Counterintuitive things that helped me fix my insomnia - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/8-counterintuitive-things-that-helped-me-fix-my-chronic-insomnia-96c6cc82d75c <comment><USER2> I've tried everything, and once my 2 year old daughter goes to kindergarden I plan on trying again, BUT the only working quick fix has been 300-450micrograms of melatonin taken at exactly the same time every night.

Melatonin at this small dosage is just amazing for me.

I don't want to dismiss all the good practices, but meltonin in the 300-450 mcg range just lets me fall asleep within one hour of taking it, as long as I take it the same hour everyday.

I'm also searching for some time-release low dosage melatonin because I only sleep about 7 hours.

<comment><USER3> > 2 year old daughter

Aw man. I feel you there. That's tough. But cute...good memories. Haha.

Melatonin works well for me too, though the effect does wear off as you said. You might check out the "bi-layer" melatonin tablets. I haven't tried them, but they are available.

I'm one of those freaks who is OK using doxylamine after researching it, and I find it really beneficial on top of the melatonin. It has a staying power for sleep that's really nice. When I take it, I take about 8mg, which is something like a third of a tablet but they're easy to break up.

I wonder also if one could split up the melatonin effect by putting a second tablet inside something like a small piece of cheese, for a simple time- release mechanism.

I also found that sleep cycles matter a lot to my body. If I wake up early, it's probably right on the button, 4-5 90-minute sleep cycles in. Falling asleep at this point is hard just because of where I'm at in the natural cycle. So it's usually a matter of waiting in bed for sleep to come back. I use these techniques to help me wait it out:

\- Turning on a long lecture or podcast that I've listened to before. There is a scientific lecture on sleep and dreaming that works really well. :-) I use an XHDATA D-328 which has tactile playback controls and no screen. I also put some relaxation / ambient tracks on the memory card.

\- Designing houses, neighborhoods, and vehicles in my imagination. I get into the most tactile details that I can.

\- Making some quick changes to get more comfortable: Shedding clothing if necessary, a quick trip to the bathroom, a drink of water, fixing my pillow.

I also like to use this calculator periodically to get a rough idea of how my sleep cycles are going to work:

[https://sleepyti.me/](https://sleepyti.me/)

Anyway...I know you said you tried everything. So I mainly posted this to mention the bi-layer melatonin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had intense insomnia when I was younger. The points the author laid out helped me immensely - particularly limiting sleep. Specifically, I limited sleep to 7 hours a night, in bed at 10 and up at 5 no matter what. Additionally, as soon as got out of bed I exercised for 45 minutes. As the author mentioned the first couple weeks were brutal, exercising at 5 in the morning on 2 hours of sleep is not fun. After a couple months it stopped being so painful, and after 6 months I fall asleep in 1-2 minutes. I don't have children which I imagine would make this much more difficult. I also have a consistent work schedule which helps as well.

<comment><USER5> Those sound like two horrific months. I am not exactly insomniac but very much a night owl. The few times I have tried morning running have been simply awful. (Adrenaline gets me though my one race a year, though I would love to try the Las Vegas Marathon, which begins at midnight.)

I don't doubt that my body would adjust if I forced it that hard, but it sounds excruciating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One counterintuitive piece of advice I can offer is to take a cold shower right before bed. Some might think a cold shower would shock the system so much that your body would be on high alert... but that's very temporary... and when you slip into your warm bed sheets afterwards, you feel like your in a safe place.

Your milage may vary. I've seen conflicting science on this. Here is the positive case: [https://www.sleepadvisor.org/showering-before- bed/](https://www.sleepadvisor.org/showering-before-bed/)

</comment><comment><USER7> She talks about going to bed only when she actually felt sleepy, not just physically tired.

Which I feel like isn't real insomnia. If I didn't go to bed until I _actually_ felt sleepy (as in, almost falling asleep) most nights I wouldn't go to bed until 5am. That's with or without using my computer in the time between 9pm and whenever-I-feel-sleepy. And then my kids wake me up at 7:30. Even if they didn't, I'd be awake by 9am, not able to sleep anymore, but feeling really dragged out, stretched thin (like too little butter over too much toast), but not actually feeling sleepy.

Feeling sleepy, for me, is just not really a common occurrence. I occasionally feel sleepy in the mid-afternoon, especially if I've not managed my sleep well for several days. But if I relied on my sleepy-cue, I'd never get any sleep.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I have some pretty bad insomnia, and I don't really feel sleepy. At some point I just kind of, crash.

I could be drop dead tired from running/hiking, but unless I take sleeping pills, I have an extremely difficult time sleeping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Getting up early and going for a run before breakfast 5x/week solved insomnia for me. I changed from a night owl to a morning person almost immediately. It's been years now with no regression.

</comment><comment><USER10> I never miss an opportunity to rave about the "Sleep With Me" podcast.[1] Thanks to Scooter's soothing voice I no longer need medication to sleep every night.

I have no affiliation other than being a very happy listener.

[1] [https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com](https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com)

<comment><USER11> YES! This podcast got me through a very difficult time in my life. I had the perfect storm of social, family, and work related anxiety going a few years ago, and suddenly my health crashed. I was a total basket case! Insomnia made me the WORST decision maker I could possibly be. "Sleep With Me" gave me a place to go in my head where I found sleep again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I want to chime in here and say the number one thing that helped me sleep better: less stress. Everything else didn't do shit. I tried pills, breathing exercises, routines, food, etc... Didn't work.

I went from barely being able to pay bills month to month with no luxuries (people look at what I lived in at the time as a prison jail cell), working on a degree I hated at a university I hated, living in a city I hated, no physical affection or love, and overall very lonely ... to perpetually having a job I hate, being in a decent relationship, not making anywhere near enough to afford the area but can afford the bills I do have, and still pretty lonely. Region isn't great either but mostly cause it's so expensive. Life still sucks but it's not the pure hell I was in before.

I don't fall asleep super fast. But I don't wake up as much in the middle of the night. (And I can fall back asleep) I don't deal with it taking 3-4 hours on the regular to fall asleep - about 30 minutes to an hour now. (I watch random educational YouTube videos) I don't deal with my mind racing and trying to figure out how to solve every problem... Even if I wish sometimes I did have that fire under my ass to keep me moving. I don't have more stressful periods where I sleep maybe 30 minutes to an hour a day and a week feels like a month or more. I'm less stressed. It was the number 1 thing that helped me and I noticed it immediately. And I always knew that was the issue.

Because of that, there was no cure except to get rid of the stressors. So I finally graduated, I got a job after many months of toil that ended up paying me, I finally met someone who would be in a relationship with me (took 26 years), and I got out of Seattle. It took forever.

Going to be 30 soon enough. I feel like when I do have my birthday, the stress will come back thanks to feeling wildly underaccomplished. Woo... But I'll manage as long as I don't live in Seattle again.

</comment><comment><USER13> Consider checking your D3 vitamin metabolite levels in blood. I had trouble falling asleep, had single digits of 25(OH) D3 concentration (The norm is 20+ ng/ml).

For now I was prescribed 20k IU of vitamin D3 twice a week. Other things that helped - no caffeine after 3-4 pm and a cup of raspberry-hibiscus tea in the evening (It's very relaxing).

<comment><USER14> 20,000IU in a day, only twice a week? Sounds really strange. To everyone else, don't follow this advice without a doctor prescribing it.

The only reason I've seen for exceeding the potentially toxic 10k limit is for fighting the flu (D3 Flu Hammer).

<comment><USER13> Yes, obviously doses this high are prescription only. Should have mentioned that.

Guess I have to trust my doctor, who mentioned this is a saturation dose, and later on I will switch to lower doses available over-the-counter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> Well, it's often due to a phenomenon called sleep state misperception. When you're in lighter stages of sleep, it can sometimes feel like you're still awake, because there's still thought activity occurring in the brain._

I learning about this, uh, experientially. My wife snores. Many times, once she starts sawing wood, I will poke her and tell her to roll over. Very often, she'll tell me "I'm not snoring, I wasn't even asleep." Hmm...

 _> There are so many horror stories out there about people who developed a benzo addiction or did crazy things while they were on Ambien._

One of the real challenges about being inundated with information on the Internet 24/7 is that there is a fundamental bias that we have a really hard time compensating for: _No one writes down boring stories._ If you judge the world based on what you read online, every Ambien pill summons a visit from the Ambien walrus and setting your kitchen on fire. Every trip to Central America ends in horrid digestive disease, bot fly infections, or both. Every politician all the way down to your local city council member is a corrupt sociopath, and every cop a malevolent scumbag.

The reality is that all of those stories get written down because they are _interesting_ , which tends to imply that they are _unusual_ , which means they are the exact _opposite_ of being representative. But it's really hard to internalize that fact.

<comment><USER16> > No one writes down boring stories.

Millions of people on Facebook and Twitter are doing this right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> #4 on the list is taking sleeping pills. In a comment thread somewhere else, the author also said she stopped consuming caffeine, which is notably dismissed in this list.

