I hate Ruby On Rails - <AUTHOR> http://ihaterubyonrails.com <comment><USER2> The problems with rails are pretty much universal to frameworks. Frameworks make it easy to do what the framework makes it easy to do, but eventually you end up paying back all that time you saved early on by fighting the framework later when you outgrow it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This site is irrelevant. If people get to complain about Rails, then they should be doing some programming to

1) fix it (I had 1 patch to Rails by actually found the bug in my app and fixed it, got accepted within a few days. The community is awesome)

2) learn something new instead of wasting time.

3) build something cool to make some good money and quit whining.

Rails is awesome when you actually try to build a complex app. And I'm sick of people complaining about Ruby is so slow and Rails is this or that. My thought? Whatever.

<comment><USER4> While I agree that they should do 2 and 3, they owe nothing to anyone and don't have to fix anything. A bug report would be nice, but again, they don't have to.

I know a lot of people say that complaining isn't useful if you don't also provide a solution, but that's BS. I've often used complaints to find out what people don't like about a system and formulate a plan to improve it. And I've often received suggestions that not only wouldn't fix the problem, but would destroy the rest of the system.

Complaints should be taken with a grain of salt, but when a lot of people have the same complaint, it bears scrutiny.

If you ignore complaints that don't have suggestions, you'll never know what made people leave, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of it's true some of it's not. It doesn't really matter one way or another because this site is useless. Spend more time hacking in a framework that you do enjoy instead of bitching about the ones you don't.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't usually bother to defend a particular technology choice but most of the arguments are either irrelevant, no longer true or just plain wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> "It's not .NET" is the problem with this site - these guys don't seem to understand that they are not the intended audience for Rails nor do they seem to know when to pick the right tool for the right job. Also, have you heard of JRuby?

</comment><comment><USER8> Chuckle.

That's the best they could come up with? People with more time to complain than brain cells to do it with!

Thanks for the levity. That site made this Ruby developer's day.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is just counterproductive.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://ihaterubyonrails.com/posts/34/the-perfect- framework-f...](http://ihaterubyonrails.com/posts/34/the-perfect-framework- for-sites-that-donothing/)

"Show me one example of a corporate or high-traffic website that uses Rails other than Basecamp."

-yellowpages.com

-hulu.com

-shopify

-kongregate

-github

-justin.tv

-ravelry

the list is actually pretty large nowadays. I don't even code with rails anymore, but this site is a big heaping pile of whiny bullshit

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER11> Uh, Twitter?

<comment><USER10> I left twitter out because it has started departing a bit from pure Ruby on Rails and has had scaling issues from the get go so isn't a really good example when someone is bitching about the abilities of RoR.

<comment><USER11> Twitter's front-end is still Rails.

<comment><USER10> and twitter's front end still crashes multiple times a day :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Big surprise: it's a Python app. Yet more proof that the Python web development community is filled to the brim with trolls. Stuff like this is why I completely stopped contributing to open source Python projects after nearly 10 years.</comment>


123-reg deletes sites in massive clean-up script blunder, customers let rip - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2016/04/123-reg-deletes-sites-in-massive-clean-up-script-blunder-as-customers-let-rip/ <comment><USER2> this is a curious case of "copy-cat stabbing syndrome" from the recent "I just deleted my entire company" hoax [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/04/17/turns-dude-didnt- de...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/04/17/turns-dude-didnt-delete- entire-company-single-line-code/)

<comment><USER2> see also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_crime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_crime)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like they deleted the entire website of Scottish League Cup winners Ross County:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands- islands-3608...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands- islands-36080667)</comment>


DirectX Is Terrifying - <AUTHOR> https://blackhole12.blogspot.com/2017/02/directx-is-terrifying.html <comment><USER2> the real problem was having shader type and its version in single variable and range checking on it</comment>


Ask HN: Am I spamming my customers? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm looking for advice as to whether it's legitimate for me to send a product upgrade email to a group of people who have a license for my product.
Here's the story: I'm an independent developer and licenses for one of my products was given away in a promotion run by a third party earlier in the year. A condition of getting the license was that they had to register with the third parties site and then go through a virtual purchase process which cost them nothing. At this point I don't think there was any kind of check if they were willing to receive email.
At the end of the promotion the third party supplied me with the email addresses of the people who downloaded the license, about 30,000 of them.
The product has changed significantly since then and I 'd like to send these people an email informing them about the changes but I'm concerned at being branded a spammer and the potential backlash against the product.
What do you think, can I email these people even though they haven't explicitly signed up for it?
My gut feeling is that I shouldn't but I'm wondering if I'm being over cautious here? <comment><USER2> No, you are not spamming them as you had a legit business connection to them and the email relates to that. However include the option to Unsubscribe from the list within the email.

If you were emailing about something completely unrelated then that would probably not go down well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suggest the following test: send it to 10% and see if their response behavior suggests they feel your email is spam.

(Don't lose any sleep, they did opt-in.)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good idea, I'll go with hitting a small sample first.

But they didn't really opt-in, there was no explicit opt-in option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Send it out and then give them the option to "unsubscribe".</comment>


Working alone sucks - <AUTHOR> http://fleetadmiral.tumblr.com/post/37907736486/working-alone-sucks <comment><USER4> I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living.

"I could never do that", she said. "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody. It'd be my worst nightmare."

I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Naturally, as a developer, I think I have the greatest job there is. Where else could you get somebody to pay you like fourteen times the median family income to hang out anywhere in the world you please and solve interesting puzzles all day?

