Ask HN: Early Founders – Do you buy new computers for all of your employees? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> As a founder/cofounder, I wouldn't mind using my personal computer to save some investment early on.

As an employee, I would see that as a really bad sign; and would probably not feel secure about getting paid every month. If you are not able to buy a new laptop for your new employee, is it really needed to get a new employee at all?

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion, after being participant in 6 startups in my career I see the lack of good computers as a bad sign of the company. Right now, I'm doing a good product with a 2009 Mac. I can code, I can design, but the timings go up as well the frustration when the machine runs slow in some processes or it hangout itself. To resume: it sucks balls.

I don't think companies need all employees under 6-core Mac Pros with 4K monitors, but having good computers also makes the job easier and pleasant.

The day I start my own company I will impose this rule for development/design team:

1\. Fatest Macbook Pro Retina: mobility and power. 2\. 16Gb mem or higher: so mem is the least of the problems. 3\. Double monitor: work better from start, no need to watch 1 screen. 4\. Mechanical keyboard: confort, speed and healty. 5\. All machines under LAN, WiFi is slow imho.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is specifically for early-stage founders. If you haven't raised much yet, how do you deal with new employees coming in? Do you buy them new laptops? Buy refurbished macs?

</comment><comment><USER4> Good question! I'm not quite there yet, but I've got it in mind to buy all new staff members personal laptops.

A lot to think about with that though: Obviously they need to be insured against loss, theft and damage. We'd probably need some spare laptops around in case anyone is temporarily without one for any reason.

Also, I guess some 'give it back please' policy for anyone who's terminated within the first few months? And you'd probably need to commit to replacing them every year or two, or we'd be compromising productivity. It'd take a while to hammer out all these kinks. Interested to know what others do!

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're hiring employees, hopefully that means that you either have revenue or investment $. If so, I'd say yes. In my experience, most employees are excited to be using a new machine, which boosts morale.

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally I would not mind using my own machine. I think your choice of computer is a personal thing. Some like smaller more portable other like the bigger (as we all know bigger is better).

I would prefer being given $500 and being told get yourself the equipment you need be it a chair, desk, keyboard, mouse. Whet ever is going to make your life the easiest.

There is no point in having a lovely laptop if you get back troubles because your desk and chair are not up to the job.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is an easy question to answer in the form of "do it the right way if you can afford to; do what you have to if not."

As other responders have pointed out, there are various reasons it's better for the company to provide company-owned boxes, but the stakes aren't very high in the very early days. Just make sure people aren't doing stupid stuff like not having screenlocks.

</comment><comment><USER8> If they are working in your office and they don't have their own laptop, then yes.

Otherwise, it's up to you. It's a nice thing to do, but not necessary.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have contractors only and have them use their own computers. I have used company money for things like surge protectors in the office or a tablet for testing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems kind of wasteful if you're not loaded with funds. If I were an employee, I wouldn't mind using my own computer. Prefer it actually.

<comment><USER11> You're opening yourself up to some fairly significant risks. If an employee is using a computer for personal stuff, chances are that it's been pwned by a hacker or botnet, or if it hasn't already been, it could easily be. If they're using that personal machine for your development, that pwned computer means that all your source code, production deployment, possibly user data, etc. is available for the taking. A hot startup is a significantly more attractive target than an individual employee.

Now, the calculus is likely a bit different when you're just a few guys noodling around with an idea than when you have actual users or worse, customers. But if I had enough money coming into my company to fund employees, one of my first priorities would be to get them corp laptops & desktops and request that they please try to limit personal usage of those machines, particularly usage outside of the corporate firewalls. After the hundred grand or so for an employee's salary, getting them nice hardware is peanuts. And if you're taking customers' credit card information or other personal identification, you have a responsibility to them not to open that information up to any hacker who can pwn a laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes. Always. Computers are the core tool of the job, and expecting professionals to provide their own tools is like saying "hey guy, build your own business, but then give it to me when you're done".

Plus, the hassles are reduced when we (the company) own the equipment - we can set policies for how these machines are to be used, which are productive policies. We have far more control over time being wasted in the toolings phase of things - all our machines are configured the same way, so anyone can sit anywhere on these laptops, and still be functionally productive.

That said, we've had some real success with providing VM's to be used by our staff - and this means we can reduce the power-requirements on the desktop, immensely. There's something very satisfying in watching 8 people work on the same Linux Server, albeit remotely, each with their own VM ..

<comment><USER13> And when you do that, how do you justify having those people in the office?</comment></comment>


Monit Team Widthdraws Inspeqtor Takedown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-10-06-tildeslash-retraction.md

<comment><USER2> What a fun day.

Now here's the only URL you need. :-D

[https://github.com/mperham/inspeqtor/wiki#getting- started](https://github.com/mperham/inspeqtor/wiki#getting-started)

<comment><USER3> Glad to see it ended well. You got yourself some good PR too, I will definitely be considering using inspeqtor in my projects now; I didn't know about it before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This made me respect the Monit team more. Very good apology.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Background discussion from earlier today in case you missed it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416773)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not familiar with the situation here, but it's nice to see the Monit guys retracting what ended up to be a misguided takedown.

Anybody know if there was any sort of formal apology made from Monit to the people behind inspeqtor (presumably @mperham on Github)?

<comment><USER6> [https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519326759930454016](https://twitter.com/mperham/status/519326759930454016)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congratulations to Mike Perham. Sidekiq is an impressive project, I hope that Inspeqtor will follow its path and serve the needs of thousands of users in the years to come.

Now that the DMCA has been taken down, it's time to kiq some ass!

</comment><comment><USER8> The cynic in me believes that monit's DMCA takedown notice was soon to be invalidated anyway. I'm seeing this as damage control more than an honest attempt to correct their mistake.

<comment><USER9> There's no such thing as "soon to be invalidated" in DMCA, in practice anyway. It would have stretched on and on, and the takedown-issuer definitely has the advantage.

They probably did realize their legal case wasn't entirely clear, but that's not stopped plenty of companies before. They probably also realized it was really bad PR. They probably also realized it was just plain jerky behavior. And wasn't necessary for the success of their project.</comment></comment>


'Anaemic' iPhone 8 demand drags Apple shares lower - <AUTHOR> http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-apple-iphone/anaemic-iphone-8-demand-drags-apple-shares-lower-idUKKBN1CO1DP?il=0 <comment><USER2> All the bullish analysts are saying it's due to the iphone X but I'm not so sure.</comment>


Feds Eye the 'Internet of Things' as Next Frontier in Spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2499109,00.asp <comment><USER2> The 'internet of things' just leaves people that aren't tech savvy vulnerable.

Many are basically just servers plugged directly into the Internet with no security updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. It does seem to be incumbent on IoT makers/service providers/etc. to make security a core part of their product, though.</comment></comment>


Did Hacker News Censor the Nancy Pelosi Story? - <AUTHOR> I just saw a story that was at number 5 or so, it was a tweet showing Nancy pelosi's husband recently bought call options for Amazon and Facebook.
I checked out the tweet, and then as soon as I was back on Hacker News it was gone, looks like it was flagged. Was it flagged for political purposes? I've seen countless stories on Hacker News with questionable claims, which are debated in the Hacker News thread, why is this any different?
Was it squashed for political reasons? <comment><USER2> It was flagkilled: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543614)

It definitely falls more on the political side than the tech side.

<comment><USER3> Really? I don't know that the story is especially important, but it seems like plenty of other tech-related stories which are equally or more political or business focused, don't get 'flagkilled'.

Frankly, I feel like people here are often a little too quick to flag anything that they simple don't like, and it's annoying and kind of cheap.</comment></comment>


Feeling Stressed? You Might Actually Be Resting Too Much - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/feeling-stressed-you-might-actually-be-resting-too-much.html?cid=sf01001&sr_share=twitter <comment><USER2> So much rubbish is posted these days..</comment>


Bird or Frog? Freeman Dyson on the Two Types of Thinkers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-polymath-project/bird-or-frog-freeman-dyson-on-the-two-types-of-thinkers-220f8ea0211 <comment><USER2> In science I believe you have to specialize nowadays. As the sphere of known things in science grow one has to specialize more to get to the border to the unknown. Specialization has a lot of pitfalls, too, but is a good strategy to find something new.

