Ask HN: How would you build a trackerless ad network? - <AUTHOR> We have seen a lot of posts on HN regarding ad networks and ad blockers. Basically there are two arguments: 1) Allow ad networks, so we can compensate content creaters. 2) Block ad networks, because they track users, invade privacy and follow shady practices.<p>I would love to know your thoughts on how to solve this issue. How to create a trackerless ad network, that solves privacy issues. It should also allow anonymous stats for advertisers, and a good fee structure for content creaters. Lets solve this! <comment><AUTHOR> I'll take a stab at it. Do not embed javascript at all! Javascript slows down the webpage, send creepy-tracking-stuff back to the ad network, and gets easly blacklisted in adblockers. We should not trust arbitrary 3rd party javascript code anyways. How about embeddable static images instead? Generate a unique img tag for each content creater, that we can refresh at our end, everytime the webpage loads. Will show a new ad everytime a user goes to the page.

<comment><USER2> But advertisers want to target their advertisements to specific demographics. How can you target the user (identify the user's demographic, to select which ad to show) if you can only collect limited information based on the load of the static image?

Ultimately you would end up with a model where advertisers target based on website, rather than user demographic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. Maybe target using some kind of heuristics? We can figure out who is loading our imgs: ip addresses, requesting browser details, load time, approximate location (city, state, country), what website is the user visiting (can figure out what they are interested it) etc. We can build anonymous profiles of users. Ofcourse, the bigger the network, more precise the heuristics..

<comment><USER2> Right. So you've just arrived back at the status quo of tracking!

How do you define "anonymous?" Even if you have a policy not to store "personal details" like real name, you are still tracking some set of attributes of each user (ip address, headers, latency, etc). Together, a set of these attributes is likely sufficient to uniquely identify the user the set belongs to.

So now you're back to the original problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dang it! Back to square one. So it seems its a double edged sword. Personally I feel this is a good compromise. What would you rather have, something like this? Or something like Google Ads that follow you throughout the internet with help of super cookies and javascript, merge everything they know about your behaviours from their other services, and serve ultra specific creepy ads?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Everyone wants their cake and to eat it.

Paywalled content providers want to charge for their content but have Google index it. Readers want to read stuff for free but block ads.

I think the solution is fewer ads, more paid content, more offers related to the free content, more sponsored free content. Ads can be used more for branding rather than direct sales, and so therefore less tracking is required, it would be more like TV.

P.S. A great example of sponsored free is hacker news!

</comment><comment><USER4> 2 cont.) and because ads are noisy, invasive, garish, and distracting.

Let's not solve this by figuring out how to circumvent ad blockers.

One idea I've been toying with is a system where I can pay the content creator directly. Good article? Have a nickel. Funny YT video? Here is a dime. Skip the middle man. Patreon does something like this, but we need a system that is anonymous, scalable to the whole internet, and above all, easy to use.

<comment><USER5> This can already be done, but the micropayments start at $1 and the content creator gets about 67¢ of it. The sweet spot is a $5 tip, where the vast majority goes to the content creator:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to- make-...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/11/how-to-make-paypal- tip-jar.html)

<comment><USER4> That's still an awful lot of money. I would be much less likely to tip if I was shelling out $1+ each time. Nickles and dimes are pocket change to me, but they add up.

<comment><USER5> You do not have to tip every single time. But it allows a means to tip, without setting a monthly obligation, like Patreon.

I still plan to set up a Patreon account, but I intend to keep this option open for folks who want to casually support my work without having to make a long term commitment.

I have done some reading and thinking on the subject. There are inherent problems with micropayments that I don't think will ever be resolved with regards to paying the cost of moving the money. I don't think that surcharge will ever get so low that it is viable to leave a nickel or a dime. At best, it might be possible to arrange a prefunded wallet with a service and leave a nickel, but I am not sure if that is viable or even what the point is.

If you feel (for example) that my writing is worth a nickel a page, leave a dollar for every 20th article. It isn't a big thing.

Paying the content creator directly is a much more efficient means of supporting content creation than ads or product sales. While I do have ads on some of my sites (but not on all of them) and while I am still exploring products, like t-shirts and what not, if you spend $20 on a t-shirt, the content creator gets a small cut of that. It puts much more money into their pocket to just tip them $5. So, unless you seriously value that t-shirt and want it in specific, it just makes a lot more sense to tip than to expect content creators to also put time and energy into figuring out product design on top of writing/comicking/whatever.

Frankly, if they are good at creating t-shirts, they can make money at that without necessarily writing. They can do a Zazzle shop or an Etsy shop or whatever. Those folks aren't really in the business of content creation. And it is fine if they like making t-shirts and stuff, but if you really want good content online, it just makes more sense to me for people to tip and pay for the content directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I would make a trackingless ad network I would make it interrest based instead so what you get is relevant to the website you visit and not based on datamining of individuals.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense. So we can, instead of mining anonymous data about users (like my other comment), can mine the webpage the ad is going to be displayed on. This would make it interest based. Thanks for your input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One caveat about removing trackers is it opens up for the ability for easily exploitable fraud from botnet users.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is true. They drive up prices on Google Ad prices. But I feel its a symptom more than the problem. Because these ad networks have a per-click payout system, they have to track each and every click. One way to fix this would be to have a constant pay rate regardless of clicks. Something like $X/week or $Y/month, where X&Y can be decided on heuristics I explained in other comment.</comment></comment>


Technically, what is Understanding? - <AUTHOR> http://onnlucky.com/2018/05/01/understanding.html <comment><USER2> When a machine can explain what it's doing and how it has reached the decision to do it that way, then _maybe_ it understands what it's doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some animals clearly show understanding up to a level [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04)

But they can not explain it to us, so "can explain" is a unnecessary high bar.

<comment><USER2> That's a telling point. Yet, I still feel uncomfortable with the idea.</comment></comment></comment>


We're Gonna Build a Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.dylanbeattie.net/2016/05/were-gonna-build-framework.html <comment><USER2> For those who check the comments before going to an article:

It's a song parodying the number of frameworks set to Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire.

