-microsoft-right

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a shame really, I like the idea of digital distribution.

Couldn't there be a system where you pay for a license and still have the ability to sell that license on, and be able to order a physical copy at a slight premium. The copy is worth nothing without the license.

One license could still have the limitation of one active activation. Perhaps the license could link to a token - which could be passed about - so you could lend a game to a friend.

The license would allow you to download the latest version of the game ( assuming that the game has updates and bug fixes), and you are free to transfer your digital copy onto whatever medium.

Your tokens/licenses could then live on a portable keychain, so in theory you could carry your entire collection about.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5907999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5907999)</comment>


Readability: An Important Announcement - <AUTHOR> http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/ <comment><USER3> Ah, what a mess.

Hopefully no one will create problems for them since it seems their intentions are good, and 826 Valencia (McSweeney's nationwide network of writing workshops for young people) is quite awesome.

I don't know what their original contracts with customers said, that contract is what needs to govern what happens to money collected that was not distributed. Perhaps the contract never thought to take into account left over money though. If that's the case, then the leftover amounts, calculated as the percentage of funds received per person that weren't disbursed based on their reading habits, should be refunded to the original customers. I think it would be worth also emailing each person and asking them what they want done - <USER2> they want it donated to 826 Valencia, or would they prefer their money back. Most will give permission to donate it since they are each small amounts anyway, but others will have problems getting ahold of them because their emails will bounce. But it will at least allow getting permission from many as to what they want done. This is all presuming, to state again, that this case of undistributable funds was not covered in the original contract.

There is one case I am familiar with where a person collected money for a certain cause, but wasn't able to use the money for that cause. He didn't keep track of the people who he collected the money from (some of this was passing baskets around at churches) and so he just decided to donate all the money (around $10,000) to a different charity he chose. He ended up charged with theft and misappropriation of funds. So you have to be careful with this stuff. (No case citation as I know the person professionally and don't wish to call attention to him, just making the point that collecting money for one thing and then spending it on another can lead to problems in some cases even when your intentions are pure.)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Nobody reads from just 15 or 20 sites a month. People read from hundreds of sites a month, creating a vast long tail of publishers."

And somewhere out there Ted Nelson is saying, "I told you so. We needed transclusion, transcopyright, and micropayments in our hypertext from the beginning!"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu> (p.s. not a xanadu zealot, just fascinated by the history)

<comment><USER5> Micropayments do not scale.

The cost of my deciding whether or not an article is worth whatever the cost of reading it is, let alone the huge privacy invasion that per-article pricing implies (tying information content and payment to a single user) is a non- starter for all but a very few sites.

That leaves us with accompanying advertising, patronage, syndication, content- as-promotion (propaganda/advertising), and self-publishing.

"Accompanying advertising" is the existing model of display or other ads accompanying content. This works for some sites, but not particularly well, and there are concerns in the mobile space.

"Patronage" is essentially sponsorship of work, as fine art patronage was fairly common in the past.

"Syndication" would require a model of mechanical payments and essentially a tax-like funding stream (part of your monthly data plan) from which content providers are paid.

"Content-as-promotion" is where the initiative for creating content is its own utility in promoting the commercial or ideological goals of the author. Bands promoting live acts, political or religious organizations.

"Self-publishing" is essentially vanity publishing -- where many blogs are (possibly a special case of content as promotion).

Of this list, the syndication model is the only one I see as having strong viable economic potential for general works, though it requires the creation of a syndicate. Small-scale syndicates, in the form of paywall/paygate operators could be the start of this -- major periodical publishers (NY Times, Murdoch/Dow Jones), Apple, Amazon, eBay. But for general content, I'd see a mix of a mechanical reproduction right, a flat (or very simply tiered) level of content payments, and what would amount to an all-you-can-eat or bandwidth- based scheme through a data service provider or independent syndicate provider. It's a leaky system, but might just work.

<comment><USER6> > Micropayments do not scale.

It's just a matter of time before it does. I'd rather say the current micro payment offerings are not good enough.

<comment><USER5> It's not a technical problem.

It's a user problem.

Economics and financial transactions work well with fairly evenly paired buyers and sellers, and largely undifferentiated goods (bulk items, water, food, etc.). Where market power is unbalanced, you end up with monopolistic or oligopolistic markets, where goods are highly differentiated (think: enterprise software sales) you end up with very prolonged negotiation over quality and deliverables (hence the high cost of such sales).

Information economies violate both precepts.

We've _never_ had a market for unbundled information goods purchases. A newspaper or magazine is a bundle of articles, a book is a bundle of chapters, cable TV is a bundle of channels. Most entertainment parks sell a bundle of rides rather than tickets to spend on any given ride. Even music and video sales are a very different experience when you can sample and preview what you're getting.

If I had to make a purchase decision for every single thing I read, I'd go stark raving mad (OK, this may explain something).

Commercializing _every_ single transaction is _not_ feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "If you haven't already registered your domain with Readability, you have until July 15, 2012 to do so."

They love to give money away, but a.) do not link to the page where to register or tell how to register b.) The signup page only caters to readers c.) The publisher page does not show how to register.

If you search the page, you will find a link buried beside others called "Register"

IMHO that is not the way to have millions of sites to register.

UPDATE: Registered for <http://codemonkeyism.com> Now I get $0.18 - Wohooo! Didn't know before that they wanted to give me money. The model seems nice, easier than Flattr but when reading about Readability (and I'm a InstaPaper payer) I thought the model was only for big publishers, not small blogs like mine.

<comment><USER8> Ha. You actually don't get $0.18 though, because the minimum payout is $50.

<comment><USER7> "If you registered as a publisher with Readability, we'll be sending you any remaining money your site has earned by July 31, 2012, regardless of amount."

Ha ;-)

<comment><USER7> The text is part of the blog post. Guess they've change the policy for the cleanup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is just goodwill-in-disguise. They've collected money on behalf of publishers, _without consent_ , and now they realise that was a bad idea. They understand they obviously can't get away with keeping the money, but they don't want to invest the time into you know, actually contacting the domain owners.

<comment><USER10> "but they don't want to invest the time into you know, actually contacting the domain owners."

That is not a viable option to tar them with accusations of not taking. I am sure the vast bulk of domains have amounts of money set aside grossly less than the cost to either party to even start talking to each other. If you want to hand me $1.21, I don't even want to hear from you. (There's hardly any way to do that anyhow without losing most or all of it to fees.)

No, the only other possibly alternative is to return the unused money to those who gave it, but that may have its own problems.

<comment><USER11> "That is not a viable option to tar them with accusations of not taking."

Right, but this does suggest a good way for them to give a good faith effort. What if they put the effort into contacting all X content providers/publishers who 'earned' $Y or more? Even if it were somewhat costly, my appreciation would kick in if I knew they spent time to contact everyone who had earned $20 or more.

Even if the rest of the money went to charity, I'd still have a higher opinion of the way they've ended this operation.

Update: Their terms of services (7b, "Payments") states they won't pay out for amounts under $50. Sounds high given the expectable long tail, but they could put in work to contact those publishers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> $150,000. "millions of domains". That works out to an average of a few pennies per domain. Given that the top 100 sites take a big chunk of the total, the median is probably much less.

