A Message from KPCB Partner, John Doerr - <AUTHOR> http://www.kpcb.com/news/115/text <comment><USER2> The strategic calculus of filing a lawsuit like this scares me. You're ALREADY partner at one of the very best firms. BEST case scenario you make a huge amount of money in an out of court settlement and then hopefully somebody else hires you. Maybe you start you own firm.

I have to imagine that things were really bad for Ms Pao. Or at the very least, she must certainly felt them to be.

Perhaps she's interested in retribution via soaking them for a ton of cash, but I can't help but doubt that. It's hard to imagine she lands in a better place, career-wise.

A truly difficult situation for her and KPCB.

<comment><USER3> I'm not familiar with the situation or any of the parties involved, but... maybe she was wronged and wants to stand up for herself and for future employees of the firm, because no one should suffer from discrimination in the workplace?

Not everything in life can be reduced to a financial cost/benefit analysis. Sometimes you have to do the right thing.

<comment><USER2> That's exactly how I feel. I mostly meant to point out how difficult (and costly) doing the right thing must be. Also, I don't mean to suggest most of the costs or benefits are financial. I believe they are mostly personal and career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what happened either way, but a choice quote:

> In the end, facts – not unfounded claims – will determine the outcome of the > suit filed against us.

The devil's advocate could just as easily rephrase it this way:

"In the end, facts – not the findings of an "independent" investigator we hired – will determine the outcome of the suit filed against us."

I know it's a tough PR crisis to handle, but somehow I think an Apple-styled cone of silence about the issue might have been a better approach.

<comment><USER5> "facts – not unfounded claims will determine the outcome of the suit filed against us."

Something to keep in mind, that ultimately, it's the evidence and the quality of the legal team that will determine the outcome of the suit. The facts/truth of the matter come in a distant third.

I often view the results of a court case as an indication of how much evidence could be discovered by each side, and how effective their attorneys were, rather than a clearcut indication of guilt/innocence.

I wonder if anyone has ever done any controlled studies, some anti- rashomonesque like scenario, where the guilt/innocence of each party was objectively and quantifiably determined, and then run a statistically valid sample of these cases through the court system, to see how well guilt/innocence correlates with the court findings.

<comment><USER4> IANAL, but civil cases aren't so much about guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as they are a balance of probabilities. So the result would be based on whether Ms. Pao's story is more likely to be true than false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do give them the benefit of the doubt, everyone deserves that. The reason I'm _inclined_ to believe the allegations is that they're _relatively_ mild, which makes them far more believable to mind mind.

I seriously doubt there was real premeditated or conspiratorial sexism on be half of the top KPCB guys, but I wouldn't be surprised at all that they unconsciously favored men for promotions/compensation. Even women have trouble not favoring men in that way, in my experience.

So even if KPCB loses the court case I wouldn't think much less of them. They're just humans at the mercy of their biases, doing their best to fight them, and sometimes failing.

<comment><USER7> My wife is working in a big corporation. What you describe is a fundamental problem at all the levels which is very hard to overcome. The company is doing regular training for the people hiring just to show them how they effectively discriminate event without claiming and having the feeling they are not.

This is because _you naturally hire and promote people like you_. This comes from the evolution of mankind where we trust more people like us and we are resistant to change. You had a good worker, white and a man, you naturally try to hire "the same" if you need to replace him even if a black woman could do the same or even better.

You cannot escape it easily, you need to constantly try hard not to discriminate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> He sneaks a bit of sophist elision in here:

 _In the end, facts – not unfounded claims – will determine the outcome of the suit filed against us. We will vigorously defend our reputation and are confident we will prevail._

Non-sequitur: reputations are composed of more than facts. Not only that, but if you gloss right over it, he appears to be placing these sentences next to each other for two slimy (I say) reasons: that the reader will connect "prevail" with "the outcome of the suit," a connection the words don't support, and also that even if they lose the suit, their reputation will be successfully defended. Kind of a weird point to feel you have to make, and a bit of a dogwhistle to their partners and clients.

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/kleiner-perkins-sexual- hara...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/kleiner-perkins-sexual-harassment- lawsuit-ellen-pao/)

This is in response to a gender discrimination lawsuit.

<comment><USER10> A few observations:

1\. Oh, you lawyers. A carefully hidden sentence: "Plaintiff eventually succumbed to Mr Naszre's insistence on sexual relations on two or three occasions". That's the only indication in the entire document that this woman was, in fact, bangin' Mr Naszre. If you ask me, it should be pretty darn difficult to win a "sexual harassment" lawsuit against somebody if you willingly and consensually had sex with 'em both before and after the alleged harassment.

Also, was it two or three? Is she really so unsure of the exact number? It's not like we're talking "fifteen or sixteen" times you cheated on your fiance with a married man, Ms Pao.

2\. As for gender discrimination preventing her from moving up: you're a freaking _partner_. What's the next step up, exactly?

I'm sure things _might_ have been weird after she'd had sex with her coworker, but geez, you should have thought of that before you opened your legs, Ms Pao.

This is not to deny that Mr Naszre had some culpability here too, they both share it. But since it's _she_ rather than _he_ who is doing the suing here it's more relevant to point out her own misconduct.

edit: Removed namecalling.

<comment><USER11> _If you ask me, it should be pretty darn difficult to win a "sexual harassment" lawsuit against somebody if you willingly and consensually had sex with 'em both before and after the alleged harassment._

If you were in a relationship before (that included sex), then broke off the relationship, then were harassed into more sex afterward, that's still a criminal act of sexual harassment.

<comment><USER12> There wasn't any allegation of criminal acts. People might behave boorishly and be jerks, but that isn't a crime.

<comment><USER11> Right, sorry I forgot this was a civil case. This is definitely enough for a civil case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll reserve judgement until the case is concluded, but something I see repeated with this is that they are a very diverse firm. That's great and progressive.

It still doesn't mean something like this couldn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER14> What does one do or not do to get a legitimate bad performance review at a VC firm?

<comment><USER15> I am pulling these out of my 4$$ but all of the normal things you could get a bad review over would apply. A portfolio company's respected founders (basically, your client/customer) saying that a partner was difficult to work with, making poor suggestions, wasting time with questions they could get answers for elsewhere, or embarrassing them in meetings with important contacts, etc. Another partner saying that you are difficult to get along with, argumentative, do not do proper research, miss glaring information that demonstrates high risk in an investment, and so on.

Basically, doing a shitty job, being difficult to work with, ruining the firm's reputation, and/or making very bad investment decisions would be good ways to get a bad review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Most importantly, we're backing them not because they are women, but because > they are the best at what they do.

This is why I'm 100% behind KPCB here. Doerr gets it. At the end of the day, what matters to them is who will do the best job, not whether they're men or women.

<comment><USER17> The world would be great if all that mattered was who did the best job. The world is nothing like that, however.

<comment><USER18> No opinion on guilt or innocence, but one could use the same "they are the best so not guilty" defense about the "best" in Wall Street too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am missing some context. what is surrounding all this?

<comment><USER20> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4008796></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think is missing from entrepreneurship/startup podcasts? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I'll get this conversation started. I love shows like How I Built This and Tim Ferriss' show, but too often the people they interview are so experienced that the gloss over the "how" part, and I always feel like I want the meaty substantive parts. But I get that it's difficult to do when you're attempting to tell someone's entire life story in 45-1hr.</comment>


Lawyer rewrote Instagram's privacy policy so kids and parents would talk privacy - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/878790/a-lawyer-rewrote-instagrams-terms-of-service-for-kids-now-you-can-understand-all-of-the-private-data-you-and-your-teen-are-giving-up-to-social-media/ <comment><USER2> It's not like kids/teens can delete Instagram either. Communication is done with iMessage and Instagram DMs => deleting them not good, especially if you don't have an iPhone. I wish there was an open platform that was encrypted by default, and isn't primarily advertised as privacy centric. If it's advertised that way then people will be scared of being seen as a terrorist or something.

Wire mostly fits the bill except it's app feels like hangouts (ugh), and it's focused on privacy, so teens don't want to use it.

Also iMessage is encrypted, but not cross platform.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried telegram?</comment></comment>


Innovative way to combat SQL injection - <AUTHOR> https://homebank.sactocu.org/UA2004/faq-mfa.htm#pp6

<comment><USER2> In case you have any confusion about this, please note that the term "Innovative" is used here to mean "likely to cause Hacker News readers to spew soda out their noses".

<comment><USER3> Ooops - looks like somebody forgot to put "TRUNCATE" in the list!

<comment><USER4> It is possible that they server is not given access to these functions, so they didn't need to be checked for, in the input.

This presents its own problems, if for some reason in the future they need to add one of these missing functions to the servers access, and don't recognise that they need to add the check as well.

But anyway, it is great to see the boss' nephew getting some work.

<comment><USER5> Come on. Typing "truncate" in a text field doesn't do anything to the database. Neither does "insert" or "update".

What it does is generate stupid alarms and break pageflows when you have an improperly configured web filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They aren't using instructions to users to block SQL Injection. They're using a web application firewall to block SQL Injection, and they have it configured to take a shotgun approach to filtering form fields.