It made me happier than it should have.</comment>


Lady Gaga's Social Network Opens to All the Little Monsters - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/07/10/lady-gaga-social-network-little-monsters/ <comment><USER2> I tried to sign up. First it wouldn't accept a + in my email address, then it wouldn't let me select my birth date, and then when I finally managed to get a birth date in and submitted it, it just redirected me to the login page without any message saying my registration was successful. I entered the email and password I registered with and it didn't work, and there were no emails in my inbox.

Why is it so hard for big media to get the simple things right?</comment>


10 Reasons Parents Should DEFINITELY Not send their kids to College - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-parents-should-not-send-their-kids-to-college/

<comment><USER2> Well, we know the author took 6 classes, worked 40 hours/week, drank constantly, and had sex more than 1000 times his first year (by his reckoning). Then, upon graduating with a MS in CS from Cornell, he had to be sent away for lessons on how to connect a computer to the Internet.

I think I see why he thinks college isn't valuable. For the rest of us, who spend time more learning and honing skills than boning and vomiting, I'd say it's pretty damned valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah? How so? And you should check out the alternatives for your kids rather than flush the money down the toilet. Here they are: <http://bit.ly/iewfpx>

<comment><USER2> Well, first I don't go to school in the US, so the financial aspect is a much different consideration. Second, I don't spend my time drinking and whoring, but rather studying, sprinkled with the occasional drinking and whoring. Third, most companies looking to hire devs/engineers/etc want to see a BS in CS or math. You're limiting your options by trying to do it the self-taught way. That's not to say that you can't do it, just that there aren't as many open doors.

Your view of college seems to be pretty slanted and limited to your experiences. My sisters both went through college with steady boyfriends, and only occasional partying. Then again, they went to an academic, rather than party school. YMMV.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Blog post around cloud issues - <AUTHOR> I saw a blog post sometime ago here from a systems engineer where she described the issues about using cloud infrastructure. And how badly optimised code is racking up costs whereas back in the day there was more focus on making sure the devs optimised their code before buying more hardware. Anyone have a link to this blog post or remember the author? <comment><USER2> Sounds like rachelbythebay.org?

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thank you!</comment></comment>


Before I Die... - <AUTHOR> http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/ <comment><USER3> Photo #5 shows a man writing "tried for pi" and I badly wanted to know what the ending was. Hilarious that it was "tried for piracey" (as shown in #9), given he is genuinely dressed as a pirate.

Awesome overall idea, too.

<comment><USER4> Pillaging. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=pillaging>

<comment><USER5> If it makes you feel better, that's what I thought it said too.

Also: Shame on you HN. This person not only answered the question (in a way that they thought was truthful, oops, they were wrong), but linked to a definition of the word.

Now they're at -9 karma overall (their user). Anybody who downvoted this or the comment below it: you probably shouldn't ever complain about HN turning into reddit.

<comment><USER6> He's being downvoted for either not reading or willfully ignoring the comment he replied to. There wasn't even a question in the first place. I'm not sure why you think expecting people to at least read before replying is a Redditism, and I don't see how linking to the definition of a word is supposed to excuse it. It was a pretty objectively poor answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not inspiring unless it moves people to action. I hope those that wrote on there are on their way to figuring out some way to make their dreams and goals come true.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a step in the right direction. It prompts people to think about something worthwhile and could easily become an ice breaker within a community. At the very least it may spark an idea in someone who reads it. "What does it really mean to 'make a difference'?" That can segue into powerful thoughts. Even the simple action of physically presenting a hope or dream can be motivating.

Of course, it's always up to the person to act but I find it's easier to work toward a goal when my spirits are high and being surrounded by hope has an uplifting effect.

<comment><USER8> I had always thought this kind of 'motivational' attempts are too simple- minded to work. Then one day, while under a lot of pressure and discouragement, I happened to see a man on the road with a T-shirt that said 'Never give up', and it really made a difference in my mindset.

So, I now believe that tiny things like this can mean a lot to someone who's on the edge and can turn them around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the least scary way you could write "Die" on a wall 81 times.

</comment><comment><USER10> What a great use of a neglected space. Really inspiring project. It'd be great to do a timelapse of people writing on the wall. The variety of people would be interesting to see.

</comment><comment><USER11> Another interesting social project from the same person <http://candychang.com/post-it-notes-for-neighbors-2/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmm, great idea for a web project that can go viral real quick.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately, beforeidie.com seems to be registered to someone who isn't interested in using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> ...begin receiving life extension therapy? ;-)

<comment><USER15> ... sign up for cryonics?

<comment><USER16> That's what I was going to write.

<comment><USER17> Here's the problem I have with cryonics: in what future do they need to defrost people from the past for another other than freak show/historical novelty? There are so many problems the defrosted will have:

* no skills for their new environment * no money * billions of warm-bodied, warm-blooded other humans already there * suffering from lonliness knowing everyone you've ever known is dead

Unless the defrosting process is great and there's going to be gene therapy, and it won't be for maybe the first few hundred/thousand people, you'll be disabled, diseased or still suffering from whatever killed you in the first place.

<comment><USER18> You could spend all days coming up with possible reasons for not defrosting cryonics patients in the future. However you need to remember that no matter how low a probability you assign to your successful defrosting, this will be strictly greater than the probability of successfully being alive in the future if you go with the default, non-cryonics option of irrevocable destruction.

<comment><USER19> Ay, me... so little confidence in reincarnation within HN ;)

"The body of B. Franklin, Printer (Like the Cover of an Old Book, Its Contents torn Out And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding) Lies Here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be Lost; For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More In a New and More Elegant Edition Revised and Corrected By the Author. " --Benjamin Franklin (self-authored epitaph)

Edit: updated to show his _final_ version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to come across this shortly after watching a video of Steve Jobs's commencement speech to Stanford students.