(I'm not strictly a scientist and more of a bird though)</comment>


Ask HN: What JavaScript MVC libraries are most popular right now? - <AUTHOR>

Trying to get a better picture of the adoption rates of the various frameworks - Backbone, Angular, Ember, Batman, JavaScriptMVC, etc.
What I would love to see is a chart which somehow measures adoption rates and interest in the varying MVC frameworks graphed over time. I scoured the web and could not find anything like this.  Has anyone else found anything like this? <comment><USER2> The closest thing I've seen is this: [http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2012/08/01/rich- javascript-a...](http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2012/08/01/rich-javascript- applications-the-seven-frameworks-throne-of-js-2012/)

Doesn't give adoption rate, but it does give an idea of relative popularity as of last august.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great article (I'd read it before). I would love to see someone come with a fancy way of scanning github, twitter, etc. to find numbers to gauge the interest in each of these frameworks/libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Based on our experience working with clients at Cantina, Backbone seems to have the biggest mindshare and widest adoption. We have several active projects that are making use of it.

There has been some passing interest in Angular and Ember, but nothing concrete yet. The press on Ember for the past few months may raise more awareness.</comment>


Elon Musk testifies he's financially illiquid, court filing says - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-10-16/elon-musk-testifies-defamation-case-cave-diver <comment><USER2> > he has said he has no plans to sell any shares

That's nice. Plans change if you end up owing legal damages.

<comment><USER3> It's not quite that simple he has to file in advance in order to sell.

Saying no plans to sell means he has not filed with the SEC saying he will sell.

<comment><USER2> He doesn't have legal damages yet, so of course he hasn't filed to sell his shares at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty much non-news. If he is ruled against in the defamation lawsuit, he doesn't weasel out of paying via the "illiquid" argument. Liens can be placed against stock.

<comment><USER5> Musk's attorney had the same opinion and expressed it with the exact same words. What a coincidence!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did not know tesla stock is illiquid.

<comment><USER7> Tesla stock held by Elon Musk is most definitely illiquid for some rather reasonable interpretations of that word. As the CEO he can't just sell whenever he wants.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why any of this is an issue. He can get a loan to pay now, file a 10b5-1 to sell stock in the future and repay the load then.

<comment><USER7> It's not an issue, this is a non-story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a GoFundMe for him?

<comment><USER10> Your money can serve better causes elsewhere.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to structure a proper onboarding process for interns? - <AUTHOR> I am currently figuring out how to structure my company's HR process for fall 2020 interns. I was wondering if there's any HR managers or recruiters here on HN with experience structuring a hiring process from scratch. I am looking forward to learning more from this community! <comment><USER2> I'm not a manager, but we've had interns on our team. Our company recruits at college job fairs, but I think anyone is able to apply online. They go through an interview similar to any hiring interview.

If they are selected, then they go through 2 days of orientation with speakers talking about the opportunities at the company, what makes us a great place to work (even if we're not). Housing is provided at a local college if they are from a distant area.

During their time at the company, they will have networking events and more speakers every two weeks or so. They don't produce much output since they need to get a machine and security assigned to them as well as learn the company structure. The company views interns as a way to capture low-cost college talent in a 'try before you buy' setting - they look for potential and hard to find diversity categories while making the intern's experience easy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it okay to what company is that

<comment><AUTHOR> I am currently working with the marketing team at this real estate fintech startup called Tellus.</comment></comment>


Where are you on the global fat scale? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18770328

<comment><USER2> BMI is an utterly bogus means of determining _individual_ fitness assessments, and there's some reason to believe it's not very useful for _population_ measures of fitness.

\- Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus : [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1062684...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439)

\- Beyond BMI, Why doctors won't stop using an outdated measure for obesity : <http://www.slate.com/id/2223095/>

\- Do You Believe in Fairies, Unicorns, or the BMI? : <http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_09.html>

<comment><USER3> Dude, thanks for linking to Dr. Keith Devlin's column. Probably the only thing I read religiously in the MAA.

BMI is just one of several mistakes attributed to the great mathematician Quetelet. You can credibly implicate Quetelet for a variety of modern day statistical crimes such as profiling ( attempting to figure out if a person is a criminal based on statistical analysis of race/sex/height/etc...),"normal" age of marriage, statistical rates of divorce in different countries and their implications on fidelity, and such other sociological nonsense.

Dr. Devlin labels these things "junk math, numerological nonsense". But you can take a more charitable view - given that Quetelet practically invented both statistics & sociology ( which he called "physics of society" ), he came up with a number of formulae that seemed true at that time ( mid 1800s ). On hindsight much of this stuff is just silly mathematical manipulation ( Instead of dividing weight by square of height & multiplying by the constant 703, you can square the weight & divide by the cube root of height and put in some other constant...) If you are interested in the kind of statistics practiced in Quetelet's timeframe, here's some wacky references.

[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume...](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_1/May_1872/Quetelet_on_the_Science_of_Man)

[http://statistiks.net/wp-content/plugins/downloads- manager/u...](http://statistiks.net/wp-content/plugins/downloads- manager/upload/v0101021.pdf)

btw, much of what we do today in quant finance is suspiciously similar to what Quetelet suggests :) We build statistical "factor models" that credibly relate earnings of a company in california to the price of chicken in China :) We take a rigged number called the LIBOR & price interest rate derivatives on the spead between this rigged fixed rate & the floating rate. Then the public loses money & we scream - hey who the fuck rigged the LIBOR in the first place ?:) Talk about bootstrapping... honestly, we are no different from Dr. Quetelet. Might as well base Google's quarterly earnings on Page's BMI.

<comment><USER2> That's Dr. Dude to you.

Quetelet's work was reasonably appropriate for his time. One source I recall (cannot find it now) stated that he was looking for a rapid paper-and-pencil method for estimating aggregate troop strength. As a basic, good-enough first approximation, BMI works reasonably well. The problem is that it's now been grossly misapplied.

Quants (and economists) spend, I suspect, a lot of time chasing what turn out to be transitory relationships between various measurements. The relationships may very well be statistically valid, when first measured, but either changing real-world conditions, or, more likely in the financial world, adoption of the relationships by others seeking profits, rapidly erodes their validity.

Thanks for the links, I've got some reading for later :)

An enterprise I had some association with in the past spent some years and considerable capital trying to establish a strongly predictive relationship between a physical property and a health measurement. It turns out that there _was_ a relationship, but not one which could be reliably used to determine an accurate quantification of the health measurement. This didn't keep them from torturing the data extensively.

And Page's health _is_ in the news today: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/google-ceo-larry-pages- health-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/google-ceo-larry-pages-health-is- much-better/2011/04/07/gJQA6ohBiW_page.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really not a fan of BMI being the determining factor in obesity. At 27 BMI, I'm apparently 3 BMI away from being considered obese. As a naturally large, fairly muscular 24 year old german/irish man, I'm 6 foot 1 and weigh 205 lbs, but you can see my abs and I'm in relatively good physical condition. Is my definition of obese wrong? I always thought obese meant someone with at least a few dozen lbs of excess fat.

<comment><USER5> Invent a way of easily measuring body fat percentage, and we can do away with BMI. Until then, muscular people can simply ignore these things. BMI works well enough for the rest of the population (the vast majority of the world). If anything, normal people have the opposite problem you do. BMI tends to underestimate obesity in the general population. [http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/health/obesity-rates-maybe- wor...](http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/health/obesity-rates-maybe- worse/index.html)

<comment><USER2> A simple waist circumference measurement is more accurate than BMI at making individual assessments of obesity (> 40" ~ 100cm is bad).

A set of 3-4 tape measurements (height, neck, abdomen for men; height, neck, waist, hips for women) will give a reasonable estimate of body fat. Equipment cost, about $5. <http://www.linear-software.com/online.html>

Your observation of the weakness of BMI is that it tends to _misreport_ true body fat percentage _both_ ways. I'd hardly call that an _advantage_ of BMI.