You could do the same thing with any application, secure or not, by applying a naive mod_security configuration to your Apache server.

That's not a great practice, but it doesn't tell you anything about how susceptible they are to SQLI.

<comment> rm-rf It may not be a direct indicator of their vulnerability to SQL injection, but it is a pretty good indicator of their placement on the clulessness scale.

clueless<\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-->cluefull

            ^
            |

Right about here I'd say.

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually this is common old fashioned industry standard:

<http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Injection_Rejection.aspx>

We where laughing our asses of. My name and the name of the other in-house guy, both contain an 'and'. Just our boss, could login and had no problem. :)

<comment><USER7> Except, the bad code as shown requires whitespace (\s) before and after the "bad" terms, so the names the Daily WTF post mentions should pass through it.

      if (preg_match('/\s['.implode('|',$badSqlCode).']+\s/i', $sqlcode))

They probably didn't realize this wouldn't catch any of the bad terms at the very start or end of their code, though :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to their annual report they have 272 million dollars worth of member deposits. With that security practice that is very scary.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm guessing that they aren't using "honor-system SQL Injection protection", but they are hard-blocking all of that in the UI layer, which is not a terrible thing to do, but not the most sophisticated and user-friendly approach.

After they got a handful of calls about it, they had to put it in their FAQ.

Sorry, I just killed the joke.

</comment><comment><USER10> My bank recently dumped their .NET online banking system for what appears to be a homebrew job in "classic" ASP. I'm sure they had a good reason, but from the outside it certainly seems like an odd decision.

</comment><comment><USER11> And here I am thinking it was odd that my bank has a non-EV SSL cert.

<comment><USER12> Oh, and the time when my bank's netbank SSL certificate expired, and it took them 3 days to get it fixed because it seemed noone knew what was going on... that was great! lol.</comment></comment>


Flops in the Technology of 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techieapps.com/5-biggest-flops-in-the-technology-of-2012/ The technology world is always full of surprises. While some small ideas and decisions turn into big business. <comment><USER2> Point #5 (Mac Succumbs To Trojan Flashback) at least, is rather badly written.

I didn't bother to read the others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everyone was expecting that the shareholders of facebook would be benefited and would get huge amount of profit but facebook really disappointed everyone.

I don't understand why a giant like yahoo appoints a person at such a high position without verifying their qualifications.

Truly disappointing technology flops such giants.</comment>


Show HN: Office Unbound – Advice on Remote Work from Developers, CEO's and more - <AUTHOR> https://www.officeunbound.com <comment><AUTHOR> Not a developer, but I wanted to challenge myself to create a blog from scratch without a CMS. It's hosted on Github Pages, written with Bootstrap 4 Alpha, SSL via cloud flare and domain via name cheap.</comment>


At 78, Scientist Is Starting a Hedge Fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/at-78-scientist-is-starting-a-hedge-fund-1437693849 <comment><USER2> The Medallion Fund cited appears to be the one that made its impressive returns by gaming the tax system:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-07-03/the-irs- chal...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-07-03/the-irs-challenges-a- hedge-fund-tax-trick)

<comment><USER3> The Medallion Fund has been phenomenally successful for decades. They are being challenged for an aggressive accounting trick, but there are a lot more things contributing to their success than one accounting trick.

<comment><USER4> Such as?

<comment><USER3> They have very smart people with PhDs in disciplines including NLP and cryptography inventing models to predict prices, and other very smart people refining the technology and execution. They are extremely secretive about the details of the strategies beyond that, and they probably change fairly frequently anyway. Slightly more detailed info:

[http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/998/strategy-of- ren...](http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/998/strategy-of-renaissance- technologies-medallion-fund-holy-grail-or-next-madoff)

[https://quantivity.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/manifold- learnin...](https://quantivity.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/manifold-learning- differential-geometry-machine-learning/#more-5397)

<comment><USER2> Those links appear to suggest two things:

1) secrets

2) magic sauce

While the possibility of "magic sauce" is in theory possible, its existence would suggest that it is currently possible to mathematically describe the behaviour of stock markets in such a way as to generate 35% p.a. returns by trading entirely based on this description.

A priori, this seems very unlikely.

Alternatives, such as an unusual access to information, and/or efficient use of existing laws, e.g. those surrounding taxes, are much more plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Such a clickbait title. Former hedge fund employee starting a hedge fund a bit more accurate.

<comment><USER6> There are over 10,000 hedge funds in the world. Somehow 'former hedge fund employee' doesn't mean much as a news headline.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/19/us-hedgefunds- laun...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/19/us-hedgefunds-launches- idUSKBN0OZ1KF20150619)

<comment><USER7> He spent seven years at Renaissance, arguably the world's top-performing hedge fund management company.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I know that. We have all watched James Simons, right?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNznD9hMEh0)

What does that have to do with being a more appropriate news headline? I was responding to the 'clickbait' comment.

<comment><USER8> The title is click-baity because we're supposed to say, "oh, there's someone old and not in hedge funds getting into it, he must have some crazy cool thing he's going to do."

Except, if he was employed by one of the top hedge fund management firms, none of that impression is true. So, click bait and misleading.

<comment><USER6> No, the title is suppose to be catchy and accurate, which it is.

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

Some Hacker News "title police" who thinks it's more accurate to simply say "former hedge fund employee" is simply wrong. There are millions of former hedge fund employees.

Why can't people add real value to the conversation or say nothing? Understanding how the trading algorithms work, for example, would be interesting.

<comment><USER8> From the article,

> It is Mr. Zweig's first foray into the hedge-fund world since leaving the > famously secretive and profitable quantitative hedge-fund firm Renaissance > Technologies LLC in 2010. He agreed when he left not to compete against > Renaissance for four years.

later,

> Mr. Zweig first turned to hedge funds as an investor while amassing a nest > egg for his disabled daughter. In 2003, he interviewed for a job with East > Setauket, N.Y.-based Renaissance, founded by former Cold War code breaker > James Simons. Renaissance has achieved near-mythical status for the > performance of its Medallion fund, which has averaged returns of more than > 35% a year since the late 1980s through 2010.

> After seven years at Renaissance, where he said he developed a system that > allowed the firm to trade certain instruments for the first time, Mr. Zweig > signed the noncompete agreement with Renaissance. Renaissance declined to > comment.

For the last 12 years he's been in the world of hedge funds. It's not like he's coming off theorizing the quark and saying "let's try this hedge thing". Indicating his expertise would have been more factual.

It would also have made the link less interesting to click on WSJ's home page. I don't fault WSJ for getting clicks, but lets call it what it is, yeah?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "founded by former Cold War code breaker James Simons"

That is a weird description. Yes, Simons did that, but a normal description would be "former mathematician".

<comment><USER10> >former

Implying that he stopped being one at some point??

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Signition is a play on words including "signal" and "recognition."

but i could not help but think of "momentum ignition", a strategy that is a little bit more sinister than what amounts to no more than statistical methods for return and risk estimation.

edit: on further thought "sigma ignition" is a rather darkly funny way to think about it too.

</comment><comment> bmir-alum-007 [http://web.archive.org/web/20150724000231/http://www.wsj.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150724000231/http://www.wsj.com/articles/at-78-scientist- is-starting-a-hedge-fund-1437693849)

</comment><comment><USER12> Click-baity headline. Yes, he's 78. Yes, he's starting a hedge fund. But he worked at Renaissance (the gold standard of hedge funds) from 2003 - 2010, and was preparing to start it for the 4 years the non-compete was in place.

</comment><comment><USER13> Scientists starting hedge funds isn't a new phenomenon. I forget the name (kinda telling) but it was an all star team of physicists and nobel prize winners doing some triangular arbitrage (?) and then blowing up spectacularly. Apart from HFT, lot of quant or algorithm based funds never seems to last longer than the market will let them. You see successful money managers but rarely are they quant based strategists. It never made sense as to why you would need so much science in a field where investing and trading is an art half of the time. I might not be understand how quants typically work which adds to my biased thinking but we've seen many like this. Reminds me of what Warren Buffet said "It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong."

<comment><USER14> What continues to amaze me is that there does not seem to be any convincing scientific evidence that predictive patterns can be found in past price movements, and yet many reputable investment firms are throwing a lot of money at this problem.

I understand that not all quantitative approaches depend on finding patterns in past prices, but some do.

I am completely undecided on this one. It baffles me. It's not like every company applying materials science also experiments with witchcraft somewhere in the basement, so what's going on here?

<comment><USER15> There are predictive short term patterns, but once the knowledge of the patterns spreads, they start to disappear. There is also constant change in long term patterns because the world outside financial market changes unexpected ways.

Financial markets are self reflecting system where people who invest are inside the the system and change it.

If you discover pattern that makes money, you must keep it secret and establish firm that tries to exploit it. If you are successful, others notice it and start to analyze your game and the edge starts to disappear. You may use machine learning to discover constantly new patterns but that does not change the situation, because others also use machine learning to detect new patterns.