"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

<comment><USER21> He may have this luxury because he's ridiculously wealthy and controls his job, but most people have to worry about tomorrow. They're really different goals. I'm going to do things today that will improve the rest of my life. I wouldn't go to work on the last day of my life, but I did it today and I'll do it tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Found this - not quite as good, but lots of pics: <http://www.beforeidieiwantto.org/usa_other.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> Everyone has hopes and aspirations. What's troubling is realizing that you have an aspiration that you will never be able to fulfil.

I want to fly a fully-loaded 777. I want to sleep with every member of my favorite all-female band. These things are never going to happen. Does that mean my life is a failure?

<comment><USER24> Do you honestly think you could never fly a fully loaded 777 if it was the most important thing to you?

This project isn't about whims, it's about dreams.

<comment><USER25> Your argument doesn't work quite as well on his other "aspiration" :-)

<comment><USER26> I didn't see any requirement there for consent or remaining uninjured and un- jailed.

Of course, the thing about actual human values is that we satisfice instead of optimizing. That's a good thing.

<comment><USER27> I would argue that the term 'sleep _with_ ' implies consent. Even without that it's a wording issue of the goal, not a case of satisficing. Flying the 777 probably is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How long 'til someone creates a cool site with this idea? I bet less than a week..

<comment><USER29> Challenge accepted:

<http://www.challengelistcreator.com>

Actually it was started like 3 weeks ago.

It's (very) rough around the edges, but usable.

<comment><USER28> Tired of giving the same advice over and over again. Don't make me open my e-mail just to give you feedback about your site. You have a webpage! Create a form and receive feedback right from it!

Other than that, looks promising. Some aesthetic changes would do good, but looks nice. Consider OpenID or OAuth, to gain traction from social networks.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for your advice.

It's on the top of my todo list.

Just after some real life stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is genius. Need this in every city.

<comment><USER11> I want to post this in my facebook page, tag all my friends and ask "what do you wanna do before you die?". It is always nice to know what your friends and family want to do before they die :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Fantastic project, and it's also a fascinating social experiment. Many people talk of changing bad situations, but this is a case of using art and engineering to make a solid attempt.

</comment><comment><USER32> The less I sit and ponder about the meaning of life and what I'm doing and what to do in the future, the happier I am.

Before I die, I don't want to contemplate what I want to do before I die. Not to say I'm not achievement-oriented, because I am, I just associate "before I die" type statements with similar "what if?" personalities - <USER2> obviously "what if?" is a concrete statement while "before I die" still leaves room for change, which can inspire hope - although it most often won't inspire action.

<comment><USER33> I think the juxtaposition of hope and inspiration on an abandoned building exemplifies NOLA.

And before anyone pounces on me: I love New Orleans more than any other city in America, warts and all, which is something that makes this piece even better to me, if it causes action or not.

If anything, it's a good reminder that people you may have never met, people right in your neighborhood have hopes and goals and even a sense of humor. It's easy to forget that in a crowd, and this kind of puts it right in front of people in a shared space, as a shared piece of art.

I think it stands pretty well on that point alone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! I love anything that reminds me that all those people around me are people too.

Who knows, maybe the Internet could benefit from the occasional Before I Die... entry. It would make for an interesting social experiment to randomly display an entry from a fellow community member (or it could be negative depending on the amount of spam, but an experiment is an experiment!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the biggest reason that draws people to the board is the anonymity of the response.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is exactly the kind of thing my art professor would love. Interesting!

</comment><comment><USER36> I found this project a few weeks back and loved it. Almost posted it here. I would love to see a web version of it or at least aggregating tweets with a hashtag like #b4id

<comment><USER3> I feel like a bit of a snob for having this opinion, but I do have it, so might as well write it: If a hashtag like that ever got any traction then the results would be horrible. Hashtags like that attract so many morons and idiotic tweets, like one I saw the other day "#thingsblackpeopledontsay" (or something like that).

I've never seen any hashtag that wasn't shit except those based around events/people/etc. For example #Dodgers during a baseball game, or #Libya.

All other hashtags, the ones based around tweeting on a random idea, result in a load of shit. I don't want to read idiots tweeting "#b4id fukk loadsa hot bitches", thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Totally liked the "Before I Die... Make a difference" message.

</comment><comment><USER38> I did come across this a few days ago and thought it was cool. Would not have expected something like this to make the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wish we had this in our city pluse I like the idea the othe guy said about having a time lapse that would be really neat great work.

<comment><USER40> Do it! Material cost is minimal, put up a board and some chalk and see what emerges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice! This is like a wall bucket list: <http://bucketlist.org/>

</comment><comment><USER42> Somewhat similar:

<http://littlegreatideas.com/willyou/>

</comment><comment><USER43> Before I Die... I want to have truly lived.

</comment><comment><USER44> Before I die I want to have a great life.</comment>


Why we hate Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWeHateLisp <comment><USER3> > Reddit is proof that lisp is really powerful. Paul Graham originally wrote > reddit, in lisp, on the back of a napkin while he was waiting for a coffee. > it was so powerful that it had to be rewritten in python just so that > ordinary computers could understand it. Because it was written in lisp it > was almost no effort to rewrite the entire thing, and the rewrite was > completed in-between two processor cycles. Paul Graham himself was > completely written in lisp, by an earlier version of himself, also written > in lisp, by an earlier version of lisp. It's lisp, paul graham, lisp, paul > graham, all the way down.

(from [http://www.secretgeek.net/lisp_truth](http://www.secretgeek.net/lisp_truth))

<comment><USER4> MIT went from scheme to python. I heard an old lisp based recursive class went to python too (people want numpy and other libs, too much pressure).

Maybe the next wave will have some sml/haskell/idris.

<comment><USER5> MIT restructured its curriculum to be more hands on. The new curriculum included a module programming robots. Python provided an interface and is a good general purpose language. The fact that robots entered the reasoning indicates how different the new curriculum is from _SICP_.

<comment><USER6> "MIT restructured its curriculum" because after the dot.com bust, EECS enrollment dropped by more than 1/2 after being a solid 40% of undergraduates for more than 2 decades, and the department panicked. And, yeah, punting teaching the fundamentals for some hand-on work (robots, communications) was part of that.