I need HN to start accepting eyeroll emojis in comments.

<comment><USER18> In my view stopping caffeine should be the first thing to do if you have sleep problems. But somehow even mentioning this seems offensive to people.

<comment><USER19> I have sleep problems, and it's to do with muscular/nerve problems, and things like the nerve sensations (mostly _not_ pain) they cause. I'd find it irritating if you told me that, because I'm thoroughly sick of people assuming they know —- and that assumption is very common — what the causes and solutions are when I tell them I have sleep problems.

<comment><USER18> I am not saying stopping caffeine is the fix for everybody and I am certainly not trying to take your experience from you.

What I am saying is that it's worth to try this as one of the first steps because it's easy to do, you can see results quickly and for a lot of people going off caffeine is helpful.

It's like dealing with backpain. Exercise or yoga won't cure everybody but it's definitely trying to do that before taking other measures.

Or if you are overweight it's a good first step to look at eating habits. Often better eating habits will help so it's worth trying as a first step. If that doesn't help definitely look at other things.

<comment><USER19> > _What I am saying is that it's worth to try this as one of the first steps > because it's easy to do_

Why should someone try it if it's abundantly obvious to them from the outset that the causes of their problem are of a different sort, for which this could not possibly help?

You're still assuming that it is something that is potentially relevant to everyone.

Put another way, you're assuming that all sleep problems are of a sort that could potentially be caused/exacerbated by caffeine, and that the person with the problems couldn't possibly tell that caffeine was irrelevant unless they tried removing it.

<comment><USER18> "you're assuming that all sleep problems are of a sort that could potentially be caused/exacerbated by caffeine, and that the person with the problems couldn't possibly tell that caffeine was irrelevant unless they tried removing it."

Yes. The keyword is "could" I am not saying "always is".

<comment><USER19> "Could" is wrong. For someone like me, I know from the outset the kind of thing that causes the sleep problems. It could not be anything like coffee.

I wish I could wave a magic wand and make you experience what I do.

<comment><USER20> Have you ever tried cutting caffeine out of your diet?

<comment><USER19> I've had lots of periods (from months to years) in my life with zero caffeine.

Including all of my childhood, and I've had the sleep problems all my life. Think about what that means for what you're saying.

Yet people like you are so sure it could be the cause or contribute, and that I could never know without cutting it out of my diet.

Even aside from what I mentioned above, if you experienced what I experience you would know that it couldn't possibly influence why I have sleep problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > To keep reading this story, create a free account.

Seriously medium? I just wanted to read

</comment><comment><USER22> I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia. They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that. Sleeping pills are addictive and you have to take them for the rest of your life. As a software developer, I am used to finding and fixing the underlying problem as opposed to the quickfixes these doctors were offering me.

After much research I figured out the underlying problem, and the fix for it. The underlying problem is magnesium deficiency. As a software developer I am using my brain more intensely than most people. This is the stress the doctors are talking about. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body depend on two essential minerals for normal function: Calcium and magnesium. Cells go into ON state when calcium goes in, and OFF state when calcium goes out. Calcium doesn't go out on its own: magnesium has to go in and displace the calcium. When you are low on magnesium, cells can't go into OFF state. When that happens your muscles become stiff and you need massages, and your brain can't turn off and you can't sleep. The solution is magnesium supplements. This fixed my muscle stiffness issues and my sleep issues. A special compound of magnesium called magnesium l-threonate is especially helpful for sleep because it can penetrate what is known as the "blood brain barrier".

Scientific sources for this are hard to come by. I had to piece together all this from multiple sources. Here are some:

[https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of- nutrition...](https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of- nutrition/magnificent-magnesium/)

[http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of-magnesium- supplements-f...](http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of-magnesium-supplements- for-heart-health/)

[http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress-and-the- miracl...](http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress-and-the-miracle-of- magnesium/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23853635](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23853635)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8232845](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8232845)

Your mileage may vary. Magnesium deficiency turned out to be the cause of my insomnia but may not be the cause of yours.

<comment><USER23> Same for me. Two things worked wonders. Magnesium supplements and a Vitamin D lamp.

There is a massive difference between taking D3 and using a lamp. While relatively expensive they are worth every penny.

<comment><USER22> Interesting. I never across Vitamin D during my research on insomnia. What is the theory behind this? I'd like to try this--what brand of Vitamin D lamp worked for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ah, lovely medium paywall.</comment>


Show HN: Hack – Hacker News iOS client with swipe to upvote, favorite, reply - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/app/id1464477788 <comment><AUTHOR> OP developer here. I had shared it before but it lacked many features which HN community requested. So I have been working on adding them in for the last month.

Features which make my app stand out to other clients and hacker news on browser -

\- Swipe on a post or comment to upvote or favorite.

\- Reply/Edit to comments and posts from the app.

\- Submit new posts

\- Dark theme - both pure black as well as light gray. It is free on a per session basis. If the app is relaunched, it will default to light theme. You can purchase a small one time in app purchase to unlock it permanently.

\- 10 font choices and many color themes, full customization of font sizes and padding

\- iPad support with Split View

\- Landscape and Portrait support

\- Chronological view similar to [https://hckrnews.com](https://hckrnews.com)

\- All known hacker news endpoints - News, front page, Ask HN, Show HN, Show HN Newest, classic, active, best stories, best comments, new stories, new comments, noob stories, noob comments, jobs, over 100-500 points

\- Ability to block posts with keywords, domains, username

\- Powerful Search powered by Algolia API. You can sort search by adding "@date". Search for stories only by adding "#story", comments by adding "#comments". Search for a story by a particular user by adding "#story,author_username" etc

\- Beautiful UI (I understand my opinion is biased though).

\- No ads, No subscriptions.

Many other features which I would let the app speak for itself.

I am available here for any questions and feedback to make the app better!</comment>


Mobile Opportunities of PSD to HTML5 CSS3 Conversion - ua-coder http://www.htmlcut.com/blog/mobile-psd-to-html5-css3-conversion.html

<comment><AUTHOR> So, this is an advertisement with a little HTML5/CSS3 feature list thrown in?

</comment><comment><USER2> This is spam, surely?</comment>


Introducing "Aristo", A jQuery UI Theme/Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/482577430/introducing-aristo-a-jquery-ui-theme

<comment><USER2> I completely agree about the jQuery UI themes looking a bit goofy. Aristo looks gorgeous. As great as the jUI themeroller is, the themes themselves look pretty toy-ish. I never understood why jUI tabs have a weird background (see tabs here: <http://jqueryui.com/themeroller/> )

I hope jQuery UI team incorporates Aristo into theme roller. It would be awesome to be able to customize Aristo to my site's color scheme.

<comment><USER3> The sample Themeroller themes look goofy for a few reasons:

1\. they all seem to be catered to show off the glassy/noisy textures

2\. they all use the more ugly fonts. Verdana/Arial for great joy.

It is in fact possible to use Themeroller to make a good looking theme, you just have to compensate for the above two tendencies when working off of their samples.

You have to tear apart Themeroller CSS to see why Aristo is not possible (and probably not desirable) to integrate into jQuery UI. Aristo uses a _lot_ of sprites for things like corners and shadows; jQuery UI instead does everything with border-radius and clever transparent background images. The downside is you can't make every little corner and shadow in Themeroller beautiful, but that should be mitigated as box-shadow and border-radius appearance improves across browsers. The upside of more CSS-based styling, however, is that you can very quickly prototype new widgets that fit into a Themeroller theme and can be styled just like everything else using the Themeroller CSS class framework. (I would like to see somebody make a custom tab or toolbar panel that can be styled by vanilla Aristo CSS -- not possible.)

The real benefit of jQuery UI that I've experienced is not just using the existing widgets but prototyping new ones that fit the jQuery UI "interface", both programmatic and visual, using the $.Widget factory. For this reason I'm glad they have made Themeroller easy to use and as broadly applicable as possible. This has required some concessions in the visual capabilities of the themes, but CSS will soon catch up to fix that.

tl;dr I think Themeroller and jQuery UI should continue to focus on progressive enhancement more with CSS and less with images, and let things get fancier via the newer CSS properties.

<comment><USER4> while i'm all for using modern css capabilities -- i think ie7/ie8 will keep us from relying solely on them. i haven't looked into Aristo's source, but using sprites as a fallback the less capable browsers is pretty much the only option atm. add to that the fact that it's typically difficult or impossible to sprite gradients and rounded corners well, and the number of images used don't seem ridiculous anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hahaha! How strange. I actually started working on this exact thing on the weekend (<http://github.com/hellotoby/Jquery-UI-Aristo-Theme>)!

This one looks great though, perhaps I should stop working on mine...

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, that's unfortunate mate. Maybe you can contact me and we can work together on a proper release that works with all the controls.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that sounds good. I also have some basic Jquery written that deals with transforming the other form controls ie. radio, checkbox and select which I could probably turn into a plugin pretty easily.