Note that since official US government policy _defines_ obesity in terms of BMI, technically, BMI doesn't misreport obesity. What it does is fail to correspond to true body fat percentage in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER5> My point is that BMI is ridiculously easy for nearly everyone to measure.

Your point is that a better measurement can be made if everyone goes out and buys some new thing and takes some new measurement.

That seems to be in agreement with my point.

> since official US government policy defines obesity in terms of BMI, > technically, BMI doesn't misreport obesity

The US government defining something doesn't make it true.

>What it does is fail to correspond to true body fat percentage in any meaningful way.

It is very meaningful. It's much better than a random guess.

<comment><USER2> How are you positing people measure their weight and height without, you know, like, a scale, and, um, a tape measure?

As many people in the fitness/bodybuilding field will tell you, eyeball estimates of bodyfat are in fact pretty bloody accurate. If you're interested in equipment costs, I could look up eyeballs on Amazon as I did for tape measures.

<comment><USER5> Most people know their weight and height already.

And again, I agree that there are more accurate measurements, but they are all significantly more complicated. This time you are suggesting training people to visually estimate body fat percentage. That could work. But it's a heck of a lot more complicated than telling someone to type their height and weight into a website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is flawed, very flawed. I weight lift now and workout 6 days a week... in college I was a skinny 5'11" and 130. I'm not 5'11" and 186.

This is going to tell me I'm fat.

<comment><USER7> Can you see your abs? Serious question.

I hovered around 25 BMI, was muscular, thought it was silly. Everyone considered me "lean". But, no abs.

Now I can see mine, am very strong, and have a 23 BMI.

It's possible BMI effectiveness changes with height though, which would make it even worse. I'm 5'6".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This uses the body-mass index, which does _not_ measure fat. It's just a ratio of height to weight, which does not take _body composition_ into account.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is really irresponsible of the BBC to be promoting BMI as a measure of health.

I'm a Marathon runner who is apparently fatter than 99% of the world...

</comment><comment><USER10> I hate BMI too (moderately lean according to body fat, but nearly obese according to BMI).

But whether you're muscular or fat, this scale is a pretty good reminder of how well nourished we are compared to everyone else.

<comment><USER11> Speak for yourself:

"You're most like someone from DR Congo"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They messed up median and average. I'm above the global "average", but if everyone were like me, the world would lose weight!

They clearly mean I'm heavier than most people, but lighter than the average BMI. Very large people skew the average upwards.

Edit: I am wrong. See the comment below. I thought average referred to arithmetic mean.

<comment><USER2> Median _is_ an average measure. As are arithmetic mean and mode.

You're messing up "average" and "mean" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Before complaining about "wah wah that's BMI, BMI sucks" please think twice. Everybody knows it's BMI, BMI is a rough measurement of your ratio height to weight.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and_shortcomings)

"The medical establishment has acknowledged major shortcomings of BMI.[...] found that BMI-defined obesity was present in 21% of men and 31% of women. Using body fat percentages (BF%), however, BF%-defined obesity was found in 50% of men and 62% of women."

Take it as a statistical game and stop getting self conscious about it.

Note also: If you are very muscular with a crazy BMI despite no fat it's not healthy either.

<comment><USER9> No "everyone" doesn't know that BMI is discredited, the BBC should have put a huge disclaimer on it saying "these numbers are nothing to do with how healthy you are, in fact they are completely meaningless".

<comment><USER12> I like how I got downvoted. Please read everything that is on the website:

The BBC say it's an estimate, with a link on estimate leading to its definition and a disclaimer about BMI.

They never say that you are fatter or slimmer than the rest of the population but they talk about your BMI and your BMI only, just a quote:

"You have a lower BMI than 88% of males aged 15-29 in your country"

"You have a lower BMI than 54% of males aged 15-29 in the world"

I really don't see anything about weight or any scheme to make you think you're fat if you have a high BMI from the BBC like some imply in the comments. It's very funny how hyper defensive everybody gets around the BMI thing, especially the ones who don't have the "right" BMI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone else having problems with this? I've tried loading in Chrome, Safari and Firefox and each time a js is not loading and my BMI as '0'

<comment><USER14> You probably input Height in centimeters. Try inputting 1.xx (or 2.xx).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >> You're most like someone from Mongolia _

</comment><comment><USER16> I was really interested to see this data until I saw that they use the BMI; possibly the dumbest and most loudly touted measure of health. According to these numbers I am overweight, heading towards obese, and I don't think any doctor on Earth would say I was overweight if they looked at me.

</comment><comment> excuse-me Damn averages.

By moving to a city with a lot of S.E. Asian people I'm suddenly above average BMI - I need to move back to Texas.

On the other hand, all those little old Japanese women mean that the average life expectancy here is among the highest in the world - so I should live to a 100 like them</comment>


Books about Lean Software Development  - <AUTHOR> http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/8-books-to-kickstart/

<comment><USER2> I am increasingly skeptical of these "new models of software development." It sounds suspiciously like the business school jargon another article mentioned earlier today. Some key excerpts:

"This is the book you must absolutely read...It identifies and covers in depth seven fundamental lean principles: Eliminate Waste, Amplify Learning, Decide as Late as Possible, Deliver as Fast as Possible, Empower the Team, Build Integrity In and Seeing The Whole."

"Lean Software Development helps you refocus development on value, flow and people- so you can achieve breakthrough quality, savings, speed and business alignment."

Yeah, they're both from the same book, but the author chooses to start his article with them.

<comment><USER3> The quote "Knowledge, by its very nature, must be intelligible, not obscure" is wonderful (as pointed out in <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581597>).

Management ideas seem to be like skin products, if you dont understand how they work, it is likely that it is just high priced mud. (Also, they wont solve all your beauty issues, sometimes you just need to be beautiful to start with.)</comment></comment>


Happy Bob's Libtls tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bob-beck/libtls/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md <comment><USER2> Was a good tutorial and pretty easy to work though. But it seems LibreSSL really hasn't taken hold on Linux and so supporting infrastructure isn't in place. Being able to use this simple API is really enticing, but I'm not sure it's quite worth swimming against the prevailing currents.

As an aside, while searching around I found this recent in depth talk "State of LibreSSL and OpenSSL in FreeBSD":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0qxHckVA9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0qxHckVA9Y)

<comment><USER3> What is the missing Linux infrastructure? The distributions provide no LibreSSL packages and therefore there are no applications able to use libtls? Or is there more to it?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, mostly its that there are no packages, and that it doesn't seem likely to change. So any fine tuning for things like making sure keys and certificates are stored & managed per the distribution conventions, protected by selinux et. al, and all the other housekeeping things, are all left up to the application rather than getting the benefits of full distro integration.

Edit: Actually since on Linux you still need OpenSSL or a replacement to handle the actual certificates and keys anyway, maybe my concern in that area is misplaced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> libtls looks awesome, going to do the exercises to learn more. thanks for the posting.

</comment><comment><USER5> Where do I get strlcpy.c (referenced from ex0/server.c)?

<comment><USER2> If you're on Linux and compiling libtls from source[0], that repo will build an implementation of it at [1]. If your distro supplies a libbsd, you could also link to it instead of compiling a strlcpy for yourself.