There was also a commandment from on-high, don't know if this was above the department or in it from long simmering resentment, to entirely purge Scheme from the curriculum.

Given all that, Python was perhaps the least worst choice (although using Java to teach the rest of what's in SICP is not even wrong), although I personally wonder about the wisdom of purging functional programming from the curriculum at the same time that multi-cores may be making it a lot more relevant.

<comment><USER4> Any data on the 'purge scheme' desire ? I find it really really strange. Was it related to post-hire issues ? or student problems ?

<comment><USER6> Nothing besides the obvious you get from the curriculum being 100% Python and Java (yep, MIT is now a "Java school"), and there being no common CS and EE curriculum besides those first two lab intense robots and communications classes (previously there was a core of SICP, two EE classes and a low level computer micro- and macro-architecture course, 6.001-4).

MIT EECS degrees, while still representing what MIT thinks its EECS graduates should know, now mean something very different, and that has, e.g. resulted in much greater differentiation between it and CMU, which has embraced functional programming in its core curriculum.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, and there were videos about MIT focusing more on 'material' engineering, giving ceramics playgrounds for students, rather than theory and software. In a way MIT is right, computer had their days, now things are back to the real world. Augmented reality, physical interactions, IoT, sensors etc etc. But at the same time FP gives better ways to reason and write solid code anyhow.

<comment><USER6> _In a way MIT is right, computer had their days, now things are back to the real world._

MIT handled this very poorly; it's always been very conservative about bulking up departments because things can radically change. Aero/Astro was red hot from, oh, post-WWI to the early 1970s, when it catastrophically crashed without to this date a recovery.

For decades EECS struggled with 40% of the undergraduates and ~1/6th of the institute's resources, in fact when they adopted the old core of 6.001-4 in the early '80s they dropped the "service" course that taught introductory programming for lack of human resources. I don't know how much the faculty was bulked up, the ultimate metric, but before the dot.com crash they committed _a quarter billion dollars_ to a new CS research building that was ugly, very dysfunctional, and expensive to operate (so insecure it requires a full time police officer).

Anyway, I judge that "had their days" differently, at least in the longer term. Most specifically, one of these days a programming error will kill thousands or tens of thousands of people, and at least part of the field will radically change as people get more serious about "quality" software.

(Scare quotes because e.g. Facebook and Boeing have very different, and correct for both of them, definitions of software quality.)

<comment><USER4> By computers I meant desktops and their software or web apps. I was shallow anyhow, and you're right it will end up as reorganization in the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Unfortunately a Russian spy stole the last meg of a LISP program for > controlling our nuclear defense systems. Fortunately, it was all right- > parenthesis._

<comment><USER8> Thats a nice variation of a joke about German. "I normally skip to the back of a novel to find out what happens at the end, but in German that doesn't work because the last few pages are just full of all the verbs".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Python:

        sum(range(1,11))

I think this more explanatory than the Lisp. Perhaps that's just me.

<comment><USER10> Yes, this article shows several different ways to do one same thing, you can't really expect programmers to remembers all this syntax.

from [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/) :

> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.

I don't know if common lisp is an "easier" lisp, but I sure would like to have a watered down version of lisp so I can learn its paradigms. I don't even know if that's what haskell is.

<comment><USER11> Common lisp = committee lisp; it's not "easier". It standardized lisp by including about every feature that any of a set of competing Lisp's had. For example, the 'format' function can write numbers in roman digits, spell out numbers, and capitalize words ([http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/a-few-format- recipes.html](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/a-few-format-recipes.html))

Beginners probably are better of using scheme or racket.

<comment><USER6> Common Lisp == Mainline Lisp. It's the direct descendant of original formula McCarthy LISP, and has accumulated a lot of warts and random stuff. Plus it's more generally multi-paradigm than Scheme, Racket or Clojure, and has no bias towards simplicity and a limited one towards elegance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SmugLispWeenies is why we hate Lisp. People who, when writing Lisp tutorials, spend a condescendingly large time telling the reader that they are going to have their mind blown by the concept of first class functions. In the space year 2015 people are still doing this.

Also they have apparently never heard of Forth either.

<comment><USER13> I can build strawmen too:

\- SmugCeeWeenie: I am so fast, look (oops, core dumped)

\- SmugGoWeenie: abstractions are so nasty we should get rid of functions, so that everyhting is laid out clearly. Hopefully, I have copy/paste.

\- SmugAdaWeenie: Functions are not procedures and records cannot store objects. Real engineers do not "prototype" code.

\- SmugHaskellWeenie: Yeah, it compiles! Job done.

> In the space year 2015 people are still doing this.

About first class functions? citation needed.

<comment><USER14> \- SmugHaskellWeenie: cabal sandbox init, cabal install this, cabal install that, write code, add ghc pragma, wtf! add ghc pragma, wtf! add ghc pragma ... Yeah, it compiles! Job done. Almost, time to get rid of the warnings. add ghc pragma, and another, and one from the top Carol and ... yeah, it compiles with no warnings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The one thing that I take away from all of this is that the people complaining just don't 'get it'. I don't know whether it's a personal failing of the individuals involved or something about lisp that is orthogonal to most people's thought processes, but the page reads more like (to me) sour grapes than a reasoned discourse on why lisp sucks. Compare that to the article posted yesterday about CLASP ([https://drmeister.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/announcing- clasp/](https://drmeister.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/announcing-clasp/)) - <USER2> brilliant piece of engineering that the creator said was just not doable in other languages, and you have a huge cognitive dissonance. But then, ymmv.

<comment><USER15> Ooops, an old link to CLASP. Here's a newer link:

[https://drmeister.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/i-gave-a-talk- on-...](https://drmeister.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/i-gave-a-talk-on-clasp-and- my-chemistry-at-google-in-cambridge-mass-last-week/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm slightly unclear why this website exists.

<comment><USER17> In case you're not joking: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As expected, a page for Lisp fanboys.