Portfolio managers seeking high alpha are often poker players, because Poker and alpha seeking are very similar games.

<comment><USER14> But banks also employ technical analysts who use well known technical signals like support and resistance. Your and lumberjack's theory does not apply to them and yet they get paid.

<comment><USER15> >But banks also employ technical analysts

No they don't. Technical analysis is to professional trading what astrology is to astronomy and big banks don't use them. Those books are snake oil sold to hobbyists and small time traders.

Large banks, investment management firms use completely different statistical methods.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Syncthing: An open source Dropbox replacement - <AUTHOR> https://syncthing.net/ <comment><USER2> I've been using the syncthing for years, and in my opinion it's so much better than a solution like Dropbox. If you want, everything can be done on your lan, it offers encryption, compression, and the ton of customizability. You can synchronize directories individually, and ignore certain files. It's from a centralized option like Dropbox, since it's not using a single location to store your files, but if you want a "centralized" set up you can still make it work by using a server which all your clients connect to instead of connecting them individually.

Great project and I would highly recommend giving it a try.

<comment><USER3> rcloud ([https://rclone.org](https://rclone.org)) is great too if you want an open source client solution for syncing to the commercial storage service. If you can setup your own server for rcloud like you'd do with Syncthing, rcloud can be enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Syncthing is _not_ a Dropbox replacement, but it is an excellent file syncing system (more similar to BitTorrent Sync). I use it to sync my main source code directories and .emacs.d, and it does a tremendous job of that.

I'm looking at the practicalities of offering a hosted Syncthing service, as I've begun doing something like that just for my company. I think that if commodity Syncthing hosting becomes a reality, Syncthing is basically unbeatable.

<comment><USER5> I took a quick look at the documentation, and it sounds pretty much like an open source version of BitTorrent/Resilio Sync.

Their documentation mentions they use an open protocol. Is this thing just running on P2P?

<comment> em-bee it syncs directly between devices. a relay server is only used when the devices can't talk to each other (because thy are both behind a different NAT for example).

that's pretty much the definition of P2P, i'd say.

<comment><USER4> > _because thy are both behind a different NAT for example_

More specifically, a case where they are both behind different NATs which both do not respond to UPnP.

<comment><USER6> No hole punching? Huh.

<comment><USER4> That too, having never implemented NAT traversal I guess my mind always considered them the same mechanism.

<comment><USER6> "That too"? From what I can see hole punching is pretty far from being implemented: [https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/4259](https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/4259)

Edit: Oh wait this exists [https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/5737](https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/5737)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Calling it a Dropbox replacement is inaccurate, it is a decentralised file synchronization system. A Dropbox replacement would be Nextcloud

<comment><USER8> Most people I know use Dropbox precisely just for that, and little more. For them, Nextcloud would be closer to a Google Drive replacement.

(Yes, I'm well aware Dropbox is way more than file synchronization, but try to change how people use things...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 6 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18832517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18832517)

2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13856552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13856552)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734114)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been using syncthing for a couple of years for sharing files between my various devices. Couldn't recommend it more!

</comment><comment><USER11> I do use Syncthing as a Dropbox replacement because that was my original use case.

My original user case was to sync files between my computers at work and home and it worked perfectly for that. Extremely reliable as others have mentioned.

But today when I started the program on my laptop while Syncthing was running on my computer it suggested the shared folder on my computer to sync. I knew it did LAN sync but I didn't know about the discovery. It was awesome.

Thanks to everyone who created this wonderful software.

</comment><comment><USER12> While at the start it was just a synching folder, nowadays dropbox's value proposition is:

\- having a client in any mildly popular operating systems.

\- having a fast and simple file sharing mechanism with co-workers/clients

\- having high quality native apps, in particular on iOS, to the point that until Files came around Dropbox could be seen a make do file manager to switch files between application even locally.

Anything that doesn't have full native iOS and android support is providing a different service. Let's just call it another "desktop file synching" service and not a Dropbox replacement.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey, sorry to go a bit off topic here, but it has been on my mind a lot and besides Nextcloud (Virtual drive, little supported and imo not great for other reasons) and Seafile (part commercial, confusing package) I haven't been able find any viable solutions for this.

My problem seems simple. I'd like to only really synchronize a few (selected) files and directories, while other files are simply shown as stubs and only downloaded on request.

I've seen that there is a Syncthing explorer that only downloads files on demand. Is it possible to build a hybrid and how difficult would it be?

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER14> Syncthing is amazing. Have it running on a few machines. It's been Rock solid for the last 6 months. I primarily use it to sync org-mode files on different machines. The client worked great on Android too when I last used it. Syncthing-fork package from f-droid to be exact.

</comment><comment><USER15> The web client lacks authentication last I checked. It is far from a Dropbox replacement

<comment><USER16> You can turn it on in the settings. I have it on a couple of servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm still looking at Dropbox replacements, is it easier to admin than Seafile? Along with native iOS/Android/win/macOS/Linux clients (not 3rd party)?

<comment><USER18> It is. The first thing you do is create/select an existing directory on one of the devices to sync. Then you introduce each device (via device IDs/QR codes) to each other one time so they trust each other. Lastly you share the folder with all of the trusted devices.

From there it is entirely fire n forget. The result of folders that just magically sync is not dissimilar to Dropbox.

The plus side is you pay no subscription, you have no limit to how much data you can sync aside from bandwidth and local storage on each device, and you can control oodles of settings you cannot on other more centralized clients.

<comment><USER12> I don't see iOS clients, not even third parties. Am I missing something ?

<comment><USER18> No you are not. I'm using a Nexus 6 (Android) so I was unaware that there is not a native iOS client yet. There are in progress talks to build one but apparently it is a high lift to get done.

[https://forum.syncthing.net/t/on-syncthing-ios-port- again/89...](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/on-syncthing-ios-port-again/8964)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Been using it for like 2 years. Extremely pleased.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is the third-party iOS client working well and trustworthy? Does it hook into the Files app?

<comment><USER21> Last time I checked the only iOS client was defunct and not even on the App Store. The issue discussing a native iOS app on github is tagged with not-our- bug.

[https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/102](https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/102)

If there's a new client out I'd love to know about it.

<comment><USER22> Discussion from April 2019:

[https://forum.syncthing.net/t/ios-iphone-crowdfunding-on- bou...](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/ios-iphone-crowdfunding-on- bountysource/13136/4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How does it differ from Nextcloud?

<comment> em-bee [https://nextcloud.com/compare/](https://nextcloud.com/compare/) gives a good answer to that.

nextcloud does not support local sync, and it has a bunch of other features that you may or may not need.

but most importantly, i understand that nextcloud needs to be hosted on a public server, and all your devices use a client to connect to that server, whereas syncthing is peer-to-peer (except for the use of a discovery server, or a relay server when needed)

</comment></comment><comment> em-bee i wonder if it would be possible to drop the requirement of a discovery server. i'd like syncing to work in a LAN without internet access. it should be possible to use zeroconf for the discovery.

<comment><USER24> i just read in the docs that it is possible to run your own discovery server and to configure the client to use it and also to remove the built-in discovery server list.

<comment> em-bee you can remove the default discovery server and rely on your own. i'd like to not have a discovery server in the first place. it shouldn't be needed for syncing between machines in the same LAN, nor for syncing with a server on a public network.

the only common situation where a discovery server is needed is to sync between a machine at home and a machine in the office. and in that case, most likely also a relay server is needed since both will be behind NAT.

<comment><USER25> I've only recently started using Syncthing so I might be wrong, but I think you can not use a discovery server at all. The only requirement is that your Syncthing devices must have static IP addresses configured in their respective settings pages on Syncthing. Once that is done, you can disable both local and global discovery servers in the settings panel.

<comment> em-bee static ip addresses are a blocker. i want my phone to sync to my laptop when i am traveling, connected to whatever wifi is available, without needing to rely on internet working.

another comment suggests that it should work with avahi/bonjour. if that's the case, that would solve my problem.

<comment><USER25> Again, not an expert on Syncthing, but I'm pretty sure that Avahi/Bonjour do pretty much exactly what Syncthing's local discovery protocols do.

edit: here's a discussion on GitHub about adding avahi support: [https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/5460](https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/issues/5460)

It seems they've dismissed it as unnecessary:

>Avahi as far as I understand is essentially the same as Bonjour/mDNS/dns-sd. Regardless, bonjour is just multicast unicast bla bla thingy, same like we do with local discovery, the only difference is that bonjour/mDNS/dns-sd etc has support in the routers to forward the service announcements to other subnets, which they won't do for syncthings local discovery.

But that thread does have some other information if you want to continue trying to use avahi/bonjour

edit again just to be clear: there's a difference between local and global discovery. Global Discovery is the "discovery server" you're referring to. Local Discovery is simply your device sending an announce packet on your local network with your device ID, so that other Syncthing device's on the same network can see it. Local Discovery does not run a "discovery server". I'm not sure _exactly_ what your requirements are, but I would think that just using local discovery would be what you're looking for, or at least worth looking more into.