[0] [https://github.com/libressl- portable/portable](https://github.com/libressl-portable/portable)

[1] libtls-standalone/compat/strlcpy.c

<comment><USER6> It's actually been added into the tutorial - if you pull it's there.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your views on writing like you speak? - <AUTHOR> I'm a long time reader of Mr. Graham and other essayists like Mr. Welch of stilldrinking.org, they are writers that I very much like reading, and they also tend to write in a very conversational manner- PG even has an essay titled "Write Like You Talk" [1].
When I reflect on the various technical books I've read over my life, I realize that the ones that I am able to get through most easily and pick up the ideas within with the least amount of friction are those written in a more colloquial manner. In fact, I often find pieces of writing that are devoid of any kind of 'voice' impenetrable, especially if their subject matter in nontrivial.
However, through all my years from childhood through college nearly every single teacher/professor I've had has wagged a finger saying "do not write like you speak" at some point. This seems to be the norm, as my younger sibling just told me about similar experiences.
I fail to see the value in intentionally writing in a way that is completely different from how you speak.
Does anyone here have opposite experiences, do more colloquial styles make things too obscure or hard/annoying to follow?
---
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html <comment><USER2> I think it's important to differentiate Conversational and Stream of Consciousness tones. Most people speak as they think of ideas which falls under Stream of Consciousness. If you write that way, you will end up with an unorganized mess full of filler words and phrases. The professors who say don't write conversationally are actually warning you not to fill your writing with the nonsense that permeates normal speech.

Paul Graham mentions taking physically awkward bits and making them sound conversational. That is the trick. Don't start with stream of consciousness and call it conversational. Start with normal writing and make it flow like a conversation.

Writing conversationally is a bit like writing dialogue. The trick it to taken written word and make it sound natural. Unfortunately it's a very unnatural act to do this well, and you will notice they do differ in subtle ways. For example, no one says goodbye or asks for change in dialogue.</comment>


A new class of experiential retailers is rising - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/opinion/why-mass-merchants-are-toxic-and-a-new-era-of-retail-is-coming <comment><USER2> Diferentiating your company with an "exclusive brand experience" has led to another kind of race to the bottom. More and more brands are trying to be the most "iconic", "relevant", "fresh", "sexy". The commoditization of these concepts is everywhere. They get so diluted and commericalized in the barely veiled desperation for relevancy that now I avoid such "experiences" whenever I realize I'm being "engaged with". I might buy your overpriced tshirt on its own merits, just don't try to tell me I'm changing the world by wearing it. Such a concept has a very precise, limited application that gets unsustainably depleted when used by a bunch of clothing companies. It's the marketing version of strip mining.

<comment><USER3> In my experience selling a consumer product, barely a month goes by without a new PR/marketing agency telling me we should "go for the green angle". Few people seem to understand that, like you said, these common differentiators, in my case "green/natural", have become extremely commoditized.

<comment><USER4> But on the flip side, they're commoditized because they are very effective. I believe few consumers share your point of view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is, despite what's been written here, no "breakdown" of the wholesale- retail model for revenue, except in the minds of lazy editors such as whoever edited this piece.

Brick and mortar sales exceed online sales by nine to one. Obviously the trend line is moving away from brick and mortar, and equally as obvious, at least in the commercial real estate industry, the US is way, way overbuilt with retail.

So closures will continue, and articles featuring the "apocalypse" premise will continue, and at the end of ten years, brick and mortar...will exceed online by maybe 8 to 1.

That said, the article central premise is sound. Designed experiences in surviving retail space are going to get deeper and more numerous.

<comment><USER6> Your points seem mostly logically separate from those in the article. (You may have extrapolated too much from the title.) The author is arguing that Nike and other high-profile brands will move to direct-to-consumer sales rather than using intermediate wholesalers. But he explicitly includes Nike-branded brick-and-mortar shops as an example of this shift. He's not arguing on brick- and-mortar vs. online.

<comment><USER7> More then that, there is an inversion: The experiential retailers are actually media channels and gets compensated with promoting the brand. That is, Nike shifts from being a vendor of the retailer to a client of the experiential retailer.

That neatly addresses the growing practice where a brand consumer goes into a physical location and then purchases from online.

In other words, the inversion makes the brick and mortar vs retailer dichotomy meaningless in terms of sales.

It's kinda like what Tesla has already been doing.

What is not said in the article: the role of Amazon in squeezing traditional retailers from the othet side; the continued erosion of broadcast advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is just an intermediate step in the inevitable shift to direct to consumer sales. Between Walmart, Amazon, dying retail and malls and globalization which killed control of product distribution worldwide, this is the only conclusion.

Brands will want to engage with customers directly and cut Bezos and co. out.

<comment><USER9> Honestly as a consumer "Engaging with brands" is somewhere just below getting a root-canal on my list of non-favourite things. Really I don't want to "engage" with anything I just want to give you some money in exchange for your stuff - why don't they get this?

<comment><USER10> At the risk of stereotyping, I don't think you or I are the target consumer.

The last high end fashion item I bought was a suit 3 years ago. Meanwhile my wife buys from the same higher end fashion retailers over and over.

<comment><USER9> That is probably true, although I do buy good suits - but even so has your wife ever "engaged with a brand" or does she think of it as "purchased a gorgeous looking $CLOTHING_ITEM"?

<comment><USER10> Seems to me like it's the brand, because she'll find something similar on Amazon then talk herself into going to the brand's store for various reasons instead of buying the basically identical knock off.

My favorite reason is "I think the brand name holds up better," ... for the 5 times you'll wear it? But it makes her feel like we're doing well in the rat race, so works for me.

<comment><USER11> LOL. Just make sure she doesn't read your HN comments. I guess you're a smart man with a happy marriage. Kudos.

<comment><USER10> Oh we've had the conversation and she agrees with me, but then goes and buys it anyway and I don't judge her for it.

That's compromise that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "New competitive pressure force established brands to come up with new ways to trick people into paying 200 dollars for things that cost 10 dollars to make."

<comment><USER4> Because the material cost to produce 1 shirt is the only variable to determine its price. Nike doesn't need to pay for anything else.

<comment><USER11> HN readers are not the typical consumer. I guess the majority here will buy after making a comparative table and a Phyton/Go/node script to scrap prices from the web. :)

OTOH the typical consumer wants to "feel good" and part of a "special club" when buying, they want "an experience". That's what Nike sells along with the shoe, and that amounts to 80% of the price. /half-joking

<comment><USER13> HN users are just as vulnerable to branding as anything else; it's just different values. Linux in particular is a massive triumph of branding; it's success is based much more on the intangible benefits of open source and that particular "lifestyle" than utility compared to its competitors. Not a few products position to this crowd, namely the various phones for privacy geeks as one example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lots of marketing speak in there so my TLDR (with apologies to 'sitelus): when people want to buy Nikes, they go to Nike.com, not drive to the nearest mall (except for grandpa buying nike's for his grandson's birthday, but there are fewer and fewer of them, and even then they might not have the model that grandpa wants, resulting in a potentially lost purchase).

Running a successful company is about managing focus and effort. In the light of the above, Nike has decided that dealing with mass retail is just not worth the effort+time investment anymore.

You still want to have a physical presence in the real world, but you want it to be iconical - people making a point to going to the Nike Store, etc (did Apple pioneer the modern version of that concept? I can't think of product companies who did something like it before). So that's what Nike is betting on.

<comment><USER15> It depends on where you stand geographically - in some places, there are retailers who are simply the go-to solution.

Now, anyone who knows some history of marketing, or who have been working on this for some time, knows that the sales channel helps with brand positioning - this is basic marketing.

If you have a luxury brand (yes, Apple is a luxury brand) you stand where luxury brands are - you even use media that luxury brands use for advertising.

Nike was about empowering people who liked sports - they were a mass market brand. That's where mass retail comes to play because they have distribution on the scale to the masses - the problem is that they squeeze margins. Mass retail REMOVES effort + time from the equation precisely.

Maybe Nike just wants to thicken their margins, since they are watching what's happening with SUPREME - a fashion brand where people make lines to buy t-shirts... if SUPREME cult can do it, with ridiculous margins... why can't they?

Nike has the brand cult, they have the product, now they just bump the prices and create the idea of exclusivity with a small supply - the illusion of scarcity.

I mean, they have a good example with basketball shoes in the USA.

Secondary market will love this.

Btw, Apple didn't pioneer the concept of the modern brand stores - they copied boutiques from luxury jewelry and watches brands.

<comment><USER16> Nike has been doing the "costumers standing in lines to buy their product" thing for longer than Supreme has existed. Their basketball shoe line has been massively cultish since at least Michael Jordan.