<comment><USER19> Do you ever comment more than a sentence or two? You are recognisable as the archetypical "low-effort" contributor.

<comment><USER20> Well, considering that yours is a throwaway account, he's at least reconginsable!</comment></comment></comment>


A Responosive Task Management App on Android - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/a3jMkCM.gif <comment><AUTHOR> It can be found on play store at [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.supriyaprem...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.supriyapremkumar.rememberit)

This is my first android app. For the next version I to make it a cloud based service.

I would love to hear some feedback.

Thanks again! -Supriya</comment>


Behavior-Driven Test Data - <AUTHOR> https://tomrothe.de/posts/behaviour-driven-test-data.html <comment><USER2> Really interesting concept. This would've been a godsend when I started adding tests to a legacy app that I inherited! I'd be interested to try it out :)</comment>


Uber Raises Giant $1.2 Billion Funding Round At A $17 Billion Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/06/uber-1-2b/

<comment><USER2> This looks like the 6th round of funding[1]. The title here indicates that about 14% of the company was sold (series D). The series C round with Google Ventures took about 13% (according to this article). Series B was from Jeff Bezos and co. which didn't have a valuation but Uber was quoted saying "We sold very valuable shares"[2]. Let's call series B funding at ~10 - 15%. Series A usually takes 20%. Seed and angel rounds take any where from 2 - 10%. Another 5 - 10% go to early employees I am guessing.

So based on my very unscientific guesswork, Uber has sold off somewhere between 66 to 92% of their company.

I'm not very versed in this topic, but is it typical to have sold this much of your company at this point in the game?

Let's say they IPO soon. Do they (the founders) stay in complete control of their company? Or is that related to how they split up the stock and the terms at which they sold their shares in each series?

[1] [http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/07/uber- announces-32-million-i...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/07/uber- announces-32-million-in-funding/)</comment>


A.I. and the Future of Cheating - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/a-i-and-the-future-of-cheating-caa0eef4b25d <comment><USER2> > What happens when universities can't tell whether an essay is written by a > human or an algorithm?

Then in that scenario, that means that essays are worthless at evaluating students, and if AI essays really are as good as human essays, then teaching the writing of essays at the college level is a waste of time.

However, looking at the generated essay, it seems to me that the real problem is that universities have reduced essay grading to an algorithm which values form over the content of the essay. The fact that AI can generate content with the required form should come as no surprise to anyone. Perhaps we should be teaching critical thinking and reading skills to evaluate the actual content of any essays.

<comment><USER3> Computers have been able to do arithmetic faster, better, and cheaper than humans for decades. But we still teach children to do arithmetic, and grade them on how well they do it (almost never as well as a computer). Why? Because doing more useful and creative math is a lot easier if you can do a little arithmetic.

The purpose of college essays has never been the quality of the product. The purpose is to have students practice so that, when they really do have to convey something in writing, they can convey it well. If an idea exists only in my head, it will take a very long time for an essay-writing bot to write it for me.

<comment><USER4> Speaking from experience, the person that writes best code (in terms of both raw quality and readability) also seem to write the best docs.

Maybe teaching essays are sideways to efficient communication?

<comment><USER5> Although we have machines that now cut and bind books, the best book binding (and most aesthetic) are done by hand by enthusiasts on, e.g., Reddit. Moreover, such book binders don't feel threatened by machines, I would think, like how people who do DIY do it because they like it, rather than because they _have to_ do it.

Even if an AI can write an essay, that would not stop me from writing. Essays have another important dimension, which is that of creativity and the message. I think the only real relevance is in the context of school work, outside of that I don't think the AI's ability is that important. People are intelligent already, and competition between writers or the general tendency to influence each other sometimes is even a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article quotes Miles Brundage:

 _"If it is not being used in an illicit fashion, A.I. can be a boon for generating larger, more ambitious, more creative text documents — similar to how calculators have been used to help develop the skills we want to be teaching."_

and it continues:

 _Calculators have spared maths and science students the laborious pain of long calculations and allowed for more advanced syllabuses, designed with the knowledge that students will have access to calculators when answering them._

The issue I have with this is that the role of the essay in education is not comparable to that of the sort of tasks that calculators automate. If there is an analog of calculators in essay-writing, it would be things like grammar- correctors and style checkers.

If AI could be used in the manner envisioned in the quote, we could end up with people writing essays that they do not understand, and presenting arguments for positions that they could not defend. I am not sure that this would be progress. It might be a way for the machines to take over.

<comment><USER7> Although I love to write, I can imagine a world in which the construction of sufficiently detailed outlines, along with some sort of style examples, could be automatically converted into a full-fledged essay that elaborates on the connections entered by a student or individual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > If a university has no way of determining whether an assignment was written > by a human or an algorithm, existing grading systems lose any semblance of > meritocracy or fairness.

Just because it was hard to tell if it was written by an AI doesn't mean the paper succeeds at whatever the assignment was. All GPT-2 does is predict the next word. I don't see how this can be used to write a research paper.

<comment><USER9> not that i believe (or not) that this will eventually be feasible, but the dream is that if you feed an introductory paragraph (which includes a thesis) to the algo, it will be able to generate the next 4 paragraphs, which completes a 5 paragraph essay.

<comment><USER10> What I would be more interested in is feeding it a topic, it goes out and summarizes sources, then arranges those summaries to make a point. I'd actually really like this driving around. I could just have ai give me the tldr on topics I'm interested in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The future of cheating is large corporations and billionaires using automation to accumulate more society points without giving back to the hard working people who make it all possible in the first place.

* Note: this is also the present of cheating.

* * Note: I hope this cynical statement of mine doesn't come true.

<comment><USER12> The future of cheating is no one having to work so hard, because machines are doing all the boring work.

<comment><USER11> I like your idea better

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note that this was posted September 13th; before the full-size GPT-2 was released yesterday after concerns about GPT-2's danger were unproven.