We're still looking for that sustainable business model.

<comment><USER13> Right, that's why they stopped doing it.

<comment><USER14> But that blog post claim the opposite. "we got money, but there's no content site"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why not make the minimum cheque $1k and award them randomly via weighted ballot method? That way everyone along the tail gets a piece (eventually) but you only have to collect 150 contact details?

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of SoundExchange, ASCAP, BMI and Sesac and other PRO's. "Not our fault if you don't claim the money we collected on your behalf!"

<comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong, but the musical licensing and payments system is 1) supported by copyright law (17 USC 115(a) <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/115>), and 2) sanctioned by either regulation or industry as to the establishment .

You left out the Harry Fox Agency, which is actually responsible for the bulk of mechanicals in the US.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it is backed up by law. Still, same type of issues, just legal breakage.

[http://www.soundexchange.com/2011/09/15/soundexchange- aftra-...](http://www.soundexchange.com/2011/09/15/soundexchange-aftra-tell- artists-claim-your-digital-royalties/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a content owner, I had no idea readability was doing this. Like Peter Thiel says, the distribution is sometimes the hardest problem.

The idea isn't a bad one, and just because the domain owners never registered doesn't mean the idea can't work. It just means most domain owners probably don't even know about this.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I am familiar with Readability but didn't know they had this program.

I think for the guys signing up and getting a 15 cent check, their form should also have the option of the site owner saying it's OK to just give the amount less than $1 or whatever to the charity since the cost of handling the check isn't really worth it on either end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I stopped using readability when it changed from a simple bookmarklet that would work on any page, to a browser plugin/service combination. It's a shame, really, it was brilliantly useful then, and I haven't found anything that properly replaces it.

<comment><USER19> Have you tried Safari Reader? It's quite similar.

<comment><USER18> I have, and from what I've found it has limitations of its own(namely, paginated articles will not work). I've also tried greasemonkey/stylebot scripts, which work great with the caveat that they're on a case-by-case basis. Really all I want is a damn simple way to invert the colors of any website, so white-on-black sites don't burn the eyes when reading at night. I'm not at all bothered by choice of font(unless it's really obnoxious and actually hinders reading of course), and changing the size of text is already easily addressed in modern browsers. Unfortunately Readability had extremely limited options for color(only -one- color scheme had light text on dark background) and font size.

Personally I see this as being in the realm of browser vendors - hopefully we will start to see them include such a feature, and flesh it out in such a way that it's customizable and really works for any site.

<comment><USER20> I use Safari Reader all the time and it loads paginated articles very well as far as I can tell. When you scroll down a bit you should see an actual separated second page, labeled "Page 2 of N."

Maybe there are certain sites whose pagination Reader can't figure out, but try this for example: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/world/europe/putins- return...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/world/europe/putins-return- brings-rapid-chill-to-us-russia-ties.html?_r=1&hp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Um, actually, they might not be able to do that.

What they may be sitting on here is a trust, for which the publishing websites are the beneficiaries. If they then repurpose the money for something else without the beneficiaries' permission, they'd be in breach of trust. Which is quite serious ju-ju.

Before doing this stuff they need to consult a lawyer.

I should point here that I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice.

Disclaimer: I am working on a startup that would have been seen as a close competitor.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's great when people try new things, and honestly rewarding creators for the work they've created is a great thing. Here's the problem, outside of the sphere of influence people don't know about the service, and that's always going to be a problem.

Also a problem? People not caring enough to sign up, if your minimum is $50 and the average site makes is $3.50, why's anyone going to take the time to get that money?

Also a problem? A lot of readers like writers who don't like in the U.S., and a lot of the time that $3.50 then gets currency exchanged down to even less.

I'm glad they've held their hands and said 'we made a mistake', but it was essentially not the greatest idea in the world to start with. You have to run through all the weird edge cases before you even get started.

</comment><comment><USER23> this comment, analysing the four combinations of opt-{in,out}-to-be-scraped x opt-{in,out}-to-get-paid is well worth reading:

[http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/#comment-34...](http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement/#comment-3419)

</comment><comment><USER24> Here is the link ton add additional domains:

<http://www.readability.com/publisher/domains/add>

I couldn't find this anywhere on their site... :(

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow.

The temptation to take the money and run in a situation like this is high.

I hope they get widely recognized for acting with the highest level of integrity.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am curious to know whether no one wanted to claim the money, or no one had a clue the money were available. Your "this didn't work" post is the first time that I've heard of this initiative. How many more users like me are out there? I'd bet, the majority.

</comment><comment><USER27> Do they have a domain lookup form that we can check without registering?

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell I wonder if they'll mail out a cheque for the $1.45 they owe me.

<comment><USER28> minimum is 50 bucks, so i doubt you are getting anything

<comment><USER29> In the blog entry they say they will send out any amount.

<comment><USER30> I'm really looking forward to taking my cheque for $0.21 to my bank here in England!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why wouldn't they just refund the money back to the customers?

</comment><comment><USER32> Whew, I thought they were going to kill their API.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, I claimed my $0.50

<comment><USER34> I have 52 cents that are rightfully mine. Where did you go in the publisher backend to claim the money?

<comment><USER35> You just fill in your address information in your publisher profile, and they'll mail you a check by the end of July.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Glad they've finally changed courses, but that was a bad idea. Collecting money "on behalf" of publishers they have no affiliation with... ick.

<comment><USER37> I think it was a good idea that could/should have been implemented in a way that felt less sketchy. For instance: show uncollected revenues to each user on a per-site basis; allow users to withdraw unpaid money at any time, or re- allocate their funds to other authors who _are_ collecting; have interest from all unpaid authors go towards uncontroversial charities.</comment></comment>


MapCrunch - Random Google Street View - teleport around the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.mapcrunch.com/

<comment><USER2> This is a really cool site, did you make it yourself? It reminds me of StumbleUpon for Google Maps.</comment>


DBExplorer All-In-One Database Dev Tools on Mac OS X - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dbexplorer/id938522300?l=zh&ls=1&mt=12

<comment><USER2> That's weird. When you download the trail version ([http://www.dbappx.com/](http://www.dbappx.com/)) the about us dialog box points to another company ([http://www.iosxtools.com](http://www.iosxtools.com)) who released the software much earlier. Rip-off?

[https://twitter.com/iosxtools/status/520805785966637056/phot...](https://twitter.com/iosxtools/status/520805785966637056/photo/1)

<comment><AUTHOR> As more and more DB OSX App we development & release ,some user hope use all-in-one database platform app instead of a single APP. if we submit dbappx to appstore by iosxtools apple account,apple may reject it because app section repeat.so we use other account release it temporary.

thanks your eye!</comment></comment>


Lisp macros for C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eudoxia0/cmacro <comment><USER2> > Why? Because a language without macros is a tool: You write applications > with it. A language with macros is building material: You shape it and grow > it into your application.

Very nice! If only this could work with C++.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very interesting way to breathe new life into C. I can already think of few places where powerful macros would come in handy and eliminate some pains. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I'd want to read other people's low- level code sprinkled with high-level constructs. Perhaps Nim would serve this purpose better?