<comment><USER15> It's a distant reality from my culture, didn't knew that was already a thing at product release!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I gave up on Nike because the quality of their shoes have plummeted with cheaper materials and inflated prices.

<comment><USER18> I was actually just looking into some Nike running shoes.

Any alternative you'd recommend for running shoes?

<comment><USER19> Brooks, Asics, Saucony for running shoes.

<comment><USER20> +1 for Asics - the foot fitness guru in basic training fitted me for them 20 years ago, and I've been happy with them ever since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> m-commerce virtual shelving[0] allows mid-level e-commerce ventures to

(1) setup branded in-store experiences / show rooms

(2) align logistics supply lines (manufacturing, importing, warehousing, distribution suppliers) to move supplies closer to "pickup points"

(3) connect local partner "distribution points" and "pickup points" to also act as 1-hour delivery using Uber, PostMates, etc

Online retailers need to connect their own existing shopping experience with local shops using virtual shelves, think backlit movie posters outside a movie theater. This can come in the form of dedicated walls, laminated print book, a simple picture frame, etc in a friendly location and an option to either ship or local pickup. As long as the local shop is tied into their partners' back offices and they believe in the brand, they can represent it well and act well on their own behalf by splitting the sales generated at minimal cost of mostly a little unused closet space. This lessens the need for mega shops like Amazon and eBay, as well as for mega logistics providers like UPS and FedEx because there are many warehousing and cargo van subcontractors available.

For an example, I've seen yoga studios with small, unmanned in-store corner shops and similar in martial arts studios and small gyms. They might have a small group of hand-picked supplies, whereas, in this model, a new company that for example has a brand new safety gear might search them out and see their gym members as a good target. Then by setting up what we might call a consignment deal today, they can have a delivery of supplies on the next run from their partner warehouse and the new rep can start printing out and framing their displays for immediate roll out.

This would have unlimited potential for those who want to setup the deals that connect e-commerce and retailers as well. That is also a branded experience, and wheels need greasing.

0: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lTdE2pfiX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lTdE2pfiX8)

</comment><comment><USER22> >For consumers, to whom shopping experiences matter as much, or more, than products, mass merchants are bringing nothing to the table.

I'm not sure if it's just me not being a hyper brand-conscious teenager anymore or if I'm just out of touch, but out of this whole nauseating article, this statement was (to me) the most ridiculous. When I need or want a product, I don't give two shits about the shopping experience other than did I find the product in a convenient manner and was it priced low enough for me to afford it.

I'm ignorant of the economics at work here. Is there really money to be gained by abandoning a strategy of lower prices but wide availability for one of more expensive and harder to access?

<comment><USER11> Yes. A lot of money, but its really hard to get there. Think of brands like Luis-Vuitton, Bentley, Burj-Al-Arab. [https://conversionxl.com/blog/product- pricing-strategies-and...](https://conversionxl.com/blog/product-pricing- strategies-and-techniques/)

<comment><USER13> Those brands never had wide availability to start with, and are straddling the line between commodity and bespoke goods. Nike really is a mass maker of commodity shoes; they have a slightly better brand cachet, but the audience for sneakers is a lot more mainstream and wouldn't support that kind of positioning.

A similar example would be in MP3 players. Remember Neil Young's Pono?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_(digital_music_service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pono_\(digital_music_service\))

That's trying a higher scale of positioning, but failed.

<comment><USER22> I guess that's what I was trying to get at. I understand how brands like Gucci get away with ludicrous pricing and positioning themselves as exclusive, but I have a harder time understanding why this is a good strategy for a company like Nike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In many places we need to demolish retail and build housing. In CA there are perverse incentives (prop 13) that continue to drive retail construction over housing. Thanks Howard Jarvis.

<comment><USER24> How does prop 13 encourage more retail construction?

<comment><USER23> Municipalities make a lot more in taxes on a lot if it's retail vs. housing so are more incented to approve...

<comment><USER24> Commercial property in California for whatever reason is also covered by Prop 13, so the property tax increases are limited. A large retailer of Costco or Walmart variety is able to move the needle as far as the underlying property valuation, which is why they typically assure a tax break before they even consider development. If the commercial property is owned by a REIT, and the retailer carries a long-term lease, the REIT as the landlord is covered by Prop 13 as far as potential valuation volatility goes.

There's a cut of the sales tax revenue that municipality gets, but commercial projects like shopping plazas also require significant municipal spending as far as the roads, street lights, infrastructure hookups, etc.

I live in Southern California which has a sprinkle of small towns packed into a limited space, with a new town forming through annexation every few years or so. Some towns are very commerce-friendly, some are very unfriendly. You'd assume that towns with a large retail presence are swimming in cash, while those that are mainly residential have a Prop 13-caused budget crisis any time they need to replace a light bulb in a street light, but it's not the case.

There are some very rich (as far as cash flow statements and balance sheets) towns that are purely residential and there are very poor towns with significant shopping and industrial presence, as well as the opposites of those two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In Europe there is suitsupply. They have a very different approach to in store experience even though they started as online only store. They greet you with their first name, ask some personal questions (not creepy though), and try to find out what you really need. I always feel quite welcomed there.

<comment><USER26> I don't know whether I am in a majority or a minority. But I hate it when I go to a shop, am walking around and just browsing, and random store employees come to me for a chat, ask me questions etc.

I don't want to be approached and forced to have a conversation until I decide I want to proceed and buy something or try something on. Just let me browse without bugging me. I am more likely to find something I like and give you money that way.

<comment><USER25> I can totally understand that, I often feel the same way. I think it makes a huge difference how and when you are approached. That's when a real good salesperson will show their skill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's something missing in this, I think, which is exactly what about the experience makes in-person retail work. Compare buying a book at a bookstore to buying it on Amazon or bn.com. Still, 20 years later, it's only good online if you know more or less what you want. Yes, you can buy a bestseller, yes, you can look at recommendations. But you can't walk into amazon.com and find something you didn't even know you wanted like you can in a local bookshop, a branch library, or a giant B&N. There is still a lot of room for growth and building a nike-branded area inside some big retailer is not the half of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This isn't a new era of retail. The article mentions that instead of widespread availability, retailers will sell direct to customer and only in a few stores. However, we have had this already with multiple brands; Bose is probably the primary example of this trend. And Bose is successfully challenged by Beats, who does normal retailing with many retailers.

Nike can try doing this, but they might find they've ceded a lot of ground to a rival brand who is willing to be visible and widespread.

<comment><USER28> Beats proves the article's point: they're part of the Apple retail and direct to consumer experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> They simply want to boost conversion of their product, which likely sells less as a shelf item with hefty stocking fees for a commodity experience. For wealthier shoppers (the target market of these brands) shopping is entertainment - something you do when bored. If the product can't differentiate itself on a shelf, doing the brand maneuver justifies the high prices a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wouldn't just limiting the selling price, like what Apple does prevent this race to the bottom?

Nike would still be free to pursue in store unique "Nike experience" selling pods with those 40 or so retailers.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow. Reading this, having spent some years doing retail tech, I feel that Nike's shift in strategy is as game changing for retail as $10K bitcoins will be seen for the finance world.

This is seismic change in strategy.

<comment><USER32> Can you please expand how it's a seismic change? Also Bitcoin is a bad comparison as we havent seen that through to its conclusion. If you wanted to say something was seismic, iPhone would be a better comparison as there is clear indicators of how it changed the landscape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> TLDR; Brands like Nike don't want to partner with 1000s of outlets that they typically did. Instead they will only work with 10s of partners who are willing to invest in creating brand specific unique experiences.

I am not sure if this is right approach. I think the whole era of "brand ambassador", "store experience" etc has ended. Previously brands carried promise of quality and uniqueness however these days this promise has been transferred to store itself that distributes those brands. Now these distributors are able to get similar quality from relatively unknown brands and sell at higher margin. This likely because most brands have centralized their manufacturing to places like China and there is usually same manufacturer there which produces same goods, one with brand label and other without. So as brands have outsourced their manufacturing, they have also outsourced their expertise.