The _practical_ use case for GPT-2 in writing is writing assistance/autocomplete, such as with Write With Transformer ([https://transformer.huggingface.co](https://transformer.huggingface.co)). Text that _partially_ AI-written would pass a Turing test so-to-speak.

</comment><comment><USER14> Highly recommend testing this new cheating tool out by entering a custom prompt at [https://talktotransformer.com/](https://talktotransformer.com/) (which uses GPT-2) and reading what the AI generates for your custom essay snippet.

A single sentence with a euphemism should suffice...

"I" was able to create some hilarious franken-stories. Anyone care to share their greatest hits?

<comment><USER15> It seems to have a habit of responding to writing prompts by continuing to write the prompt. College essay fodder like "Write about a situation in which you overcame adversity." produces output that continues with "This doesn't have to be a life-changing event, but you have to be honest." before diverging directly into bullets 3 through 5 of a numbered list of other prompts like "A story about how you did something right or how you have a great life now, and then you go out and do it over and over again.".

On the other hand, I get interesting responses if I instead provide it with the first two sentences of an answer to a prompt. I tried "I was only eleven years old when he died. I started playing soccer and it made me who I am today." and got:

"He died from complications of chronic renal failure. It's just a really, really bad way to die.

You think about that. You're talking to a kid who just died from a medical issue that was preventable, if not treatable. And you think about the kids who die on the soccer field, all over this country, and you think about how that's not OK."

It's not going to fool anyone, but it's a big step up from anything I've seen before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So I've been playing around with GPT-2 and wow. It will write about anything. It is like I am talking to everyone on reddit, all at the same time. And I mean E V E R Y O N E on reddit.

GPT-2 is an abomination.

</comment><comment><USER17> Imagine this use-case:

1) Copy some text to be plagiarized.

2) Feed text to AI so it's rephrased.

3) Present result as own work.

<comment><USER18> Interestingly enough, I fed those lines into an AI[1] and it spit out:

1) Start copying some text from another source.

2) Start rephrasing text.

3) Present result as own work.

You are now a master plagiarist.

\-----

So I think you're onto something. The AI is a far faster rewriter of text than human beings.

[1] [https://talktotransformer.com/](https://talktotransformer.com/)

<comment><USER17> I can see that item 3 is the same. Still very impressive.</comment></comment></comment>


Made and Distributed in the U.S.A.: Online Disinformation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-online-disinformation.html <comment><USER2> The Daily Vine issue is not emphasized enough.

In the last years, we've seen "entertainment" pages getting sold by the original founders to companies interested in making a profit from it, by publishing links to their own products, or articles bloated with ads.

But now they're used to political purposes to influence people who didn't follow the pages for this reason. What's worse is they abuse the trust put in the original page to spread misinformation and fake news.</comment>


ReMail (YC W09) is now Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.remail.com/blog/posts/170028

<comment><USER2> I'm ok with Google buying and closing cool services as long as they keep open sourcing them in response to the nerdrage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wicked, now I can work on adding some encryption to the datastore. Most things on my Touch aren't very sensitive, but the complete copy of my e-mail archive certainly qualifies and having it just sitting there really scares me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Another really cool thing users of jailbroken iPhones will have that most will not. Another symptom of how Apple is handicapping themselves by being so closed.

(EDIT: Okay, fanbois. Know that I have _firsthand experience_ with both configurations of the iPhone mentioned. I also own other equipment running OS X.)

<comment><USER5> Nothing stops someone else from pushing reMail back into the app store. (Except, of course, the other ten someone elses doing the same thing.)

But this seems like a better outcome than previously, when the app just died with no recourse.

<comment><USER4> You can have an Open Source app in the App Store? I know GPL is out. I didn't know other licenses were kosher.

<comment><USER6> Only GPLv3. Everything else is fine; those licenses say that as long as you get the source code, the licensing obligations have been met. Being able to compile and run that source code is something only the GPLv3 guarantees.

(And in the day and age of locked hardware, I think the GPLv3 is the only sane license as a result. Free Software dies if nobody can actually run it.)

<comment><USER7> You can compile and run the source code, you just can't do so on an iPhone without buying a key. Free Software dies if nobody gives a shit about it, running it on the original hardware is completely irrelevant.

I'm sorry but the GPLv3 (and worse, the AGPL) are the shittiest passive- aggressive 'Free' software licenses yet written. They're just clickwrap EULAs, since you can't enforce the restrictions they add on top of the GPLv2 via copyright law.

It's funny to see the same people who wanked long and hard of restrictions on crypto turn around and try to impose their own restrictions on the same by ideological fiat.

<comment><USER6> Is preventing someone from taking away your freedom taking away their freedom? Technically yes. But it's a worthwhile "loss".

 _They're just clickwrap EULAs, since you can't enforce the restrictions they add on top of the GPLv2 via copyright law._

Sure you can. Under copyright law, you can't distribute copyrighted code without permission. You also can't distribute derived works; binaries produced by your compiler. The GPLv3 grants everyone permission to copy, compile, and redistribute, as long as they give others the same permission, promise not to sue the people they give the code to, and promise not to ship the code on hardware that can't run modified versions of the code. That fits perfectly into the framework of copyright law. If you don't like the conditions of the GPLv3, you fall back to copyright law -- you can't distribute binaries or modified versions at all.

EULAs rely on a much shadier principle; that you "redistribute" a copyrighted work when you copy it from your disk into memory. Copyright law says, the lawyers reckon, that you can't make that copy unless you are given permission. You are given permission by following the EULA.

You can see that this is not quite the same as the GPL because of the scope. EULAs say copying is how your computer runs programs. The GPL says copying is making a copy for your friend. Much more solid.

Anyway, if you don't like software licenses, don't use one. I like the GPL, though, because I want people to give me back what I gave them. Nice people will do that anyway, but not everyone is nice. So the GPL clearly spells out their obligations to me, and lets them make an informed decision as to whether or not they want to modify and redistribute my software. The nice people follow the rules anyway, so the GPL makes no difference to them.

Are you a nice person?

