Who will remember you in 100 years? - <AUTHOR> https://micaelwidell.com/who-will-remember-you-in-100-years/ <comment><USER4> Many times, in my career while negotiating something with another party I've said, "Let's get this fixed, it won't mean much to either of us in 50 years and in 100 nobody will remember either of us."

I've managed to solve some pretty hairy problems saying that, the other party usually pauses and realizes the futility of our disagreement and we work something out.

Call me morbid but I started saying that when I was 18 years old.

I also say, "I raise my kids for me to die". It shocks people when I say it but what parent wants to outlive their children? Honestly my goal is to teach them how to make good decisions and find what feeds their soul for their short stay in this world.

I've read many things over the years about the deep need for humans to somehow push death out beyond their consciousness because otherwise it would destroy them to think every day could be the end of them.

I don't see it that way, I feel like I borrowed these atoms my body is assembled from and it's my goal to use them to learn, love and enjoy the amazing reality we live in every day. Today could be my last, so what, at some point I must give my atoms back to the universe for whatever purpose they find in the future. Today they're mine, and I'm happy to have them just a bit longer to discover a tiny bit more about our existence and the people around us all.

<comment><USER5> It's not morbid, but sensible. No-one gets out of life alive.

An unexpected death in my immediate family several years ago helped me realize how underprepared most of us are for death; for all the people and living things around us to die. Rather than be caught surprised, I've tried to remember that life can end in any moment, and it's best to make the most of things (and borrowed atoms, as you say) while you can.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, losing a loved one used to be common, now it's exceptional. One thing that struck me when reading Dickens was how prominent death was. Everyone had family members who'd died. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings. I think almost universally in the current era we take life and health for granted. The advent of antibiotics and sanitation has really had a profound effect. We know this, but we don't _know_ this.

On the one hand, some one realizing the seeming meaninglessness of existence is banal. This is well trod ground for many after all. But on the other hand it's also a an xkcd 1053[1] privilege to be a part of the authors epiphany.

Personally, for myself, the question of 'what legacy shall I leave?' resulted in finally settling down and having children of my own. I felt like I received an immense gift of a kind, warm, and loving home. I seek to continue that legacy with my own family. Because in the end, that's all most can hope to do; be a positive influence on the generations to come.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I sometimes pay attention to the sheer number of people I cross paths with in life, and think: see this person going by in their car, or that guy jogging up the street. I know almost nothing about what their life has been about, what struggles they've faced, what successes they've had, what it was like for them growing up, what are they thinking and feeling right now. I'd wager that the large majority of people out there, I know nothing about and anything they've gone through hasn't even crossed my mind. So most don't even need to be gone 100 years, to be largely unknown on an intimate level except to a relatively small circle of people.

I can find myself believing (perhaps due to a survival instinct) that what I believe, think, do, etc matter greatly. The truth is, those things matter to me and perhaps several others in my close circle. Sure, I can do things to engage in greater society and provide a positive influence on others. That doesn't change the fact that, in all likelihood, a large portion of the world isn't even aware of or concerned much about my existence.

I like a quote from the book of the samurai (hagakure) that says: "this world is vanity indeed. People always forget this." I've made up how important things are and probably will continue to as part of human nature. So I'll try to have a life I can appreciate and enjoy while it's here, because I want to -- and most other people won't even notice, much less care, if I do.

</comment><comment><USER8> Living your life with a goal to be remembered in 100 years sounds more like living life to impress people you aren't even sure will regard what you are doing as important. Politicians, whether they changed the world for good or bad, are more likely to be remembered that 99% of who are contributing positively to this world.

<comment><USER9> Unless you become "the cannibal of {your village name here}"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Death makes life fair because we all end up with nothing. The universe itself won't last forever. In terms of justice and equality, this is very comforting.

I don't understand all these people who are funding research to cure death. Even if you manage to cure natural death, you definitely won't be able to cure occupational death.

<comment><USER11> > I don't understand all these people who are funding research to cure death.

It's very simple: they don't want to die. They're enjoying life, and death is the specter which threatens to halt that enjoyment. They are also in the privileged position of having money to throw at the problem.

In someone's 30's and 40's, the biggest fear is of death as a general evil to be conquered. I wonder how the focuses of these groups will change over time; will they change their focus from death in general to particular symptoms of aging in particular?

Will their focus move to curing cancer if they get cancer? How about preventing Alzheimer's when their loved ones no longer remember them? Regeneration of cartilage when they can no longer walk around pain free? And so forth...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know some things about my grandfather from 120 years ago, because he'd write letters.

[http://walterbright.com/trip/chas.html](http://walterbright.com/trip/chas.html)

I suppose the stuff I post on the internet will last forever :-)

<comment><USER13> Geocities were there 20 years ago. I posted some cringeworthy things there. Now they aren't there anymore (thank goodness).

Your posts, too, shall pass.

<comment><USER6> I'll just drop this here as an FYI:

[http://www.oocities.org/](http://www.oocities.org/)

<comment><USER13> I don't remember my Geocities ID in TimesSquare and I am not really inclined to look it up now. But thank you, thank you.

 _(cries in horror and runs away)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even contemporary fame and success is no guarantee of being remembered. I've stumbled across Wikipedia articles on countless authors who were hugely successful in the 19th and early 20th century, often publishing dozens of widely-read books, but who are already almost entirely forgotten. I'm sure they imagined they had done enough to secure a personal legacy, but it seems not.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's one thing that has always bothered me about grave yards: how little the people end up leaving behind. An entire life gets reduced to a few meaningless facts about a person that don't really tell us anything about who they were. It would kind of be nice in that sense if there was more information available about a person to perhaps leave something behind. Maybe some wisdom or entertaining historical facts from the person... I dunno.

This is somewhat of a joke but: put sha256 hashes on grave stones that identify contracts on a decentralized cloud storage system and then fund them with enough coins to enforce their content for the next 1000 years. Technically you could use time-lock encryption to reveal progressive challenges to the hosting nodes to prove that the content still exists overtime so that an autonomous system that enforces content could be made (existing protocols somewhat depend on an active system to prove that the content still exists but this is getting a bit technical now... Or otherwise just embed content into a blockchain if its small enough.)

I guess there is also tomb stones that have QR codes on them that let you do something similar with an app but there's no guarantee that the company will still be around in the next 100 years. With a self-organising autonomous storage system you could have a way to intelligently reallocate content without any kind of human intervention. So that overtime if the people hosting content go down or decide to stop doing it, the storage contracts can be dynamically reallocated to new nodes who will collect fees from the contracts.

Much like a DropBox that never dies - it would far outlive anyone today and so long as the funds for hosting content still existed on some blockchain - <USER2> too would the content. And that my friends, is why blockchains are over-hyped and stupid. LMAO, blockchains for dead people? Did you really buy that. I mean, seriously.

<comment><USER16> The problem is not that information can't be persisted: diaries etc have been around for a long time. The problem is that there is nobody left who will care about a person they've never even met.

<comment><USER17> I recently tried looking up some relatives about 5 generations back. If you average 2 kids each then in 5 generations you have 40 or so living descendants who may be curious. It was interesting because one of them wrote a family history in fairly literary form - bit Jane Austen in style. Not sure we would have bothered if it was just diaries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was putting working a genealogical tree today (using gramps [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramps)).

Even within your family it is hard to remember people after a couple of generations.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's also important to remember "will you care?".

<comment><USER20> Arguably, we'll never know that we're dead. That's a kind of immortality, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Your most ambitious and daring dreams, no matter if they succeed or not, will mean absolutely nothing when you are gone."

I need to remember this when I'm freaking out about an interview or a presentation.

</comment><comment><USER22> I remember my great-grandfathers: Gilbert, Clyde, Coit, and Sam. They mean something to me because I would not be me if they weren't them. Something would be different if their lives were different. There are connections. Life continues.

Yes, we should live our lives not worried about appearances to others. Most of our accomplishments will be fleeting at best, but the lives we live influence our children and our grandchildren, and that influence passes along, whether they remember my name - because of a shared passion for family genealogy - <USER3> not.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious what the policies are for the persistence of cemetery plots in different areas. I thankfully have had no personal interaction with the funeral industry yet, but the article's matter-of-fact mentioning of gravestones being uprooted and hauled elsewhere (or even destroyed) after some period of inactivity seemed hideous to me. A bit of research ( [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2248/do-cemetery- pl...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2248/do-cemetery-plots-have- expiration-dates) ) suggests that the US (where I reside) seems to have more permanence in burial plots than Europe does. I suppose it makes sense given the limitations of space and accumulated time that Europe has had to deal with as opposed to the US, but there is something aesthetically horrifying to me about the idea of evicting dead bodies for failure to "pay rent." Moving graves for new development is one thing, but for it to be a policy of an active cemetery seems like such an alien concept.