<comment> em-bee yes, local discovery without needing a server is exactly what i am looking for. thank you!

i mentioned avahi/bonjour mainly as a point of comparison for something like it. i don't care about the implementation details as long as it works :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> it's nice, but not great for old hardware. quite CPU intensive.</comment>


India's invisible innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/nirmalya_kumar_india_s_invisible_entrepreneurs.html Can India become a global hub for innovation? Nirmalya Kumar thinks it already has. He details four types of "invisible innovation" currently coming out of India and explains why companies that used to just outsource manufacturing jobs are starting to move top management positions overseas, too. (Filmed at TEDxLondonBusinessSchool.)<p>Nirmalya Kumar is a professor of Marketing at the London Business School and a passionate voice for new entrepreneurs in India <comment><USER2> the "sinking skill ladder" concept is interesting</comment>


Ask HN: Why has Firefox not really moved forward with the UX of its addon store? - <AUTHOR> The team working on Firefox is doing an incredible job pushing their browser forward. I've been a staunch supporter of their work for years. But one thing I don't get it how old the addon store feels. I see chrome add-ons rising to the front page on product hunt and almost never see them being ported over to Firefox despite it actually being decently simple enough to do so (doesn't apply everywhere of course but a lot of core logic is very similar). Even disregarding ports, I don't remember seeing anything major in show HN threads or anywhere else about some amazing new addon.<p>My point is, add-ons are actually a big deal (as evidenced by platforms like product hunt). But Firefox feels like it's neglecting a very obvious market. And I'm very curious why that is. <comment><USER2> From one staunch supporter of Mozilla to another:

1\. Chrome was first to the easy JS addons game. Firefox is playing catch up there with Web Extensions. Did Firefox basically invent the browser extension? Yeah. But Chrome made it popular and easy to develop

2\. Developers are largely moving towards Chrome as their sole browser for testing. Therefore, addons get developed for Chrome first. You also might be experiencing sample bias on the other end of that: PH and HN are developer focused, so Chrome gets more front-page love.

<comment><USER3> > Developers are largely moving towards Chrome as their sole browser for > testing

That's the most depressing thing I've read this week. I'm not saying it's not correct, but it's fucking ridiculous.

We _just_ got to a point where there are multiple competitive rendering engines (i.e. they keep each other honest) and front end developers say "eh, fuck it, if it works in chrome thats enough".

To the developers who have either a stated, or unstated view of "<site> works best in Chrome": fuck you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chrome is more heavily advertised since it's maintained by a tech corporation with lots of resources. And Chrome is also being preloaded onto a lot of Windows machines by OEMs, so that's also pushing adoption.

Meanwhile, Firefox is relying on the same advertising it always has relied on: word of mouth. The reason Firefox became popular was because the only other choice at the time was IE 6 (which already had a bad reputation at the time). Now, with Chrome out and receiving regular updates, users have little incentive to not use the browser that "everyone else" is using.

<comment><USER3> > Chrome is more heavily advertised since it's maintained by an advertising > corporation with lots of resources

Fixed that for you.</comment></comment>


What Business is Wall Street In?  - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2010/05/09/what-business-is-wall-street-in/ <comment><USER2> If Mark Cuban thinks the market is now all about exotic derivatives rather than buying stock in companies you believe in, he's listening to the wrong people. Commission-based brokers talk about exotic derivatives; Warren Buffet still talks about buy-and-hold.

The biggest wins and losses in day trading will come from exotic derivatives simply by their nature: they're highly leveraged bets. Those firms that create the vehicles to make those bets aren't "hackers", they're "Vegas". You ask for a bet against the housing market or for cattle, they set up a structure to let you make that bet, and you play the odds -- and you might beat the other betters in the market over the short term, but it's the house (taking its percentage off the top) that always wins long term. Mark Cuban is right to be uncomfortable playing that game.

Meanwhile, people like Warren Buffet continue to look for healthy companies that are underpriced and buy into them for the long term. Day-to-day the market might be driven by short-term bets, but over the course of 3 decades it's still driven by the fundamental health of companies. If anything, those who care about _"the performance of specific companies and their returns"_ benefit from the fact that occasionally, as a result of day traders' bets, healthy companies' stocks get sold at bargain prices.

If you try to play Vegas' game, you'll probably get burned. But if you stand back, watch the game, and buy when their game creates a bargain price on good long-term stocks, you stand to get very solid returns.

<comment><USER3> I think what Mark Cuban is saying is that because of the way Wall Street operates now it is very dangerous to be the Warren Buffet type of value investor.

More specifically, Wall Street's obsession with the big score makes stocks very dangerous and volatile which means that if you try investing based on a company's intrinsic value, the stock you buy can easily swing down for reasons that are completely unrelated to the company value but have to do with some traders or trading algorithms trying to outsmart each other.

Now if you are Buffet you probably have enough cash reserves to ride out any such swings, but most people need to rely on the money in their stock holdings, so they cannot afford the new found volatility of Wall Street, so many people are just moving out of the market all together.

Now I have to say that I am not sure if this argument is right, but that is his argument.

<comment><USER2> > _"it is very dangerous to be the Warren Buffet type of value investor."_ ... > _"most people need to rely on the money in their stock holdings"_

If you need to rely on the money from the _sale_ of your stock holdings, you're not a Warren Buffet type of value investor. If you're looking for _income_ from your holdings (dividends and such), the volatility of Wall Street's stock pricing algorithms is not an issue.

For those who are nearing retirement and counting on the _sale_ of stock holdings, make sure you have an appropriate stock-bond-short term reserve mix in your portfolio so that you can ride out market swings. Moving out of the market altogether is unnecessary. If you do move out of the market in desperation (like people did in March of last year, selling for whatever they could get), you're providing us value investors the "irrational bargains" I mentioned in my reply to davidw.

<comment><USER4> Buying stock for dividends is usually not a great investment since dividend income is taxed at a much higher rate than capital gains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Which is the wiser way to deal with hackers:

Is it to enact hard to enforce ambiguous anti hacking laws, while at the same time individually patching each exploit with unrelated fixes?

Or is it to step back and analyze why a system has so much hackable complexity, and seek to fix the overarching issues that create security vulnerabilities?

I would much rather see fundamental suggestions about how to optimize the market for fairness from the ground up rather than patchwork fixes like the dollar a trade tax, or the 5 year tax break.

<comment> daniel-cussen My understanding is that game theory isn't there yet, so you can't do a first principles market approach. But one should still try to make things work better and more elegantly.

<comment><USER6> It's also hard to really "design" markets in an overarching way; they tend to be nothing _but_ formalizations of and patchwork fixes to various existing practices. The stock market, for example, is a formalization of the paper- stock-trades market with an attempt at improving transparency and reducing fraud; the commodities exchange market is similar for commodities, with the additional goal of providing a clearance mechanism to get counterparty risk out of the picture; etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I have always thought I had a good handle on the market. Until recently."

Guess what? That just means that the market has gotten more efficient so that you can't arbitrage it anymore. If you can't make money, that your problem. If the quants made the market so irrational then why aren't you profitable arbitraging it?

All technologies improve the average case at the expense of making the worst case worse. Cars versus walking for example. Average case: get to where you are going faster, worst case: horrible accident. The question is not whether financial innovation introduces systemic risk but whether the benefits out- weigh the costs. The consensus amongst academic is that yes, this is the case.

</comment><comment><USER8> This article is at best inconsistent, at worst self-serving.

Funny that Cuban wasn't complaining about traders when they were driving up tech stocks in the dot-com bubble that eventually helped him land his giant payout in Yahoo stock. Or the traders that took said Yahoo stock off of him when he wanted to divest himself (aka liquidity).

Tax breaks for long-term investors? Well VC and PE firms are "long-term investors" and they already have a pretty sweet deal on carried interest. That didn't stop them from rampant speculation in the tech bubble, or buying companies at outrageous debt multiples in the credit bubble. Imagine how much more it would have gone on if they didn't have to factor tax into their return calculations? I bet Mark would love to get all his future speculative VC investment payouts tax free. I don't know of a major tax regime that doesn't treat short-term trading revenue as income as opposed to capital gains. Tax breaks for "real long-term investment"? Yes, it's called a 401k or pension plan. If you're really a long-term investor a 10% algo glitch (4% actual down day) shouldn't even register for you. You shouldn't even be looking at the market on more than an annual basis.

"The market has changed over the last 3 years" and is driven by macro issues? Yes we've been through a severe global recession driven by the bursting of a global credit bubble. Of course macro issues have dominated and volatility has been extremely high.

(The wider) Wall Street's business is not and never was purely raising capital for companies. In the 20s were market volumes way less than capital raised as a proportion? I doubt it, but even if so it sure didn't prevent the Great Crash. Why does government need to further incentivise capital raising, that already brings in some of the highest possible fees (on individual transactions) to investment banks of any "traditional" activity (equity and debt underwriting, M&A, market making), i.e. excluding principal business and super exotic trades. He also says that companies never go public anymore, yet global IPO volumes are the highest in a decade (<http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2010-03-26/global-ipo-q1>).