<comment><USER4> > I'm not sure if I'd want to read other people's low-level code

Write-only languages, yay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> TIL: You can use typeof(expr) as a type in variable declarations. C has type inference! A plain old C macro like

        #define AUTO(var, expr) typeof(expr) var = expr

might be handy sometimes.

<comment><USER6> `typeof()` is a common compiler extension, not standard C. (C++11 irritatingly standardized it as `decltype()`).

<comment><USER7> > [...] irritatingly [...]

Or correctly; it is so common and so different (and incomplete) across implementations, so a new name with the exact semantics has been invented [1].

[1] [http://www.stroustrup.com/C++11FAQ.html#decltype](http://www.stroustrup.com/C++11FAQ.html#decltype)

<comment><USER6> I understand the reasoning, I just think it's wrong. The point of a standard is to, well, standardize. And each new version of the standard breaks plenty of existing (and strictly standards-compliant!) code, often intentionally.

Now a type deduction operator is never going to come to standard C because any proposal will get buried under endless bikeshedding about whether to call it `typeof()` or `decltype()`.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure about C++, but C tries pretty hard _not_ to break code that complies with a previous standard unless it's absolutely necessary, and they put some effort into avoiding breaking common extensions too.

This is why, for example, the language-level boolean type introduced in C99 is `_Bool`, and then you can include a standard header that will typedef it to `bool`. Identifiers that begin with an underscore and an uppercase letter are reserved for the implementation, so no compliant code will be using _Bool anywhere for itself. And since old code won't include `stdbool.h`, there's no conflict if it happens to define its own `bool`.

Given this, it seems like the best approach would be to call it `_Typeof` or similar, with a standard header that does `#define typeof(x) _Typeof(x)` to make it nicer to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing. The documentation is well done, looking forward to checking out the code.

</comment><comment><USER10> This way of adding metaprogramming to C does not improve performance. The compiler will still be unable to inline the comparisons in the qsort example. C++ will continue to be much faster.

<comment><USER11> It does. It's just no one has come around to write a qsort in macros yet. (And only then the comparison would be fair)</comment></comment>


How McSema Handles C++ Exceptions - <AUTHOR> https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/01/21/how-mcsema-handles-c-exceptions/ <comment><USER2> In case you were also unable to figure out from context exactly what McSema is: [https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema](https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema)

 _> McSema is an executable lifter. It translates ("lifts") executable binaries from native machine code to LLVM bitcode._

<comment><USER3> Once you lifted the code to LLVM, you can do some interesting things, like fuzzing with libFuzzer: [https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema/blob/master/docs/Using...](https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema/blob/master/docs/UsingLibFuzzer.md)

<comment><USER4> Depending on the situation it may be simpler to just use AFL's qemu mode.</comment></comment></comment>


Tolkien's Guide to Contemporary Politics - <AUTHOR> https://unherd.com/2019/04/what-tolkien-teaches-us-about-power/ <comment><USER2> Best line: "I'm not saying that Mark Zuckerberg is Sauron, just that the business model of Mordor isn't entirely unknown in Silicon Valley."</comment>


Buell is Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.buell.com/en_us/

<comment><USER2> I hate to be the one to say it, I know I'm not supposed to, but...

How is this Hacker News? I didn't even know what "Buell" was until I clicked on the link. Are most american hackers motorcycle afficionados? Is Buell a super-important brand in the US, like Michael Jackson? Does this have an impact on start-ups? Was this Buell company a haven for hacker minds? Is this intellectually gratifying? I can't quite fathom why this got posted here.

Edit: instead of downvoting, please do explain. I'm clearly missing some essential bit of hacker culture here.

<comment><USER3> Well, I think it's more related to HN from an engineering/innovation standpoint than the Tiger Woods earns $1B article that circulated here last week. I was downvoted and told to see the "rules" to a site I've been visiting for ~2 years.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=862601>

I think it's just a matter of growth and therefore dilution.

<comment><USER4> it looks to me like news.yc doesn't ever suffer from "dilution." the editors are very active, they'd kill this in a heartbeat if they thought it was off- topic. it could still happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is especially surprising given the new high production value ads they've been rotating on TV and online. Sad to see them go as well, I hope Erik continues to innovate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Buell has always made amazing bikes, pretty hard to compete with the cheaper japanese bikes though but they always seemed to offer something a little more unique and different than their japanese counterparts.

I'm sad to see them go.

</comment><comment><USER7> With this comes opportunity.

I hope he goes on to create a new motorcycle brand.

</comment><comment><USER8> The brand, not the man.

<comment><USER9> even though it certainly looks like he has taken a hard hit.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A great (and now tragic) story of one man's vision to take on the world, create a great product, become absorbed into a gigantic corporation and then cast aside when times get tough.</comment>


Show HN: Stencil – Simple code templating for Go - <AUTHOR> https://www.laddoo.net/p/stencil <comment><USER2> My question is: do we really need to complicate tools to replace a language missing feature that someone keep telling we don't need? Does it really worth it? I'm not against the author, his work is amazing! I'm just pointing out that we are here, writing "language patches" that's shouldn't exists at all...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really really cool!

As an aside though, I feel like we need some protocol for on-save junk. GoImports, GoFmt, Stencil, ... all are trying to implement a bunch of functionality on save.

Is there a good way to handle this? Both GoImports and Stencil implement GoFmt _(I believe)_ , what's a better way to do this?

<comment><USER4> On-save should support unix-style pipe-lining. That's the time tested pattern. I guess it depends on which editor you use.

<comment><USER5> You mean piping into editors? I'm working on something related; most editors don't handle cursor repositioning very well when you dumbly refresh the content without going through editor-specific APIs.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A hiring platform that makes you passive income using referral trees - <AUTHOR> https://earncarrots.com?ref=WjS0yb <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. As a software engineer in the Bay Area, I've become increasingly aware that my network is tremendously valuable, but that value only materializes under rare, ad hoc circumstances: one-off referrals, founding, and funding. With that in mind, I decided to develop a product that realizes the value of your network in a consistent and material way.

I built a hiring platform for software engineers where we'll not only pay you a percentage of our recruiting fee when someone you refer gets a job, but we'll also keep paying you when the person you refer, refers others who get hired. Your referral tree is infinite, so by referring just a few people, you can generate a significant amount of passive income.

The referral model is relatively straightforward, and you can check out the algorithm here: [https://repl.it/repls/WrithingReflectingTrigger](https://repl.it/repls/WrithingReflectingTrigger). We've allocated a fixed percentage of our recruiting fee to referrers of any degree. A first-degree referral earns 13.33% of our recruiting fee, and each subsequent degree of separation earns half the amount of the prior degree (e.g., 2nd degree = 6.67% of recruiting fee, 3rd degree = 3.33% of recruiting fee, and so on).

You can learn more on our site ([https://earncarrots.com?ref=WjS0yb](https://earncarrots.com?ref=WjS0yb) \-- query string because it's invite-only) and play around with our calculator to see how much income you can make! I'm posting here hoping to get feedback from the community, so please let me know what you think and what you'd like to see to make it better.</comment>


Huawei Seeks Independence from the US with RISC-V and Ascend Chips - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/huawei-risc-v-ai-processors-ascend-us,40238.html <comment><USER2> What do they expect. The US tariff wall and embargo is essentially a subsidy that encourages local development. Without it it's cheaper to continue to depend on US controlled designs. Essentially low tariffs make it hard for local industries to get themselves above the price floor.