In a similar way, I've found myself less happy with the idea of modern cremation the more I learn about it. The mental picture of "body goes into the fire, ashes come out of the fire" seemed beautiful, but the use of the cremulator ( essentially a blender to crush up all the bits of bone that didn't turn to ashes, as seen in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTclbBKxKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTclbBKxKk) ) gives me pause. It may be an irrational thought in our modern materialistic world, but that last act of push-button pulverization feels violent and overly industrial. Perhaps embalming is not much better, but at least that connects with a familiar historical tradition. I wonder how far back the use of cremulation in cremation goes -- in modern times can you request that your cremation keeps the bits of bones "unprocessed"?

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, an interesting and yet humbling, depressing read.

What a way to start my morning.

<comment><USER25> That feeling isn't depression, it's hubris leaving your body.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Depends on how much of my consciousness I am able to put into the AI that becomes the singularity.

<comment><USER27> In his spin on this view, only until the universe freezes. Its longer than a 100 years but still :P.

For you, this still doesn't matter as you are still dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In all seriousness,

Who cares? I don't.

It's like discussing life after death. I'm fine with just this one.

</comment><comment><USER20> In many countries, cemeteries aren't managed so well as this one in Sweden. I've toured my share, and recall seeing graves that were hundreds of years old. In some places, thousands.

Not that it matters, of course.

</comment><comment><USER29> From the epilogue of Barry Lyndon: "It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it possible to remember someone without having shared experiences with that person?

I don't think so.

Otherwise you're just remembering a short list of their most significant accomplishments and not really the person themselves.

So if no one is alive who interacted with me in 100 years, then, by definition, no one will remember me. A few people might recollect my accomplishments, but it will only have been done through 3rd party accounts and documents like my notes/books or photographs.

</comment><comment><USER31> If any software I work on today survives that long without any major rewrites I just hope they are not yelling and cursing my name because I missed a 100 year old bug.

</comment><comment><USER32> With today's networked data, assuming enough technological acceleration that all the web content gets archived, your Tweets, posts, and other writings could be available indefinitely. Not so sure that that's a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well there's a very good chance we'll be alive in 100 years.

<comment><USER34> This is the most depressing comment in the thread.

It's not about how long we live, it's about how long we live while we are in our prime... Gen 1 tech issues... we are extending lives, we aren't really extending prime years... so all we're doing is stretching out that twilight- period. Every time I visit my 97 year-old grandparents they say things like, "I pray I'll go soon..."

I'd rather just go quick at 50 than prolong my years after 70. The thought of perpetually being old and frail sounds like some sort of torture. And while it may be appealing to say, "I'd like to stay 21 forever..." 21 year-olds tend to be idiots and the thought of having "21 year-old problems" forever sounds like a whole other form of torture.

<comment><USER35> I'm fascinated by this idea.

Let's say there's tech to freeze your age at whatever point you like. Where would you want it to be frozen?

<comment><USER31> 26 sounds like a decent age, but you never know if it's your prime or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The pale blue dot will

</comment><comment><USER37> Easy: the internet. Archive.org if it still exists

</comment><comment><USER38> TLDR: YOLO!</comment>


Why an Upstate Prisoner with a History of Escape Foiled His Latest - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/nyregion/david-sweat-prison-escape.html <comment><USER2> Free pentesting for the prison. Pretty awful move by the warden/staff though. He clearly had good intentions and had some minor requests in return which could have been negotiated (and should have been in writing with a lawyer).

And now at the next prison he's causing more problems instead of less... as clearly he doesn't trust the guards to not even poison his food now. It deteriorated the situation and caused more headaches instead of potential being a useful or zero-sum one. Including the negative press via this NYTimes article...

I don't feel much sympathy for the prisoner but in terms of problem resolution, management skills by the staff, and minimizing costs/drama they are taking the worst approach. Especially now that he's in some (probably expensive) hospital setting for some dumb reason.

Clearly they have a relationship built purely on hostility and fear with the inmates fueled by short term relationships (as mentioned they do 60k transfers a year). So many of these prison stories sounds like the staff prod the inmates into being shitty prisoners. Sounds like a bunch of drama queens in high school, on both sides.

<comment><USER3> Yup, my grandfather worked at a state prison, in New Hampshire, and when an innate described a vulnerability in the electronic lock system (back when they were new), the warden went to the judge to ask for a reduction of the man's sentence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have to say that's pretty slimy of the prison administration.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _He had his girlfriend tell the authorities that he would reveal his plan in > exchange for a few privileges: an extra visit each week; the ability to > receive food packages and take photos with his girlfriend and her 6-year-old > daughter._

> _Mr. Sweat and Ms. Malanik met after his infamous 2015 escape. She was among > many people who wrote to him after the Clinton escape, and she and her > daughter eventually began visiting him regularly at Five Points._

I don't think I would bring my six year old daughter to visit a convict I had been dating for two years, and had never met outside of prison. It seems like a lot for her to process.

<comment><USER6> She's not thinking about her daughter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Prison administration are as trustworthy as mega-corps when revealing security flaws.

</comment><comment><USER8> I really can't see how he thought this would be a successful negotiation. "Don't negotiate with terrorists." If the prison gave him special treatment that would establish a precedent. Subsequently, other prisoners would attempt to negotiate special treatment. If the activity were solely restricted to "pen-testing" then it might be a net positive, however, since we are dealing with known criminals here it does not seem likely that things would go well in the long run.

<comment><USER9> > "Don't negotiate with terrorists."

> since we are dealing with known criminals here

Every time I see something like this I'm reminded how fortunate I am to live in Europe. "Known criminals" are people too, you know, you can't just take anything from them for free, they are not slaves, they deserve a fair compensation for the value they provide. Not to mention, being "tough" on them simply doesn't work the way you'd hope to. I really think that the system in your country would benefit tremendously from being a bit more humane.

<comment><USER6> Sweat is a lifelong criminal and a cop killer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dh-g It would be an amazing and productive program for prisons to offer standardised bounties for security vulnerability disclosure.

</comment><comment><USER10> He's got plenty of time to rethink that strategy of doing the right thing in exchange for some niceties... I wonder what was the biggest factor in making him decide to reveal the plot instead of trying to execute it.

<comment><USER5> > _I wonder what was the biggest factor in making him decide to reveal the > plot instead of trying to execute it._

I'd wager it was the gunshot scar from his previous escape attempt.</comment></comment>


The Pirate Bay Returns After 2 Days Downtime - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-returns-after-2-days-downtime-121003/ <comment><USER2> TPB's Facebook posts about this have been quite entertaining.

"Sorry for not fulfilling your pirate needs tonight. It's ok if you cheat on us with another site, just once. We know that you still love us, deep down in your cursed pirate heart. ♥"

<http://www.facebook.com/ThePirateBayWarMachine>

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many people downloading torrents understand that there is a real- time tracking service logging all their downloads?

<comment><USER4> What service are you talking about? AFAIK tpb doesn't use trackers anymore, they rely on DHT.

<comment><USER5> Harvesting IPs from DHT is a very easy thing to do also.</comment></comment></comment>


Earliest known photos of an Apple iPad prototype - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/earliest-known-photos-apple-ipad-prototype <comment><USER2> _I'm not sure why Apple included this photo in the bunch, but it's random enough to warrant inclusion. Behold! An unidentified man "using" the 035 tablet mockup._

The picture of a man holding the device gives the viewer scale and perspective.

<comment><USER3> Those sentences were in two separate paragraphs, and while not unambiguous, it's pretty safe to say that the first sentence was intended to relate to the photo above.

<comment><USER4> Nope. Every single photo had the description above it, including that one. "A more head-on view." Nor is the "head-on" photo random at all.

The "guy holding iPad awkwardly" photo only seems random if you don't recognize it, though. It was (apparently) the model for the "in use" diagram Apple put in their design patent. <http://www.google.com/patents/USD504889>

<comment><USER3> You're being a slave to patterns. By my reading it seems at least as likely that a mistake was made when the attachments were added to the text.

The existence of the paragraph break makes it fairly clear (to my reading) that the "it's random enough" paragraph was commentary associated with what had just come.

<comment><USER4> How is a head-on view of the device random?

Seems a lot more likely to me that the line break was a device to add drama to the "Behold!". Basically I read that as an ellipsis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This adds a lot to the speculation that the iPad actually came first, and they forked it to launch the iPhone, then came back around to launch the iPad.

I've always found that decision fascinating -- what a brilliant strategic move to recognize that Apple could create the new touch-screen market using phones first, rather than what at that time would have seemed more obvious, a touch computer.

<comment><USER6> No speculation needed. Steve Jobs himself mentioned it in an interview at D8, two years ago:

 _"I actually started on a tablet first," Mr. Jobs said. He explained that nearly 10 years ago, he had the idea of a keyboard-less computer where users typed on a multitouch glass display.