<comment><USER7> The GPLv2 operates solely within copyright law — it hinges solely on distribution of the work itself and nothing else. The GPLv3 gets into contract-like territory, with the patent grants and restrictions on hardware.

I do think that the GPLv3's tivoization clause is operating on the same shady principles as EULAs: if it's not a contract, then they're effectively claiming that a digital signature is a derivative work!

I'm a nice person that doesn't like the implications the GPLv3 has for Freedom 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks Gabor (et al)! This is fun to look through.

I'm loling at the BuccheitTimer.

</comment><comment><USER9> So what's to stop someone from selling this on the app store? Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of the buyout?

<comment><USER10> From the post about the actual acquisition there was, if I recall correctly, agreed that this was more about the talent rather than the software itself.

And who knows, perhaps they had a future product coming up that Google was interested in.

Link to previous post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132712>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like the Google Code link found in this blog post is broken. Does it work for anyone else?

<http://code.google.com/p/remail-iphone>

EDIT: It works now! Before it was giving a 502.

<comment><USER12> We had a problem in one of our data centers and as the service migrated we threw some 502s. It's okay now, I'm hearing. Sorry bout that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone working on a reMail "clone" for the ipad? Could be a fun little project.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't undersand why google bought them only to open-source it. I get suspicious when companies are nice. Any ideas?

<comment><USER15> It was almost certainly a talent acquisition. They don't want the product: they want the people behind it. This is pretty similar to what happened with Etherpad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Senor Gabor, Respect.

</comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see the BuccheitTimer made it :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Very cool!!</comment>


Build Your Own Tablet for $400 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/build-your-own-tablet-for-400/ <comment><USER2> I think the performance of the touch screen is critical to the experience of using a tablet. This device has a resistive touch screen. I've used a number of different touch screens, and all of them were hateful, except for the Apple iPhone/iPod touch screen. That was the first screen that I didn't want to fling violently away after using it. I'd guess that I'd be flinging this one. On the other hand, if I read that a high-resolution capacitive touch screen was available, I'd be very inclined to give this a shot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone should build a "tablet", which is just a large touchscreen (and a battery) that you plug your Android phone into.

No need to duplicate all the 3G and Wireless hardware. No need to have two dataplans or worry about tethering. All your contacts and bookmarks and browser history is shared.

I just remembered Palm did something like this called the Foleo except it turned the portable device into a netbook type thing. I seem to recall it was either a flop or never released, but I still think it's a good idea.</comment>


Ron Paul's Debtpocalypse Idea: So Crazy It Just Might Work - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/07/26/ron-pauls-debtpocalypse-idea-so-crazy-it-just-might-work/

<comment><USER2> There's a lot more than just 1.6 trillion which is really just one arm of the sprawling US bureaucracy "owing" it to another criminal segment.

This idea of repudiating the national debt is 30+ years old: <http://mises.org/daily/1423>

Note the history of states doing it in the story and keep in mind that states used to have more power than today.</comment>


Government bans fax machines in the NHS - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46497526 <comment><USER2> Intercepting a fax is pretty tricky, you either have to physically break into the phone network (in which case all calls are insecure), or you have to have the sender misdial and happen to send to the attacker's number.

That's sounds far more secure than typical network based communication.</comment>


Injection for Xcode - <AUTHOR> http://injectionforxcode.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Although it's still a distance away, Smalltalkers will appreciate this.

I've always found laying out pixel-perfect UIs in iOS tedious due to the tweak-build-run cycle. Hopefully this will fix it.</comment>


Life Changing Programming Lessons (your PR Is Wanted) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AdamBrodzinski/life-changing-programming-lessons <comment><AUTHOR> This is a collection of lessons that have really impacted the way I program. It would be great to have some additions here!</comment>


Show HN: Build a full product with AngularJS and Firebase (7 hrs of HD video) - <AUTHOR> https://www.angularcourse.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't plan to post here today but after the Firebase acquisition I figured why not.

This is the course I wish I had when I was learning Angular. It was a painful process that sucked. I was really annoyed that I wasn't getting anywhere fast after reading the docs and countless tutorials. And when I felt like I did grasp the concepts, it was hard to find examples of complete apps once I was ready to build something.

So I made the course to address these issues. After you go through this you'll finally get how all the pieces fit together. And when you look at the docs again, everything will make so much more sense. You'll also have a neat product that you could actually sell to businesses.

And of course you'll learn Firebase, the real time datastore that was acquired by Google today.

If you haven't worked with Firebase, it's worth going through the course just to see how it works. It makes development incredibly fast and fun. Like a lot of other people, I thought that Firebase would just be a toy for hackathons and side projects, but the more I used it, the harder it was to go back to the way I was handling data before.

Now Firebase is the first thing I turn to when I want to build apps. It's that good.

</comment><comment><USER2> I feel like the page should include some mention of the prerequisites of the course. Should I already be familiar with Javascript, or can I start as a non- Web developer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Still working on the sales page. You should be familiar with HTML/CSS/JavaScript to get the most out of the course.

Having said there are quite a few students that have gone on through the course without any background at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No discount?

<comment><AUTHOR> No discount but there is a 30-day guarantee. So feel free to try it and if you decide it's not for you, just let me know.</comment></comment>


FreeBSD x86 Assembly Language Programming: Using the FPU - <AUTHOR> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/developers-handbook/x86-fpu.html <comment><USER2> Just to be clear, this is a historic document (2001), not a current introduction to x86 assembly. There's entirely new floating-point architectures introduced since this was written (SSE and AVX).

</comment><comment><USER3> Original source: [http://int80h.org/bsdasm/](http://int80h.org/bsdasm/)

My recollection is this was published on the author's site years before being added to the "handbook" on the FreeBSD website. I could be wrong. Perhaps check archive.org.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the engineers at Intel were inspired by the HP RPN calculators, since the stack-based x87 is quite unlike the register-based x86.