The only point I really agree with is leverage - it fuels the growth of bubbles, and exacerbates their bursting (or causes it when taken away in some cases). Most of the major bubbles/crashes in the past 100 years were either caused by excessive leverage (credit bubble, LTCM, various debt and currency crises) or had leverage as a major feature in their bursting and the speed and volatility of the movements (dot-com, Great Crash, credit bubble). The possible exception to this is '87 (to a large extent computer-driven, arguably) although again leverage played a big role.

Finally, the major, unforeseen crashes have typically come about due to opaque, illiquid and/or highly leveraged situations (AIG, LTCM, CDS on CDOs, day traders buying tech stocks on margin etc). High-frequency traders only trade in the most liquid instruments, so ironically they are the ones trading on exchange, transparently and with exchange-set collateral and trading rules. Certainly illegal activities such as real front-running should be stamped out. Possibly things like flash orders too. A level playing field should be ensured. But he should worry more about the stuff going on off exchange than in the public markets.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cracker, not hacker, is what he means. Annoying mistake.

<comment><USER6> I dunno, it seems to be "hacking" in the relevant sense of figuring out how a formal or mechanical system works and finding clever things to do based on that understanding (of which "exploiting weaknesses for profit" is one, though not necessarily the most interesting one). People here discuss "hacking fitness" or "hacking productivity" or whatever, so I don't see why "hacking the markets" is any worse of an analogy.

<comment><USER10> The context in which Cuban uses it, though, seems to presume that any hacker will use his findings for illicit personal gain rather than for the benefit of the community.

Admittedly this is a bit pedantic, and I know the popular use of the term has come to imply black hat, but this _is_ Hacker News!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of the best articles that's been written about the issues with today's wall street.

</comment><comment><USER12> _Put another way, there is zero moral hazard attached to any trade. So why wouldn't traders take the biggest risk possible ?_

I'm glad I'm not the only one who somehow says and types the exact opposite to what I meant to say.

Mark means there is a maximum amount of moral hazard -- the brokers have completely different interests than the principals. If there were zero moral hazard, that would be a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wall Street should give priority for investors over traders.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would like to be shown I am wrong because it seems like an oversight but the answer to his main question is "the bond market" right?

</comment><comment><USER15> _There will be another crash, because there are too many players looking for the trillion dollar score. They can't all win, yet how many do you think wouldn't risk everything, even what is not theirs, for that remote chance to score big ? Put another way, there is zero moral hazard attached to any trade. So why wouldn't traders take the biggest risk possible ?_

well I'm sorry, but that also applies to VC/angel funded startups game nowadays, which Cuban participates in.

<comment><USER16> I disagree. Angels and VCs make money by investing in people who build great companies. What do derivatives traders build?

<comment><USER4> Derivatives traders build ways for great companies to hedge risk. They also push the price of assets towards their correct value, allowing the price in the present to reflect information on the future.

<comment><USER16> The trouble with this argument is that it is a reductio ad absurdum after the fiasco of the last few years. It's hard to hear something like "they also push the price of assets towards their correct value" with a straight face.

Has it not become painfully clear that the financial system has come to dominate the economy to a greater extent than the value it provides? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYUGDPFinancialShare.jpg> And that this has been driven by the interests of those who profit personally from such a configuration, in opposition to the interests of society as a whole? [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/405/i...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/405/inside-job). I'd say those statements are hardly controversial to anyone without a vested interest in the status quo.

I grant that "hedging risk" and that other standby, "ensuring liquidity", do have value, just not to justify the existing system. The liquidity argument in particular comes off as ironic in light of the fact that trillions of public dollars provided to the financial sector in the name of opening liquidity to the general economy did no such thing.

<comment><USER4> Actually, a lack of proper derivatives did help to create the housing bubble. Until a few years ago, it was very difficult to short the housing market. It was only fairly recently that speculators such as Paulson, Magnetar and others managed to successfully speculate in the right direction. This certainly helped to bring housing prices closer to their proper level.

In any case, since you feel the financial sector is too large, what do you believe is the proper size of the financial sector?

<comment><USER16> I don't have time to study this question so my answer is useless, but to play along, I'll go with 5% or so of GDP. Why? Because the two historical periods that exceed 5% are (1) the Great Depression and (2) the 1980+ era of financialization leading to the recent crash. (I'm getting this from the Wikipedia graph I linked to.)

To turn to your other point, I certainly respect what you're saying, but once again there's this problem of reductio ad absurdum: forces leading straight to financial meltdown can hardly be representative of a proper system. What you're saying sounds dangerously close to "the system worked". Or perhaps, "the system just didn't follow its own logic consistently enough".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for 3 Desks in Mountain View ASAP - <AUTHOR>

Hi, if anyone has 3 available desks or just office space that fits 3 desks (we can buy our own desks), can you please let me know.
We are a team of 3 engineers just building stuff together and wanted to work out of an office in preferably Mountain View.
We are looking for space ASAP, you can also drop me a note at email@example.com if you have something. <comment><USER2> If you need some basic desks and chairs, I have some from the studio. Just let me know, they are in Storage now.

Good luck with the search.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sid, you can work out of HackerDojo for free (donations happily accepted).

</comment><comment><USER4> Sid - are you leaving LinkedIn?</comment>


Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5 dimensions vs weight - <AUTHOR> http://abdophoto.tumblr.com/post/31691722139/lumia-920-vs-iphone-5

<comment><USER2> I'm considering the 920 instead of the iPhone 5 (though I may come screaming back). For me it's comforting that the phone has some heft--most of the Samsung phones feel really cheap compared to the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER3> So the Lumia 920 is almost twice as heavy.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say "almost twice". But it is 65% heavier, which is a fair bit.</comment></comment>


The Coddling of the American Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ <comment><USER2> (September 2015)</comment>


The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/The_Top_Ten_Reasons_iTunes_Sucks

<comment><USER2> Top 5 reasons iTunes doesn't suck:

My wife, who is not a geek, can: 1\. Import CDs 2\. Buy music 3\. Arrange playlists 4\. Sync her iPhone 5\. Burn CDs

All without help or frustration.

<comment><USER3> Double mod up (if I could) for buying music and burning cd's.

itunes makes this dead simple.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> iTunes is in no way sub-par so I think the language is a little strong, however, I think that just like many pieces of popular software it is not necessarily the best. Indeed, people with free time and some know how have come up with pretty cool product features that rival or surpass some of Apple's features. Aren't we allowed to demand more even though the product is already good?</comment>


Bill Could Destroy Uber's Unsustainable Business Model - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmpaq4/this-bill-could-destroy-ubers-unsustainable-business-model <comment><USER2> But they aren't employees. I still dont understand why people who get to work on demand whenever they want without a boss to report to or set hours are employees. The company doesn't get the benefits of having employees (schedule them in for rush hours, reliable controllable labor base), so why should drivers get the perks of becoming an employee without having to give up their flexibility and everything?

<comment><USER3> This just codifies an existing California Supreme Court ruling and applies it to general employment status.

Explainer of the Supreme Court ruling: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonymarks/2018/05/29/the- califo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonymarks/2018/05/29/the-california- supreme-court-deals-a-blow-to-independent-contractors/#27991e8b70a1)

> Under the newly adopted 'ABC test,' a worker is an independent contractor to > whom a wage order does not apply only if the hiring entity establishes all > of the following:

(A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact;

(B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business; and

(C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity.

A is debatable at best, given that make and model of car is heavily restricted, particularly for the 'UberBlack' service. [https://www.uber.com/drive/new-york/get-started/eligible- veh...](https://www.uber.com/drive/new-york/get-started/eligible-vehicles/)

If your contractor gets to dictate how you present yourself and how you do your job rather than just being happy with the end product, that looks a lot less like contracting as understood by laypeople.

<comment><USER4> What if you're a clown and you show up in jeans and a button down with normal sized shoes and no makeup?

<comment><USER3> As far as I could imagine, most clown contracts don't actually specify the exact articles of clothing down to the UPC; anything that looks reasonable is permitted. Whereas Uber has a list of specifically permitted vehicles.

<comment><USER5> That's a distinction without a difference. There's only so many car models, what alternative would you suggest to a whitelist of acceptable cars for UberBlack?

<comment><USER6> Allowing the worker to choose their car. Quoting GGP:

 _> (A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact;_

<comment><USER3> Curious, what is GGP in this context?

<comment><USER6> I meant "great-grandparent", referring to your comment quoting the Supreme Court ruling, but I realize now that I miscounted and it's actually one level further than that :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Eh.. just charge people more money to use Uber. Yeah they would lose a lot of regular riders but will those people really go back to using cabs? Uber could double their prices and I would still use them over taxis 9/10 times.

<comment><USER8> Half the time in New York you get a cab with their meter off when you call Uber.

<comment><USER9> What?! I live in NYC, have taken dozens of Ubers/Lyfts to a variety of places, and have literally never once seen this.

<comment><USER8> Happened to us in Brooklyn just last weekend.