But not everybody is wired the same. Lots of people (most people???) get their energy from face to face human interaction.

Poor fools, eh?

<comment><USER5> Wait what? Who in the world is using a computer today that isn't _constantly_ interacting with people on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, uh.. Hacker News, even..

I mean, you're doing it _right now_.

Today's web is an insanely social place. Compare with computers in 1985, yeah, you might have a point about social isolation. But today? Absolutely not, no way.

<comment><USER6> That still doesnt change "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody."

Even by using social media, you are still alone in front of your computer.

<comment><USER5> That's meaningless. "never getting the chance to talk to anybody"? I'm talking to you, and everyone else who reads this web page, _right now_.

Just look around you. Look at all the people who are in real world physical social situations and _still_ spend most of their time staring at their smartphone and the stream of social updates from Twitter, from Facebook, from Email...

Staring at those screens is compelling because they are so damn social now. It's not some mythical solitary activity like playing solitaire or reading a book.

<comment><USER7> It's interesting that you can't tell the difference. You are _not_ talking to parent poster, you are typing text into a box while alone in room. You can't see his(?) facial expressions, change the subject, comment on things taking place around both of you. You just type into a box and sometime later you might see this reply.

Don't get me wrong, communicating on the Internet is great. But for some types of personality (and pretty much all of us to some extent) face-to-face interaction is vital.

<comment><USER8> Experienced writers/readers easily communicate emotions through text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can definitely empathize. A few years ago, I co-founded a startup with one of my close friends - except he had relocated to Shanghai and I in Virginia living with my parents to save on rent.

We talked or IMed every day, but it definitely wasn't the same as working with a co-located team. There's no grabbing lunch together or the occasional drinks after work. It definitely got lonely, and led to some unusual behavior.

By the end of the second week, I'd stopped getting out of my pajamas - <USER2> wasn't like I was leaving the house, so why bother?

We have a dog, who isn't allowed in the house, so I set up a desk in the garage and worked from there. I'd keep the garage door open all day, for natural light but also to let the dog run around.

I distinctly remember one afternoon, where I'm cranking away in my garage/office. Some neighborhood kids were cutting through our yard to get to the local basketball court, and they definitely paused for a moment to stare at the unkempt weird hermit guy, still in his pajamas, a bathrobe, and slippers, hacking away in the garage of all places.

Good times!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's how I also started. After too many unshowered days eating cereal, I decided I needed to get an office :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a pretty clear take on the cofounder debate. Key quote:

"I don't have a CFO, COO or other peers with the same overall picture of the company and incentive structure that I have"

In the early days of Quantcast, Konrad (the other cofounder) and I wondered why the employees didn't generally have the same sense of urgency that we did. My friend Bryan asked "so, what do you do when you read an article about a competitive threat?" and we both answered "we share it with each other". "and not the employees?", and we looked at each other and said "we don't want to be discouraging". Bryan said "no wonder they don't feel urgency".

And that's at the core of having a cofounder. Or more importantly, perhaps that's one of the real reasons you want the initial team of a company to all be cofounders (YC style). You want everyone in the same boat, with a big bet on the line, sharing information openly.

I'd love to hear any other thoughts about the real underlying reasons that the success rates are higher with companies that have cofounders. Most of the discussion on HN is about the observation, and examples either way. But I'd love to hear insight into the reasons.

<comment><USER11> I am curious to know how you cultivated sense of urgency among employees after this conversation? Did you start sharing more about competition and/or other information? Did you share it directly or massaged the message so the employees don't get discouraged? Or was "we don't want to be discouraging" an assumption?

<comment><USER10> The single best thing we did in this regard was to have a weekly communication meeting, like Google's Friday all hands. Our CFO came from Google and clued us in.

It's an open meeting where successes and challenges are openly described and anyone can ask any question. Someone from Google could probably give a much better description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Title should be "Working alone sucks _for some people_ ".

I've been working from home for years and love it, for instance.

<comment><USER13> I truly believe 'alone' is more a state of mind than anything else.

Having recently left a veritable 'Office-Space' like enterprise, with 500 people on my floor you'd think I wouldn't have been so lonely. But being lost in a sea of cubes and water cooler/misery loves company talk replete with excuses of why someone can't do something and something didn't get done at every corner can wear one down.

As a newly minted Rails consultant going on 6+ mos now, I have yet to meet any of my clients/designers face to face (there's 10 people involved in 2 separate long term projects). They live on the East Coast and I'm in southern California. But we're in regular communication... skype/google hangouts, phone, basecamp, email, pivotal tracker, github.

When it comes to my career I'm feeling amazingly whole when I'm 'virtually' surrounded with highly competent people who see eye-to-eye than when I had to grudgingly come into a mediocracy every day. I've never experienced this level of cohesive team work before... to me it just seems like the physical presence thing is icing on the cake.

If I get 'physically lonely' heck while working I'll go out to one of various local cafes I frequent and take my headphones out every once in awhile and chat up a stranger. Usually we have far more in common than I did with any of my former co-workers. To top it off I find myself more regularly hanging out with friends while not working... having a fluid schedule + getting rid of that time sink that is commuting really opens up one's options to be social.

<comment><USER14> _"Our language (...) has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone."_

 _\-- Paul Tillich_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have experienced feelings similar to these in the past as a freelancer working from home. My advice is to join a local coworking group where freelancers come together to share office space. I have found the social atmosphere helps everyone get more enthusiastic about their work and allows for easy collaboration between designers, developers, marketers and businesspeople.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I have also successfully experimented with this in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The update on the bottom of this post really hits home: "it is the lack of peer-level teamwork towards a common goal that I lack". That made me shudder.