I'll shoot you an email over the next few days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You might be interested in my Aristo port to CSS3 <http://github.com/maccman/aristo>

</comment><comment><USER7> This would go nicely with Uniform (<http://pixelmatrixdesign.com/uniform/>). Doesn't jqgrid support jquery ui themes now, too?

<comment><USER8> Uniform already handles this theme. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and there are three pre-made Uniform themes listed: "Uniform Default," "Aristo," and "Agent."

<comment><USER7> That's what I meant. With Uniform already styling forms element in Aristo style and JQuery UI now with a matching look, I don't have to waste too much effort on intranet apps...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the css with a nicer datepicker that doesn't move around as things get selected and has better vertical alignment of the selected date:

<http://gist.github.com/348580>

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks really good!

Add the following to your css:

a { outline: none; }

<comment><USER11> Outline is a helpful usability hint, especially for keyboard navigation.

Be wary about removing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks great. But, why does everything have to look mac like? (I don't use a mac.)

<comment><USER13> Cappuccino was developed by ex-Apple employees.

As far as Sproutcore goes, it was selected as the basis for Apple's MobileMe service. This probably didn't have much to do with their L&F selection, but it's still a useful datapoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Damn you're hired! Are you looking for a job by the way :)

<comment><USER15> These are the guys you should hire.

<http://www.madebysofa.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When you click several times on a button, it selects the text.

<comment><USER17> _When you click several times on a button..._

...in rapid succession. Like all other text in a browser.

<comment><USER3> In jQuery UI 1.7.1, there was a function $.fn.disableSelection() that would toggle all the right browser-specific CSS and attributes so that text selection would be disabled. I would recommend that the author use it during the instantiation of these buttons...</comment></comment></comment>


Design of Facebook Homogenizes Identity and Limits Personal Representation - <AUTHOR> http://www.hz-journal.org/n19/grosser.html <comment><USER2> People are talking about visual customization, but the article is mostly talking about how Facebook forces you to conform to social definitions of yourself by giving you checkboxes for gender, language, forced spellings of particular concepts, etc.

Foucault talked about (I don't remember where) how technology isn't neutral, its expressive power is limited by the nature of systematization. and as technology takes more of a role in daily life, people are forced to conform to whatever limited system was thrown up that you have to interact with to get government services or buy groceries. Your life is complicated but the form gives you four options because a computer can't process your freeform answer. The article explores how Facebook does this, admits more or less to the technical and business reasons that underlie this, but then goes ahead and blames white males anyway. Three years later Facebook has far more options for languages and genders and naming, which is still limiting, but blows apart the hegemonic white cis male attitude argument and all you're left with is what Foucault observed. I don't think you can lump together technical reasons, business reasons and racial/gender hegemony reasons anyway, but these claims have currency with some people whether or not the argument for it is defensible.

<comment><USER3> Lacan argues that this perception, that there is an inexpressible, ineffable something which can't be captured by a limited conceptual system, is itself a product of that system. The male/female binary scheme produces the experience of being more than simply one or the other.

From this perspective, the best way to support a diversity of self-definitions is by providing fewer options, not more. Facebook only lets you make one kind of connection to other people, the "Friend". As a result, two people being Facebook Friends has many different possible interpretations. No one believes it means you are friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Didn't read the article, but that's one of the things I like about Facebook the most. The ability to customize your profile on MySpace is part of what killed it.

Oh, you already forgot about the flashing animated gifs and snowflakes falling while 3 different videos and/or songs played?

<comment><USER5> I had the exact same immediate reaction. Facebook was a smash hit in large part because of how restrictive and uniform it was. Could it not also be said that Twitter homogenizes communication and limits personal expression?

<comment><USER6> You're right, everyone loves to wear exactly the same clothes in real life. It only makes sense that they'd want to wear the same "clothes" to express their online identity. It's obvious in retrospect. Silly MySpace!

<comment><USER4> oh people want to express themselves, but when it gets out of control, you get MySpace. It's not MySpace, it's the people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are definitely options between letting you hack falling snowflakes into your MySpace page and not letting you use any markup at all. A usability- oriented framework could exist which allows self-expression without all of the problems of Geocities, MySpace, and tumblr.

But this text isn't strictly about the fact that Facebook doesn't let you inline CSS and HTML and I think it presents some valid arguments about the social problems created by Facebook. People should actually read the article.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

</comment><comment><USER9> It doesn't do any of those things. Behind the scenes facebook has an extremely rich representation of your identity. In fact it is so good that they could probably even predict your favorite color and make that the background of your profile. Would that kind of approach be considered not limiting one's identity and personal representation?

At the end of the day facebook wants to collect certain kinds of information to sell to advertisers and the site is set up to do just that. If for some reason advertisers wanted to know tomorrow if you also self-identify with two different genders then you'd be damn sure that tomorrow there would be two gender drop-down lists when you sign up. That is unless they couldn't predict it from the massive trove of data they already have. So really the argument in the article comes down to I don't like facebook's UI because it doesn't let me input the kind of information I want to input all the while forgetting who the real customer of that data is and that there is this thing called HTML/CSS/JavaScript that lets you express yourself as freely as you want for less than $5/month.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Identity is theft of the self."

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course it does and by doing so it allows users to focus on what really matter which is the content.

Could a more freely customized social network exist? Absolutely but it would still require some sort of ability to control the powers.

</comment><comment><USER12> Aren't there now around 50 gender choices on Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER13> jesus christ- how bout you dont tie up your identity in facebook to begin with

</comment><comment> kuni-toko-tachi Mainstream academic fluff like this is what is truly homogenized. Academic articles are a marketplace like any other, and this market tends to promote in a vehement manner a rather limited worldview.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do if a company you like opts you into a mailing list? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> There are many products I like to use where I don't care about anything but using the product. For example, I recently signed up for Google Analytics and was given the "opportunity" to get emails on some topic presumably related to this thing I'm using. In these cases I uncheck the box, unsubscribe if I forgot to uncheck the box, and start marking as spam if there is not a clear unsubscribe link that does not ask me to log in.</comment>


Deconstructing Fizz Buzz with Flip-Flops in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://juliansimioni.com/blog/2014/12/03/deconstructing-fizz-buzz-with-flip-flops-in-ruby/ <comment><USER2> For some reason, the ability to say this with a straight face in the English language and actually convey information cracks me up.</comment>


Mt. Gox Files for Bankruptcy Protection - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303801304579410010379087576-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwNzEyNDcyWj <comment><USER4> To all the HN members who lost a lot of money in this closing, remember the community is here for you. Don't do anything too rash and if you need someone to talk to, myself and most other people would be happy to lend an ear.

<comment><USER5> Until Mt. Gox publicly confirms that no one will be getting their BTC and/or fiat money back, I think it's wrong to assume money owed to the users has been lost. Please have faith that they will do the right thing.

<comment><USER6> It seems highly unlikely that anyone will get all of their money back. They announced that they have debts of 6.5 billion yen and assets of only 3.84 billion yen. If they can liquidate 100% of their assets that's only enough to pay back 59% of their debts.

<comment><USER7> 6.5b yen is only 63 million USD. The 850,000 BTC wasn't included as a debt (which is roughly 475 million USD).

<comment><USER8> I believe it was included as debt at the artificially low GOX price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When you make a deposit you are extending credit. In the case of Mt. Gox, or any other Bitcoin exchange, that credit is secured by nothing and insured by noöne.

Advice, going forward, for managing counterparty risk:

(1) Split a $100 transaction into 10 $10* transactions executed incrementally (send $10 of BTC to Mt. Gox, exchange it, transfer it out, and only then send the next $10 of BTC over). This keeps exposure at any given time at a manageable level. The downside is it increases exposure to BTC/USD volatility.

(2) Split a $100 into 5 $20 transactions executed simultaneously on many exchanges. This keeps exposure to any single institution at a manageable level. The downside is it increases the number of institutions which must be dealt with.

(3) Draft a special arrangement with the institution for a large transaction. This should include credit and speedy withdrawal guarantees. The downside is the legal cost.

*edit: I am illustrating a hypothetical $100 transaction. Substitute, in place of $10, the most you are willing to lose in the event the exchange proves insolvent.

<comment><USER10> I believe MtGox users have unfortunately learned the definition of "counterparty risk". This is one of the major overlooked risks that almost took down the global financial system in 2008. People would hedge their worthless bonds using AIG as a counterparty, and once things blew up, these people realized their insurance policies were completely worthless because AIG was about to go under itself, causing them to almost go bankrupt as a result.

Unfortunately, in a world where none of the bitcoin exchanges have any sort of regulation, there's no way that BTC use can expand via BTC financial institutions until people have full confidence they can get their money back in the case of another collapse like mtgox.

<comment><USER11> The collapses we've seen with traditional currencies stem from the inherent risks of fractional-reserve lending.