<comment><USER9> How many times have you taken Uber and how many times has it been a yellow cab?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about people get guaranteed certain rights and services by the government so we don't have to worry about whether someone's an employee or contractor?

<comment><USER11> Because Americans don't like paying taxes. It's why we revolted against the British in the first place.

<comment><USER12> That was about taxation without representation, which doesn't help explain why DC residents don't get to vote.

<comment><USER13> Given modern travel, why not disperse the federal government and simply dissolve the federal district (as was already returned to Virginia)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey I'm the author of this piece, let me know if you all have any specific questions about AB5, the ABC test, and this gig economy business model!

</comment><comment><USER15> Im baffled to imagine drivers really want to lose all those tax deductions - and get paid less - to be employees rather than contractors. Being an employee is just about the worst possible tax situation.

A better change in the law would be the opposite. Give the benefits of being a contractor to all folks currently forced to be categorized as employees. And fix healthcare so it's not tied to your job.

<comment><USER16> Being an employee means you can unionize, you must be paid minimum wage, you have protection against arbitrary termination, and myriad other benefits. Many drivers prefer the current arrangement, but many also want to make the tradeoff.

<comment><USER17> >you have protection against arbitrary termination

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At- will_employment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment)

<comment><USER16> That's all fine and good on paper, but what do you think really happens when an employer fires an at-will employee, without cause, who doesn't like what happened?

<comment><USER18> Maybe the employee gets their lawyer involved, and then the company gets their _entire cadre of highly-paid lawyers specializing in exactly this thing_ involved and regardless of whether the law's on the employee's side, he gets a legal fight that will just drain his resources for years and years (or until he's broke).

<comment><USER16> I'm not saying the employee would win, but nor would your scenario occur, in most cases. They'd just pay them off. It's easier to avoid that entirely and offer severance. To get back to my original point, being a real employee rather than a contractor means there's a cost to arbitrary termination, which provides the employee with some additional job security. This is one of the many reasons why one might prefer to be an employee, rather than a contractor, even if there are tax implications.

<comment><USER15> So basically it is better to have a terrible tax situation, because you're hoping to hang on to a job where you aren't wanted?

I'm sorry to hear it, that's a really sad situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Uber has never made a profit and has actually lost over $14 billion in the last four years alone. In the prospectus, Uber insists that these five major metropolitan markets are essential to its path to profitability. In reality, what Uber actually relies on is the $20 billion in funding raised over the past decade and the $8 billion in new investments after going public in May. This investor welfare covers the cost of low prices that render each rideshare trip unprofitable, of driver incentives to combat the high turnover rate of drivers, and of promotions used to drive up demand."

Article nails it, Uber is an investor funded welfare program. Certainly Uber's tech employees are benefiting from this welfare _a lot_ more than drivers, but does asking a massively unprofitable company to be even more unprofitable aid drivers' long-term interests?

<comment><USER3> A fair amount of businesses were probably put out of business when we banned child labor.

Doing _anything_ to restrict _any_ business will reduce profitability and make their balance sheets redder, but as a society we can define the minimum standards that a company is expected to meet; otherwise they'll just feel free to dump the externalities of treating their workers poorly onto society and the general taxpayer will have to pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Postmates derive a huge share of their sales from > California: 41 percent of all Postmates' US sales are in California, 27 > percent with DoorDash, 24 percent of Lyft's rides, 17 percent of Uber's > rides, and 13 percent of UberEats' sales.

Not the main topic of the article but I'm surprised at how concentrated Uber and Lyft's revenue is the state of California. I can imagine smaller / newer companies getting started in one location and being lop sided in their sales, but those two are huge and have been around for years. That's some serious concentration of regulatory risk!

<comment><USER21> SV & population

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A pedant might argue, and cogently one might add, that Uber's unsustainable business model is what will destroy Uber's unsustainable business model.

<comment><USER23> The story of Uber is one of how surprisingly long they can keep an unsustainable (and illegal) business model running. They were supposed to be dead for a long time now. They're still kicking.

<comment><USER5> What is Uber doing that you consider illegal?

<comment><USER23> Operating taxis in cities around the world. Google it, it's not only not news, it's pretty much the core defining thing of Uber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What will it do to the taxi business model? In the US, traditionally, cab drivers are classified as contractors too, and they've also been suing companies in the last few years regarding this issue.

<comment><USER14> The taxi business model emerged relatively recently and was the inspiration for Uber's. In all likelihood, there will be a reversion to the historical norm which actually operates more efficiently than taxi cabs (which believe it or not operate as or more efficiently than ride shares in many scenarios). But we will have to see. Anything is possible because of how many billions are at stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It all seems to work for a while only because self-driving cars are delayed...</comment>


Silence: Because I talked so rarely, people took the time to listen to me - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/8/13/silence <comment><USER2> This is a great technique, and an excellent essay describing it. I found it enjoyable to read.

I wonder, though, if the author failed to pinpoint the likely cause of this effect. Yes, I believe that there is an element to it that involves signaling alpha security in a non-verbal way, and another element to it where the sheer rarity of your speech raises its perceived value.

But consider this, which I suspect may be the dominating force at play: if you follow the author's algorithm and only speak if you feel as though saying nothing will have greater cost in the future to put things back on the rails, what are you doing if not filtering out the lower-quality, lower-urgency, and lower-importance thoughts that you might otherwise utter. I believe that the effect of this is that if you only utter the crème de la crème of your thoughts, then people end up suspecting that you're more brilliant than you actually are. At the very least, people will come to learn that if you have something to say, it will likely be well worth their attention.

It's simply a matter of keeping your lower-quality thoughts as the part of an iceberg submerged below the surface.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a grad student in English Lit, which means I teach freshmen comp to undergrads, which in turn means they want to fight about grades at the end of each semester. One former student, who'd read this essay before I posted it ([http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2...](http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2%80%99-attention-or-how-to-get-the-coaching-and-mentorship-you- need/)) asked how often students actually win grade fights, and I relied, "Never, with me."

I preface grade fights by saying, "I won't change your grade" and then talk about the paper to the extent necessary. The right way to get better grades is to do better work next time. Being on this side of the desk has definitely made me more skeptical of the students who said, "So and so was a hard grader / mean / hated me," mostly because those things might be somewhat true but can almost always be overcome by greater effort, at least at the undergrad level.

Also, grade fights can sometimes be won through silence, as James Fallows describes: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/03/-quot-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2009/03/-quot- when-you-apos-re-done-talking-stop-quot/9827/) . His post is titled, "When you're done talking, stop," which might be slightly better advice than "rarely talk." Since learning the silence trick, grade fights have plummeted in length, since now I've learned to just sit there and give one sentence answers once the substance of an issue has been covered.

<comment><USER4> Obviously not a legal prof. :)

<comment><USER5> Really, what can you expect from an English grad student?

... Well, other than being a teacher?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the poster chose to break his dignified silence by posting a epic paean of fatuous self-praise on-line, interspersed with some quotations from his fathers 'blog on wisdom'. Really.

It would be interesting to hear the other sides of the story:

"Yeah, when he finally spoke, we were all surprised he could still talk, it was sort of weird. But I guess he was our manager so we had to listen to him".

"When he went silent in the middle of the negotiation I wondered what the hell he was doing; is this some sort of new trick?"

Dispensing this kind of wisdom seems to be yet another popular form of 'premature victory lap' on HN, where fairly wet-behind-the-ears types with no major runs on the board can puff themselves up by handing out the Keys to Their Success.

<comment><USER7> _posting a epic paean_

I didn't think it was all that long. I often post things longer than that, in email form or on blogs/websites I own (and probably even here as comments). Seems like an ugly thing to say and not at all accurate.

<comment><USER8> The word "epic" can be used to describe tone, not only length.

<comment><USER7> Still not seeing it. Both the tone and length of the post I replied to seem far more guilty of either interpretation (in context, given that blog posts are frequently much, much longer than posts on a forum) than the blog post it is basically smearing. The post seems uncalled for and contributes nothing of value to HN. It is merely scathing, for no apparent reason. It amounts to a personal attack rather than a critical analysis of the ideas put forth. Very often, posts of that character are rooted in personal vendettas. I'm not aware of some personal history between the two HN members in question, but the whole tone of the post just rubs me completely the wrong way.

<comment><USER8> _the whole tone of the post just rubs me completely the wrong way_

I could say the same thing about the blog post. It's seems to me it's not saying anything except "I'm a smart guy".

 _Very often, posts of that character are rooted in personal vendettas._

Now _THIS_ is uncalled for. As is saying his post is smearing, worthless, and constitutes a personal attack, but _this_ is most uncalled for.

I think onan_barbarian just thought that the idea from this blog post isn't really novel or interesting enough to be submitted here and that the author stated it in a way that makes him sound a little full of himself. He was being a little mean while making his point but people often react like that when something "rubs them the wrong way", no?