For me, the worst thing in the world is to try and do something in a "team" which exists in name only. If the other folks aren't willing to run at the same speed, then it just starts draining the life out of me and the project. It sounds like the author of this post is in the same situation.

The flip side of this is that when a couple of people agree to really band together, we can go out and do amazing things. It doesn't even have to be programming. The nights when I got together with a couple of friends and decided to "beat the (ticket) queue down" were great. We were all "over it" and did not like our jobs any more, but the teamwork of getting in there and showing what we could still do was worth it.

Two or three of the right people could destroy a backlog of tickets which had accumulated over the span of hours or even days. It would make a dent which would last for several shifts, and probably rescued more than one ticket which would have been criminally mishandled otherwise.

The teamwork basically established that more than one of us felt this way. That's important, since if you're the only one of a kind in any situation, don't you start wondering if you've done something wrong?

I guess life is easier for those who aren't troubled by that sort of "do I even belong here" thought.

</comment><comment><USER17> Definitely join a Co-working space. They are designed for this.

You may not be working directly with the people you interact with, but you are all working toward something, and that fact alone helps me be productive.

The diverse community and productive environment of any good coworking space have untold benefits beyond the obvious. Try it out for an extended time before you make any assumptions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not yet 100% comfortable giving up our office. But we have some extra desks and we are located in a very nice part of town. I think offering these to interesting local entrepreneurs might achieve a similar goal.

If you are en entrepreneur interesting in a space in Old Montreal, leave your contact info here and I'll contact you.

<comment><USER17> That could work great. I know a local co-working space here in Boston does an office-space trade as well. Maybe get in touch with one in Montreal and see if their members have any interest or if they offer a similar service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Many many years ago, I tried to do solo musician as a career - I write, practice, and perform the music - and in addition to the crushing poverty, the solitude was really hard. When I ended up working for a software company, I remember telling people, "Gosh I wish there was a Lotus Development for guitarist-composers." (I'm dating myself...) In addition to the lack of social contact, there's the lack of externally provided structure - schedule, resources, breaks, milestones. I just think it's hard to be a one-person anything.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you work at home alone and you need human interaction, get a dog. It will force you to get outside and interact with humans.

I met a young person once who was successful (multi-millionaire) and had sold several companies. In the post-sell lull, he said that until he got a dog - <USER3> didn't have a daily routine - since he didn't have to really work. Showering is a habit that quickly can fall by the wayside if you work from home alone too much.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have been in a similar situation and also read a bit of psychology and the inescapable conclusion that I have come to is that this is exactly why you need a cofounder.

Humans crave regular 'peer' level feedback and gratification - this is an evolutionary trait and is extremely critical for your happiness which is in turn critical for optimal work performance. Almost anyone who feels otherwise is wrong.

The key point is that even if your startup is doing well and making tons of money you will still not be happy because of the lack of 'peer' level feedback. So in that sense getting a co-founder is a bigger objective than making your startup profitable.

The only other two options are:

1\. Your company grows real fast and you are able to hire a couple of CXO's. This might take a long time and its not really in your control.

2\. Raise funds and hire a couple of peer level CXO's - this is easier said than done as premature scaling is the number one cause of startup mortality even assuming that you can raise funding in the first place.

The good part is that if you understand this simple fact, you can start figuring out a solution which I guess you have already begin.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have never had a real life developer friend or someone to talk to.

I got my BFA in illustration in 2010 and decided to get back into web development (I got an associates in digital media 3 years prior and was into web development in high school). So the landscape of development had changed a ton, I stumbled on to middleman and SASS.. so I was getting acquainted with modern tools and techniques. Then I was lucky enough that a marketing company in my town hired me to help out with html emails and photoshop collateral.

They had a VB .NET Webforms guy that they would outsource application-ish websites too. At this time I was watching the google python videos and reading books about django / rails. I learned about heroku and in my spare time I would build and deploy simple apps like questionnaires with an active admin backend. Basically, my company let me take a stab at one of these application- ish projects and it went really well so I got to do more and more. That was a year ago, and now I work solely on large Rails / backbone projects hosted on Heroku. In all of this personal growth I still have not met another developer who I can talk to or learn from, it's crazy. It makes me sad because I don't have someone to share the excitement with, or someone who I can learn with. We have had this AD out for another developer for months and get very few responses. If you're in NH and like this stuff send me a message :)

<comment><USER22> If you're close to the Portsmouth area check out: <http://alphaloft.com>. They have regular talks and meet ups.

You could always head over to Boston there's a ton of web development stuff happening there and regular meet ups.

<comment><USER21> Wow alpha loft is an amazing resource, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am currently writing a paper relating to this topic. (Nothing special, just part of a university course)

We are studying Seats2meet.com, a company providing co-working spaces in The Netherlands, or rather one of their co-working spaces, BounceSpace, where its free to work but you have to "pay" with your social capital.

What we have found so far is that it is mostly (early start-up phase) entrepreneurs and freelancers who attend the location we have studied. They say that they cannot focus well at home and having the possibility to interact with is great beneficial to them. The fact that the location is free is of course important, especially for start-ups on a tight budget.

The idea behind the concept is knowledge sharing but while there is certain amounts of knowledge sharing going on it appears that most are looking for human contact, and sometimes the human contact can help them out - good.

The academic literature suggest that teleworkers, and it appears entrepreneurs though the literature is quite weak on that subject, are often feeling isolated due to lack of face-to-face interactions such as informal meetings, lunches and "water-cooler conversations" with colleagues.