Is this a risk with Bitcoin? According to my limited understanding, it doesn't seem to be. That should in theory reduce the need for things like FDIC and complicated risk calculations, like counter-party risk.

MtGox doesn't seem like a "bank failure" or "bank run" to me. It seems like a bank that forgot to lock the doors at night.

<comment><USER12> At least if your money is held in an FDIC insured bank and the bank goes under, you can rely on the government to insure your investment. With bitcoin you have no such thing.

<comment><USER13> That sounds very smart, however if your money is held in an FDIC insured bank, then it's likely to be in a national currency that is systematically devalued by the issuing institution through progressive year-on-year inflation. (Note that I use the term _institution_ instead of government as two major issuers, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, are private organizations).

PS. I'm not characterizing inflation as bad, nor am I a goldbug. I am merely pointing out that the entire population of FDIC-insured banks are paying _constantly_ for the mystical "it might happen some day" promise of a bailout, due to an inflationary system that reserves priveleged access to a central clique - ie. it's not like the conservative viewpoint of " _faith in <the national central bank>!_" comes without strings. (I am most aware of this perspective as someone who used to live with someone on the interest rate committee for the Bank of England.)

<comment><USER14> > That sounds very smart, however if your money is held in an FDIC insured > bank, then it's likely to be in a national currency that is systematically > devalued by the issuing institution through progressive year-on-year > inflation.

Which may be a good reason to limit currency holdings to what you need to use as _currency_ (that is, short-term medium of exchange for things of value), and invest the rest in productive assets, whether those are stocks, bonds, real estate, or digital collectibles like internet funbucks. But if you aren't directly holding those productive assets yourself but are trusting them to account held by someone else who promises to transfer them to you on demand or dispose of them at your direction, you probably want to do some consideration of their ability to keep them securely and execute the trust you are placing in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In this incident I lost a bit more than $500,000 USD that was in my MtGox account. I sold my Bitcoins a few months back, but the USD have been sitting in my account waiting to be withdrawn.

This was a massive fuck up by MtGox, but I really do feel sorry for Mark Karpeles. He seemed really enthusiastic about Bitcoin. Right by MtGox's offices in Japan was a Bitcoin Cafe being built. You can [see here]([http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN- BS458_mtgox0_G_...](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN- BS458_mtgox0_G_20140227225518.jpg)) the sign of a Bitcoin logo waiting to be unraveled.

Bigger than all the victims (no pun intended) was Mark himself. He lost more Bitcoins than any of us, and it's likely he'll be going to jail. Not to mention the death threats he has and will be receiving.

\--

One of the (features?) of Bitcoin is its inherent irreversibility. You only have one chance to get things right. Combined with Murphy's Law, something like this was bound to happen.

I've been a Bitcoin enthusiast and have been mining since early 2011, and Bitcoin has been a huge part of my life, but I will admit my confidence in Bitcoin ever _practically_ succeeding has diminished a little.

<comment><USER16> Did you try to get your money out of MtGox? A friend of mine has been trying to get his money (CAD) out of MtGox for 2 months. He received his money yesterday.

<comment><USER17> Where is he? I've read about a few people getting their money, but they were all in Japan moving $ into Japanese bank accounts.

I tried to withdraw a couple hundred at the start of January into a US bank account and I'm curious if I'll ever get it. It's a very small amount of money (and I paid even less to get the BTC originally), so it's not a big deal at all if I lose it all but I'd still like to get it.

<comment><USER16> Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel bad for Mark Karpeles but the way MtGox communicated & lied to its users makes me sad. It's those nameless individuals who believed in him, whose trust was betrayed - those are the ones that deserve the affection of the community. I've been following the news and I think MtGox was handling so much money that they should have focused on better security practices and audits.

Few examples of their lackadaisical attitude :

1\. [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mt) :

 _I arrived at MtGox early, approximately 8am, and stood outside with a sign reading "MtGox, where has my money gone". I got some curious looks, and a lot of questions from passersby about my protest. Then at approximately 9.20 am, Mark Karpeles himself came along carrying a large, and very fancy coffee in his hand that could have passed as a dessert. I immediately confronted him and told him we needed a chat. So he stopped to hear me out.

I told him he was playing with people's lives, and some people stood to lose their entire savings. Like Gonzague told me the night before, he mentioned __technical issues_ _, and that he would look into my case._

2\. [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9dgei)

 _I was told that up until a few weeks [at time of the interview] ago, there was hardly any development environment to test changes. Most changes were done straight on the production environment. Typing this made me throw up in my mouth._

3\. [http://i.imgur.com/xMeW43a.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/xMeW43a.jpg)

<comment><USER19> > and some people stood to lose their entire savings.

While I am not defending MtGox, having your entire life savings wrapped up in Bitcoin is hardly a sound, proven financial decision and evokes absolutely zero sympathy whatsoever. Losing it all in a get-rich-quick frenzy is sad - but it's sad in a "I can't believe people are willing to bet their lives on this" way, not a "this poor person lost his/her entire life savings due to the corruption of the financial industry" way.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely right.

Putting 5-10% of your net worth in something like this is being innovative and forward thinking and taking a calculated risk.

Putting 90-95% of your net worth in something like this is serious, foolhardy gambling.

<comment><USER21> Highhorses are fun to ride, but if you put in 5% of your networth at any point > 8 months ago, it is likely that you ended up with 90-95% of your net worth in Bitcoin.

<comment><USER22> I had not considered this, and you have a very good point. Most of those people had been getting used to the idea of being rich, that it will be very rough for them to adjust.

Besides, the way their money is lost made it so much worse. The global value of btc crashing would be one thing, corruption would be another, but this level of incompetence.. it's almost harder to digest since they most likely are not guilty of any crimes either, unless stupidity would be a crime.

<comment><USER21> Too true. It is interesting that rationally speaking, considering windfalls or lottery winnings "house money" is incorrect--money is money. This attitude can lead you to cognitive errors that cost you more money in the long run.

On the other hand, if we think about the coping strategy for people who've been Goxed, I can see where if you can disregard the winnings as "paper gains" it is much easier to get on with life thinking "I only lost 10k."

<comment><USER23> This thread is awesome. Goxed is now my new favorite word (sorry for the more initiated if I'm already late to the party). It's just like being doxed - <USER2> exposed yourself in some way, and some clever bastard got the better of you for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _The company 's lawyer also said at a news conference at the Tokyo District > Court that Mt. Gox had outstanding debt of about ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 > million) with assets worth ¥3.84 billion._

This implies a debt ratio of 170%. Assume: (1) no outside debt (only customer deposits) and (2) only 100% liquid assets (only currency). Even in that case, a depositor would recover no more than 59 cents to the dollar (the maximum recovery rate).

Fifty-nine cents is clearly rose-tinted. Assets include office leases, computers, and other things not easily liquidated at book value. And outside debt is senior to deposits. That is the bite of being unregulated (deposits are at the top of regulated banks' capital structures). After factoring in the cost of chasing bankruptcy claims in Japan I do not see depositors recovering a penny.

<comment><USER24> > a depositor could expect to recover no more than fifty-nine cents to the > dollar

59% is a wet-dream scenario. Apparently they are trying really hard to value the lost 750K BTC at the closing MtGox price which was around $100. And Bitcoin is actually $566 now. It looks more and more that if anyone gets anything at all it will be under 10 cents to the dollar.

<comment><USER9> > _Apparently they are trying really hard to value the lost 750K BTC at the > closing MtGox price which was around $100._

Comical. The equivalent of a shipper, having sunk its cargo, claiming the damages it owes are diminished by the cargo being worth less for having dropped to the sea floor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's easy to be angry at them and/or see how stupid they were about accounting, security, etc.

But I guess on the other hand we do have to realize they are victims of massive theft, as far as we know this massive loss was not due to their own profiteering or internal theft, it was an organized outside force targeting them.

It occurs to me it is like blaming someone for getting mugged, although they were stupid enough to walk down a really bad street at a bad time of night with their cash out in their hands, it did take a criminal to make the crime happen, not the victim.

<comment><USER26> It seems it is too early to state with any certainty that MtGox are also a victim here.

[http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/28/the-gox-crater-crowd- detecti...](http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/28/the-gox-crater-crowd-detectives- reveal-billion-dollar-heist-as-inside-job/)

[http://letstalkbitcoin.com/the-ghost-in-the-machine-at- mtgox...](http://letstalkbitcoin.com/the-ghost-in-the-machine-at-mtgox/)

<comment><USER27> The allegation that an address that MtGox's controls still holds all the Bitcoins but that they've lost the key is fascinating.

If true, how can MtGox prove it lost the key? If he walks away, he can wait 10 years and then transfer the funds out and spend them.

But if false, can we demand he produce the key?

What if someone else entirely different has the key?

It's all fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but they still have not said how much of the (700k + 100k) BTC was stolen and how much was just "lost" by technical incompetence, right?