These parts aren't much to get excited abOUT _today_ but they've finally given China a reason to subsidize local efforts, resulting in the long term with an ecosystem that can take off the us design giants.

<comment><USER3> "Essentially low tariffs make it hard for local industries to get themselves above the price floor."

This applies to both countries.

<comment><USER2> The point is that it's asymmetrical. The US produces high value products (high tech bearings, specialized software), stuff whose value is lower than the cost of transport (paper) and extractive goods (mining and agriculture). Other countries are more competitive on the low end stuff.

Look at electronics: yes, China has tons of people building phones, but Chinese companies get about $20 on each iPhone; other parts of the supply chain get dribs and drabs and Apple pockets a couple of hundred bucks, almost all of the profit. trying to do all that in the US wouldn't add much to the GDP and conversely would take people away from working on higher value goods. So for a wealthy country the tariffs not only don't help, they hurt.

Conversely US restrictions raise the value of Chinese companies working their own way up the value chain. Before those restrictions were in place it simply wasn't worth designing, say, a new chip; that takes a long time and while you're doing so other companies are smoking you by selling low cost chips designed elsewhere. Essentially the US was sucking the oxygen out of their competitor's market...but these tariffs stop that.

It's the same principle of why the US wouldn't want its NATO partners spending too much on defense: essentially bribing them to not have much military is cheaper than getting entangled in a future war on the continent. Again, trying to pressure them to spend more is a very expensive move in the medium and long term.

<comment><USER3> I would not describe any situation that results in perpetual bribery to stave off war ideal. That's extremely unfair to the American taxpayer. I would much rather spend that money on our own military so that we can have peace through strength. What you propose makes the American worker a slave to the rest of the world in an aims to appease them into not competing. That is ridiculous in my opinion as companies like Huawei prove that the competition is already here. Second, how are we ever going to compete when we keep sending them the designs for our latest gadgets? We're giving away the IP in exchange for cheap labor again at the expense of the American worker. China is going to be a major player in the next century and we had best prepare.

<comment><USER2> Why would that unfair to the American taxpayer? Making sure a war you want doesn't happen saves those taxpayers' lives (and money).

And in the Nato and Japanese case the "bribe" is paid in kind: you get what you are asking for (the US builds up its military and provides a security guarantee; those countries don't have to waste money on military expenditures and in exchange get a higher standard of living than the US). I suppose that's peace through strength.

> Second, how are we ever going to compete when we keep sending them the > designs for our latest gadgets?

Sounds like the arguments against free software (AKA Open Source) I heard in the 80s and 90s.

The American worker isn't going to build these low margin products anyway; the design is where all the margin is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem is that while RISC-V may deliver an excellent open ISA, there is no equivalent open solution for the GPU/display controller side. As I understand it, the GPU world is full of patents and dominated by just a few parties. I don't think there's something that Huawei or other Chinese manufacturers could easily start with and extend.

So I can see RISC-V being ideal for applications that are not user facing or don't require fancy graphics -- servers, network hardware, microcontrollers, etc. But it would be a tough call to put one in a phone, tablet, or laptop.

<comment><USER5> Let's be real, the Chinese have been stealing technology right and left for years. Losses number between $225 and $600 billion per year [0]. One in five companies has had its technology stolen [1]. They will just steal the tech. Or maybe they'll decide it's easier to work with AMD (they're already doing it on the CPU side [2]).

This is not popular to say, but it is accurate and my statements are sourced. Feel free to provide rebutting evidence if you disagree.

[0]: [https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/23/technology/china-us- trump-t...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/23/technology/china-us-trump- tariffs-ip-theft/index.html)

[1]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say- china-s...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-stole- their-ip-within-the-last-year-cnbc.html)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%E2%80%93Chinese_joint_vent...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD%E2%80%93Chinese_joint_venture)

<comment><USER6> The methodology in the US study seem to suggest that Chinese are inable to do anything on their own and any technology that US company have that somehow China also got, is ALL counted as stolen.

That's a very fun verdict

<comment><USER7> Especially since China is the number one scientific country in terms of number of published papers and e.g are the leaders in nuclear fission and AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More like "Huawei seeks to survive in the future in spite of the US squeezing them. They want to believe these other chips will let them do that."

I don't understand the tech well enough to know how much of a fairy tale or hope and a prayer strategy this is. But calling it "seeks independence" is some incredibly positive spin which makes me suspicious of the claims.

If these other chips are so good, wouldn't you go ahead and migrate to them for the actual benefits rather than researching them as a backup plan?

<comment><USER9> Software.

There's tremendous inertia in apps which is what gave x86 an effective monopoly in the 90'es, even when superior options were available (hello Alpha). Today the situation is actually better and with RISC-V having the same memory model as Arm, porting from an Arm version is way easier (Neon code not withstanding) but it's obviously way less attractive than running running existing code.

<comment><USER10> > Today the situation is actually better and with RISC-V having the same > memory model as Arm, porting from an Arm version is way easier (Neon code > not withstanding)

It's really not any different today than it was. The memory model being similar is kinda nice, but you still need to convince the world to compile for another arch. And you need to make a CPU good enough to justify the recompile and ongoing multi-arch maintenance.

<comment><USER9> IMO it's hugely different, at least in the server space. In the 90'es _all_ servers ran on proprietary platforms (OSes and micro-architectures). To succeed with an alternative, you had to convince your OS vendor (Microsoft, Sun, ...) to port. The most famous attempt Windows NT (ran on x86, PowerPC, Alpha, and possibly more), but the effort fizzled.

Today, the _MAJORITY_ of servers run Linux, even on Microsoft cloud platform, and a significant part of that is using primarily open source (eg. "LAMP"). If, say, RHEL supports your platform, it's fairly easy for most to move.

Yes, it's not easy to migrate, but it is _way_ easier than it used to be. Now, non-server application is a different story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So there are basically 2 possibilities.

It is possible for Huawei, and Chinese companies in general, to build a successful alternative without using American technology (for the purposes of this post, I'm defining successful as equivalent to their American tech using competitors).

It's not possible.

What the actions on Huawei have done, however, is ensure that if that possibility exists, very significant chunks of Chinese resources will be devoted to finding it.

It appears China had decided this wasn't completely necessary, and were happy to rely on Americans for software, and core hardware. But that is obviously not true anymore, and the biggest long term effect of these actions are Chinese state resources being poured into directly combating and threatening American tech's competitive position.

And seeing that the tariffs and capricious action has not been limited to China, it won't even be surprising if some other nations join in to help, especially from the EU and/or India and Korea.

<comment><USER12> It also shows how short sighted USA is with this. They've given China incentive to reduce their reliance on the US and give the US less leverage overall. China may set a damaging precedent here with regard to US power

<comment><USER13> > China may set a damaging precedent here with regard to US power

I'd say precedent was set when congress blocked China from joining the ISS, leading to China developing its own space station program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think that RISC-V has a long way to go to be actually competitive with ARM on a IPC basis. Although it is great to have more competition in the market I believe that this is more of a 5-10 year goal rather than distinctly near term.