Our focus is mostly on knowledge sharing and social capital but I think many entrepreneurs could benefit from more interactions with others, rather than just hacking away at home.

P.S. Check out Seats2Meet/BounceSpace if you are in Amsterdam and looking for a co-working space, they got some collaboration with Appsterdam and such. Not to mention good coffee!

</comment><comment><USER24> Except for the lack of distractions, I don't like it. Same with working with people, in reverse.

I work as both a programmer and a glass artist, and similar conclusions apply. Working in group environments is inspiring, informative, invigorating and synergistic, but brings up all sorts of problems one doesn't encounter in solitude. I'm trying to find the right balance.

</comment><comment><USER25> This post hit close to home for me. I have had very similar work experiences as the OP (having done both a startup with two co-founders and management consulting), and found that the biggest factor is whether you are introverted or extroverted. He notes that he's extroverted, which is likely why he hates this method of work.

As an introvert, I don't mind long periods of alone time as long as it's occasionally punctuated by social events. However, I tend to avoid the local networking events like the OP described because I find them to be full of blowhards and vendors pushing a service (YMMV). Instead, I prefer smaller group gatherings with people I trust.

I'm trying to decide if my next startup is going to be solo or with co- founders, so this is weighing on my mind at the moment. I find that the biggest drawback of solo is the sense of loneliness, and I'm trying to balance that with the considerations of equity, creative control, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> >Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am (hyper?)active, extraverted and social. Sitting in front of the computer alone all day is as sub-optimal as it gets for my character

A more appropriate title would have been "Working alone sucks for me"

I love working alone. Politics are non-existent or scarce.

</comment><comment><USER27> One word: coworking! As a freelance developer I struggled with this for a while (getting depressed working at home, and getting tired of reduced productivity at cafes) until I joined a good coworking space. I realized that while working alone wears me down, I wouldn't trade working _for myself_ for anything, and being around a group of people who feel the same way is awesome.

For me at least, coworking is better than working at home in every way I've considered. I'm much more productive, it's not as isolating socially, and professionally I've even found new contracts through people I've met coworking.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been working at home and travelling the world for over 5 years with our whole team completely distributed, managing over 30 people remotely for all of this time. I've seen it doesn't work for some people. If the person doesn't have a partner, is a bit too introverted, they can get into an anti-social pattern and not communicate enough, not get out of the house.

My experience is that this is the minority, maybe 5% maximum 10% of people. The majority love working from home and the benefits of greater flexibility and not having to travel to and from work each day more than compensate for any downside.

</comment><comment><USER29> Working alone sucks(if you are extroverted).

I had the opposite problem, I started working in sales with tons of people. I had no time for myself, meditation, solitude or thinking, just meeting people or being interrupted on the phone constantly.

People could not understand that I wanted time for myself(most of the human population is extroverted).

It was great for some people, but not for me. Now I work(at home) in engineering mostly alone with my dogs at my side and I am so happy. I am thinking about problems most of the time without interruptions. I see people when I want. For me this is great.

<comment><USER30> I'm definitely introverted, but sometimes I do find it helpful to be around other people while working. Which is why I'm starting a coworking space in my hometown.

<comment><USER31> Have you found any pitfalls trying to start a co-working space where there's a lack of an existing community? Did you do much research?

<comment><USER30> This remains to be seen. I just signed the lease on Monday for the space and we are doing cleaning and some minimal construction right now.

I live in Helena, Montana. We have a very small startup/tech community here, but we do have a lot of people who telecommute or freelance for out-of-state clients. Ideally, we'll get a mixture of these people. I think the diversity is what's really important.

Outside of Helena, in Bozeman and Missoula, there is a much larger startup community that's really starting to take off. I try to drive down for meetups a few times a month and participate in as many things as possible.

So far, the initial response has been overwhelmingly positive. Rent is really cheap (my father-in-law owns the building, that helps) and I'm not trying to make a living off of the coworking space itself. It won't take many members to get the space self-sustaining and I'm confident that we can get there quickly even with the small population.

Our website just went live yesterday. <http://theshophelena.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have been working from home for almost four years now. I don't consider my self an overly social person, but it's beginning to take a toll on me.

I live in a small city (~80k population) with absolutely no tech industry and don't have any close friends that are working programmers with similar interests. I tend to have a lot of ambitions, which make it even worse when you have no feedback system to discuss those ambitions.

Lately I've been considering applying for jobs in the Bay area, but I'm not sure I'm qualified enough to get a job worth moving my family for.

<comment><USER31> Sounds like a strikingly similar situation to mine: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4905386>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd like to consider this through the lens of motivation.

It's a social motivational problem. I experience the same thing is some classes in the case where grades are too easy to get / there's no challenge, and when there's no push for creativity.

When the prof presents a leaderboard or favorite features in projects afterwards, or offers bonus for implementing more challenging additions, it multiplies my own motivation significantly. Even in grad school (CS), most of my course projects have been too easy IMO.

</comment><comment><USER34> These are exactly my feelings in last one year after i left my job and working solo from 2+ years now. While i love the work & freedom and comfort as i am a natural loner/introvert, sometimes it sucks real bad. And unfortunately, we don't have much of work at cafe & co-working culture here.

And with the time i have lost interest in "social media". It feels like i am talking to projections of characters and not real people.

</comment><comment><USER35> How I wish, how I wish you were here...

I mean, You, you, the clever, normal people. But for now I'm sharing my cubicle with two really clever (they can get the job done quickly, elegantly, etc) guys, who are both loud racists, one of them scientologist (although the later that did not caused any problem yet). And there's no chance the change offices.