He asked his user interface designers to build a prototype. When he saw the results a few months later, Mr. Jobs was particularly struck by one of the features in the prototype: the ability to scroll up and down at the swipe of a fingertip.

"I thought, 'My god, we can build a phone with this,' and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone," he said.

Mr. Jobs said the tablet got back on track only after Apple had established itself as a major player in the smartphone business.

"Once we got our wind back," Mr. Jobs said, "we pulled the tablet off the shelf."_

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/first-came-the- idea...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/first-came-the-idea-for-a- tablet-jobs-says/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm amazed how close that ~2004 prototype is to what they launched in 2010. I'm really curious what the software on those early models was like.

<comment><USER8> In the iPhone announcement keynote Steve says they toyed with Linux at one point before deciding to fork Mac OS X into iPhone OS.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just ran a skinned full Mac OS X on this one, because it was already there, and it would mean the UI guys could get to work right away on cool stuff (like rubber band scrolling as mentioned). The fact that it's so fat tells me it probably just had a G3 or G4 inside, basically a MacBook with a touchscreen and no hinge.

<comment><USER9> Since they refer to it as a "mockup", I assumed these had no actual hardware and were just tests of size, form factor, weight, etc.

If it had any hardware, it'd be easiest to just reuse existing stuff - basically an official Modbook[0], only with a capacitive instead of resistive touchscreen.

[0] <http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/modbook>

<comment><USER6> According to Steve Jobs, Apple had a working tablet prototype in 2000, and it used multitouch gestures (like swipes).

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/first-came-the- idea...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/first-came-the-idea-for-a- tablet-jobs-says/)

At the time, only a Public Beta of Mac OS X had been released, which certainly didn't have support for multitouch gestures. Geez, the iPod hadn't even been announced yet, and all Macs had PowerPC processors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do these photos look like they were taken in the 1920s?

<comment><USER11> They come from legal documents submitted to the courts, so they were probably greyscale PDFs that had been printed, scanned and printed. If someone could have screenshotted the PDF and included it in a Word document I'm sure they would have somewhere during their lifespan.

Documenting things for inclusion in litigation isn't cheap. There's no reason they needed to print the images on glossy photo paper in full color. Google is asking Oracle to pony up over $4 million just for their bill of costs over the Java API Copyrightability case: [http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120706111715...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120706111715256)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What prototype does Apple have now for release in 2022? Entering hypersleep...

<comment><USER13> I still remember how weird it felt with the first cellphones, people looked like talking to themselves.

I could imagine something like "corrective lense" (heh, retina based haha) that goes in front of your eye/eyes, and "projects" in such way that it positions for your brain a virtual image in front of you - HUD display with some kind of UI - and then using voice, or... well awkward (but maybe not in the future) - you use your hands, as if in front of you there is some kind of input device - yet, it's only projection in your eyes.

Some kind of AR is needed to pretend that what's projected to your eyes, in these iLenses :), can go behind the hands, as if you are typing stuff there.

Naaaah... That's too cheezy!

<comment><USER14> Like Project Glass by Google?

<comment><USER13> yes, but on your contact lenses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Budget Burndown – Visually track your spending against your budget - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1461718630 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

Budget Burndown is a personal finance app that borrows the idea of a "burndown chart" from Agile software development. You set a monthly budget, which is plotted as an expected spending rate. Your actual spending plots against it as the month goes on. If you keep the lines matched up, you stay on budget.

It's a uniquely simple and logical way to visually track your spending across multiple cards.

There are no ads, credit scores, annoying emails, or overly-complicated designs. It's completely automatic. There's dark mode. There's a home screen widget. You don't even need to create an account.

Please let me know what you think!</comment>


Survey: What tools are you using for composing blogposts? - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe3gS3kvSxzFtrCppoQ-V4cZmdhxfsyt2p8TY6qYRerT-Z74g/viewform <comment><USER2> I compose my posts in Vim and use Zola (previously Gutenberg) to statically compile my posts and styling. This gets bundled with Caddy into a docker container and pushed via a Makefile, which I then pull and host on my vps.

website repo: [https://git.andrewzah.com/andrei/personal- blog](https://git.andrewzah.com/andrei/personal-blog)

vps docker script setup: [https://git.sr.ht/~andrewzah/andrewzah.com](https://git.sr.ht/~andrewzah/andrewzah.com)</comment>


Show HN: Freight Finder, an easier way for truckers and shippers to connect - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.freightfinder

<comment><USER2> Excellent idea, thought I'm also not really sure how you'll get it infront of truckers. Perhaps you could take out an advertisement in one of the numerous trucking free magazines/newspapers that you'll find in truck stops on the highway. Though they're often not cheap to advertise in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks rex, this was the main issue I see with the app. I somehow need to get a bunch of loads and a bunch of trucks right away. I appreciate the advice, I'll look into the magazines!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created this app to eliminate the broker for smaller companies who have no need for all the brokerage services. They'll get a substantially lower price by working directly with the truckers.

Any ideas on how to push this out to those that should be seeing it?

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this idea and I actually just sent you guys an email. How will you guys monetize this, and all you guys have to get the same qualifications as a freight broker? Thanks!</comment>


MissingMyMental (Express mental health thru art) - <AUTHOR> I came up with was a clothing brand that can help express different types of mental health disorders. Some of the topics are linked back to my original research about neurologic symptoms. The other topics that we picked also had a high number of cases within the United States.
With our brand, we hope to bring awareness to mental health and to help people speak out to others so that we can get the right type of help that is needed. With every item that is sold on our website part of our profits are donated to 3 different foundations that focus on mental health and provides resources for those that need it.
Thank you for your support, be sure to check out our website for more info.
missingmymental.com <comment><USER2> Even as a neurotypical I dig some of these, some are unfamiliar though I could see them as a conversation starter and intro to that particular mental health issue.

However, have you run these by some clinical psychiatrists and or other experts in the field? Not that your research is useless, but there might be something missing, and maybe they're missing something you could offer.

</comment><comment><USER3> My wife does art as part of her therapy program for severe depression and anxiety. She has it listed for sale on Etsy though nobody's bought any yet. Each piece takes her a few hours... she hand-draws a mandala with a stylus on her iPad, engraves it into a ceramic tile, hand colors it with markers, seals it, makes a custom frame for the tile, and hand paints the frame. It's a whole process that helps with focusing, calming and giving purpose to a day when that's needed. If anyone's interested, you can check it out here: [https://www.etsy.com/shop/MindfulAlchemy](https://www.etsy.com/shop/MindfulAlchemy)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wanted to create you this very little observation just to say thanks once again on your pretty basics you've provided here. It was simply open-handed of people like you to grant publicly precisely what a number of us would've marketed as an e book to generate some cash for their own end, specifically now that you might have done it if you wanted. These thoughts also served like the easy way to recognize that other individuals have the same dreams just like my own to know much more in terms of this condition. I think there are some more enjoyable sessions up front for many who scan your site. [https://usawriters.org](https://usawriters.org)</comment>


Skype's Principal Architect explains why peer-to-peer was eliminated - <AUTHOR> http://markmail.org/message/exc3srjkx3uu66bz?q=android <comment><USER2> Peer-to-peer technologies not only make Skype obsolete, but also make it much harder to spy on people.

By the way, use WebRTC or some completely peer-based video conferencing (WebRTC still uses central servers to establish connections). Don't use Skype. Doesn't make any sense from a technology standpoint or from a privacy standpoint or anything.

I am actually amazed by how little discussion there is on Hacker News and reddit about peer-to-peer technologies for things like video conferencing, publishing and realtime data collaboration.

This whole NSA thing should be enough to push things like named data networking/content centric networking, WebRTC and meshnets ([http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan](http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan)) into the mainstream.

I believe that we are going to move away from a lot of traditional ways of doing things pretty soon. For one, obviously centralized servers have to go. Replace that with encrypted, privacy-focused data oriented networking.

Replace centralized internet backbones with wifi meshnets, private laser systems, even private fiber networks, etc.

Its very nice to have a simple programming language and API available with things like Webkit and Mozilla browsers, but that still puts too much power in the hands of a few companies, and locks us into particular implementations, and also traps us within the browser.

Programmers and businesses do need easy-to-use, cross-platform and cross- device APIs and programming languages. I think we can port a lot of the Web APIs to a language-neutral, binary-neutral, implementation-neutral semantic representation. Dump as much of the unnecessary complexity from Web APIs as possible.

Take a look at what HTML/SVG etc. provide and re-engineer a more general purpose solution for representing all kinds of things _including_ software source code that is based on truly semantic representation inspired by description logics which separates presentation from display/editing.