<comment><USER15> RISC-V is an instruction set - I think you're confusing that particular implementations of RISC-V (of which there are few yet)

<comment><USER14> But none of them are competitive at all on an IPC basis right?

Don't get me wrong, I would love a RISC-V chip that is competitive with the ARM chips in smartphones but I think we are quite aways away from it for the time being.

RISC-V is most successful as microcontrollers who do not have to be state-of- the-art fast, they just have to work reliably.

<comment><USER16> BOOM is close to Ivy Bridge IPC in one benchmark. [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~celio/](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~celio/)

<comment><USER17> Using MHz as a divisor really benefits BOOM and extrapolating from IPC makes some assumptions regarding the future ability of the chip to scale to similar frequencies as Intel's product line.

Assuming the best performing BOOM chip refers to the 2018 HotChips tapeout, that chip operated at 1.0 GHz. The lowest speed Ivy Bridge Core/Pentium (a design getting close to a decade old, FWIW) was 2.5 GHz. This means on a core- to-core basis Ivy Bridge is 2.7x more performant. This ignores the benefit of the additional core count of the Core series of Ivy Bridge procs.

Today's 9900K is also around 40% more performant than the comparable Ivy Bridge (4960X). That would suggest the performance gains modern Intel design holds over BOOM is closer to 3.8x on a core-to-core basis.

Being within an order of magnitude performance-wise is impressive given that BOOM is mainly a one-man show. That said, having about a quarter of Intel's present chips' performance doesn't strike me as particularly "close".

<comment><USER16> IPC means "instructions per cycle," so it's correct to divide the scores by frequency. Totally agree that in total performance, no realized BOOM chip comes close to mainstream Intel chips. I think Chris is working at Esperanto Technologies ([https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/);](https://www.esperanto.ai/technology/\);) hopefully, they upstream performance improvements to the BOOM open-source repo.

<comment><USER17> I understand and I appreciate the test from an intellectual standpoint. But the IPC definition is orthogonal to meaningful performance benchmarking when I can't get real world equivalent clock frequencies of each processor type.

<comment><USER17> @Taniwha - I can't reply to you directly because we're so deep, thread-wise.

I appreciate and understand the discussion around IPC and how BOOM is a significant improvement on the state of the craft. I cut my early programming teeth by developing PPC and SPARC versions of my business' embedded software products. I'm a longtime fan of alternative architectures and keep up with the industry through attendance at events such as Hot Chips. I am familiar with the terminology here and am not disputing it or the findings of the benchmark.

My point was that using IPC in this way obfuscates how far these architectures have yet to go to be competitive in certain markets. Said market competitiveness was the original discussion topic up-thread.

<comment><USER18> You can always click on the timestamp of a comment to got the comment permalink and reply from there.

<comment><USER17> That didn't seem to work at the time but both options are now available. Too late to delete and re-post, regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's hard to speculate what's going to happen in the end with the tech industry when there is turmoil - there are too many factors and actors at play.

But, I, for one, enjoy watching it tremendously (it's like "soaps" for us tech folk).

</comment><comment><USER20> Imagine the irony if Huawei turns into an open source company that is the best option for user privacy.

Just by going with RISC-V they eliminate the issues with the Intel management engine.

I'm curious what Huawei will do next.

<comment><USER21> That seems... unlikely.

<comment><USER22> Does it? Their first arm doc was extremely open.

It is often used by academics for researching really low level stuff.

<comment><USER23> Their history with android is very poor. Their phones are next to impossible to physically open and they offer no way to unlock the bootloader but there are individuals who will charge you a fee to have the bootloader unlocked using their exploits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if this will contribute to the world having RISC-V laptops sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER25> Why would we want RISC-V on laptops?

<comment><USER26> Maybe it won't contain a vendor "management engine".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Claims...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Claims_that_ME_is_a_backdoor)

<comment><USER27> Maybe, but I doubt it. It's there to support a bunch of features that companies want (eg. remote management, trusted computing, etc.). The reason why the consumer version has it is that most consumers don't mind, and having a seperate sku with it disabled/not present would cost extra. This won't change with RISC-V. You might be able to get a low performance part without it, but all the mainstream (ie. high performance) parts will have it.

<comment><USER28> Intel has a huge variety of different models. They are experts in market segmentation. They could do that. But they won't, and there are few who could do that.

With RISC-V, it is reasonable to expect multiple vendors to provide CPUs. There is a very good case to expect non-backdoored chips.

<comment><USER27> >Intel has a huge variety of different models. They are experts in market segmentation. They could do that. But they won't, and there are few who could do that.

That's true, but the way they do that is in a way that requires minimal changes. In terms of the management engine, that means not including AMT module (software) but keeping the rest of the ME (hardware). After all, it also does some essential things like power management and the bootloader. Removing it completely would also mean re-implementing the essential functionality.

The best you can hope for if you want to use mainstream parts is something like me cleaner where the management engine is only there for the boot, but is disabled afterwards. Something without an management engine would certainly possible, but would be limited to niche products like the librem.

<comment><USER28> > Something without an management engine would certainly possible, but would > be limited to niche products like the librem.

I don't share this forecast. I think many private customers would view a machine without the ME and it's capabilities as a plus for a product when the marketing is done right. Especially since most don't care for the capabilities.

<comment><USER27> >I don't share this forecast. I think many private customers would view a machine without the ME and it's capabilities as a plus for a product when the marketing is done right

A lot of people say they value privacy, but when push comes to shove, they'll willingly trade privacy for convenience and cost. See: any facebook/instagram user, or iOS users who use google maps. iOS/Mac is marketed as _the_ private phone/computer, but their market share shows how little consumers are willing to pay a premium for privacy (except in the US where iOS share is surprisingly high). You can try to convince consumers otherwise, but in truth, a management engine with backdoors/0days isn't really applicable to most consumers' threat model. The risks from social engineering attacks or unpatched software is a much greater threat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there a comparison between RISC-V and Power? IBM recently published the POWER instruction set.

</comment><comment><USER30> I looked for MindSpore and only found references to MindSpore Studio. Anyone have a link to a git repo and docs? I saw that it also supports CPUs in addition to their custom hardware.

TensorFlow and Keras have such a large first mover advantage, the custom chips and MindSpore would have to be very efficient and inexpensive to make real inroads.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is it just me or does this read like copypasta from a Chinese -> English translated press release?

From TFA:

 _In a similar vein, Huawei has launched MindSpore, a development framework for AI applications in all scenarios. The framework aims to help with three goals: easy development, efficient execution and adaptable to all scenarios. In other words, the framework should aid to train models at the lowest cost and time, with the highest performance per watt, for all use cases._

 _Another key design point of MindSpore is privacy. The company says that MindSpore doesn't process the data itself, but instead "deals with gradient and model information" that has already been processed._

</comment><comment><USER32> I am glad to have lower prices and more healthy competition

</comment><comment><USER33> By moving away from ARM, mostly designed in the UK and with Japanese owners? Sounds like they're really just seeking general independence.