<comment><USER34> Is there a github/wikidata list of global manufacturers and the branded goods made by each factory? In theory, that would enable supply chain transparency, e.g. Amazon plugin for online shopping or mobile app for offline shopping. Note that the same factory can make goods to different quality specifications, depending on brand requirements.

<comment><USER35> datamyne, importgenius, panjive, 52wmb are all services that collect shipping manifest information and make it searchable

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the pointer, which lead to [https://www.quora.com/Panjiva-vs-piers- vs-zepol-vs-import-ge...](https://www.quora.com/Panjiva-vs-piers-vs-zepol-vs- import-genius)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> since the quality of nike's products is often much lower these days, fuck, WHY?</comment>


Contact Tracing Patent Licensing - <AUTHOR> https://www.blyncsy.com/contact-tracing <comment><AUTHOR> Additional context:

From press release[1]:

"Blyncsy would like to get its technology into the hands of other companies and government agencies, so that we can fight this virus together. We have launched the website to streamline the process to make licensing easier."

And from local news article[2]:

"We would encourage anyone who's doing contact tracing to license our technology as we believe we have a patent on the technology that covers the entire U.S." ... "the firm seeks the licensing not so much for financial reasons — it is offering to waive royalty fees in some circumstances — but more out of concern that contact tracing in other companies' hands might lead to widespread surveillance and violate individual privacy."

1\. [https://www.newswire.com/news/blyncsy-announces-launch-of- co...](https://www.newswire.com/news/blyncsy-announces-launch-of-contact- tracing-licensing-request-website-21135011)

2\. [https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/05/04/utah-company- claims/](https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/05/04/utah-company-claims/)

<comment><USER2> Is this patent defensible?</comment></comment>


Avoiding NLP At All Costs - <AUTHOR> http://teddziuba.com/2008/11/avoiding-nlp-at-all-costs.html

<comment><USER2> Summary: NLP is hard. There are lots of complicated academic concepts involved in parsing natural text that I don't understand. I have failed at using NLP in some indeterminable way. Please don't use NLP because you probably can't do anything with it either.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought this was going to be about Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Turns out it was natural language processing, so the rest of it became tl;dr.

<comment><USER4> Oh, so that's what it was. I read the entire article to try and figure out what NLP meant, and still didn't figure it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The off the shelf natural language parsing algorithms are polynomial time (generally n^3 or so).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms#Parsing>

In that list CYK, Earley, GLR, and Inside-Outside are taught as suitable for parsing natural languages (oversimplifying, the dividing line between parsers for computer languages and human language is that the former are deterministic and the latter spectacularly ambiguous).

So, you want to process a bunch of text, with time to parse each sentence increasing as a polynomial of the length of a sentence...I think you see where I'm going with this. Obviously, lots of people are looking for shortcuts here, but that probably means sacrificing something in accuracy, at which point you need to question whether you really want to be parsing, anyways. Last I checked, state of the art parsing accuracy is low 90s, and that's if all your sentences come from the Penn Treebank corpus.

So, when saying NLP is hard, NLP probably means parsing. You can probably describe applied NLP research as finding clever ways to answer the question you want to answer without actually parsing. Or parsing just a little bit, but not everything, you get the idea.

An interesting side question is just how do people parse natural language in real time so accurately. Or do people really parse at all, in the algorithmic sense?

<comment><USER6> > An interesting side question is just how do people parse natural language in > real time so accurately.

We have hardware support for massive neural nets:) I would guess that as we read/listen we speculatively build several different parse trees that could represent the sentence, eliminating each one when its probability (based on the implied semantics) falls too low.

<comment><USER5> That sounds cool.

Do you have any references to research arguing this, or is it just your personal idea?

<comment><USER6> Just my idle speculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I totally agree with this, and the reason is simple: my US friends often fail to get the dripping sarcasm of my UK ones, so I don't expect a software package to.

From a practical perspective, it's remarkable how often you can cheat your way out of not needing NLP. Google is in a way a prime example of that.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just to clarify for everyone's benefit - guy rants about Natural Language Processing, and not Neuro Linguistic Programming, which is what NLP acronym is commonly used for and which is incidentally also quite relevant to the field of press release crafting.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming>

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://nltk.sourceforge.net/>

it's not that hard; you just have to know when to use it.

<comment><USER10> NLTK uses statistical approach, which it seems he doesn't consider to be "NLP". TF-IDF is also part of that statistical approach. He seems to be talking about the old school rule-based natural language understanding.

<comment><USER11> If rule-based NLP is what he's truly referring to, he is actually very much on the money. Rule-based NLP gets too complicated too quickly and is useless when analyzing a language other than the target language or analyzing a piece of text that is poorly-formed (bad grammar/spelling) or heavily peppered with loan words and loan constructions.

Much like how Good Old-Fashioned AI has proven to be cumbersome and non- analogous to how biological brains actually work, rule-based NLP is flawed at its core. Statistical NLP has proven to be much more powerful, extensible, and tolerant to near-misses.</comment></comment></comment>


Ghosts of departed quantities – The problem with infinitesimals - <AUTHOR> http://robjlow.blogspot.com/2017/05/ghosts-of-departed-quantities.html <comment><USER2> I did a first attempt at coding these up at one point. [https://bitbucket.org/ianai/](https://bitbucket.org/ianai/) under hyperreals.</comment>


Microsoft Attack CPAN Testers (Again) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cpantesters.org/diary/76 A follow-up to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056158 <comment><USER2> [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/c3l8f/microsoft...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/c3l8f/microsoft_attacks_cpan_testers_again/c0pxl4e)</comment>


Mental Health Care Increasing Most Among Those with Less Distress - <AUTHOR> https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/news/mental-health-care-increasing-most-among-those-less-distress <comment><USER2> palpatine-ironic.jpg</comment>


Rate My Startup: Basecamp + Yammer for employees, customers and partners - <AUTHOR>

Recently we have launched a service called Disqourse and would very much like to hear HN community feedback! http://disqourse.com <comment><USER2> Visually, the site is clean and well designed.

However as a product I'm still not clear exactly where it would fit into a businesses needs. Is it a sales lead management tool? A customer support tool? An easy to use CRM? Project management software?

I think most of your target customers may be confused by these cross- functional purposes. IMHO, you need to simplify the messaging and purpose of the product. I think the tag line "Private Social Network for Your Business" confuses the positioning further.

The actual service may be great but I think you need to work on how you describe and position it. For instance, it may be simpler to use positioning like: "The easiest way to manage and develop sales leads into successful projects."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://disqourse.com></comment>


Show HN: ChronoFlo – Create beautiful timelines you can share on the web - <AUTHOR> https://www.chronoflotimeline.com <comment><AUTHOR> I am the creator of this. Have been building this over the past year or so. Technologies include: HTML5 canvas, CSS filters and a lot of JS.

To give you an idea of what you can make with ChronoFlo Timeline Maker, we created an interactive timeline of US presidents: [https://www.chronoflotimeline.com/timeline/shared/3114/USA-P...](https://www.chronoflotimeline.com/timeline/shared/3114/USA- Presidents-Timeline/)

Would love to know what you all think?</comment>


Statistical Immortality - <AUTHOR> http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/7238016119/statistical-immortality <comment><USER2> Seems like an attempt to reinvent the _Permutation City_ argument. In any event, as formulated, I don't think it quite works:

> Since there are an infinite number of universes, an infinite number of > dimensions, or an infinite number of non-identical universe "cycles", there > are an infinite number of particles and particle arrangements.

The last claim does not follow without additional assumptions about the nature of universes.

<comment><USER3> why doesn't the claim that there are infinitely many particle arrangements follow from there being infinite non-identical universe pairs?

<comment><USER2> Particle arrangements aren't the only property of a universe. Imagine a universe with 1 particle in it. Imagine a second universe with the same particle but +1 volume bigger. Not identical. Now imagine a third universe with the same particle arrangement with +3 volume bigger... And so on for all natural numbers. An infinite number of universes, each distinct, with the same particle arrangement. We can do this same trick for all sorts of universe properties (laws, energies, geometries).