<comment><USER3> > This whole NSA thing should be enough to push things like named data > networking/content centric networking

You're damn right. It wasn't even a few days after this whole thing broke that I started working on a simple, distributed and automatic file synchronization program. No third parties and open source.

I was absolutely stunned to find out that nothing out there meets those criteria (despite my best efforts). The only thing that was close was git- annex assistant, but I don't want to use git for simple file synchronization (particularly for large files).

There's also Bittorrent Sync, but it's completely locked down. :-/

<comment><USER4> > There's also Bittorrent Sync, but it's completely locked down.

This really surprised me; for some reason, I assumed it was open source. Since the storage is entirely peer-to-peer, I wonder what their business model is?

<comment><USER5> Not open source, probably because the bittorrent protocol isn't open source.

<comment><USER6> I believe that's not correct. First a nitpick, I think it's only software that can be open or closed _source_. Protocol specification might be kept secret, though.

Regarding specifically BitTorrent protocol specification[0], it's free to use. Anyone can build their open or closed source BitTorrent client without reverse engineering.

[0] [http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html](http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reasons given:

* Avoiding things like the supernode crash from December 2012.[1]

* Supporting the growing mobile share, which can't contribute as supernodes.

[1] [http://blogs.voxeo.com/voxeotalks/2010/12/23/skype- outage-i-...](http://blogs.voxeo.com/voxeotalks/2010/12/23/skype-outage-i-run- a-supernode-and-heres-what-i-think-happened/)

</comment><comment><USER8>
       >
       > these devices are a lot different: they're running on battery, sometimes on WiFi
       > but often on expensive (both in money and battery) 2G or 3G data networks,
       > and essentially "off" most of the time.
       > On iOS devices, applications are killed and evicted from memory when they attempt
       > to do too much background processing or use too much memory.
       > On Windows RT and Windows 8 Modern applications, when the application is not in
       > the foreground we only get a few seconds of CPU execution time every 15 minutes
       > and again, strict memory limitations if we want to stay loaded.
       > And when the Skype application is unloaded, it can no longer receive incoming
       > calls or IMs, rendering it a lot less useful.
       >

This is pretty much why/how all IM clients for iphone/ipad/android work as well.

( i work on verbs.im, we're a team of 4 now, here's a link to our privacy policy [http://includetech.co/privacy/verbs](http://includetech.co/privacy/verbs))

The server becomes a proxy for your account, and being able to send push notifications.

Your apps become thinner clients needing lesser battery, bandwidth.

Infact we've got a step further, and replaced XMPP/HTTP with MQTT to save even more battery.

( here's a nice article profiling power consumption of MQTT vs HTTP here across wifi/3g: [http://stephendnicholas.com/archives/1217](http://stephendnicholas.com/archives/1217) )

That being said, the recent iOS 7 have introduced API's for longer running background apps

~B

<comment><USER9> I don't know why this necessitates the removal of supernodes though, because it has always been the case that desktop clients could disable supernode functionality with a checkbox option. Why would it ever be enabled (or even an option) on a mobile client? Or is the issue simply that the majority of clients have become non-supernode-capable and it became an issue? I wish he would have went into more detail on this because at first glance the explanation is not sufficient to justify the change.

<comment><USER10> Kaufman's point is that phones don't even have enough resources to be a _normal_ Skype peer, let alone a supernode. Thus work had to be shifted from peers to servers. I guess they could have shifted all that work to supernodes, but it was probably simpler to just put that functionality in reliable MS data centers. Also, I don't know that it's safe to send iOS/Android push messages from random PCs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious... I understand that the Microsoft servers are functioning as supernodes now.

But when one computer calls another, and neither are behind NAT/firewall/etc., is the actual audio stream going directly between computers, or are they both sending the actual audio to/from the Microsoft servers?

Obviously Microsoft _could_ choose to redirect it through their servers whenever desired, but I assume that audio communication is still direct, whenever possible?

<comment><USER12> I don't think the scenario you're presenting is realistic. Either an exposed PC on the internet has its own firewall, or it's already exploited.

<comment><USER13> Nope - centralised network firewalls never became popular for consumer users. Microsoft started shipping a default-on host firewall in XP SP2, those let the user get prompted on what apps to allow. Lately corporations have been moving to host firewalls too since the "crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside" intranet mindset is increasingly incompatible with the modern world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its funny, people got so caught up on the fact that Microsoft must have changed Skype's architecture to allow wiretapping. Via Snowden/PRISM we know wiretapping of Skype was possible well before the acquisition, let alone the redesign.

<comment><USER15> Exactly!

Prism slide: Skype: 2/6/11

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg)

But "Microsoft to acquire Skype": May 10, 2011

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20061371-17.html](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20061371-17.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Most of the points mentioned make it reasonable to use central servers, but why did they need to drop the p2p encryption?

The only thing that seems related is "and other nice features like spam filtering and malicious URL removal" which he briefly mentions, but I don't find it a good enough reason to drop encryption and make it possible to intercept communication. Seems like an awful tradeoff.

<comment><USER17> Taking off my tin foil hat for a moment, I would propose that encryption adds latency which they felt most users didn't care about. However most users demand land line quality voice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To anyone using Skype for actual work, the problems with peer-to-peer messaging become rather obvious, as messages from one device appear only when both that device and the receiver are online, which gets _really_ chaotic when communicating with more people at the same time.

Basically, the perception is "if you don't send the message when all of you are online, really weird things happen".

<comment><USER19> Still, that does not mean that encryption needs to be dropped (or e2e encryption needs to be dropped, or that MS has your encryption keys).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reasons given lined up with my own thoughts. It's very hard to build a stable, reliable and self repairing distributed network. Communicating status and presence info is the largest challenge that distributed networks is the hardest and most difficult challenge you have, whereas with a centralized server, and 'register' its fairly easy to push updates out for all of this. Also, the server can be set to maintain status for the subscriber, even if they are not really connected.

</comment><comment><USER21> Archive that displays more than a paltry 15 lines at once:

[https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2013/06/sort/time...](https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2013/06/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/4:269/20130623090855:0B714E0A-DC06-11E2-9F35-8CD4CCA160A2/)

<comment><USER22> And the original submission that points to it. fwiw: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5929404](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5929404)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The original design of the Internet was peer to peer.

This is not some revilutionary idea. It's getting back to the original design.

Small scale peer to peer networks can still be achieved, easily, even in the presence of "firewalls", "ISP's" and "NAT".

You need a least one reachable IP address to be able to pierce NAT and "bootstrap" the network. Easy.

You need to do some simple encapsulation. Again, easy.

You need an OS with a TAP interface. Easy? iPhone denies programmers the TAP device. And any other company controlling a mobile OS could easily block your peer to peer networking capability by interfering with your access to the TAP device.

Maybe it makes more sense to distribute your peer to peer solution as part of an open source OS that will run on many hardware architectures than to distribute a solution that purports to run on all the popular OS's.

Maybe "apps" don't have to run on the OS that does the peer to peer connection. Maybe they can run "through" it instead: point your router/gateway settings at this open source OS, running on some small form factor pocket- sized computer like the Pi, and voila, you have a decent simulation of the "original" end-to-end Internet that you can use with people you know (the original Internet was among people who knew each other).

</comment><comment><USER24> WebRTC is not a silver bullet, it mainly standardizes the profile for enabling interoperable media (via SRTP, SDP,...) and an API to control it from JS.

The signaling is open, so it is mainly up to the developer to decide the topology they want to enable: p2p, mesh, centralized MCU, hub-and-spoke, overlays, etc.

However, in many cases you'd have to use a TURN server to communicate from within very restrictive firewalls. This turn server could possibly run by anyone, including you. Just need to call the appropriate API with your own TURN server.

I run restund (a open source turn server) on an amazon instance and route my packets via that (I also remove all other ICE candidates and just keep the TURN).

</comment><comment><USER25> As a network engineer, I always knew when skype was misbehaving because those users always came up to me and complained. They complained because our corporate firewalls blocked them for using thousands and thousands of TCP connections when they became supernodes.

They asked "how do we fix this" and sadly the answer was generally (if you were on a mac), you don't, just shutdown your client when you're not using it and it won't become a supernode. It wouldn't really have been a big deal if it was 5-10 connections, but it wasn't so it became a problem.

I assume eliminating the crypto has to do with eliminating overhead, but it could have to do with DPI and making it more firewall friendly.

</comment><comment><USER26> Relevant: [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype- mes...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get- end-to-end-encryption-think-again/)

</comment><comment><USER27> When my non-technical friends want to Skype with me I tell them to go with Jitsi. ZRTP all the way.

[https://jitsi.org/](https://jitsi.org/)

People with a clue should no longer be using Skype.

<comment><USER28> I attempted to use jitsi with ddg's xmpp server, however the video and audio would never work between us. It was always one or the other. I hope the kinks are worked out as I would like to stop using Skype asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about collecting all https links, with the excuse that they're protecting you against spam (as if most spam links are https)?