So. I would give both of their arms if only I could work alone a day a week.

</comment><comment><USER36> Interesting. My experience is almost the opposite of this. CEO of a small distributed team with 10 people, I spend half of my day on Skype talking with the team.

I actually socialize more than my previous office job (penetration testing) in an office with 20~ people.

Best part of it when I want to be alone to focus on something all it takes is setting my status to DND which you can't effectively do in many offices.

</comment><comment><USER37> I believe it depends on the personality of person. I like to work in an environment where I am able to do my work alone, in isolation, have full control over process and schedule, and interact with others only when necessary. It's not that I hate interacting with people. I like to socialize but not when I am working.

</comment><comment><USER31> Isolation doesn't matter if you're absorbed in your work since your work _is_ your world. If work stagnates (a project, a startup or a job) that's when it's felt.

The trick is to _always_ love what you do and to feel part of something whether it's guaranteed to succeed or not.

I'm finding this out slowly.

</comment><comment><USER38> I love the fact that a developer can work anywhere, while working on client projects thats totally fine and cool. But when you're doing 'cool stuff' or your own ideas. I found that working with someone else is another world. The energy that flows back and forth is incomparable.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't have much experience at this level (CEO), but I've always had the impression that this is partly why CEOs join the boards of other companies/organizations (including non-profits), to find camaraderie with peers, give back some of their perspective/experience, etc.

</comment><comment><USER40> > I should emphasize that it is not physically being alone (i.e., not enough > contact with other people) that bothers me, it is the lack of peer-level > teamwork towards a common goal that I lack.

I wonder if Roger Federer feels that way?

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't work alone; I work in blissful solitude. Alone is a word for extroverts.

</comment><comment><USER42> I guess many indie developers and freelancers with an office-work history have the same issue. If you have the time, an appropriate option might be to go back to school or do some postgrad studies.

</comment><comment><USER43> I worked alone (from home) for 4 years. Left a very high paying job mostly for that reason. I thought if it continued I'd kill myself.

Now I am working on my startup with other smart people and man, I love it.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think totally the opposite. Working in group most of the time degenerates into procrastination. Also I find a lot harder to concentrate into problem solving when someone is talking to me.

</comment><comment><USER45> Tell that to Philip K. Dick, J. D. Salinger, Ken Kesey, Orhan Pamuk, Albert Camus, George Orwell, to name a few..)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems from the comments that coding is an activity particularly well suited to working alone.

</comment><comment><USER46> Thanks for sharing this. You are definitely (ahem) not alone.

One thing I heard from a friend (in a church talk) was that if you want a beautiful life, you need to find beautiful things and bring them into your life. This struck me as obvious but somehow I never clued in before. _I need to actively create the life and living environment I want._

I hope this doesn't sound like browbeating because it isn't. I don't know you but I absolutely relate to what you're saying.

Good luck in creating a better life for yourself and enjoy the journey along the way. I will try and do the same.</comment>


How brain architecture relates to consciousness and abstract thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-brain-architecture-relates-to-consciousness-and-abstract-thought <comment><USER3> Jean Piaget's theories are pretty in line with this. In his book "Biology and Knowledge" he sets forth the idea that higher level cognitive abilities are built via the coordination and integration of basic sensory/motor behaviors. The progressive construction of higher level behaviors eventually leads to logico-mathematical thought.

He even did extensive biological experiments to demonstrate that these concepts are valid interpretations of organic biological phenomena and thus reasonably extendable into the domain of cognitive development. It's a shame his work was reduced to the "stages" theory, which really doesn't do justice to his work as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER4> The discussed paper is [http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18112](http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18112) "The global landscape of cognition: hierarchical aggregation as an organizational principle of human cortical networks and functions"

Consciousness is mentioned only once:

>Our current data-driven results holistically demonstrated expanding amalgamation of function [sic!] over structural depth [...]

>Fascinatingly, results suggest why the insular and opercular regions are some of the best candidates for awareness or consciousness [62] [63] or why parts of frontal cortex are involved in higher cognition.

Wait, why is function uncountable?

>These conclusions are elaborated here:

>Sensory regions closest to inputs (bin1) in our hierarchy [include Insula and opercular]

>[...] hypothesized to play a role in multi-sensory integration and interoceptive awareness,

>[...] since it is the hub of the senses

>[...] the coordinating role awareness plays in cognition

>Further, middle regions, intermediate in distance from all sensory inputs (bin5) included hippocampus and MTL known for memory and celebrity neurons

>Deep regions less connected to and farthest from inputs (bin10) [...] may support more abstract cognitive functions.

Aren't the first two quotes contradicting? Surely, awareness or consciousness is an amalgamation of function and distributed.

I'd rather thought the hippocampus was deemed central to cognition, as memory seems essential for re-cognition. Self-awareness is deemd a function of higher cognition and therefore an abstract concept. Why is it close to the concrete input stage? They talk about recurrent networks, does the hippocampus give feedback to the "input stage", maybe slowly as in conditioning? They "simplified recurrence into a continuum of statistical connectivity to sensory inputs" to probalisticly show a directional hierarchy.

Their methods are interesting, but far beyond me. They seem to build a model of the brain into a NN and test that, where a modified NN is the control group.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The goal was to understand how abstract thought arises from brain structure"

Is there any evidence that it does?

<comment><USER6> As a hypothesis, the evidence presented by the article seems to give some support to it. What's the alternative hypothesis?