As another Mt. Gox loser (sent my money back a few months before the end, of course they never arrived) this is one question that pains me the most. I don't care too much whether Karpeles goes to jail or not, but I want to know whether theft was made or just gross incompetence.

<comment><USER29> _they still have not said how much of the BTC was stolen and how much was just "lost" by technical incompetence, right_

Unfortunately, they are known liars. Right up until days before bankruptcy filing they were telling people they were working to resume withdrawals. It doesn't matter what they say at this point or anything they've said in the past because their words do not in any way reflect reality.

The only thing left is to investigate and if the facts show fraud has occurred, then prosecute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If only Bitcoin exchanges had some degree of regulation to ensure they were properly securing their users' funds, or perhaps some level of insurance to prevent their users from suffering financial losses due to the exchange's misfortune.

<comment><USER31> Elliptic Vault[1] is an example of a startup attempting to solve this.

[https://www.elliptic.co/vault](https://www.elliptic.co/vault)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Should the owner Mark Karpeles go to jail?

On one hand, there may be a chilling effect if Karpeles is sent to jail, because fewer companies may be willing to participate in an area where the penalty for failure is time behind bars.

On the other hand, it feels very inequitable and unjust that Karpeles made millions off of MtGox, lost our money and then is free to enjoy life. But that's a vengeful mindset, and it seems counterproductive. Is it really just a bad situation with no recourse? Karpeles walks, MtGox shuts down, and everyone's money is gone. Poof.

The most persuasive argument for jailtime seems to be that if he's not penalized, then others may attempt to orchestrate similar disasters. Bitcoin has a very, very small chance at becoming the next gold standard, but it's a chance nonetheless. Therefore whoever is willing to flaunt the law and steal >5% of all bitcoins that will ever be created has a very, very small chance at becoming extremely powerful in the future, and wealthy in the short term.

I don't know. There's probably nothing to be done, and taking away years of a person's life out of a sense of retribution probably isn't the best answer.

What does everyone think?

<comment><USER33> After this, you still say "Bitcoin may be the next gold standard"?

<comment><USER34> Personally, this fiasco hasn't affected in the slightest my beliefs about the protocol. Hell, if anything it might've been a small point in favour of decentralization.

<comment><USER33> That sounds like the reasoning of the gun-lobby. When bad things happen to do with guns, they tell us we need more guns.

<comment><USER35> I would've preferred to let the banks fail in 2008, short-term economic consequences be damned. That experiment is now playing out in the unregulated crypto-economy. (I've got my popcorn.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My take: If the money was stolen this year, it was theft by a third party and they were maybe incompetent, however, this is not punishable, see politics.

If it was stolen last year, they made all existing (and even worse: new) costumers since the time of the theft believe that they would get their money back. This is fraud.

</comment><comment><USER37> What I wonder, is if Mark was actually the only one internally who had access to the cold storage wallets, what would happen if he got hit by a car and died? Have other exchanges got plans for this sort of thing? Some corps don't let their programmers fly on the same aeroplane.

I wouldn't want to own that many Bitcoin and be the only one who has access also because someone could profit considerably from your death.

<comment><USER38> At Bitalo [0] we use multi signature wallets all over the place - for user wallets (so we cannot move them without users permissions), but also for company wallet for storing fees. For the latter, all board members have keys for them, but you only need a subset of them to access the funds. That way even if one of them loses the key or something bad happens to them, coins can still be moved by the others.

For example, you can have 2-of-4 wallets, where 4 people hold the keys, and you need only 2 of them to move funds.

[0] [https://bitalo.com](https://bitalo.com)

<comment><USER39> Please, don't ever send money nor coins to these guys, they're scammers. M4v3R used to run [http://bitmarket.eu](http://bitmarket.eu) and lost all the users' coins while running some sort of (according to his own words) "hedge fund" around December 2012. Around April 2013, with bitcoin around $50 he "kindly" offered to reimburse everyone over time, valuating each coin at 10€ arguing that it was their value when he lost them. I told them wanted my 10btc, not money, and they still owe me to this day.

See [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134208.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134208.0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So are they claiming they literally lost ALL of their bitcoin? How is that even possible to have happened without them noticing... It just seems much more likely somebody got greedy on the inside.

I am sure they lost some. But I can't help but wonder if that was taken as an excuse to loot the ship as it was sinking.

</comment><comment><USER41> No one stole anything from them. Or at least not something remotely close to what is reported. How can 800k btc go missing?

Even people with few hundred btc split them between several different offline wallets. Can't be stolen. Their hot wallet being hacked is a total possibility, but it would contain no more than 5% of their coins. So, they just emptied the cold storage until it was completely empty?

No.

Something else is going on and we will all know soon enough. Don't let yourselves be manipulated like that.

</comment><comment><USER42> I was selling a significant amount of Bitcoins in January. I wanted to use Mt Gox because of higher rate. I did not think there was a real possibility of the whole exchange going down. However, I did not pass identity verification because of some minor problem. So I sold the Bitcoins on Bitstamp and had money in the bank a day later. I was really really lucky.

</comment><comment><USER43> Pirates buried their treasure in hidden locations rather than let someone hold on to it for them [1] :-).

[1] I realize this isn't strictly true, as there were organizations the pirates did use, but they had the same challenges with them being crooked or getting captured by England or some other authority at the time.

</comment><comment><USER44> >One Japanese small-business owner that accepts bitcoin as payment said Japanese banks had expressed skepticism toward the payment method, and that the business's lenders this week asked that the company wouldn't use bitcoin in the wake of Mt. Gox's stopping all transactions on Tuesday. "They're approaching bitcoin very conservatively," the owner said.

I don't think that the demise of mtgox will destroy the ecosystem. However, I suspect this will be a major setback in mainstream adoption as a method of payment. Bitcoin speculation (and difficulty of shorting) may very well prop up the price for the foreseeable future, but... so what? The interesting thing about the Bitcoin saga is seeing it work its way into mainstream.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.

<comment><USER45> And is this because it will make you rich with your bitcoin stash, or because somehow "Society Needs This" and you'll just happen to get rich while being so magnanimous. It's a new paradigm, I know.

<comment><USER46> Everything you use for your benefit made someone else rich, from your toothbrushes till the banks you use... and you know this to be true, so your discourse is only an attempt to be rude and cynical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> what happens to the BTC in their wallets that they didn't lose? Liquidated to pay creditors 1c in the dollar?

with 63 million in debt, I imagine customers aren't first class debt holders either?

<comment><USER48> > 63 million in debt

it is still not clear if it is 63 million + 750k BTC in debt, or in total. If in total it is not clear how btc are valued.

<comment><USER49> Zero. Bitcoins are worthless.

<comment><USER50> Just like everything, until we decide to give it value. Gold is completely and absolutely worthless to us humans, we don't need it to function and it serves no biological function in our organisms whatsoever. But because we like it and there is a scarcity of it, we will trade goods for it. Just like with bitcoins.

<comment><USER51> Who trades goods for gold?

<comment><USER50> Unless you interpret what I said literally,and are going to point out that no one trades apples for gold rings, then the answer is - literally everyone who buys gold. You might pay with a fiat currency,but then you obtained it by either selling something that you produced or work that you carried out - <USER3> "goods".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can anyone explain to someone who didnt follow whole story from the beginning what exactly happened to Mtgox that caused them to lose all this money?

<comment><USER53> No, because nobody knows for sure. The most common theories are stupidity, fraud, and theft (or some combination thereof).

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I just don't see how they missed it. Since they used a hot-wallet system this had to be over a pretty substantial period of time. Surely if you're running an operation with that much cash involved you've got some kind of rolling reconciliation between debt owed vs reserves available?

Who misses a 500MM hole in their assets? Or is reckless enough to hide it (trading whilst insolvent)?

</comment><comment><USER55> Perhaps naïve question but can't see any info on this one. So, the Bitcoin ledger is still intact. 750,000 is quite a lot of Bitcoins to be stolen. Mt.Gox may have been shitty built but they must have kept some logs, account databases, etc. What are the odds of recovering the coins/exchange money that was lost? Technically sounds like pretty good odds? No?

<comment><USER56> At the same time it's quite easy for it to all be gone forever due to good old fashioned incompetence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> _The company 's lawyer said at the news conference that Mt. Gox had outstanding debt of about ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million) with assets worth ¥3.84 billion._

That can't include the value of the bitcoins lost can it? So presumably the assets doesn't include the value of any bitcoins that they still have which all makes this statement rather meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER58> It seems like the bitcoin community should collectively decide to not honor transactions for the stolen bitcoins.

Not only will it prevent the market from completely crashing as the thief eats up remaining buy orders, but it would moderately discourage future thieves if such a mechanism were in place.

</comment><comment><USER59> > bitcoin industry

What the? They certainly do seem to consume a couple of factories worth of electricity

</comment><comment><USER33> Hilarious. Can't wait to hear from the choir of libertarian crypto-currency- zealots, who will sing the praises of the Ponzi scheme that is Bitcoin.

On a serious note: who benefits?