<comment><USER29> In a previous discussion on HN, a HN user checked and confirmed that MS servers hit both HTTP and HTTPS links. Unfortunately I can't find that comment at the moment, so here's an Ars article that reports the same behavior:

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype- mes...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get- end-to-end-encryption-think-again/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30>
        In the case of
        instant messaging, we have merged the Skype and Windows Messenger message
        delivery backend services, and this now gets you delivery of messages even
        when the recipient is offline, and other nice features like spam filtering
        and malicious URL removal.

This relates well to the HTTPS url visiting thing of a while back.

</comment><comment><USER31> TL;DR Skype P2P performs on mobile devices so we removed the featues people loved about Skype and kept the name.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why not let me run my own server then, for me and my friends?

</comment><comment><USER33> To collect and store the data, stupid.)

</comment><comment><USER34> Sounds legit.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've been saying this for, probably close to a year now. Moving supernodes from being personal consumers to running in a cloud is a good thing and has minimal impact on privacy.

Even comments here indicate people clearly didn't read this email or fail to understand it at all.

<comment><USER5> Minimal impact on privacy? I wouldn't say NSA having access to all Skype calls a "minimal impact on privacy".

<comment><USER36> Given how supernodes worked, the NSA might have had as many supernodes as it wanted, with your traffic going through them and you none the wiser. Hence, your argument doesn't stand, really.

<comment><USER37> Only if you had to use supernodes. All you had to do was open an outside port for skype and you wouldn't need supernodes for anything.

<comment><USER35> wrong on top of wrong on top of wrong.

Like I said, people still don't get it.

Supernodes are a directory service. "Traffic" as in text and video traffic rarely, if ever, is transmitted through Supernodes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I liked this part

"In the case of instant messaging, we have merged the Skype and Windows Messenger message delivery backend services, and this now gets you delivery of messages even when the recipient is offline, and other nice features like spam filtering and malicious URL removal."

And wish to add to that, other nice features like "censorship and loss of privacy."

I remember when I ditched MSN in favor of a what I thought was a secure communications solution, I waved goodbye to Microsoft. Here I am again, my messages routed yet again through their backend.

<comment><USER39> And let's not forget how Microsoft scanned all private urls that were mentioned inside Skype chats recently:

[http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/May/78](http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/May/78)

<comment><USER40> Um yes, that's covered in the "malicious URL removal" part. Hard to do malicious URL removal without, you know, looking at the URLs to see if they need to be removed.

<comment><USER41> Except that they only checked HTTPS URLs, and most malicious URLs are on HTTP, which they apparently not checked.

<comment><USER40> Are you an expert in this domain or are you just parroting what the article said? I can think of at least one reason for a spam filter to contact the computer for an HTTPS request but not for an HTTP request- you want to find out what certificate they're using.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook drops the comment button, allows users to edit replies  - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/03/16/facebook-drops-the-comment-button-allows-users-to-edit-replies/

<comment><USER2> I was having the exact discussion with a friend yesterday of what the default behaviour in real time should be.

My friend was of the opinion that it should be Enter to post and "Shift+Enter" to add a new line. What facebook did today basically.

My stand was the oppposite. Shift+Enter for a new comment and enter for new line.

The reason being that even if I press enter thinking it would post my comment, the error handling (forgiveness to the user) is minimal and I can either click the button or be informed that to post I need shift + Enter.

However if I do it the way facebook does and press enter thinking it would take me to a new line without me realising that I posted a comment that is half of what I wanted to say.

Lesson: _Let you interface be forgiving and give it priority over simplicity._

<comment><USER3> Usability wise, it makes a lot more sense to have "enter" be a new line. That's how it works in any textarea and document. We're trained to naturally expect that. Enter to submit only makes sense on one line inputs. Anything that resembles a text area should have shift + enter to submit(or control + enter). This is most intuitive.

<comment><USER4> >Usability wise, it makes a lot more sense to have "enter" be a new line.

I disagree. The paradigm they're using here isn't that of word processing a document, but rather quick text conversations. In pretty much every chat/IM program I've ever used, "enter" == "send", and shift+enter == newline.

<comment><USER2> Exactly! Dow you want the conversations to be one liners (witty or shallow) OR do you want people to have meaningful conversations?

Assumption: You cannot _always_ have meaningful conversation with one liners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think physical keyboards should come with a "post/submit" key separate from the "newline" key, like the iPhone keyboard does.

<comment><USER6> I'm surprised the keyboard has lasted so long in nearly the same state. Some notable exceptions are the remapping of function keys on Apple keyboards, and the brilliant reuse of the caps lock key as a search key on Google's Chrome OS netbooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why? Does this solve a perceived usability issue? It's just going to confuse its users.

When in a multiline text field, pressing Enter should add a new line. (If comment fields where single-line text fields, however, I'd understand the change.)

<comment><USER8> >Does this solve a perceived usability issue?

Editing, yes. When I leave a comment and see that I made a typo, I have to delete it and repost it, by which time someone has often already replied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't quite like the hitting Enter to post. Though, I can deal with that. I do, however, like how we can essentially edit our posts. That was something that always frustrated me with Facebook comments.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's horrible for usability. If you don't have JavaScript on, you lose the ability to submit comments entirely. Not that Facebook was very usable with JS off to begin with, but still.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not one to complain about UI changes, but I truly think they'll need to tweak this. In fact, it should be the reverse IMHO. Shift + enter= submit and enter= carriage return.</comment>


Programmer Knowledge - <AUTHOR> http://henrikwarne.com/2014/12/15/programmer-knowledge/

<comment><USER2> If you're dissatisfied by the programmer knowledge halftime, then try Common Lisp. Lisp is 55 years old and hasn't reached its half time yet.</comment>


My breif life as an anti Internet Explorer Jihadist. - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20071012034018/http://www.nomoreiehacks.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> In 2007 I launched a campaign (anonymously at the time) against IE, it went viral.

I doubt it had much impact,but happened to coincide with the emergence of mobile devices (iPhone) with modern browsers and services with advances web features that may have forced users to make the switch.

Quite a difference in a few short years. The web is IE-Free and Microsoft is struggling for relevance.

<comment><USER2> How is the web "IE free"?

<comment><AUTHOR> developers aren't building sites with the aim of catering to IE anymore...I don't mean people aren't using IE.</comment></comment></comment>


Hear us Roar - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/hear-us-roar-8e0fbab9f36c#.qztrgj1p6 <comment><AUTHOR> Earlier this week I posted this link. It is a reactionary piece to Trump winning the election and it's impact on women in tech.

The post was flagged almost as soon as it was added :-). The only answer I have for this happening is blatant sexism. There is nothing that goes against Hacker News rules that I am aware of in the post.

I wanted to bring this to your attention Hacker News Community. As I don't think it reflects the majority of users here.

<comment><USER2> It's a short piece with little to learn from or engage with beyond upvoting in solidarity.

Might I suggest something that goes into more detail on why the work is important, how it differs from the status quo, or what the Trump administration is doing or could do to better align with those goals?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I think that is a fair response and gives me something real to think about.

However, someone just flagging it so others can no longer comment on it isn't very productive. That is what bothers me about it.

I can totally see your point of view on this particular story.

<comment><USER3> Another reason people might flag it is in the same vein as the one the gp noted, in that there's little to engage with. Given how other threads have gone on similar issues, they've generated a lot of heat and unfortunately very little light. Rather than create another thread where this can happen, raising tensions even higher, they're flagging it to prevent the same thing happening again, even if they support the post.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


British Startup TransferWise Raises $58M - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2015/01/25/british-start-up-transferwise-raises-58-million/?_r=1&referrer=

<comment><AUTHOR> I really wish I had known about them when I made some international wires for my company last year.

A HNer recommended them to me when I griped about it here, and I'm thrilled that they'll be growing.

I'm thrilled to not fork over 4%+ to my bank for a wire anymore.</comment>


Ask HN: Seriously Frustrated. Encouragement, Advice, Bitch Slap Needed. - <AUTHOR>

I'm frustrated and am reaching out to you guys for some inspiration, motivation, etc.
I want more than anything to build something that I can charge for. I'd love to be able to say that I've build something that generates even a hundred dollars a month. I find though that I fall victim to getting excited about an idea, starting down the path of building said idea, finding a reason to give up and then quitting. Sound familiar to anyone else?
Obviously the idea thing isn't working out. What I need to do is find actual problems to solve.
Here are a few questions.
1) How do you find problems to work on? I've been browsing forums of potential audiences but they all seem to have solutions already.
2) I've been mostly focusing on building some kind of software product. Maybe that's too much of a step from nothing?
3) Any advice, motivation or what ever you have? I'm sure there are lots of other readers on here that feel how I do.
I'm positive there must be lots of other people in the community that feel the same way. Hopefully we can spur some discussion to help others out as well! <comment><USER2> It isn't easy to make a product that generates a few hundred dollars a month. The way Hacker News writes about these little products, you'd think they fall off trees. Nope. The step from nothing to $250/month is much much greater than the step from $250/month to $5,000/month.