<comment><USER18> The ARM that is following US sanctions against Huawei due to its large presence in the US and reliance on what it says is "U.S.-origin technology"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Whenever I hear the horrors of the tradewar in a positive light, I wonder if this is the Russian propagandists in action.

How can war be good? Delighting in the suffering of everyone?

<comment><USER35> Every 'war' that is not actually involving bloodshed can be good, because competition has been the spur of amazing human endeavors throughout history. Sometimes people need motivation to try something hard...</comment></comment>


Embrace Losing, It Will Make You Stronger  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/11/25/embrace-losing/ <comment><USER2> I knew this was a recycled blog post: <http://www.cloudave.com/1720/embrace- losing/></comment>


Ask PG: Do you think the YC Model could scale to other industries? - <AUTHOR>

Do you think the YC-Model could be applied to other industries, such as providing resources and seed funding for the bealthcare or biotech industries. <comment><USER2> Only in industries where you could get started cheaply. It might work for bands, for example. I doubt it would work for biotech.

<comment><USER3> It would work in the direct response/infomercial market. I can't imagine that products like the Snuggie or ShamWow took a lot to develop, and they've brought in millions. I guess the YC in this field would be Telebrands, run by AJ Khubani.

Biotech's problem is the length and cost associated with FDA regulation. Anytime there are political barriers in place to prevent you from selling directly to the consumer (whether it is justified or not), it's not something you can do without heavy financial support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some of my family works at biotech startups, and if their experience is at all representative, I would guess it wouldn't work in that area. The kinds of people who are best placed to start them are usually people who have access to some sort of research that has already demonstrated at least plausibility, but not yet been scaled up and commercialized. The alternative, doing blue-skies research in the startup itself, is expensive and risky, since it can take years for things to come through.

The ones I know of are almost all spinoffs from academic research, where a few professors who have something that works in the lab join up with a few people from industry to work on scaling up to industrial volumes and with industrial processes: dealing with somewhat less precise and less sterilized equipment than the stuff used in a lab, getting yield rates up, automating anything that requires human babysitting, etc. They usually already have the connections they need, and aren't in a financial position where $20k would make much difference either way, so the two main YC benefits wouldn't do much in this setting.

</comment><comment><USER5> Aren't the costs to get to a minimum viable product in those markets much higher than in web applications / software development ?

<comment><USER6> It is and that's probably the biggest reason the model works well for internet media. It's cheap to create, test and deploy.

Sometimes even traditional markets such as Healthcare could use web innovations to suite their bottom line. i.e. Health care registry, patient filing systems, etc.

<comment><USER5> $20K worth of investors money might get you to the point where you have the functional requirements of a health care registry or a patient filing system specc'd out, you will still have to go through all kinds of regulatory stuff, make sure that you abide by the law wrt to who has access to which bits of data and so on.

By the time you have it built you're well in to the 100's of thousands of $.

Just to find the expertise is going to cost a bundle.

<comment><AUTHOR> For medical devices, $20k might get a small team to prototype stage. There are a few "simple" medical devices that were developed to prototype level with minimal cash.

I work on EEG systems, and the prototype and related equipment costs less than $10k.

From what I've read, more than a few YC-backed companies get funding soon after demo day.

<comment><USER5> Neat! Yes, that sort of thing I can see it work for, but it had better be very simple and not have to pass too many regulatory tests and clinical trials or you'd be talking about different quantities of cash pretty soon.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A mobile application to deploy a personal VPN server in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zudvpn/ZudVPN <comment><AUTHOR> ZudVPN

A mobile application to deploy a personal VPN server in the cloud (DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP, Azure and others) with DNS ad-blocking and other features

Features

\- Deploys a VPN server to major Cloud Providers (DigitalOcean only, others coming soon)

\- Connects to Cloud Providers using OAuth2 or an existing API token

\- Uses IKEv2 IPSec-based VPN service (strongSwan)

\- Sets up an ad-blocking DNS resolver (Pi-hole) \- Installs VPN profile with SSL/TLS certificate (Signed by Let's Encrypt)

\- Uses native VPN client

\- Contains a xterm.js-based Terminal for SSH connection to the server (Experimental)</comment>


The effects of growing up with an extremely common name - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/978760/popular-baby-names-the-psychology-of-growing-up-with-an-extremely-common-name/ <comment><USER4> Slightly uncommon perspective: As a trans woman I recently had to pick a new first name.

I think my previous first name was well chosen by my parents. It was a name that was more common in the generation before me. That meant everyone knew the name, I didn't get asked how to spell it and no one looked confused when I said it, but also I was always the only Y in the room. I have literally never met another Y my age in my life.

I didn't actually spend a very long time picking a new name. I wanted one that fitted a few pretty precise criteria and there wasn't many left to choose from. It has however ended up that my new name is quite common for women my age. Last weekend I was at a party and there were 3 other Ys out of 20 people.

I've thought about the change from a well known but rare name, to a well known and common name quite a lot. I have noticed that often trans people go one of two ways; pick a super common name because they want to fit in with their peers as much as possible, or they choose a really super unique name as as way of expressing themselves.

Being called my new name is still relatively new to me (coming up to one year full time, three part time). I still am alerted a lot more by people saying my old name than my new one. I wonder if this will ever change as the only time I hear my old name now is when talking about my past, which means that label is still exclusively for me. Whereas I hear my new name being used to refer to loads of different people all the time.

Lots of my friends have said they find it odd to think what name they would pick if they were to pick one of the opposite gender.

Interesting anyway :-)

<comment><USER4> Another point: I used to be ungoogleable as I shared my full name with a fairly well known celebrity. I am now at the top of Google's results if I google my new name. Not quite sure what to make of that...

<comment><USER5> It wasn't Michael Bolton, was it?

<comment><USER4> No it wasn't! :-)

Michael is a common boy's first name for my generation where I'm from. There was two in my primary school class, two in my secondary school year and I was once in a band with two at the same time!

<comment><USER6> My name is Michael. There's always at least one other Michael in any large enough group of people.

Usually that guy goes by "Mike", though, so I try to insist on being called "Michael". I honestly don't recognize "Mike" as being my name, which is confusing when people who want to seem friendly shorten my name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People obsess too much about telling the world how unique they are. I think that uniqueness only really counts when something stands behind it and does not work as a thing in itself. That's why having a relatively uncommon foreign name is a conversation starter - it signifies a difference in background, upbringing, experiences. At the same time a unique name chosen by the parents for the sole purpose of being different does not carry much with it, does it now? "Oh, your name is SpecialSnowflake2005 because you parents wanted to give you a uniquely identifiable name? That's nice I guess."

<comment><USER8> _People obsess too much about telling the world how unique they are._

People also obsess too much about telling the world which groups they are a member of.

<comment><USER9> Yep - I don't care about the frat or college sticker on the back of a car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I experience the opposite. I have the Irish name 'Cathal' which isn't very well known outside of Ireland. I've spent the past year in the US and every time I'm introducing myself to someone I hesitate and mentally prepare for the 'wait what?' after I tell them my name.

It's common here for restaurants and cafes to ask for your name when ordering, and often I'll make up a more common name for myself to avoid the hassle spelling out and explaining 'Cathal' to the cashier.

Having a unique name does however create an interesting talking point when talking to a new person, and it seamlessly opens up a discussion about my background and origins after introducing myself.