<comment><USER7> Note that the goal of the study was not to determine IF brain structure produces attract thought, but HOW.

The point I think the commenter was making is that the statement "The goal was to understand how abstract thought arises from brain structure" suggests there may be some _begging the question_ in the study design.

If you start with the assumption that that brain structure produces abstract thought, your evidence will support it, because you already believed it in the first place.

The main challenge to any hypothesis about the nature of thought or consciousness is that our fundamental tool for contemplating the topic is our consciousness - which is precisely what we're trying to understand.

On that basis, the argument goes, it's impossible to objectively determine what consciousness really is, because we have no way of separating the consciousness we're studying from the consciousness we're using to study it.

Alternative theories to the one that says the brain _produces_ consciousness are that the brain is a _carrier_ or _receiver_ of consciousness, which somehow originates elsewhere.

Various forms of such theories have been proposed by reputable scientists including Roger Penrose[1], John Eccles[2] and - somewhat ironically - <USER2> Popper[3].

I personally don't have any strong opinions about the validity of these theories; it's enough for me to know that they exist and to keep an open mind until someone can develop a truly testable and falsifiable hypothesis.

Until then, it's all pretty much philosophy.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Physics_and_cons...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Physics_and_consciousness)

[2] [http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat- bra.htm](http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/prat-bra.htm)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem#Popp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem#Popper)

<comment><USER4> Is it also impossible to research matter, because we can't seperate the matter we study ... ? Am I missing the analogy?

<comment><USER7> It's a complex topic that's really one of philosophy not science, and to try to discuss it in depth in an HN thread is to risk going down a very unedifying rabbit hole.

But in short, we can study matter to the extent that we can observe it from the outside using established scientific techniques. So we can form reasonably objective observations of the nature and behaviour of matter, because (at least for the sake of this argument), it is separate from our consciousness.

However, science is system of techniques and tools developed out of the consciousness of humans, so to study consciousness, you need to use science, which was created by consciousness, which we're trying to study using science... and so on.

So, short answer: we can use science to objectively study matter because it's separate from consciousness. It's harder to objectively study consciousness with science because that thing very we call science is a construct of consciousness.

<comment><USER4> >for the sake of the argument

That's begging the question. There's researchers writing a 18 page report about a 100 manyears of development and you stumble in here without really reading it, saying it's wrong on account of it not being right. Well, your circular logic leaves me unimpressed.

I think the uncertainty principle makes pretty clear, assuming for the sake of the argument that it is correct, that we can't observe matter without interfering. Ofc that's a matter of believe

The whole presumption of the article is that consciousness is related to matter. You are, if anything, changing the subject. You probably don't have a clue what consciousness is, no offense, I really don't. Sadly the quoted papers are not open access and I can't figure out sci-hub. Also, they are from a philosophical faculty, while I tend to the hard sciences.

Where would the inability to figure out conscioussness leave us, anyhow, do you just give up?

<comment><USER7> Hi there, I think you've read too much into what I was trying to say (which was my concern before I started answering you).

I'm not saying the research isn't useful, but rather that the way it was described in this article raised doubt about just how far the findings go in answering the deepest questions about consciousness (at least compared to what was implied in the headline).

I agree with you that I'm in no position to refute the countless hours of work by people far more more educated on the topic than me.

And I'm not saying we have no way of understanding consciousness, just that there's a limit to how deeply we can ultimately understand it, as at some point you'd have to step outside of your own consciousness. But if your position is that the same may be true for matter because fundamentally matter and consciousness may be inseparable, well I'm very open to that.

The comment of mine that you responded to was just answering someone else's question on the issue of whether the brain generates consciousness, or carries it in some other form.

I have no strong opinion on the matter; I take great interest in reading various hypotheses and philosophies and research studies, and the outcome is that just as you say, I don't have any idea what consciousness really is, because nobody else seems to either (though Roger Penrose's hypothesis about "quantum microtubules" is kinda cool, and seems to have some evidence to support it [1]).

Also, I'm with you on the uncertainty principle and the inability to observe matter with complete objectivity. But I resisted going there in the comment because, like I said, it's a rabbit hole.

But I really do look forward to more being discovered and debated about it.

[1] [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm)

<comment><USER4> You keep speaking of "the outside", implying that there is any outside that's inaccessable to us. This's not scientific. It's not mumbojumbo either, but it's just not provable. It's glaringly obvious, too. It's tedious to still try to derive any insight from that. What you want maybe is an outlook, so to speak, to expand your horizont.

Consciousness is binary in my mind. To say that there is an understanding of consciousness sounds redundant to me, although understanding carries a notion of direction.

<comment><USER7> I don't disagree with you, and I think we're more on the same page than not.

In case you're interested, a writer (and scientist) whom I've found very insightful and thought-provoking on this topic is Bernardo Kastrup:

[http://www.amazon.com/Bernardo- Kastrup/e/B004OFGCA4](http://www.amazon.com/Bernardo-Kastrup/e/B004OFGCA4)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How leaving a corporate job to join a startup fucked me up and sorted my life - <AUTHOR> https://byrslf.co/how-leaving-a-corporate-job-to-join-a-startup-f-ked-me-up-and-sorted-my-life-out-97f68ea14c28#.h85311vfe <comment><USER4> The story might be more interesting to me than to more experienced hackers here, so YMMV. For me, however, what was intriguing was how he first of all had to learn what he _didn 't_ know - and then learn it. Looks to me as if one of those learnings was essentially about life/work as a roller coaster - <USER2> the sense that even though it sometimes _appears_ you're headed for a crash/death, sometimes it's just a whiplash in one's professional "learning curve." Rahul's sharing this on HN may be one of those whiplashes - on the blogging slopes - where it's more important than one might guess to attend to writing(and formatting) _style_. Until that slope is mastered, the poster discovers that most comments about his post concern his quirks of using _bold_ ing in overabundance.