You're frustrated because it isn't easy. I mean seriously, you really think there is a golden bullet to this? There isn't. Launch more stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. If you read HN on a daily basis it does often feel like building a product that generates money is easy. I guess that biggest question is what does traction feel and look like?

<comment><USER3> In my startup that succeed, traction happened like this:

We were about to shut down, I returned to my old job at the IRS - we were not making any money at all. Suddenly, a huge construction company came to town to build a dam. We rushed to try to sell to them and somehow they bought it. It was cool because the company would have profits at least for some time.

But after that, hundreds of companies that had business with them started calling us. In a matter of 3 months we grew more than 600%

It took 9 years to find that single client that created traction for us. I don't know if you can create traction by yourself. I think you need to find someone that can create traction, usually someone that is a client of many companies and somehow spread the word about you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should go over all of your side projects and catalog the point in the project and the reason that your interest fell off. Maybe you'll find a common theme such as, "built prototype, now need to add a ton of (tedious) features". Or "built MVP, now need to polish the design and write marketing copy". If you're able to find such a theme, it may suggest a path to success. For example, if you always get to a functional product but quit when it's time to promote, you may want to find yourself a bizdev partner.

Aside from that, the only other thing I'd say is that you should find yourself a partner. Things turn out much better when you've got someone to work with.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing this. I found these comments very helpful. A few thoughts from what I learned at my first company, and from someone possibly a bit more revenue minded.

-First, I recommend doing some personal strength tests such as the Gallup Strengthsfinder test. If you have a better idea what you are strong at, this may help how you approach solving the question of how to monetize things.

-Sales will not just appear, you'll likely have to email/call/meet/blog/do everything it takes to get the initial buyers group. I had no idea how to "Sell" something but I picked up a sales book, read it, put on a suit by myself in my apartment while I made sales phone calls (the suit was a confidence booster). Once you get the first sale everything gets easier...at least for a while until you hit Phase 2 which is too many people buying but that is a different Q&A.

-Have you thought about asking people or companies what they need, what XYZ would be worth to them, and then building it for them? This decreases your risk since they have already told you what they would buy. Make them pre-pay.

One of my favorite stories is of the entrepreneur who goes to a company and asks, "What product do you guys really need right now?" They inform the entrepreneur and he responds, "That's interesting, I make that!" He hadn't even built the product out but did it under their specifications. Once that was complete he went back to them and said, "What other product do you really need right now?" They informed him and he said, "I make that too." Thus started his business.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is me too.

I developed an app which was constrained by time (sport event to be precise). I had to work towards a time limit or else it was worthless. I also spent a decent sum money on getting design work done so I wasn't going to quit.

The app was big failure but I actually feel very pleased with myself for sticking to something and getting it out the door. Because of this experience I feel more confident about shipping the new product I'm working on.

In summary, reasons I believe I got something out the door:

\- Having an actual deadline

\- Working with others

\- Investing your own money

Having a deadline means you have something to aim for. Otherwise it's just too easy to be working on something for ever. This twinned with seeing you become out of pocket for not sticking to your deadline is a motivator too.

By working with others I don't just mean working on a project with a buddy. I mean the people I hired to do designs or do research. These people often came back to me asking questions about what I wanted done so I wasn't able to stop thinking about the project for too long. Having people help out also made sure that I had stuff ready for them to work on too.

Good luck.

edit - when I had to research / collect media for the app I encountered some really painful problems - which is now the basis for my present project!

</comment><comment><USER7> Not got anything to contribute aside from this post could quite easily be me ... exactly the same boat, exactly the same feeling ... chin up

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm sure there are quite a few that feel the same. Hopefully this will be up voted a bit and get some attention.

<comment><USER8> This is exactly where I'm at right now. I just built a little prototype and right before launching I don't think the idea is going to pan out. Send me an email and let's chat.

<comment><USER9> I've been lurking this site for _years_. It's these comments that brought me out from lurking after spending the past 11 months building something I hope will work out. If you folks are interested in a google hangout, irc chatroom, I don't care, something... please let me know, too!

<comment><USER8> Email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just to drop my 2 cents, answering your questions (I've started two startups, one failed, one succeeded).

1) It found me. Someone asked me how to solve a specific problem and I realized I could build a product; Edited: My personal strategy for dealing with competition: Ignore, don't go to their website, never, don't read about them, it will not help you.

2) If you can pick one, always choose services instead of products. Products usually comes with liabilities and the market is prone to saturation.

3) Try to build something more simple that people you already know would pay a little money to use. I never suggest books, specially 'self-help' but you need to read Rework by 37signals guys.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Build stuff that is already out there - competition is fine in any marketplace if there are enough consumers for the product. Create a copy of software that is already performing well, tweak a bit of it to give it your own flavour - copying something that already exists will give you the chops to pull off something unique when the inspiration hits you. Kind of like learning to play music - learn some basics, copy the classics/standards in your style, improvise a bit on the classics and eventually, write your own tune.

If you can find it, look up jgc's talk at the last HN London meetup - he gave a talk on "ideas" it was good.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am highly interested in the answer to this. I am tired of learning news things just to learn them. I want to be able to the use the stuff i learn to build something that is actually useful and interesting, and not just another app/website in some already crowded space. I have built a few apps that I use personally but they are not things i feel anyone would pay for. They mostly solve my particular requirements for an already solved problem. I would love to find an answer to this question.

</comment><comment><USER12> Talk to people that do stuff and they will often tell you about problems they have. if it is something you think you could do something about. talk to more people who do the same thing and see if they have the same problem. Is the solution already out there? could you do it significantly better? They may also have an idea about a solution to give you a starting point. Is it a big enough problem? would it be worth your time building a rough MVP?

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel you on this. I am a seasoned dev and have worked on lots of projects. But it is always someone elses vision and I kind of fill in the blanks and make it happen.

When you have to supply the vision, it gets A LOT harder! I think it is also distorting when you've worked on projects that have had success finacially but are not really great in the dev department.

A lot goes into a profitable project besides just good development.

</comment><comment><USER14> I tend to work on stuff I want for myself after failing to convince less lazy, more capable people to do it for me. If I still want it enough to do it myself, then I do it. My impatience/random ideas and desires/tendency-to- criticize-everything must overcome my laziness to create a perfect storm to convince me I should actually fix some problem, that it's not just some random thing I'm being a perfectionist about, before I do anything.

</comment><comment><USER15> I felt like this for a long while. The last few projects I've built have been kind of a turning point, in either popularity or revenue. I focused on keeping it small and sharing it with people.

No matter how much work you put in on a big project you never feel 'done' and that leads to feeling demoralized. Also small ideas need less maintaining.

This is coming from someone with very limited development skills!

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to share some of the stuff you've built?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a how I feel too, so many ideas that have fizzled and very few actually being finished, which after so many times gets really discouraging. Maybe this is your problem to solve, for yourself and for the rest of us?

I'll lend a hand anyway I can if you set out to solve this -Mike

</comment><comment><USER17> You should work on the simplest idea you can think of. Start small and improve as you go. Launch something and just focus on covering the hosting cost.

Making a constant $1/day is really hard. If money is the only motivation then you'll give up really easy.</comment>


Philosophy of Computer Science [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/phics.pdf <comment><USER2> This is obviously too big to be digested in a single chunk, but from a very brief first read, it looks impressive. The table of contents alone (19 pages) is an extraordinarily good outline of what CS is, and what the major components and questions of it are.

The author is William J. Rapaport, emeritus professor of computer science at SUNY Buffalo: [https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/](https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/)

Wikipedia bio: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Rapaport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Rapaport)

Trivium: WJR is the author of "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo".

There've been some earlier submissions, few with much discussion, though from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10388603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10388603)

Also relevant, the "Philosophy of Computer Science" article at the Encyclopedia of Philosophy: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16451072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16451072) [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer- science/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/)

<comment><USER3> > Trivium: WJR is the author of "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo > buffalo".

You're off by a couple of buffalo :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)

<comment><USER2> I've always tried to avoid buffaloing buffalo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Ch 2. What is philosophy

Man, he's leaving no stone unturned.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there a print copy of this book purchasable anywhere? Reading PDFs of this length is difficult for me.

<comment><USER2> Not AFAIU, though:

\- Reading this on a tablet works pretty well (9" or larger). I find PocketBook Reader is quite good, FBReader is another option. Both are far more functional than a basic PDF reader.