<comment><USER11> I grew up with an extremely rare _last_ name. According to forebears.io, only 156 people in the world have my original last name. It's an obscure variant of a surname that's only slightly more common (forebears.io tells me that just over 19k people have it, which is still pretty low), and both are variant forms of an ethnic slur.

To say it affected me negatively is an understatement. Nobody could spell it right, and nobody could pronounce it right. It made me feel like a freak because I was the only person I knew who had to spell their last name when giving it to people. And they _still_ got it wrong. I've had my name misspelled on important documents, such as my lease and my electric bill. I hated the last name I was born with with the fury of a thousand exploding suns.

Before I accepted that I was both trans and aromantic, I used to fantasize about getting married to a woman with a common last name like "Smith", taking my wife's last name, and giving the finger to anyone who tells me that a man shouldn't take his wife's name.

Of course, I eventually came to accept the fact that a) I'd be much happier as a woman and really don't want to be a man and b) the idea of getting married or even being in any kind of romantic relationship actively disgusts me, so that fantasy went away and was replaced by a newer, more plausible fantasy, one that I eventually fulfilled: transitioning to female and legally changing my entire name.

One of the hardest parts of my transition was choosing a new last name. My first name came easy, and while it took me a while to settle on a middle name, I was solely concerned with aesthetics for that one. But my new last name had to be _perfect_. It needed to have no variant spellings or variant pronunciations, it needed to be monosyllabic, it couldn't give away my ethnicity (I was sensitive about my old surname being a slur), it needed to be common, and I needed to like the sound of my initials (my initials were the only thing I ever liked about my deadname). It took me ages to find one. I even considered Korean surnames (particularly "Park"), because Korean was a language isolate (cognates are the biggest sources of variant spellings, and language isolates have no cognates), all Korean surnames are monosyllabic, and I liked that it would totally mislead people as to my ethnicity, but I eventually rejected them. Eventually, I relaxed my definition of "common": instead of requiring it be common as a last name, I'd also accept names of common household objects. And then I stumbled on the perfect surname, which also happened to be the literal English translation of my mother's maiden name, so I still had some kind of family connection without being obviously ethnic. While it's not super common as a last name (only 24k people according to forebears.io), it has an advantage in that it's one of the most common household objects you can think of: Book. If someone _does_ mishear my name (and I _have_ had people mishear it as "Brook", "Brooks", or "Buck"), all I have to say is "it's like the thing you read".

You have no idea how happy I am now that I'm not saddled with that awful last name I was born with. All those awful feelings went away as soon as I walked out of the courtroom with the signed court order for my name change. I'm actually proud of my last name now.

My name is Amy Jessica Book, and I _love_ my name, which was something I was never able to say before mid-2014.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of my first and middle names: my old and new first names were roughly as common for my birth year in the US (two places apart) and both in the top 20, and my new middle name is _much_ more common than my old one ("Jessica" is the 2nd most common girls' name for my birth year, and my old middle name didn't even crack the top 200 boys' names). Funny thing is that my old middle name is technically gender-neutral, but I've only ever even _heard_ of one woman with that name, and she's a famous actress. It's also more common as a last name than as a first name, thanks to a certain astronaut. I like having common first and middle names. I don't want to stand out, and I like the anonymity that having very common first and middle names give me. I have to admit that I _did_ consider "Sunset" as my middle name, because I liked the dichotomy of having a really common first name and an ultra-rare middle name, but I'm glad I made the choice I did (if only because AJB looks much nicer than ASB; I can even write the former as a ligature). "Amy Book" is even ungooglable, since googling it returns a ton of results for "Amy's book".

<comment><USER12> I too have a very rare last name. It doesn't even register in forebears.io (just using the simple search bar).

Having to explain it's "sleep without one 'e'" and instruct people how to pronounce it every time is something that got annoying, but am used to it now.

On the flip side, it's very easy to pick out relatives in a sea of names.

<comment><USER13> I've got a last name with about 900 people on forebears, the problem with mine though is that there are three groups(maybe families? I'm not sure) who all pronounce it differently(I happen to be in the least common basket). Correcting people on the pronounciation has been heavily ingrained in me but every once in a while I run into someone who is quite certain I'm saying my name incorrectly. Grar!

Sidenote, how do you say slep?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like to think that everyone thinks that the grass is greener on the other side.

In my case, I have never been 'average' or 'normal', and I always envied the Sarahs and Johns of the world. Then I realized that often 'normal' people really want to be unique, and those born 'unique' really want to be average.

Besides my mom, nobody really uses my real name - Leonardo - and I am very vocal to correct everyone to use the more natural "Leo". As for my last name, which has two parts separated with a space due to how Spanish last names work, I usually avoid writing the accents and provide only the first one.

All of that doesn't mean that I am ashamed of my name, which I adore. I just want to assimilate and make other people comfortable. In the words of Abed, from community:

"When you know who you are and what you like about yourself, changing for other people isn't such a big deal."

<comment><USER15> At least people can pronounce your name.

There are, I'm sure, many brown/Asian HN users reading this thread, cringing at the days when teachers would do roll call, or on a daily basis annoyed at introductions taking 5 minutes longer than they would with a "normal" sounding name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am eternally grateful that googling my first and last name returns pages and pages of links _not_ about me.

<comment><USER17> :-(

      - <USER2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a moderately uncommon last name (1400 in the world, according to forebears.io.)

By having my lastname @gmail.com, I've met lots of people with the same name who erroneously give out my gmail address as their contact information. At first this was kind of annoying, but now its become just amusing. I've gotten people's internet / cell / rv / NRA membership info sent to the address, and they are normally grateful when I reach out to them to ask them to correct it.

<comment><USER19> I also have firstname.lastname@example.com and get a fair amount of email intended for email@example.com addresses. Quite amusing sometimes, though sometimes annoying if it's a reply-all thread whose participants can't figure out how to remove me from.

Having a very rare/globally unique name makes for a very different experience of online exposure than most people. If your name is shared by even a few dozen people, your identity online is at the very least muddled in a bit with information about other people.

In my case, if you google my name I'm the only non-historical person you'll find. This has been a pain point in the past with 'real name' policies in online communities. For people named, say, Alex Smith, having their real name attached to a post online allows them to remain pseudo-anonymous, whereas my real name easily reveals much more about me. Mostly I've just embraced it and just make sure that I control the first page of profiles you find if you google my name, but it can be annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see our names as unique addresses for our identities and I feel lucky that I share my name with only one other person in the United States. I want people to find me when they google my name and not that other person. I enjoy googling my name and finding nothing but search results referring to myself.

My brother, a choreographer and filmmaker, has the same first+last name as a lawyer in DC and they compete for search results. In recent years, my brother has begun branding himself as first+middle+last name to distinguish himself from that lawyer.

If you are concerned about privacy, then having a common name may provide you some benefit, but if you are concerned about your own personal brand, then having a unique first+last name identifier is hugely beneficial.

<comment> le-mark I like this idea of name as a unique identifier, but it really breaks down given the limited number of names. For example if there are 1,000 possible names, then a naming system with first, middle, last would only account for 1 billion people. Certainly there may be more than 1,000 names, one could simply include the dictionary as possible names which would drastically increase the pool of addressable names. Or add a fourth name. Etc.