<comment><USER60> Unfortunately I get the feeling more and more everyday that this really is just a ponzi scheme built on really cool new technology. I mean honestly most people who buy bitcoin aren't looking to spend it or use it because of convenience, they are looking to hold it in the hopes that the price continues to go up and on the way encouraging everyone they know to buy in to drive up the price.

<comment><USER61> > I mean honestly most people who buy bitcoin aren't looking to spend it or > use it because of convenience, they are looking to hold it in the hopes that > the price continues to go up and on the way encouraging everyone they know > to buy in to drive up the price.

Even if that's true, that doesn't make it a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is an investment in a phony entity run by a fraudster (the Ponzi) who's promising guaranteed returns and lying about the existence and nature of what the investment is. New money making early investors rich _is not_ a defining feature of nor unique to Ponzi schemes.

Ponzi schemes require a Ponzi, intentional fraud, and a fake investment. Bitcoin is none of these things; it's not even remotely similar to a Ponzi scheme. No one is being lied to about what Bitcoin is, there's no fake investment here, Bitcoin is a real and functional payment network. There's no guarantee of returns here. Stop spreading FUD. Gox is not Bitcoin, Mark being a criminal doesn't make Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER62> Bitcoin is much more like a speculative bubble than a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER61> Correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Serious question - is now a good time to buy Bitcoin?

<comment><USER64> Are you planning to buy it as an investment, or to use it as a currency? If the latter, this is not a good time because the currency is less stable than ever. But it could arguably be a good time to "invest" if that's your thing.

<comment><USER63> Invest

<comment><USER65> What makes BTC a better investment opportunity for you than, say, some stock in Tesla or Amazon?

<comment><USER63> I feel like doing something different. I'm sure Amazon would be a better investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Sorry if this is a stupid question, but did Mt. Gox have their wallets? Why didn't these people keep their wallets with them?

<comment><USER67> The way that exchanges work is that they hold a wallet for you, you deposit money into it, and then you do off-blockchain trades with other users. At some point, you ask to withdraw, and give them your local wallet address, and then they send you the coins.

<comment><USER66> ok so Mt.Gox should still have the digital wallets. The whole point of bitcoin is that you don't need a central bank/exchange holding your wallet. But people used one anyways and now Mr.Gox doesn't know where the money went.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> So much speculation and theories. Seems like Occam's razor wins again.

<comment><USER69> I don't think that applies here. Neither incompetence nor theft strains credulity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Is this the largest heist in history?

<comment><USER71> I don't think the numbers even reach the low billions, so no Madoff still takes that award.

<comment><USER70> I guess it depends how you define heist. I think I would put Ponzi scheme in a different category, but I do see your point in that a theft is a theft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> So much for cold storage

</comment><comment><USER73> Learn your lessons and move on.

Money, bitcoin, value, economy. Its like a game, like chess, sometimes you loose.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUcXI2BIUOQ&feature=kp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUcXI2BIUOQ&feature=kp)

Aint got no, ive got life, by nina simone.

</comment><comment><USER74> Anyone stupid enough to invest a significant portion of their net worth in a nascent currency like BitCoin only have themselves to blame, high risk.

<comment><USER65> Bitcoin hasn't suffered any loss; the exchange rate has been relatively flat all year. People who let a third party hold their assets lost those assets due to that entity's negligence. That can happen to shovels in a storage unit -- the underlying asset is irrelevant to this particular risk.

<comment><USER74> A currency is only as good as it's exchanges, AFAIK Mtgok was the biggest and most trusted, for me this is a death blow to bitcoin.</comment></comment></comment>


US company reinvents wheel to make bikes electric - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25436871

<comment><AUTHOR> Official page here: [http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/](http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/)</comment>


Show HN: TB-303 Synth, Drum Machine and Sequencer in Web Audio - <AUTHOR> http://www.errozero.co.uk/acid-machine/ <comment><USER3> That is very cool! Just spent a bit of time playing with it, and while I wouldn't say I was a 303/808 connoisseur (unlike a friend who is pretty famous for his use of them), sounds pretty good to me; it's not perfect (it sounds like the filters aren't quite there in terms of extreme settings of resonance and envelope), but it's good. I've not used RB338 for years, so it could be mis-remembering, but it's almost like the sounds need controls that 'go to 11' to get to where you'd want them to be?

I like the simplicity of it and the ease of producing a WAV from a session, and the UI seems to be simple and straightforward to use. I'll test it out on some students this week, see what they come up with.

I have a couple of minor criticisms - I don't think the ballistics of the rotary controls is right, but I can't quite put my finger on -why-, just seems a bit too sensitive or there's something about the linearity of it? Would it be possible to add the Cubase-style "shift reduces the sensitivity while dragging" to them?

The other thing was editing the grid - I'd prefer left click to toggle an event on and off rather than right-click to clear; while this is personal preference, it's one that I've got used to using Cubase for 20 years or so in the drum editor, so it's a little counter-intuitive to have to do it another way, and I think many other editors are similar?

Finally, any chance of an undo in the editor?

But overall, love it. An amazing demonstration of what's possible in a browser, and of your skills!

<comment><USER4> > I wouldn't say I was a 303/808 connoisseur

I would, I own a real TB-303 (as well as a TR-808 and a TR-909), and this suffers from the same problems that all emulations suffer (even Roland's own TR-3 and TR-03): the sound is really 'static'; real 303s have an instability in the sound that gives them a nice natural vibrato, which at the extremes (resonance full, and sweeping the cut-off), causes mini-ripples of sound that give the 303 _that_ sound.

Have a listen to this to see what I mean (try to avoid the Roland shills with their "it's just as good" opinion) [1]

It's pretty much the same with all emulations of analogue gear. I am yet to hear any plugin or emulation come close to the sound of analogue. The closest I've experienced to-date Uhe Diva, but even that doesn't have the liveliness of the real deal.

[1] [https://youtu.be/4lhXeTGMo2c?t=796](https://youtu.be/4lhXeTGMo2c?t=796)

<comment><USER5> I agree. It's the instabilities and nonlinearities in analog audio that give it character.

Now whether that's worth emulating, or even noticeable by most people, I'm not sure. But I'm buying all analog, and mostly VCO synths

<comment><USER4> > or even noticeable by most people,

I think it is, but on quite a subliminal level. As well as producing music I also DJ, and I notice a marked increase in energy levels of people on a dancefloor when I play tracks that I know are made with analogue synths and drum machines.

Two weeks ago I was playing at a club in London and played Donnato Dozzy - <USER2> [1], it's so simple as a track, almost nothing to it, but it's a real 303 and 808 that drives the track. I had tons of people asking me what it was, and I could see the room had got more energetic. I even had this conversation about it after the night.

So even for those that don't know exactly why, I think they do feel. I've seen it happen lots of times.

> But I'm buying all analog, and mostly VCO synths

It's still there with DCOs in my opinion. They're cleaner for sure, but they still have _that_ sound. My Juno 106 is one hell of a synth, and that's DCOs, as is my Waldorf Pulse 2 (which for almost no money is a great sounding machine), but then I have the VCOs: Moog Sub 37, Roland TB-303, Roland SH-101, and the incredible DSI OB-6. They're all amazing sound. Especially compared to my digital synths (Nord Lead A1, Roland Super JV 1080). I've stopped using plugins completely now.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZzZ1jdvIyM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZzZ1jdvIyM)

<comment><USER6> Ooh, where did you play? Love that track, will have to try and catch you play sometime if you play that sort of thing :)

<comment><USER6> Won't let me reply to you directly, but cool! I shall keep an eye out as I live round that neck of the woods - hadn't even heard of that venue. I'll give your mixes a listen tomorrow, cheers – recognised your name from the 4Four site I used to go on occasionally :)

<comment><USER4> Heh, yeah I still run 4four - although you'll be lucky to log into it now, it was killed by the march of various sites (Facebook, Soundcloud, RA), to the point that it went from 10,000 unique visitors per day to 100s. I'd like to resurrect it at some point, but it'd need a better value-proposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, this is something I have been working on for most of this year. It started out as a more fully featured web-based daw that would have lots of different instruments with its own plugin format. I got quite far into the project and built a very modular system so it is easy to create more instruments by just dropping in a js file and a view file for the visuals.

It was taking longer than I thought so I decided to create a V2 of my old Acid Machine app using this code as a base.

It's great to see people talking about it after being hidden away on my laptop for so long. If anyone has any technical questions, I would love to answer them. Also.. I am on the lookout for some freelance work at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome! Brings back memories of playing with Rebirth. Love the different design.

Boy I still remember playing with Propellerhead Rebirth in the late '90s and that was pretty great at the time. It made me a bit of money in high school to simply create some basslines and burn them onto a CD for friends.

By the time Reason 3.0 came out I stopped playing with this kind of software and only really used tools like Audacity for editing sound files. But also, my taste for Electronic music had died down. It had become very generic for me for the most part.