If we define universes _as_ the particle arrangements, then it would then logically follow that infinitely many unique universes implies infinitely many particle arrangements (a ≡ b; a; ∴ b).

(This is common to many Eternal Recurrence theories as well; need some assumption which prevents repeating patterns from 'running out the clock' and not exploring the full range of possibilities.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alternately:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/lazy- immortality....](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/lazy- immortality.php)

Wouldn't it be nice to wake up and find that we were all immortal? That would save a whole lot of work, uncertainty, and existential angst - and we humans are nothing if not motivated to do less work. The best of us toil endlessly in search of saving a few minutes here and a few minutes there. So it happens that there exist a range of metaphysical lines of thought - outside the bounds of theology - that suggest we humans are immortal. We should cast a suspicious eye upon any line of philosophy that would be extraordinarily convenient if true, human nature being what it is.

<comment><USER2> He doesn't actually believe it:

> I personally reject the proof because I don't believe all the premises, but > if the premises are revealed to be true, then I would accept that death is > unattainable.

Most take the _Permutation City_ argument as a _reductio_ about computational theories of identity, and a challenge to figure out what computations really are since simple theories lead to such odd consequences. (This is how Boltzmann brains were received as well.)</comment></comment>


How Uber Backers Orchestrated Kalanick's Ouster as CEO - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-uber-backers-orchestrated-kalanicks-ouster-as-ceo-1498090688 <comment><USER2> In retrospect, it is interesting to see that a reflective blog post from an engineer ended up in the casualties of CEO, most of the senior leadership and a few board members. Maybe the cracks were already there but nevertheless it has been surreal seeing this unfold in the space of 5 months. It is almost like watching the butterfly effect in action.

<comment><USER3> I'm reminded of the Hemingway quote:

"How did you go bankrupt?"

"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."

Without diminishing the impact of Susan Fowler's blog post, Uber has already been "going bankrupt" slowly for years before this point.

I has been surreal watching this unfold, but I'd hesitate to compare it to the butterfly effect - unless we're talking about many, many butterflies over a long period of time ;)

I do hope that these events have inspired companies to pay more attention to their workplace and culture - festering problems like these are easy to ignore, but reveal their consequences suddenly and severely.

<comment><USER4> Isn't part of the butterfly effect narrative that a number of things were already balanced at such a delicate point that they could be tipped?

<comment><USER5> No, or at least not as originally propounded.

The point of the butterfly effect is that every small input magnifies so much in a chaotic system over time that you won't be able to predict it correctly if you miss any detail, even one so insignificant as a single flap of a single butterfly's wings.

The moral being that a chaotic system is fundamentally unpredictable in detail, and can only be predictable in averages and aggregates. (So we can predict climate, but not weather.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A commenter in another thread put it very well: you can have as many voting shares as you like, but you aren't in control of your company until you're profitable.

<comment><USER7> You are never in control of your company unless you don't have employees.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but at what point does the bar for control become meaningless? It's not really productive to raise it to the point that every company ostensibly has no one in control because they have obligations to other parties.

It _is_ productive to discuss how founders like Zuckerberg and Kalanick retained majority voting rights, because that's meaningful even if you use a pithy definition of control that makes it virtually impossible to achieve. Similarly we can talk about the class of shares Snap issued which do not allow shareholders to control the company.

When you abstract legitimate insights like "executives at pre- profitable/public companies can't rely on voting rights for security" to "no one has control as long as customers are a thing", you preempt a lot of very useful discussion. You've defined away the controversy.

<comment><USER7> I haven't defined away the controversy, just taken a step back and tried to look at the issue more globally.

My company over the years has transitioned from no employees, to employees, to no employees again, and back to employees. The only time I have been in control (despite having 100% ownership) is when I have had no employees.

When you are thinking about starting a business the decision to employ or not is even bigger than deciding to take in investors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just a slightly different perspective from the mob.

"The culture at Uber is Toxic."

I keep hearing this. Yes, there are clearly some sexual harassment issues, I'm not sure it's systemic. I lived a couple of blocks from Uber's HQ's on 10th/Market and I went to lots of meetups there. People I met were happy and proud of the company.

As for the rest of the events, such as Greyball, etc. I don't consider that toxic, I consider that disruptive. Had Uber not have done that, the lobbyists for the Taxi industry would have kept the status quo.

It was Uber, pushing hard, that changed the world, for the better. That's how the world changes, people pushing hard and breaking the rules when they know the rules are wrong.

I also personally worked with Travis and I know his personality. He pushes hard, he works hard, he wants to win. That may be because he's had some really tough losses too (Scout, RedSwoosh [1]). I have a lot of respect for him, being an entrepreneur is tough, especially when it's raining.

[1] Although he had an exit, it was a slog ~7-year slog where he lost funding and was, at one point, alone.

<comment><USER10> What's your opinion of stuff like the Hell app, or intentionally sabotaging competitors?

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/uber-hell- lawsuit/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/uber-hell-lawsuit/)

[http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride- re...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-requests- lyft/index.html)

<comment><USER9> That's tough to say, I don't know enough about the entire situation. I think it's safe to say that Lyft and Uber wherein a street fight and were both doing "questionable" things to each other. It reminds me of Thomas Edison sabotaging Tesla, and yet, here we are, on A/C. [1]

[1] [http://mentalfloss.com/article/30140/acdc- tesla%E2%80%93edis...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/30140/acdc- tesla%E2%80%93edison-feud)

<comment><USER10> I couldn't find any example of similar actions by Lyft, but I could have missed something. Also, it's not just Lyft: [https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/24/black-car-competitor- accus...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/24/black-car-competitor-accuses-uber- of-shady-conduct-ddos-style-attack-uber-expresses-regret/)

Regardless of whether anyone else did it, do you think these are examples of Uber making the world a better place and breaking rules that shouldn't exist?

<comment><USER9> "Regardless of whether anyone else did it, do you think these are examples of Uber making the world a better place and breaking rules that shouldn't exist?"

You're not really asking a question, you know that anti-competitive behavior is not making the world a better place, it's fighting for market share and dominance.

Anti-competitive behavior is often rewarded in our society with higher profits, valuations, and market dominance. For example, Microsoft forcing PC makers to use Windows 95, or Microsoft using Windows to push IE crush Netscape. Look at Google pushing Chrome via all its products to take 70% market share, much of it from Mozilla, or Google downranking Yelp to push its own products.

<comment><USER10> Those are all good examples, and I think a pattern of that type of behavior is good evidence of a "toxic culture". That's what people are talking about, not just the recent sexual harassment stories. I'm pointing this stuff out because you said in your comment that you'd never heard of any bad behavior at Uber besides sexual harassment. In fact there's a consistent pattern of bad decisions made by people throughout the organization, and that's why people talk about a toxic culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I do agree that the culture at Uber was toxic and ultimately Travis was to blame for that, on a human level I do feel for the guy. At the end of the day, he just lost his mother and now also his life's work for the foreseeable future. And damn that must suck.

<comment><USER12> Maybe eventually, he will view it differently.

 _" Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."_

<comment><USER13> That's a really powerful quote from John Sculley.

<comment><USER14> > That's a really powerful quote from John Sculley.

/s/John Sculley/Steve Jobs/

<comment><USER15> I'm sorry that you have had to use Hipchat so much that you know this and use it outside of it. A human can truly get used to anything.

<comment><USER16> I don't think that syntax is Hipchat-specific

<comment><USER17> It's originally from `ed` then `sed` then `vi`. It's been in use in email, Usenet, and IRC for a very long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The backers:

> By Monday of last week, Benchmark had found four additional investors to > sign the letter, including First Round Capital; Lowercase Capital; Menlo > Ventures and Fidelity Investments, according to people familiar with the > matter. Benchmark's Mr. Gurley attempted to get other board members to sign, > but at least one refused out of reluctance over being represented by Mr. > Gurley, according to one person with knowledge of the matter.