<comment><USER7> I really don't get how you can defend his post and turn around and state that mine is uncalled for. I am well aware that my posts are not "polite" and there is no good way to rebut the remarks that were made -- that stating "that's a personal attack" almost always ends up being a personal attack. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Many people on HN come across as socially awkward, full of themselves and so on. Hackers are not exactly known for their suaveness as a group. (Personally, I have no fondness for suave people, but I imagine commenting on that would really strike people as "uncalled for", personal attacks, sweeping generalizations, and so on.) I don't see how sounding to someone else (not me) like he was full of himself invalidates the point or makes it uninteresting. I also don't see how even if it were guilty of such things that merits the characterizations in onan_barbarians remarks of "fatuous self praise" and so on. For me, it is good food for thought. I tend to be too talkative. I've had to work on such issues. I rarely find good insights into the type of problems that causes.

Anyway, it would probably be best to drop this. I'm quite tired, which is not a good place from which to try to politely disagree or parse out such things. And I strongly suspect that we are both merely putting out the fire with gasoline (since I really don't think you intend to be ugly and I certainly don't either), which really adds nothing of value any way you slice it.

Peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In this example I imagine part of the reason why his infrequent talking was taken so seriously is because when he wasn't talking he was engaging in active, serious listening. This gave him a better grasp of what was going on, and it allowed him to make his own speech highly relevant and sensible.

I think this is a great lesson. Good speaking arises from good listening, because only good listening will give you the best sense of what everyone else is thinking and what you need to say to explain your own thoughts to them.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. Remaining quiet and not constantly thinking "what can I say next to 'contribute'?" was one of the reasons I could actually really pay attention to what was going on and catch those key moments where I could actually say something worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminded me of a quote, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." It's attributed to Abraham Lincoln (e.g. in the Yale Book of Quotations).

It's a humorous twist on a Bible verse: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: [and] he that shutteth his lips [is esteemed] a man of understanding." (King James Bible, Proverbs 17:28)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for posting the source. That's one of my favourite sayings and one I would do well to remember more often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is very true. I have repeatedly been called a great communicator which surprises me as I find in group conversations I tend to listen 70% of the time and talk only 30% of the time. I believe because I talk less, more weight is given to what I say. Also, because I talk less, I choose my words wisely instead of just blurting out anything that comes to mind.

<comment><USER11> It seems to me that the optimal percentage of time to spend listening should depend on the number of people in the meeting.

<comment><USER14> My dad had a saying, "you have two ears & one mouth. Use them in that proportion".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In french we have a saying

        "Tourne ta langue 7 fois dans ta bouche avant de parler"

it means

        "Turn your tongue 7 times in your mouth prior to talking"

A metaphor, of course. A reminder, often used by my mum, to say that I was speaking to say nothing.

Carefully crafting the flow of words is as important as the words themselves. Same apply to writing.

<comment><USER16> Especially if it's a tourist visiting Paris - in which case turn your tongue until they leave you alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> While this may be helpful for business people and politicians, I think this isn't great advice for this demographic. A huge skill lacking within this industry (and of course I'm generalizing) is that of verbal communication. Wouldn't talking more, much like writing more, help that skill?

<comment><USER10> No, not at all.

Silence, like body language, is an essential part of "verbal communication skills" - that's the point I'm making. You can no more learn "verbal communication" without learning to use silence than you can learn "driving skills" without learning to look in the rear-view mirror... (poor analogy, but you get the idea)

<comment><USER2> "Music is the space between the notes." - Claude Debussy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I used a silence technique when tutoring (class size about 20): if you want students to answer a question, give them space. 10 seconds of silence is quite uncomfortable - 30 seconds is extraordinary, unbearable. Don't elaborate, or coach; just ask the question, then total silence.

Nature deplores a vacuum, and silence will draw someone out. Counter- intuitively, it also gives permission for people to speak who otherwise would be too shy.

<comment><USER7> _Counter-intuitively, it also gives permission for people to speak who otherwise would be too shy._

I'm wondering if that has to do with internal "speed"/timing issues. My ex was a slow talking, quiet sort (and shy/introverted) and I tend to talk a lot and talk fast. A big issue in our marriage was when we argued and I felt like I took really huge pauses to try to get him to speak but he still wouldn't speak so I would resume talking to fill the silence. His take on it was that I never ever shut up and there was no way to get a word in edgewise. I imagine if we had overcome this issue, the marriage would have gone a great deal more smoothly. I had to actively teach our younger son, who is more like his father in this regard, to simply "interrupt" me and his fast-talking older brother. Otherwise, he feels like we don't "let" him talk. There is a big disconnect in the internal timing here -- he seems to not be able to judge how/when to jump in the way his brother and I do. So when he simply "interrupts" us, I defend it if his brother gets irritated or something.

<comment><USER19> Definitely can relate to this situation (of your ex). It definitely can be a case of difficulty "judg[ing] how/when to jump in", I certainly am below- average on that measure.

However, a separate but related trait is that I often find myself internally running through several iterations of what I want to say, only to realize that by the time I've winnowed it down to the relevant info and am ready to speak, the conversation has moved on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I absolutely agree with this. I find that time and time again, when I refrain from talking as much as possible, people tend to listen more and more when I speak.

I have also found that silence can be very useful in an educational situation. When I tutor kids in math and they are having trouble working through a problem, the tend to look at me after 5 seconds of effort and expect me to help them. I just stare at them until they go back and look at the problem again. 75% of the time they figure it out. I'll admit, I got the idea from Plikt (the tutor of Valentine's children in Speaker for the Dead)

</comment><comment><USER21> I think of certain quiet people I know as having high signal-to-noise. When they start to emit, I listen carefully, because my attention will be rewarded with lots of signal per unit time.

<comment><USER22> On a per sample basis it is very difficult to distinguish between signal and noise. So your lack of definition as to what 'per unit time' means leaves me very confused.

<comment><USER23> I like how this thread suddenly buzzes with science. ;-) Engineers doing some engineering, I guess.

Isn't it impossible to distinguish signal and noise on a per-sample basis, though? A sample has no context, only a frequency. By itself, it can be both - no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've heard something similar that sums up this way:

           "The more you're heard, the less you're listened to"

<comment><USER25> To the contrary, I find that those who speak from long silence are ignored out of habit by those who won't shut up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem with this "silence" is that you are not actually silent, you never are. If you can't back up silence with non-verbal communication skills you will end up being that weird shy guy who never says anything and you really don't want to be weird shy guy.

There is also a huge difference between silence in a group setting, which just means letting others speak compared to silence in a 1-on-1 conversation in which you are forcing someone else to make a move.

Whereas the first is relatively simple to pull off, it also just affects the signal to noise ratio and might give others the impression that you are more intelligent than you actually are. Once that intelligence is put to the test this becomes anything but simple.

The second one can be a lot more difficult. Most people are not accustomed to silence, they prefer noise, they live in noise and they hide in noise. If you are not comfortable or confident enough in how you use silence it will backfire and you end up in a situation that is just awkward.

</comment><comment><USER7> Something of a twist: I used to post a lot on some topics/lists and people tried to shout me down. Arguing with them wasn't effective in swaying opinion. I began looking for other outlets for my need to "talk" and saying less on certain topics and reserving more of what I did say for blogs/websites. I say a lot less on those topics these days. But people are beginning to listen to me and not count me so much a fruitcake. When I tried endlessly to explain, thinking they just didn't understand, it hurt my credibility and convinced people it was about ego and attention-mongering. I still feel there is a great deal of information which needs to be conveyed on those topics, but I continue to work at finding ways for my communication to be effective and not just so much churn. Since I'm a huge blabbermouth, this just does not come naturally to me at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> My father also drilled the same idea in me when I grew up. But as of late I started to notice things that do not quite follow this golden rule.

Take following examples:

1, when in a group of friends engaging in casual conversation, staying quiet tend to get you ignored. You will be labeled as "that quiet person" unless you are already a respected member of the group.

2, in business meetings, the most important persons on the table will never get ignored. And it's best for them to NOT dominate the meeting so the other attendees can express their views.

3, The ability of commanding a conversation is highly valued in society, and such skill cannot be gained by being quiet all the time. In fact, even conveying your message across the table takes skills that can only be learned after much practice.

</comment><comment><USER28> I use an alternate of this as well. In almost never use profanity, particularly as an intensifier. When I do, it's full-quieting, guaranteed to rivet the attention of those who know me. Perfect for those rare times when I absolutely must be heard.

</comment><comment><USER29> "We have two ears and one mouth for a reason."

I think one of the big reasons this is effective is because when you're not _talking_ , you're _listening_ , and this lets you figure out which stuff actually matters.

</comment><comment><USER30> Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer. \--Muhammad Ali

</comment><comment><USER31> It only works if the people who are listening to you don't need to be corrected a lot. Some people in my class who are somewhere between chav and decent IT student have a lot of theories that can instantly be proven wrong. Otherwise yes, I've found this to work really well.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is anecdotal, but I've heard Steve Jobs is notorious for doing this.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would post a comment, but...