Still though, it's cool to a web version of this software and the amazing things you can do with HTML5.

<comment><USER8> I'm still affected, I got completely hooked on and transitioned to Reason. I'm a fan ever since.

I remember fighting for the "server" Mac in the class room because that was only machine powerful enough capable of running ReBirth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow this is awesome! I'm building something similar with WebMIDI and WebAudio and I've been blocked trying to get recording to work. My current solution is sampling my OscillatorNodes with a MediaRecorder and turning the resulting blob into an .ogg file but it only works in Firefox (Chrome has a bug with decoding ogg with WebAudio). Do you mind elaborating on how you do your wav recording?

<comment><AUTHOR> I experimented with the MediaRecorder too but couldn't get anything to work. In the end, I used this: [https://github.com/mattdiamond/Recorderjs](https://github.com/mattdiamond/Recorderjs) \- It has been abandoned by the author and the forceDownload function does not work anymore so I had to replace that. I'll send you a copy of my version if you like?

<comment><USER10> slightly inefficient, but you can use a ScriptProcessorNode [1]. just copy the buffer right before it reaches your destination and encode it as WAV when you're done recording. (Audio Worker would be the ideal solution but i don't think they're implemented yet).

something like this: [http://pastebin.com/UP3F09Wn](http://pastebin.com/UP3F09Wn)

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/ScriptProce...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/ScriptProcessorNode)

<comment><USER9> I tried this but using ScriptProcessorNodes is a pain in practice because of how the events work:

>An event, implementing the AudioProcessingEvent interface, is sent to the object each time the input buffer contains new data, and the event handler terminates when it has filled the output buffer with data.

Events just fire like mad until you put stuff in the output buffer. Couldn't get it to work like I needed it to.

<comment><USER10> i mean, of course events are going to fire like mad. welcome to the world of audio processing. :)

MediaRecorder works the same way (but for MediaStreamSources, not BufferSources).

the idea is that audio buffers are processed in chunks- an event fires for each chunk that is processed. the act of "recording" is just reassembling these chunks into a single ArrayBuffer.

edit: seems like Recorderjs works exactly this way (but implements features more than just recording, like exporting as WAV).

capturing the chunks: [https://github.com/mattdiamond/Recorderjs/blob/master/src/re...](https://github.com/mattdiamond/Recorderjs/blob/master/src/recorder.js#L21-L30)

reassembling the chunks: [https://github.com/mattdiamond/Recorderjs/blob/master/src/re...](https://github.com/mattdiamond/Recorderjs/blob/master/src/recorder.js#L97-L101)

<comment><USER9> > if (!this.recording) return;

This is the key I was missing in my implementation. Another challenge is wiring this up to multiple OscillatorNodes - the docs say a ScriptProcessorNode can only have one input. In my implementation I create a new OscillatorNode whenever you press a key.

<comment><AUTHOR> In Acid Machine, I have created a kind of virtual 4 channel mixer, that is the only thing that connects directly to the main destination output. All osc nodes that are generated by an instrument get connected to the instruments master gain node, then that connects to one of the mixer channels. All mixer channels then connect to a master mixer gain, then the output.

If you do it that way, you just need to attach the recorder to the master output of the mixer.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the advice! What node would be a mixer in WebAudio?

<comment><USER10> if all you're trying to do is combine nodes in the graph a gain node is standard. (that is, you can connect any number of oscillators to a single gain).

<comment><USER9> Great thanks. But throughout this project I've been wondering: why can't I buffer a damn oscillator (or gain) node?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work! Web Audio has come on a lot.

ABL3 still sounds better to me, but it's no surprise, Mike (the guy who wrote it) has made analog emulation his obsession for years.

Also, if you're in the market for actual analog hardware, I picked one of these up earlier this year, great juicy sounding little box, cheap as chips.

[https://www.thomann.de/gb/mam_mb33_retro.htm](https://www.thomann.de/gb/mam_mb33_retro.htm)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb9C7NRCmZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb9C7NRCmZ4)

<comment><USER11> Wow... that little box sounds really nice. Probably I'll get one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This took me a minute to figure out so writing it down in case it helps someone else. The sequencer button allows you to string your patterns together into a song. To actually play them in that sequence though, you need to click the "Pattern Mode" grey button at the top of the screen and toggle it to "Song Mode". Then, the play button (or spacebar) will play your song in that pattern.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that, I really need to write a little getting started guide or a tutorial video.

<comment><USER13> I think that would be really helpful, there are bound to be some features in there that aren't immediately obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very nice. Sounds quite good and works very well. I tested it with Firefox 50 on Linux. No audio issues of any kind.

Is there a way to use the keyboard to control the synth and the knobs? I grew up with trackers (and later Jeskola Buzz) and I always enjoyed playing with synths using a "keyboard piano" input.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use your keyboard number keys to play the drum machine.

I could probably add in keyboard control for the synth knobs, I might add that in a future update. If you have a midi controller, you can control almost everything with the midi learn functionality.

<comment><USER14> I don't have a midi controller so it would be nice to have a way to play the notes "live" with the keyboard. And perhaps turn the knobs using number keys or function keys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is very good work in this space. Rebirth 338 was the bees knees tipping point for virtual analog on a PC. We have been seeing numerous things that hint at the direction of where things can end up and this is a good way to establish cred for browser-based audio generation.

Generally good piano roll implementation, controls. It'd be nice to have a master fader and possibly a compressor amongst the effects implmemented.

I'd also love a swing parameter.

Something I've noticed is that knobs with a touch screen can be rough since your digit is covering the visual feedback. Maybe a single vertical line indicator next to the knob could mean you would know where you are and how far you can go when tweaking one?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is awesome! Now if only there was a web-protocol for syncing the audio clocks of two webapps I could really jam out with this and (shameless plug) [http://io808.com](http://io808.com) together.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I'm really trying to think of ways that could be done in a fast way. Any ideas?

The instruments in Acid Machine 2 are built in a modular way, kind of like a basic vst plugin. This is because I started out trying to make a more fully featured web daw. It would be possible to add in more instruments in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Love it so much. Going to go home and play with this for a few hours. Thank you for making this and sharing it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can't say I'm a fan of the skeuomorphic rotary knobs that don't even work like rotary knobs, but like vertical sliders.

</comment><comment><USER19> Works perfectly well for me in Firefox 50/Linux, on a 5 years old machine :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Having flashbacks to using Rebirth-338

</comment><comment><USER21> it "looks" a lot better than it did, but I have no idea what is going on. Used to play around with the old version quite a lot when bored at work :)

I guess I was just used to how it worked before, this re-design of multiple full screen views is confusing, couldn't figure out how to get things to play, quick live edits don't seem possible now either.

<comment><USER21> also couldn't get it to work in FF, just sits at loading, even though had turned off ublock / noscript / privacybadger and had to load up chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> It should show a full screen message on FF to say that it will not work as well as Chrome. It has a continue button to hide the message. Did you see that or did it just show the loading bar straight away?</comment></comment></comment>


Morally Wrong iPhone App Pricing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.iphoneography.com/journal/2009/2/18/are-some-app-developers-taking-the.html <comment><USER2> Iphone applications are a 'marketable commodity', as such if they are priced 'wrong' there is room for a competitor with a product priced 'right'. This should take care of itself.

The fact that people are willing to pay for these trivial bits of software is telling, how much they are willing to pay for it is less important. I hope that soon there will be a way to put foss on the iphone without all these hacks and then we can put this all behind us.

But then again, there is a market for snazzy cell phone covers too...

<comment><USER3> _if they are priced 'wrong' there is room for a competitor with a product priced 'right'._

No, because Apple has designed in a bias towards cheaper apps in the App Store.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Let me Focus – Cure mobile addiction - <AUTHOR> https://focus.apki.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> This app I made has been around for a while. It basically takes a core idea from a popular Forest app and executes it with minimal overhead. So far I've gathered mixed responses about it, from positive ones to ones accousing me of scam.

Any feedback is appreciated. Ping me if you want a promo code to download it for free.</comment>


Will you be employable in the next 5 years? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ctrlaltdeletebook.com

<comment><USER2> The medium distracts from the content. Luckily the scroll wheel comes in handy.

Transcript:

TECHNOLOGY HAS SENT BUSINESS THROUGH A MASSIVE TRANSFORMATION.

IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS, THERE'S A STRONG LIKELIHOOD THAT SOMEONE IN YOUR INDUSTRY WON'T MAKE IT. WILL IT BE YOU?

WE ASKED 3,397 PEOPLE WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE.

SEE HOW YOUR ANSWERS STACK UP, AND HOW READY YOU ARE FOR WHAT'S AHEAD.

THE WORLD HAS CHANGED.

GOOGLE'S ADVERTISING REVENUE IS NOW BIGGER THAN THAT OF THE ENTIRE U.S. PRINT INDUSTRY.