The fact that it's stack-based also makes for some _very_ high code-density; a lot of the tiny demoscene demos (<=256b) make heavy use of the FPU, like these:

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3397](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3397)

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53816](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53816)

<comment><USER5> William Kahan consulted on the design of both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, the assembly in the link is ancient. Treating FPU registers as a stack was considered a mistake 20 years ago. In this day and age it's been replaced with MMX and then SSE. It will technically still work because of backwards compatibility, but modern compilers will output newer, faster SSE instructions.

<comment><USER7> A bit of a nitpick here about MMX. Although the MMX registers were aliases of the floating point stack registers, the MMX instruction set consisted of strictly integer operations, not floating point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The developers handbook is just rife with gems.</comment>


YC vs Reddit vs Digg: Orders of Magnitude of Difference, Literally - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/ycombinator.com?site0=ycombinator.com&site1=reddit.com&site2=digg.com&y=t&z=3&h=300&w=610&u%5B%5D=ycombinator.com&u%5B%5D=reddit.com&u%5B%5D=digg.com&x=2008-03-27T23%3A11%3A03.000Z&check=www.alexa.com&signature=CFP%2FV95UyVd%2FCeYOyel%2BXKioDb0%3D&range=3y&size=Medium

<comment><USER2> Dangerous to use Alexa since there is a credible inverse correlation between likelihood of contributing to Alexa statistics and choice of news site.

<comment><USER3> Here 'tis the compete data:

[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ycombinator.com+digg.com+re...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ycombinator.com+digg.com+reddit.com/?metric=uv)

We're still niche.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Before we worry too much about news.YC becoming inundated with smelly vagrants, it's good to keep things in perspective. According to this obviously questionable source, we're not quite at levels of controlled chaos(reddit) or outright bufoonery (digg).</comment>


Ask HN: Any WordPress Developers here that can help me? - <AUTHOR>

Hey there.
I'm trying to find out what cookies wordpress sets automatically for all users?
I'm creating a page count function (as I dont want to use yet another plugin) and at the moment it is counting everytime I press f5. I just want to be able to do it only once.
Thanks for your time. I would have usually put this on stackoverflow but the community isnt to fond of broadish questions nor ones without code / specific problems. <comment><USER2> Any reason you want to do this in WP and not using a javascript solution like Google Analytics?

Backend page view tracking is not compatible with most forms of response caching.

</comment><comment><USER3> I write WordPress plugins for my business and if I want to manage cookies I use something like [https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-session- manager/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-session-manager/). This will give you full control.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can set/read your own cookies when developing on wordpress.

I usually us the jQuery cookie plugin for javascript.

You can set/read cookies using php as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not too familiar with WordPress but couldn't you just store the page count in the database and update it periodically?</comment>


Amazon to remove stack ranking - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazon-hunger-games-employee-review-process-change-2016-11?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER2> About time. I can't believe any tech company, which requires collaboration and cooperation amongst employees in order to make software, could implement a system that encourages employees to sabotage each other's work so they can be higher ranked.</comment>


IDC: Android to overtake iPhone, BlackBerry by 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/01/25/android.to.pass.iphone.win.mobile.in.3.years/

<comment><USER2> You have to wonder what their methodology is. Hopefully nothing like this:

<http://xkcd.com/605/>

</comment><comment><USER3> hopefully</comment>


Entrepreneurial synchronicity defined (or "I love it when a plan comes together") - <AUTHOR> http://www.calacanis.com/2008/02/16/entrepreneurial-synchronicity-defined-or-i-love-it-when-a-plan/ <comment><USER2> AKA pmarca's "Product/Market fit": <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca- gu-2.html></comment>


Boston to Develop 'Innovation District' and Funding Competition for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2010/05/boston_mayor_to.html

<comment><USER2> _Spencer Trask & Co. will be holding a startup competition starting in July that will award the winner $25,000 to locate a business in that part of the city_

I can imagine that 25K going really fast once you pull up out of your apartment and set up a "real" office. The idea sounds half-baked to me. I'm in the Boston area and would really like the startup culture to grow here, but I get the feeling that our local government just doesn't get it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't Massachusetts enforce "no compete" agreements?

Do you own "intellectual property" you've developed on your own time, with your own resources?

I'm given to understand that the answers are "yes" and "no" respectively. Aren't those two of the major factors for the success of Silicon Valley?

<comment><USER4> Seems that while MA is not as hostile as CA to non-competes, I vaguely remember from my business law class that they are still generally weak, and this article confirms:

"Having been involved in counseling companies on noncompete issues for 20-plus years, I have to admit that I am suprised to read this. While noncompetes are pervasive in Massachusetts, many judges are unwilling to enforce them, or will enforce them only in part (i.e., "you can't work in this particular area for a period of time"). The sense of lawyers in Massachusetts is that absent theft or trade secret misappropriate of some sort, enforcing a noncompete is an uphill fight, so better to negotiate than attack head-on. Most noncompete disputes are negotiated to a private resolution."

[http://masslawblog.com/noncompete-agreements/why-has- silicon...](http://masslawblog.com/noncompete-agreements/why-has-silicon- valley-outperformed-boston-route-128-as-a-high-tech-hub/)

And what's the basis for thinking the second one is not true in MA? What legal theory would hold that IP developed with your own time and resources not be yours, unless you signed away that right explicitly (and even then, if there's no consideration...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll believe it when I see it - it will be very interesting to see if other VC firms in the area (Sigma, Greylock, Matrix, Polaris, North Bridge, etc) get involved in this at all.

As it is, I've not seen very many business-or-startup friendly movements coming from the local and state government, so we'll see.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, getting other firms involved will definitely help the process and could decide it's success or failure. The building(s) in that area alone aren't going to attract startups. The whole package (location, funding, state and local laws) needs to be more attractive.

At least they've announced they're working on it though. This still could go no where, but it's nice to know startups are being talked about at the local government level.</comment></comment>


California becomes 7th state to ban running credit checks on job applicants - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryhannon/2012/01/31/bad-credit-can-cost-you-a-job/

<comment><USER2> The law is sane, too... it exempts this exclusion from hires that access financial or personnel records, too (so companies can still require a credit check for those positions).</comment>