\- You could print the text directly and bind it at virtually any print shop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was expecting this without looking at the website : [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer- science/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/)

Seems to be more relevant.

<comment><USER2> The Stanford reference is more concise. Rappaport's is far more inclusive and comprehensive.

Both are highly worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What section of it should I read to get an idea of what, according to the author, "philosophy of computer science" is?

<comment><USER2> Start with the ToC, as suggested. It provides an excellent overview and framework.

The first four chapters (and preface) largely answer this question. Though of course, the answer is what the entire book is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> FYI, Rappaport suggests another book on this topic, somewhat shorter:

 _Computational Artifacts: Towards a Philosophy of Computer Science_ , by Raymond Turner.

[https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662555644#](https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662555644#)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is an excellent summary of older work but it needs to be updated with modern type theory. See the following:

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3418003](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3418003)

</comment><comment><USER9> Thank you, Mr. Rapaport! Gonna break out my new Xerox Phaser tomorrow and print this out for reading. I am super excited as I've become quite bored with Computer Science since reading Zen and the Art and connecting with it deeply.

When you publish, I'll be happy to purchase a copy.

</comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR; The major question in the philosophy of computer science, according to Smith, is: What is computation?

</comment><comment><USER11> looks fun, but man, do you really need to make subsubsubsubsubsections?

</comment><comment><USER12> Philosophy is advertised as something more fundamental than logic itself. Here it's advertised as something more fundamental than computer science.

But when I read stuff like this I question the veracity of it all. The very first section seems to be talking about "science" and "computer science" then it goes on to talk about ethics... Is this really legit? I mean what "science" means and what "computer science" means is more of a english language problem then some fundamental aspect of reality... and ethics are just rules that govern human behavior and the human condition... does this really need to be merged with the formal fundamentals of computer science? It's like saying english literature is part of quantum theory or that morality is intrinsic to classical mechanics.

I'm curious but as an outsider looking in... it looks like a load of BS. Any top tier theoretical mathematicians or hardcore scientists have anything to say about philosophy? Or even the philosophy behind computer science? Is it worth reading this stuff?

<comment><USER13> Philosophy is the study of knowledge, including the idea of "knowing", and furthermore even being in a position to know (existence). It is indeed more fundamental, as it was probably the discipline in which first useful breakthroughs were made in human thought. Though we would do well not to confuse being more fundamental, with being more important (as far as people & society today are concerned).

In a way, it is the fuzzy wiring that underlies most other disciplines, that you need to poke around in when you run into longstanding, or seemingly intractable problems in what you're trying to do above. See for example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20905801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20905801)

<comment><USER12> Computer science itself doesn't have ethics. It's like saying arithmetic has ethics. My question is why is philosophy including it as if it's part of the framework of computer science. It makes philosophy seem illegitimate.

<comment><USER14> Computer Science is pretty different from arithmetic (heck, that's a philosophical question in itself). Looking at the table of contents, he doesn't seem to be saying algorithms or data structures have ethics - but that a lot of recent developments in Computer Science can help us reckon with issues of what constitutes intelligence or autonomy, and the ethical ramifications that follow.

<comment><USER12> That's what makes it all seem illegitimate. The ethical ramifications of AI are a human quality outside of the computer science itself.

Computer science as a discipline like arithmetic has nothing to do with the human condition, it is just an aspect of logic. If philosophy purports to be more fundamental than logic or computer science why does it go on to talk about liberal arts topics of things like ethics or religion? It seems jumbled and disorganized and lacking of formal rigor.

Think about it. To use the analogy of arithmetic, the more fundamental theory is number theory. It dives into a lower level description of arithmetic. But then suddenly it starts talking about ethics and the moral implications of using arithmetic on human society. Is this social studies or formal logic?

<comment><USER15> The practice of computer science is a human activity and therefore involves ethics. Further, the argument that computer science is ethically neutral is itself a question of philosophical ethics.

<comment><USER12> The practice of mathematics also is a human activity and therefore has ethics when viewed from the context of human activity. However, math itself is not ethical. It just is.

The same is said of computer science. What you do on the job as a software engineer, is more engineering and applying math and programming in a human activity. The disciplines themselves, algebra, category theory, topology, calculus, number theory, computer science are all devoid of ethics or morals.

Combining ethics and science is like combining church and state.

<comment><USER16> is there any non-human math you are aware of? The categorization of mathematics into certain disciplines (algebra/topology/etc) is also a human choice. As is the choice to separate the philosophy class from the calculus class. They are all human choices, which reflect our outlook to life. I choose not to demarcate mathematics and philosophy because as far as I know only humans do mathematics, and every choice they make in that doing, teaching or researching has implications, even if tiny, for the good or bad that happens to this world.

<comment><USER12> All math is non-human.

What does the quantity one have to do with a human? Nothing. The only thing you are doing is giving it a name. "One" The categorization of mathematics is just nomenclature. We choose the name and categorizations of something that already exists independent of the human experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Whoah. He goes for 360+ pages before even touching the titular subject of his book. I would have preferred a simple glossary of terms, or maybe just release 3 books instead of one? It sounds like he wants to teach this book in schools, but as a student, I could easily imagine the professor telling me to buy this whole book just so we can study the last 400 pages. I think it's a waste of money when the professor asks me to buy an entire book because he or she just wants to look at a few chapters.

<comment><USER18> But his book is freely available as a PDF.</comment></comment>


The optimal shape of a kitchen measuring cup - <AUTHOR> http://joshuaredstone.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-math-insight-some-code-and-optimal.html <comment><USER2> I'm an experienced cook and this device is useless. The only area where wet measurements really matter is in baking, and even then 5-10% error is more than acceptable. If you really cared, you'd just weigh the liquid and compute its volume from its density (if you're OK with the error of a density estimate).

<comment><USER3> Not everyone is experienced. Most people don't have the time to learn how to measure like an "experienced cook"

<comment><USER2> You don't need to be experienced to level measurements. You need experience to judge the results of your error.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mundane startup financial details? - <AUTHOR>

How do folks handle business banking? Payroll, HR, etc? <comment><USER2> Banking:

\- We use silicon valley bank. They have a pretty horrendous online banking system (essentially a bunch of third party services cobbled together- we have like 4 different sets of login credentials). But, their bill pay system is good. They also are extremely responsive. We have a real account manager to help us with issues. They were also able to make intros to a number of financial/HR vendors that were used to working with startups, which was really helpful.

HR:

\- Our lawyer provided all the boiler-plate hiring docs.

\- Paychex (SVB intro) handles payroll processing, withholdings, etc for like $10 per employee per month.

\- Melita Group (SVB intro) handles benefits administration. We only have basic medical coverage now, but they have the capacity to provide all sorts of enhanced benefits if we need them.

Expense Tracking:

\- We use InDinero to track all of our expenses by category each month. They do a better job of categorizing expenses than the SVB system does and it saves us some accounting time.

<comment><USER3> Definitely agree that Quickbooks is the standard to beat. We (Profitably.com) just launched small business analytics that work on top of Quickbooks, and we keep hearing that lots of owners feel more comfortable with a well-established accounting suite. What other pain points are there for you? What would make that easier?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another thumbs up for SVB. The real value is in the the personal manager they provide.

We use ADP for payroll - they are a little expensive

In terms of managing your finances it can be broken into two \- Accounting (or preparing for taxes) I would check with your accountant for their preferences. Most smart ones will suggest an online app which saves them having to come to you(and saves you money!). If you don't have an accountant yet just pick one that you can invite your accountant to: Outright.com, Kashoo.com, LessAccounting.com or QB online are all good. \- Finances (or managing your dollars) There's a new group of applications that some are calling BFM (business finance management) or CFM (cash-flow management). They could be described as Mint.com for small business. billFLO.com (us) and indinero are probably the best known at this point.

Good luck! Ian

</comment><comment><USER5> You might look into using Quickbooks - they have addon payroll options (I've not tried payroll though, sorry). I do like Quickbooks, however. Most accounting firms work well with the data files. Good reporting.

</comment><comment><USER6> If any Canadian startups are reading, my venture is <http://SmallPayroll.ca>. Right now it's targeted to a slightly different audience, but I'd love to hear about what it would need to appeal to the startup crowd.

</comment><comment><USER7> Local bank, pay monthly in cash (China is a cash economy).

</comment><comment><USER8> Local bank and a copy of QuickBooks.</comment>


Has industry given up making software development easier for ordinary people? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Has-the-industry-given-up-on-making-real-world-business-software-development-easier-for-ordinary-people/answer/Cameron-Purdy?share=1 <comment><USER2> With visual basic, I think it was reasonably easy enough that anyone who wanted to write code could. I think what the industry is under-estimating is the fact that most people really don't want to write programs. They are happy to use programs and computing but simply have no interest in creating their own programs. So the issue isn't really ease of use so much as interest.</comment>


Corporate Social Networking Startups Attract VC Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201801442 <comment><USER2> "The networks are designed to let business professionals exchange information such as business leads, job candidate referrals, and new product ideas, or develop networks for groups of people with similar interests and concerns, such as women."