2/3 OF APPLE'S REVENUE COMES FROM PRODUCTS IT RELEASED AFTER 2007,

AND WHILE MOST BUSINESSES STRUGGLE TO CATCH UP, COMPANIES LIKE AMAZON ARE LEADING THE WAY. WITH ANNUAL REVENUES LARGER THAN THE GDPS OF HALF THE WORLD'S COUNTRIES,THEY HAVE ENOUGH WAREHOUSE SPACE TO FILL OVER 700 MADISON SQUARE GARDENS,AND A BIGGER STAKE IN NORTH AMERICAN E-COMMERCE THAN OFFICE DEPOT, STAPLES,DELL, AND SEARS COMBINED.

AND IT'S NOT JUST THE BIG COMPANIES LIKE GOOGLE, APPLE, AND AMAZON

START-UPS LIKE:OUYA OUYA IS AN ANDROID-BASED GAMING CONSOLE THAT ALLOWS ANY DEVELOPER TO BUILD VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY ON YOUR TV. PLEDGES REQUESTED: $950,000 PLEDGES RECEIVED: $8,596,474 VISIT THEIR KICKSTARTER PAGE OuyaFLIPBOOKIT FLIPBOOKIT IS A KIT THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE TO BUILD YOUR OWN HAND-CRANKED OR MOTORIZED 24-FRAME ANIMATIONS. PLEDGES REQUESTED: $5,000 PLEDGES RECEIVED: $137,567

AMAZONSTART-UPS LIKE:OUYA OUYA IS AN ANDROID-BASED GAMING CONSOLE THAT ALLOWS ANY DEVELOPER TO BUILD VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY ON YOUR TV. PLEDGES REQUESTED: $950,000 PLEDGES RECEIVED: $8,596,474 VISIT THEIR KICKSTARTER PAGE OuyaFLIPBOOKIT FLIPBOOKIT IS A KIT THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE TO BUILD YOUR OWN HAND-CRANKED OR MOTORIZED 24-FRAME ANIMATIONS. PLEDGES REQUESTED: $5,000 PLEDGES RECEIVED: $137,567 VISIT THEIR KICKSTARTER PAGE FlipbookitBRYDGE BRYDGE IS AN ULTRA-SECURE IPAD KEYBOARD WITH BUILT-IN SPEAKERS THAT ALLOWS FOR CLOSE TO 180 DEGREES OF POSITIONING. PLEDGES REQUESTED: $5,000 PLEDGES RECEIVED: $137,567

ARE CROWDFUNDING THEIR WAY TO SUCCESS,AND CLAIMING THEIR PIECE OF THE PIE.

CONSUMERS HAVE CHANGED TOO.IN 1999, THERE WERE 38 MILLION BROADBAND INTERNET USERS WORLDWIDE. TODAY, 1.2 BILLION PEOPLE GET BROADBAND INTERNET ON THEIR PHONES.

NEARLY HALF OF FACEBOOK'S 150 MILLION DAILY VISITS COME FROM MOBILE, AND MORE PEOPLE HAVE MOBILE DEVICES THAN ACCESS TO SAFE DRINKING WATER, OR ELECTRICITY.

THE COMPETITION HAS CHANGED TOO.STAYING COMPETITIVE IS NOT JUST ABOUT KEEPING UP WITH MOBILE COMPETITION TODAYCOMES FROM EVERYWHERE.

IN JUST FOUR YEARS, KICKSTARTER LAUNCHED OVER 98,000 NEW PROJECTS AND RAISED $521 MILLION. LAST YEAR THEY DISTRIBUTED MORE MONEY TO BUSINESSES IN THE ARTS THAN THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS. AND THEY HELPED LAUNCH EMERGING COMPANIES LIKE THIS [show Pebble watch].

THE WORLD HAS CHANGED. [stast like this] MOBILE COMMERCE WILL BE $150 BILLION THIS YEAR 50% OF CLICKS ON MOBILE ADS ARE ACCIDENTAL MOBILE DRIVES 23% OF PAID SEARCH CLICKS WE SPEND 2.5 HRS A DAY ON OUR MOBILE DEVICES 50% OF WIRELESS TRAFFIC IS VIDEO

AND WE'RE STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS EVOLUTION. IF YOU WANT TO BE EMPLOYABLE IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS IT'S TIME TO REBOOT.

Link to new book [http://www.amazon.ca/Ctrl-Alt-Delete-Business- Depends/dp/145...](http://www.amazon.ca/Ctrl-Alt-Delete-Business- Depends/dp/1455523305/)

<comment><USER3> Wow. Why would anyone want a nice HTML slideshow when we could enjoy it in your all-caps pasted format?

Do you convert every pdf and powerpoint you see into plain txt?

<comment><USER4> That would improve most power points. Have you seen the average marketing presentation? Star swipes and comic sans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 100% of websites designed like this will be laughed at in 5 years...

<comment><USER6> I certainly hope so. I've seen it done well, but this one isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While it was pretty that was incredibly frustrating to read. I gave up after scrolling for a while.

<comment><USER8> It's kind of okay for me on my rMBP with maximum key repeat rate to just hold the down arrow.

That said this would be a lot better if there was a button you could just click to scroll through the screens one at a time.

<comment><USER7> I agree if there was a button to click to jump to the next one it'd be less frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's just like a video, except you have to constantly scroll the mouse wheel to make frames advance.

It's like we've gone back to using hand-crank projectors.

<comment><USER9> Which means it probably works fairly well. Just having you scroll is actually a pretty slick way of engaging you.

So, yeah, it throws off some folks that are annoyed with the engagement. How many folks just let videos bounce off of them because they didn't engage at all?

<comment><USER10> The problem comes when you scroll past some detail because the speed changed. That happens to me a lot with these things. Also, I'm never sure when I'm supposed to stop scrolling. As others have said it's just distracting.

<comment><USER9> Oh, to be clear, I am one of the folks that didn't finish it. :) While at work I need a passive experience more than an active one.

I just happen to think it is probably a smarter idea than a video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Will you be employable in the next 5 years?"

I hope not, especially if it's for an industry that thinks this form of presentation is elegant or useful.

</comment><comment><USER12> Too annoying; didn't read. Made it to the bottom of the first page, then gave up. If anybody has time to arrange the text into paragraphs I could probably summon the will to read them, because I'd like to know the answer to the question if there is one.

<comment><USER9> I have to admit that the source for the site isn't terrible, if you just want an idea of what it is doing.

Edit: To be clear, I should not have said "what it is doing." Rather, you can read the script of what the video would have been fairly well if you look at the source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is one of those where the mods need to retitle it. The content has nothing to do with employability. It mentions a few big companies and some obscure startups, but not related to employability whatsoever without a stretch.

</comment><comment><USER14> The mouse wheel comes in very handy. I made it to the dumb question at the end. We've heard about the "Decline and Fall of the American Programmer" before? Oh wait, he wrote a followup.

[http://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Edward- You...](http://www.amazon.com/Decline-American-Programmer-Edward- Yourdon/dp/013191958X)

[http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-American-Programmer- Yourd...](http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-American-Programmer-Yourdon- Computing/dp/013121831X)

<comment><USER3> > I made it to the dumb question at the end.

There was no question at the end, just a few links to his book.

Damn mitch, nice work! I expected the site to choke on mobile, but you have a very nice fallback.

<comment><USER14> Ok, I'll bite:

       DO YOU BELIEVE YOUR COMPANY IS KEEPING UP WITH THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF BUSINESS?

         - YES, WE'RE CONSTANTLY RE-INVENTING OURSELVES
         - WE'RE TRYING, BUT WE'RE NOT THERE YET
         - NO, WE'RE NOT KEEPING UP AT ALL
         - WE HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT

       SUBMIT

<comment><USER3> You're absolutely right that its a dumb question. But the second half of the page is after you answer it.

<comment><USER14> I stopped at the question and wasn't really interested in where answering it would take me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I read it all and got the impression that the Internet is growing extremely rapidly worldwide, and I do not see how that will affect the ability to be employed in the next five years. The growth of people using the Internet is outpacing the growth of people who produce content and manage the Internet. In fact, the page showed how Kickstarter is actually encouraging the rise of new businesses and giving lots of money to the creative industries.

</comment><comment><USER16> No, because you'll be five years older and young people will cost less than you do. Might as well go eat worms.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good god, I couldn't make it through more than one half-scroll of that. Gah!

</comment><comment><USER18> This felt like a chore. Why did they waste their time with parallax scrolling?

<comment><USER19> That Guy alert: parallax refers to a 3D effect achieved by scrolling background sprites slower than those up close (think strafing in first-person shooters).

Not sure if there's a word for what this is doing - scrollbar repurposing?</comment></comment>


Fast Facts on jQuery 1.5 - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/02/09/fast-facts-on-jquery-1-5/

<comment><USER2> my favorite stat:

"most versions of Chrome have gone from performing a little over a thousand children() operations per second in jQuery 1.4 to around 20,000 in jQuery 1.5″.</comment>