Anyway, congratulations on surviving the transition, Rahul. And here's wishing you move through _surviving_ to _thriving_!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the appreciation and lesson learned, I will carefully format my future articles. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I sometimes try to imagine how differently things would have played out if this whole startup culture and the massive media buzz around it had not existed.

The oligopoly that big companies have on tech media has really only helped big companies ultimately. In spite of what the media says, I think that the past 10 years were the worst time in history to be an indie software developer.

Indie developers got absolutely trashed by VC-funded developers.

Passion has lost, money has won.

Pretty much everyone who started a passion-project over the past 10 years and who didn't manage to raise VC funding for it have probably been forced to give it up and are now working for some evil mega-corporation instead.

<comment><USER6> Or, as every millennial with a liberal arts education learned the hard way, it's _really fucking hard_ to contribute enough value to some organization for it to pay you a living these days, and passion rarely if ever comes within a hundred thousand miles of cutting it.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, I keep hearing that electricians and plumbers and similar jobs aren't running out of work anytime soon, and that you can make a very very good living out of these kinds of technical occupations, especially in a small community. Maybe it's not that hard to contribute value to an organization; just that the organizations we've built for ourselves are flawed to start with.

Perhaps the lesson here is that a lot of what we're doing is just wankery. Honestly, 90% of the startups you hear about don't meaningfully improve anyone's life in a way they couldn't do without. Monthly boxes full of crap? The new social network du jour? I've been in the tech industry for about a decade, I'm starting to have enough money that I could live a very comfortable life with a medium salary job, and I'm starting to think more and more about whether it's really worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is one of the most eye-opening experiences in the career of software development to be thrown into your first non-trivial codebase. Helpful colleagues provided, this will get you further than any course-based training, and much quicker. The condensed mixture of best-practice and this-had-to-work- quickly is very instructive.

</comment><comment><USER9> I tried to read it but the random bolding of words was too distracting to me.

<comment><USER10> It's not just the formatting, the content is also rather unimpressive. How can you not be able to find your way through a startup codebase if you came from a corporate job, where presumably you worked on much bigger projects?

My takeaway: Not every startup founder needs to write blog articles and post them to HN.

<comment><USER11> With that lack of respect, I doubt you've ever started a company, but if you have, you know it's one long string of running into things you've never done before.

Even strictly on the technical side that's usually true because there are so many unique aspects to every code base.

I choose to disagree, and thank Rahul for sharing real life experience, and hope that he and others continue to do so.

Anyone who has the balls to quit and start from nothing I assume has at least one interesting thing I can learn from their journey (not to exclude women with the colloquialism).

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry if my comment came across as lacking respect, I meant no disrespect towards the author as a person. I would like to apologize if I insulted the author in any way.

It's just that given the title (i.e. corp->startup) I expected something different from all the other, similar articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a great story because it's honest. Nothing in life is free and growth is messy and painful. You could have spent a lifetime at any steady gig and never seen anywhere near what you have seen in the past year. The good stuff is out here on the dangerous part of the limb. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> "good stuff is out here on the dangerous part" \- true words, and I believe if you keep on learning new stuff and making yourself better its not that dangerous anymore :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > You see in India, a general rule of the thumb defined by the society is that > you complete your college, get a job in some "renowned" company, and get > your life set. Though this mentality is changing in the current generation, > it is still prevalent in the older ones.

That's not necessarily a bad thing IMO. My father grew up in Bombay and he too resisted this 'mentality' and pursued his arts passion - <USER3> photography. Despite winning awards for his war photography (Indo-Pak War and the Indo-China War) he was struggling to make ends meet.

Eventually he put himself through engineering college studying nights and weekends and made it to US into a Masters Program and that's when he had me. He used to tell me this story in my 'coming of age' years, but he never forced me to take up Engineering or Medicine. Eventually, I ended up becoming a Computer Science major rather than pursue my Sports career ambition (more on that some other day). I am still thankful to my dad for instilling that thing you call 'Indian Mentality'. I know my father would've supported me if I had gone the Arts or Sports route, but I am so glad he showed me how the real world is. :)

<comment><USER14> I'm glad OP took the road less traveled. I'm getting pretty tired of people living up to their stereotypes.

<comment><USER13> Not disputing that. Very brave. But you never hear of the 95% + stories that end in tragedy / poverty. You only see the Glory Stories.

<comment><USER12> The ones that end in complete failure are the most valuable.

<comment><USER13> How so? Please explain.

<comment><USER15> From Wikipedia:

>>Survivorship bias, or survival bias, is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FanDuel founders to receive no cash from sale to Paddy Power Betfair - <AUTHOR> http://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/16333124.fanduel-founders-to-receive-no-cash-from-sale-to-paddy-power-betfair/ <comment><USER2> In some ways, this story sheds light on the _philosophical_ differences between private equity firms like KKR [1] and venture capital. At least when it comes to the fat parts of the Bell curve (and ignoring outliers), private equity investments tend to be premised on gaining control of the companies accepting investment and seek return on each investment. The fat part of the venture capital investment Bell curve (and ignoring outliers) is looking for fantastic returns from a few companies and tends not to seek control of the companies it invests in.