<comment><USER19> First Round Capital signing this is amazing to me - especially since it doesn't look like it required them too to make this happen. Sort of expected the others too but not them.

<comment><USER20> What makes First Round different than the others, out of curiosity?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, it was signed by Benchmark, First Round and Lowercase. Those are all of Kalanick's earliest backers and most fervent supporters, even in times of controversy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps with a sustained PR onslaught that will now magically disappear even if nothing material changes at the company?

<comment><USER22> Well he did say there was no way in hell Uber would IPO. What's a poor billionaire to do when faced with an obstinate CEO messin' with their payday?

PS the rest of the Uber story is IPO in 5..4..3..

<comment><USER12> Doesn't an IPO require some actual disclosure of financials in a format accountants would accept?

Or is there some way to IPO without outing exactly how much the burn to date has been subsidizing rides?

<comment><USER23> Not counting fraud, I don't believe there is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > It became clear from conversations with potential COO recruits that few > would take the job if Mr. Kalanick stayed, they said.

Aha. Now I think this makes more sense.

</comment><comment><USER25> Could someone please explain to me why does Uber has 12,000 employees? Drivers are not employees, there is no content to curate, no brick & mortar operation, the app and tech stack is pretty much developed and stable. Sure the Otto and UberEATS are now part of Uber but still.

<comment><USER26> They are active in more than 600 cities. Even assuming tech support, design, engineering and R&D staff are negligible, 20 employees per city seems to make sense. Partnership, Marketing, legal, operations, vehicle rentals.

Their software might scale and business model replicable across many cities, but they still need people on the ground running.

<comment><USER25> All those cities are located in less than 100 states. What are those people on the ground doing?

<comment><USER27> You need people on the ground to recruit and hire drivers, hand out ride incentives (especially on campuses), manage out-of-home advertising and local events, manage the in-city staff...

It's easy to think everything is handled online via digital advertising, but ops-heavy businesses like this require bodies on the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's an interesting dynamic. The investors hold the cards, because Uber is going to need more funding soon. But on the other hand, pushing Travis out might tank the valuation.

I'm guessing they decided that any valuation damage will only be short term. I suspect they are right.

</comment><comment><USER29> The article doesn't make it clear what the letter said, other than "A group of us think you should step down. Do it." What could have possibly been in the letter that made Travis step down?

<comment><USER30> That's what I wish I could read more about. The behind the curtain conversations, emails, etc. Those rarely come up light but are an important part of how business gets done at that level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Non-paywall version?

<comment><USER32> You can do the same trick that used to work with Google, but with Facebook instead. Search the text of the title in Facebook and follow the link through.

Could also probably modify some header or something to achieve the same thing.

<comment><USER33> Thank you, TIL!

<comment><USER34> Get Brave, it works very well.

<comment><USER35> It is still blocked in Brave.

<comment><USER34> Ah I was meaning to say use Brave as it will by pass adblock walls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Are WSJ links going to be penalised now the google firewall workaround no longer works?

</comment><comment><USER37> Couldn't have happened to a nicer person.

</comment><comment><USER38> Imagine the pressure the VCs on the board are under from the people that gave them money to invest. An investment in Uber went from:

"Man I can't believe you got our money in there, we're gonna be rich!"

to

"$&?@! our money is in Uber? We're going to lose our shirts. Do something! Now!"

The VCs on the board had no other choice but to kick Kalanick out of the CEO job.

<comment><USER39> It's unclear to me how much the actual business has been affected by the upheaval.

But once they get Sandberg in there, combined with Huffington on the board, and Boz St John on the exec team, the press is going to love it. It's a new day at Uber, Uber goes from harass-y to classy, all that stuff.

<comment><USER40> Agreed. The great irony of all this is that a more palatable group of people running the company are more likely to take it further and thus do more damage to society, building an even more enormous and dependent economy of drivers they already intend to fire.

<comment><USER39> The more I think about this, the more I respect the moves they're making, even as I agree with you that they're evil.

In fact, this is a brilliant pattern: start by winning with shitty, extortionate tactics. When everyone eventually, inevitably hates you, fix the image problem by replacing leadership with a more optically-appropriate team. Continue as before.

And why not? Do investors care who is ostensibly in charge, as long as the wheel keeps turning? They do not. Employees love that action has been taken, voices have been heard, wrongs have been righted. Plus, now they don't work for just another bunch of white dudes like everywhere else in tech. Press is all about it, of course.

It's smart!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Saving Detroit: When a Big City Stops Being Big - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/13/saving-detroit-when-a-big-city-stops-being-big.html <comment><USER2> Pittsburgh has remade itself as a startup ecosystem going from a steel city to a IT startup hub. Could Detroit do the same I wonder. Manufacturing is not going to be what it used to be. Can Detroit take some of those empty buildings and turn them into startup incubators? I don't know. Maybe Enimem could invest in such a project. There is little Slim Shady could not do I should think. :-)</comment>


More Than Slack. More Than Trello. FREE - <AUTHOR> https://vabotu.com/ <comment><USER2> and how does it earn money? With users' data?</comment>


Obama: Increase energy research spending by decreasing fossil fuel subsidies - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/14/14greenwire-obamas-doe-budget-request-promotes-clean-tech-32236.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting to see a budget proposal like this when people like Rand Paul were calling for the dismantlement of the DOE.</comment>


Return of Bleichenbacher's Oracle Threat - <AUTHOR> https://robotattack.org/ <comment><USER2> Want to understand this attack better? We'll walk you through it in the Matasano Crypto Challenges:

[http://cryptopals.com/sets/6/challenges/46](http://cryptopals.com/sets/6/challenges/46) (and 47, 48).

Bleichenbacher's RSA oracle --- some people call it BB'98 --- is the RSA equivalent of the best-known real-world attack on crypto, the CBC padding oracle. The math behind the exploit is a little trickier (it's 10th grade algebra, plus the very basic finite field stuff you'd get in a single decent blog post on how RSA works) but it's otherwise mechanically pretty similar.

The basic idea is: the client sends the server messages; it can send any message it wants, valid or not. The server processes those messages. In doing so, it causes the message to interact with the server's private key. Once that interaction happens, any observable behavior the server exhibits can be used to infer things about that key. In the case of a padding oracle: send random messages; see if you can detect the padding validation error from the server. Based on that one signal, establish new bounds for the key.

This paper is pure Hanno Böck. His M.O. is straightforward and awesome. Take a crypto vulnerability everyone assumes has been eradicated for years, especially on serious hosts. Now, here's the tricky part: scan the Internet for it. Oh, look: it's everywhere. Including CISCO.COM and FACEBOOK.COM and a gajillion F5 devices.

<comment><USER3> Want to put the skills you learned from those challenges to good use?

There's also a CTF at [https://ctf.robotattack.org](https://ctf.robotattack.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Bitcoin does not use RSA, instead it uses elliptic curve cryptography based > on the curve secp256k1. Our attack cannot be directly applied to that. > However if you transform a quantum key exchange to a supersingular Isogeny > you can attack post-quantum RSA and thus apply our attack indirectly to > secp256k1.

Can someone translate this? I don't understand how this attack would apply to Bitcoin even if it did use RSA since there's no server accepting or rejecting messages based on a private key.

<comment><USER5> J.o.k.e.?

<comment><USER4> Haha, ok, should have guessed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else get this when using the test server feature?

 _Host xyz.zyx added to queue.

It can take a few minutes till the test is finished. This page will be automatically reloaded._

But then the page never actually reloads?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, this was all created in a rush. I must have removed the reloading metatag.

At the moment the queue is overfull anyway... I will make sure I improve this tomorrow, in the meantime download our tool, use testssl.sh or use the ssllabs dev test.

<comment><USER6> Hey, thanks for the reply. Will do!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does this attack affect the security of RSA-based SSH keys, or is it TLS-only?

<comment><USER2> Protocol 1.5 had BB98 vulnerabilities. I believe modern SSH uses RSA just to sign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how many times it's coming back before people will actually start to put some thought (or learning) into design of things that involves a lot of un-obvious considerations?</comment>