</comment><comment><USER34> an economy of words

</comment><comment><USER35> The following is not necessarily commentary on the poster's method of handling meetings:

I had a manager who would do the say-something-then-sit-in-silence thing. It was absolutely horrible. Basically, you had to be a sociopath in order to _not_ feel perpetually uncomfortable around her. Every 'normal' person working for her was absolutely miserable. I'm sure she thought she was being very clever.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is this Western ego-mass trying to adopt and assimilate emerging Asian economies by embracing its cultural distinctiveness?</comment>


Cello Wars (Star Wars Parody) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&v=BgAlQuqzl8o&src_vid=DKC-lRhvdNY&annotation_id=annotation_706910 <comment><AUTHOR> Wait, why did I post this? Ugh - Jedi mind tricks...

<comment><AUTHOR> More information on these guys: <http://thepianoguys.com/music/>

Very talented...

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> were they the same person?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - one of the piano guys plays cello...go figure :)</comment></comment>


Complete [US] Civil War submarine unveiled for first time - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/complete-civil-war-submarine-unveiled-first-time-004714070.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia article for further information: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_%28submarine%29></comment>


The Math of Card Shuffling - <AUTHOR> http://fredhohman.com/card-shuffling/ <comment><USER2> There's a great numberphile with Persi Diaconis all about shuffling: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxJubaijQbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxJubaijQbI) The extra footage is fantastic, too.

<comment><USER3> Author here: I link to this video in the post—it was what originally sparked my interest to do the visualization! The whole channel is really great.

<comment><USER4> Great article!

Where can I find other things you've written? I tried searching your website, but it looks like the blog is pretty inactive.

On another note - I saw that you used Idyll for this site. I haven't heard of it but am very interested - what do you think about it?

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

This was a side project for me. I'm doing my PhD right now so all my current writing is funneled into my research. But Idyll is great for these types of articles, so I'm looking forward to doing more in the future. The creator of Idyll is also a good friend of mine so I may be a bit biased :)

Here's the homepage: [https://idyll-lang.org/](https://idyll-lang.org/)

Check out other examples too: [https://idyll-lang.org/gallery](https://idyll- lang.org/gallery)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a very interesting false card shuffle called the Faro Shuffle. A trick most card magicians/technicians can spend a lifetime perfecting. If you split the deck perfectly, riffle shuffle perfectly such that each card lands 1 for 1 with each other, and repeat 8 times, the deck will be fully restored to it's original order.

No one uses it in live tricks due to the dexterity required and the fact that to a layman the effect is identical to other easier false shuffles.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a nice but somewhat technical analysis of card shuffling things in "Proofs from THE BOOK", a book I can highly recommend to the mathematically interested (requires some mathematical background, like what you'd get in a good CA curriculum, but nothing fancy). This link to an older edition _should_ hopefully work: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.167...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.167.5285&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a difference between "random in theory" and "random in practice"... see: [http://blog.maxshinnpotential.com/2017/11/05/how-you- should-...](http://blog.maxshinnpotential.com/2017/11/05/how-you-should-be- shuffling-cards.html)

<comment><USER8> For instance, the assumption that a single card riffle into a deck will put it in a random location. In reality it would probably be something more like a bell curve around the middle.

<comment><USER3> Author here. Definitely true that you need a random number generator for this to work. See this relevant response to my tweet with a paper describing how bad humans are at picking random numbers: [https://twitter.com/fredhohman/status/1007718733186396161](https://twitter.com/fredhohman/status/1007718733186396161)

<comment><USER7> There is actually a pretty simple algorithm people can use (in real time) if they want to generate random numbers: [http://blog.maxshinnpotential.com/2017/07/05/can-humans- gene...](http://blog.maxshinnpotential.com/2017/07/05/can-humans-generate- random-numbers.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's not how you shuffle cards though. First you cut the deck, such that the bottom card is somewhere near the middle. Then you split and riffle.

If you do that seven times you get a random deck.

If you do it three times you get a fairly random deck, but you'll get clumps of cards together. That's why casinos usually use three cut/riffle steps, and why you can have an advantage playing with a hand shuffled deck.

It's also why I will never play with a machine shuffled deck. Because _those_ are actually shuffled seven times, and are truly random.

<comment><USER10> So why won't you play a truly random shuffled deck?

<comment><USER9> Because then I have no advantage over the casino. With a hand shuffled deck, you get clumps of high cards together from the last set of hands, which gives an advantage to the player. If you can ride out waiting for the clumps, you can beat the house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > most of the time, a deck of cards is shuffled using a riffle. Here's a > question: how many times do you have to riffle a deck of cards before it is > completely shuffled? It's a tricky one, but math has us covered: you need > seven riffles.

</comment><comment><USER12> The behavior of the last cards is interesting.

This can be improved by splitting the deck between riffles.

</comment><comment><USER13> A high school friend told me the same thing around 1993-1995: you have to shuffle it seven times. He said he read it in Wired magazine. I've tried to find the article a few times since, but never been successful.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to understand how you came up with the equation summing up to 235

<comment><USER4> If you take the 52 out of the sum, it becomes:

52 * (1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3... +1/n), where n=52. This is the harmonic series. I didn't know off-hand of a formula for the sum of the harmonic series, so I searched, and apparently, there _is_ no closed form formula for this. So you either have to actually calculate this number, or find an approximation.

Personally, I just plugged it into Wolfram alpha: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F1+%2B+1%2F2+%2B+......](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F1+%2B+1%2F2+%2B+...+%2B+1%2F52).

The result is, approximately, 4.538. And indeed, 4.538 * 52 = 235.976, which rounds down to 235 (not sure why the author rounded down).

Thanks for asking this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since I lack the skills to riffle succesfully, I usually sort and shuffle based on the properties of the game at hand. I usually sort somewhat randomly to stacks, where the number of stacks is larger than the regular set in the game (but < 2 times the regular set). After that, a few quasi riffles and I feel I've made the next game sufficiently random from the sorting that the last game gave. Wonder if I could wrap my math around formalising that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Riffle shuffle leaves many cards that were near the bottom still near the bottom. That's not exactly what I'd call 'truly random' ... which would be ANY card has an equal chance of being ANYWHERE in the deck.

A better alternative would be to put the bottom-third of the deck on top, then riffle.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think I saw is in the article, but what is the definition of a properly shuffled deck?

<comment> GuB-42 Just on top of my head: a deck where the original order and shuffled order are completely uncorrelated. Or a deck where the shuffle process yields every possible order with equal probability. These two are equivalent if all cards are the same for the purpose of shuffling (no bias).

<comment><USER18> Can 7 riffles fully reverse the order of cards?

<comment><USER4> Sure. Why couldn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636, 856,403,766,975,289,505,440, 883,277,824,000,000,000,000

Quite a big number!

<comment><USER20> How big, you ask? This big: [https://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html](https://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html)

<comment><USER21> This link always gets posted here when this subject comes up. If you haven't read it it's well worth a look. It's a very effective way of conceptualising the vastness of big numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article didn't have enough Fourier transforms on the symmetric group.

<comment><USER23> and not enough coupling arguments.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Git Story – save all your changes to Git - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yatagarasu25/GitStory <comment><USER2> It shouldn't be hard to implement this for VS Code. It would be cool if it could also record key strokes!

You might get valuable data ouf of it (refactorings that might increase productivity, learn how people code, see what can be improved).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, VS Code is not an IDE I use on daily basis, but I'd like to see extensions for VS Code and Android Studio. VS extension works by handling document save event, and if all open documents are saved it makes a commit. CLI tool can be used from non .net environments.

Another idea I have is to gather all the changes and show some kind of "heat map of changes" in the IDE document view.</comment></comment>


Customer Support Rule #1 - Don't be a Robot - <AUTHOR> http://crazyviraj.blogspot.com/2011/11/customer-support-rule-1-dont-be-robot.html

<comment><USER2> A short article, but the point it makes is absolutely true. As an email tech support provider my #1 tool in defusing the anger at a situation is responding in a "real" way, often like what's shown in this article.

In 18 months of supporting 40k+ users I've yet to receive a single negative comment about it.</comment>


SJ Games vs. the Secret Service (1990) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sjgames.com/SS/ <comment><USER2> I remember this, it was part of Operation Sundevil..

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Operation_Sun...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Operation_Sundevil)

(oops apparently it is not, but it's an interesting read anyways!)

</comment><comment><USER3> The game Hacker, which was inspired by the 1990 raid, was a pretty fun card game, and its rulebook still has one of the nicest phrases in any game ("turn like a crazed weasel").

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember what I was doing on the day this happened. And it was just over twenty years ago and all.

A book released after the event, The Hacker Crackdown, gave a blow-by-blow account of the whole farrago. I could not put it down back then. I still own that book. In the light of this last few weeks' nonsense, I'll go and dust it down and read it again.

<comment><USER4> I don't actually have to go to my bookshelf. Bruce Sterling, the author of The Hacker Crackdown, released the text onto the web here:- <http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My contact with SJ was when I wanted to scan his book Stonekeep for my 'game novellas' website. He went ballistic and called me a pirate. I pointed out all the other novellas have personal permission from the rights holders to be hosted on my site, and he said that was fine then.

He said contact Interplay. I did so - no response.</comment>