I feel like there's a social network concept here.

<comment><USER21> I think your underestimation is vast.

According to census data in the US alone we're looking at 5,000 unique first names (at least).

So even if we throw out the fact that there are probably upwards of 100k unique last names... combining 5,000 first middle and last name variations puts us in the range of 125 billion unique combinations _in English alone_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In this day and age of online user tracking, I'd be glad to have an extremely common name!

<comment><USER21> Yes and no, this also makes it more difficult to stand out when you want to.

I have a few friends with common names: One has to tell people that the first google result regarding a drug arrest isn't her. Another has to tell people to not google her name because it's identical to some porn star.

I have a unique name, and I'm aware of this so I only use my real name in situations where I'd be ok with it showing up on the first page of my google results. I've gained freelance clients through word of mouth and being easy to find on Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how the statistics would be for Eastern Europe. Orthodox Christians celebrate name days, it's a tradition that even the non-practicing Christians and atheists usually follow, i.e. the day associated with the saint whose name you have, or just somehow associated with your name. If you give your child a unique first name, then they don't have a name day, so it's really uncommon to give them names outside the list of several hundred traditional ones (might be even a few thousand, given all variants). On the other hand, last names have much more variation. I would say at least half of the people I know are usually called by their last name.

</comment><comment> le-mark My first name was a very common male name in my age group. I have a nephew who at one point had 3 uncles named as me; my other sisters husband, his dads brother, and myself (my other sister divorced her husband after some years). I never considered having a common name to be a thing, there are lots of common names after all, or more specifically, few names and many people.

Nowadays, Sarah is supposedly an uncommon name, we named our daughter Sarah partly because of this. I didn't realize it was so common previously, I only ever met a few Sarahs in my life.

<comment><USER24> Now you've done it!

My 11 year old daughter is named Sarah, but we just liked it. Her mother is Jennifer, and frequently tells me about how ridiculous it was to be named Jennifer in the 1970s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel a bit sorry for people whose name is TOO common. My first name is neither common (e.g. Bob) nor unique (e.g. Attila), so when I hear someone say it, chances are good that they want to talk to me.

In fact, when I meet someone who shares the same name, I almost always say, "Hello, me!" and they seem to get the joke.

My first name does have some (humorous) baggage however, which was a bit damaging psychologically growing up. Said baggage probably contributed to the name becoming rather unpopular after the mid 1960s.

<comment><USER25> Sorry, Ringo :-(

<comment> le-mark Lee? Harvey? Oswald?

<comment><USER5> I gave a big hint in another comment. FWIW, I'm quite happy my middle name is not Wayne or Duane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm a 'Joe'. Never been a problem. At work there were at most two Joe's - <USER3> an another guy. Curiously, we worked three different jobs at the same time. He must have thought I was shadowing him.

The only time I even had a Joe issue was, when working another startup with a Joe, and my son Joseph joined, we all sat in a row in one room. Folks had to say JoeC, JoeA or Joseph to get the right one!

<comment><USER27> From 3rd grade on till graduation of high school, I shared a class with a Josh. Of course, since I preferred to be Joshua and he preferred to be Josh, none of our classmates had any problems with keeping us apart. Teachers, on the other hand... well, it was funny when the French teacher decided to put the two of us next to each other and the substitute teacher got to us in roll call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I really love that Germany keeps a list of preferred given names since 1890. Ahh, good old days when your kid had the name of a Monarch or, worse, a Dictator... :D

[http://www.beliebte-vornamen.de/755-beliebte.htm](http://www.beliebte- vornamen.de/755-beliebte.htm)

<comment><USER29> Germany also has a list of allowed names. There are always some lawsuits whether it's OK to give a child a certain name or not.

<comment><USER30> > _Germany also has a list of allowed names._

There are guidelines, and it's up to the official registering the name to decide if they think it is acceptable or not, ask for additional proof, ... – if they parents disagree with them, it ends up in court, which can override.

There is not an official list of "these are _the_ allowed names", although "this name has been accepted before" is of course a strong positive signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My name wasn't popular in the 70s but became one of the most popular baby names sometime in the 90s. So I had the effect of not growing up with a common name, but my name suddenly becoming common in adulthood and suddenly heard a lot in crowds which is... disconcerting.

</comment><comment><USER32> Your name says more about your parents than it says about you.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but that's not the point — the question is about how what you're called impacts the growth of your personal outlook of life.</comment></comment>


How D-Wave Could Make Or Break Quantum Computing - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/12/30/d-wave-quantum-computing#awesm=~orwsNjKbzt2u5Q <comment><USER2> The story needs a helping of Aaronson, who's been the public face, or the focus of, this debate for 2-3 years now.

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400)

And about a zillion other blog entries. And he's recently written a fairly decent quantum computing book (and no I'm not putting in a cheesy amazon referral link, you can find it yourself)

It would be like a reasonably good general public interest story about linux that somehow avoided mentioning Linus and RMS.

Aside from that peculiarity of source selection, it was a good article.</comment>


United.com bug sent my $200 gift to the WRONG person and hung up on me - <AUTHOR> United.com has something called a "Gift Registry", where you can send a gift to someone else's registry. It's probably not a popular feature because their support reps had no idea it existed.
I tried using the registry for the first time today, and a bug in the website sent my "non refundable" gift to the wrong recipient.
Here's how to reproduce the bug:

  1. Open the United Gift Registry (link below)
  2. Type in any last name to search for their registry
  3. Open any two names in new tabs
  4. Go to the first tab you opened (Person-A)
  5. Enter payment information and click "Continue"
  6. Your gift will be sent to the WRONG person (Person-B)

 Even though the page says your recipient is Person-A, it will send your gift to the person in the second tab because there's no confirmation page.
Why this happens?
The site is built with ASP. When you open the second tab, the site saves Person-B as the recipient. If you go back to the first tab, the server has already decided Person-B is the recipient, even though the page shows Person-A is the recipient.
Since there's no confirmation page, you've just sent the non-refundable gift to the wrong person. You'll then have to spend hours trying to call, only to be hung up on when the rep has no idea what the gift registry is.
Here's the link to the United Gift Registry:
https://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/products/travelproducts/Pages/CashGiftRegistry.aspx
Here's a video in case its confusing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osNziAJ8IF0 <comment><USER2> I have met the same problem and it is good to know the reason.

After an hour call with UA, UA assistant just asked me to wait for 7 business days although I have made a second contribution to prove it is not about the time.</comment>


One of the worlds cheapest Laptop for $65 - <AUTHOR> http://androgeek.com/one-of-the-worlds-cheapest-laptop-for-65.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Androgeek+%28AndroGeek%29 <comment><USER2> Nice idea, but four hours battery time is just not enough.</comment>


Alt Text: Stupid New Domain Names and What They Really Mean for the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/06/alt-text-stupid-new-tlds/

<comment><AUTHOR> The takeaway ...

"The wave of new possible new web addresses has nothing to do, ICANN assures us, with pocketing millions of dollars from hopeful registrants. Thus, it looks like we're going to have to deal with a whole host of D-string TLDs."</comment>