You know those women, always having the same interests and concerns.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL.....it is amazing how slow corporations are sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Is the corporate world ready for Web 2.0-style social networking? Venture capitalists seem to think so"</comment>


HP Enterprise let Russia scrutinize cyberdefense system used by Pentagon - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-russia-hpe-specialreport/special-report-hp-enterprise-let-russia-scrutinize-cyberdefense-system-used-by-pentagon-idUSKCN1C716M?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social <comment><USER2> "The U.S. military agency itself did not require a source code review before purchasing ArcSight and generally does not place such requirements on tech companies for off-the-shelf software like ArcSight, the Pentagon spokeswoman said. Instead, DISA evaluates the security standards used by the vendors, she said."

So the Russian government has higher security standards than the US?

<comment><USER3> I don't know if that's really true. DoD gets the Windows source code for example.

<comment><USER4> So does Russia.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how that's relevant.

Tools exist to audit anything on the windows CLR. So, from a security standpoint they have everything they need and can request the source code if any red flags show up.

Sure, the source code is great if you want to maintain code. But, for a security audit it's often more deceptive than useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't that standard practice?

HP wants to sell their product so they do this. If the Pentagon doesn't want this they would need to purchase exclusive rights to it or the state department would need to forbid the sale of the software overseas.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why do so many people still believe in security-by-obscurity?

      "Some security experts say that studying the source code of a product would make it far easier for a reviewer to spot vulnerabilities in the code, even if they did not leave the site with a copy of the code."

I would like to meet those experts that advocate, that not looking at the code makes the product more secure.

<comment><USER7> Well, if you compare the situation where an adversary has access to source code with a situation where they don't - everyting else being the same - , they have higher chance of finding vulnerabilities in the first.

The "security-by-obscurity" point does apply when you compare "going open- source with many observers" to "being closed-source with no one looking", but this is not the case here.

<comment><USER8> ...now enter fuzz testing and your first statement goes out the window.

<comment><USER9> Fuzz testing is far, far easier and more complete if you have the source code. It is not required to have the source to fuzz, but white-box fuzzing can be combined with code coverage analysis to make sure you hit all code paths, including ones that would rely upon a more structured sequencing of the inputs. Black-box fuzzing could eventually reach the same end result, but it would take far longer or far more resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to admit, the constant articles with the word 'Russia' in them just to make you go, 'oh, it must be something super nefarious that they're doing' is getting a bit on my nerves lately. Report on something worth raising a stink about or admit that you're just red-baiting.

<comment><USER11> What saddens me is that it works. Most of the people I know don't see through the propaganda.

<comment><USER12> The very odd thing is how the susceptibility to the name has switched political sides. Now the populists/conservatives don't want to hear about Russian stuff, and the liberals are sure that Putin elected Trump. I caricature, but not by much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even if they didn't disclose the source code, they could always reverse engineer/brute force a single install.

I guess the Pentagon not only did the same thing, it also secured its right to patch without HPE's knowledge or approval.

If we put ourselves in the shoes of the Russians, they are about to get software the US already uses, which gives the Pentagon a head start in knowing the eventual security flaws. Like the US wouldn't use that kind of knowledge if they wanted...

Also, why do all hacking news graphs/stock images show people in hoodies?

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a piece of software that aggregates logs and allows you to look for patterns to flag up suspicious activity ... it's not like it's the source to your firewall, total non story.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is totally normal practice.

Also most likely ArcSight used by pentagon can be totally different beast then ArcSight used by private companies.

Also most likely ArcSight doesnt cover most of US cyberwarfare arsenal.

<comment><USER16> ArcSight processes security events. These typically come from devices or server log files. Events are filtered and tagged with context before being sent to the server where they are further processed. The primary processing is correlation done in-memory which is a strength of the product.

Each installation is different - deployment site of probes, filter, tagging and correlation rules. There is not much be gained by looking at the code vs. knowing the Pentagon uses ArcSight.

The one security relevant aspect is the fact that ArcSight processes data from the internet. Programming error in that code may contain vectors allowing a RCE. On the other hand the product has been around for a while and _should_ be safe.

ArcSight is not only used by the Pentagon but by many tier-1 companies to monitor their networks. Unless it falls under ITAR companies can sell their product in whatever manner they like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In other news, Ford let Russia inspect the same sedan they sell to the US Armed Forces!

</comment><comment><USER18> Access to root accounts on some ArcSight boxes only involve challenge-response codes that we were supposed to get from HPE support. Because of how annoying this was, a clever ArcSight colleague of mine was able to create a simple Java program we would run to get the response code ourselves, saving us lots of time. Not sure exactly how he did it, but it only took him a weekend.

Source code or not, some ArcSight servers were already very vulnerable. Whether or not that was done on purpose, who knows.

</comment><comment><USER19> HP Enterprise (now Micro Focus) has responded to this: [https://community.saas.hpe.com/t5/Protect-Your- Assets/Nation...](https://community.saas.hpe.com/t5/Protect-Your- Assets/National-Market-Certification-A-common-practice-and-our- high/ba-p/1617529#.WdzYihNSxjI)

</comment><comment><USER20> This appears to be a case of patriotism vs the Almighty Dollar, albeit with shades of nuance. Is it standard practice for security software vendors to provide enterprise clients with audit rights? And could a restriction in future market opportunity lead technology companies to avoid doing business with the government?

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh, an article about Russia from US media. I'm surprised they didn't include the usual stock photos of people in hoodies typing away as matrix text scrolls behind them.

</comment><comment><USER22> The real problem is that there seemingly isn't a great FOSS alternative for ArcSight. Whatever it does couldn't really be that extraordinary.

</comment><comment><USER23> What a joke.

Surely this has completely destroyed the value of this software.

Hard to imagine any good software written by HP anyway.

Don't they employ lowest cost programmers? Heck the probably designed it using UML or something silly like that, with hundreds of business analysts and vast numbers of stakeholder meetings all working to reach consensus, before getting all those lowest cost programmers to try to write what they think the spec might mean - all truly inspired software is written this way.

<comment><USER24> ArcSight was an acquisition if I remember correctly, and it would have avoided a lot of the HP/E Software issues as a result.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to fully outsource yourself? - <AUTHOR>

I have been thinking of outsourcing my skills as a technology design consultant to the point where I would effectively run a small company that sells my services and I manage those who perform the work I used to do, but I am unclear how to start doing this?<p>Has anyone turned themselves into a consulting firm? How did you do this? <comment><USER2> With all this talk about telecommuting, I wonder if you could do the same thing with your job. You get a telecommuting job and hire someone to do your work (at a lower rate, of course ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats kind of what I am talking about - but scaling it up by 5 or 10 people....

Ill handle all the interpersonal communications between [Me] and employer, they do all the tactical work.

I PM myself effectively.</comment></comment>


AMD's Radeon HD 6970 & 6950 Debut: Enter Cayman - <AUTHOR> http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Radeon-HD-6970--6950-GPU-Reviews-Enter-Cayman/

<comment><USER2> _Hold on, hold on a second._ Let's put this in perspective. This _brand new_ ATI flagship card has a whopping 24 cores clocked at 880 MHz and a memory bus capable of 5.5 GB/sec. There's no general purpose API here; everything is shaders. Let's compare this to the latest NVIDIA desktop GPU, the GTX 580, capable of both shaders (graphics-native code) and general purpose programming: _512 cores clocked at 1.5 GHz with 192 GB/sec in memory throughput_. What? And this isn't even NVIDIA's most powerful card. How does ATI get out of bed in the morning?

<comment><USER3> There is a rational debate to be had about the relative merits of the two architectures and programming ecosystems; this isn't it.

1) A GPU "core" is loosely defined. Those "512 CUDA cores" are 16 streaming multiprocessors with 32-wide SIMT.

2) Big parts of GF100/110's SMs are double-clocked; most of the rest of the chip runs at 750MHz (for the clock rates in your example).

3) 5.5 Gigabits per second per data pin (faster than GF100/110). 256 data pins (fewer). 176 Gigabytes per second per chip (close).

4) OpenCL. There are and have been others, but OpenCL is probably ATI's bet for general purpose programming. You could say it's inferior to CUDA (and I'd agree), but to act like it doesn't exist cheapens the debate.

This does speak to the immense power of marketing though; it's easy to lay down such a thicket of buzzwords that you can spin a product any way you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, it's all how the two companies market their architecture is all, that and branding. Technically speaking, AMD does more in less silicon area but also has to run at higher clock speeds to do so. The power draw is about comparable between similar price/performance ratios from each camp.</comment></comment></comment>