To put it another way, founder friendly private equity is not really a thing and venture capital is a philosophy that is rare outside Silicon Valley (though it has become more common in the last decade or so). Venture capital is playing long odds based on possible future value, private equity seeks to buy current assets at a discount. This sort of outcome would be a hit to a venture capital firm's reputation. It's not an unexpected outcome when private equity invests.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg_Kravis_Roberts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg_Kravis_Roberts)

<comment><USER3> > _private equity investments tend to be premised on gaining control of the > companies accepting investment and seek return on each investment_

Put another way, losing money on a PE deal is terrible. Losing money on fewer than half of one's VC investments is positively great. When FanDuel sold, it didn't have enough upside left to justify pure venture capital. It was a distressed sale whose alternative was closing down shop. In this timeline, employees got a few more years of cash salaries. On the net, they did better with KKR _et al_ than they would have without.

<comment><USER4> > In this timeline, employees got a few more years of cash salaries.

I think most of their employees would have easily been able to get jobs elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> That's really a toxic assumption to make.

<comment><USER6> What do you mean by that?

I'm not disagreeing with your statement, but "toxic" is a strong word and I'd like for you to elaborate.

<comment><USER7> Some people find it hard to get jobs even in a strong tech market, even if they are brilliant due to a variety of circumstances including random chance that is interviews or finding the position in the first place. Blanket statements like this gloss over the human hardships involved for some, and encourages general lack of empathy among our community.

<comment><USER8> Ironically, if the initial commenter had fleshed out their position like you did, I think the reception would have been much more empathetic.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, it's just I was on mobile. And as someone below pointed out, it was a pretty emotional response for me. Apologies for the unsubstantiated and harsh allegation.

I just really object to how casually OP waved off people losing their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> TL; DR FanDuel was sold for less than its liquidation preference, so common stock holders got nothing.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious - what happens to the current set of employees in this situation?

Presumably some of them have vested stock, and it just got zeroed out. If there's ever a good time to ragequit, this seems like the appropriate hour.

<comment><USER10> Stock is worth zero, but good employees will get retention packages to stick around with the new company.

<comment><USER11> _but good employees will get retention packages to stick around with the new company_

Maybe. Often acquisitions are just for the customer list. Betfair is located in London (and Dublin for tax purposes IIRC), it has no office in Scotland.

<comment><USER12> This acquisition was made to bolster their US strategy. CEO of FanDuel is becoming the head of the combined US entity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quick math here:

"the aggregate value being paid for FanDuel "is approximately $465m"."

"2014 and 2015 respectively led $70 million and $275m" (345 million)

"Mr King is expected to receive a payment of up to $11.3m as a result of the Paddy Power Betfair deal. The firm's current chief technology officer Robin Spira is due to make up to $3.5m, its legal officer Christian Genetski stands to make up to $6.2m, and it chief financial officer Andy Giancamilli is due to receive up to $5m" (Those add up to $26 m)

So it looks like the investors got just over 7% return on a venture investment. (Which is not an unusual ask for preferred shares).

<comment><USER2> The difference is that the returns of a venture capital fund come from the performance of a few portfolio companies. The returns of a private equity fund come from the performance of most companies. Private equity investors, like KKR here, are happy with the 7% premium return because they usually get it from each investment. The 7% return from liquidation preference would be a poor performing investment in a venture capital portfolio. Another way of looking at it is that the hit to reputation that a venture capital firm would take on this outcome isn't worth the 7% return at the expense of founders. The money is in the 10x to 100x deals.

<comment><USER14> 7% is a bad return when you risk-adjust this kind of deal.

So many ways it could go wrong. There are less risky ways to make . 7%, with a lot less work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a lot more here, including responses from the founders: [https://twitter.com/Suhail](https://twitter.com/Suhail)

Seems the founding CEO spent 10 years there and got nothing, but a new CEO of 6 months walked away with $11MM.

<comment><USER16> The new CEO had previously been CFO since 2014. If his actions turned an unsalable company into a company that could be sold for $465 million then I'd say he's probably worth the $11 million. And the founding CEO surely drew a reasonable salary despite the company making a loss.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, to be clear, I'm not saying anyone did anything wrong.

<comment><USER17> Possibly, but how many more of these deals will it take until the employee pool goes away permanently?

If you have the skills to be good at a startup, you can go to one of the big boys for a _lot_ of cash.

<comment><USER18> I think this says more about top end compensation, rather than startup compensation. The effect is going to be top end employees not really being early employees at startups, but that's not necessarily bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Stories like this seem to validate that people should choose real liquid equity of public companies over the paper equity of startups when considering employment.

<comment><USER20> If you like lower risk and lower gain, sure.

The most important thing is being educated. Every time this topic comes up on HN it appears that many people are unaware that liquidation preferences are a thing and many sales that are down-rounds have no money falling on common.

<comment><USER4> > If you like lower risk and lower gain, sure.

Given how much the big tech companies are paying though, especially when it comes to RSUs, I'm not sure this calculus makes sense anymore, _especially_ for early employees. Founders may do exceptionally well on many cases, but for most early employees at startups there really isn't that much potential upside in most cases, compared to the guaranteed earnings you can get at a top tech company.

<comment><USER21> My take is over the last 30 years the return for early employees has become progressively worse. To the point where the best case scenario you only break even vs a traditional job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just because you founded a company, it does not mean you get a cut of the final sale.

Starting a company is hard. You can struggle to make it profitable, never get there, and end up deeply in debt years later.

Fanduel became relevant mainly because of the marketing it was able to purchase without that it would have fallen by the wayside. You need lots of money for that.

The founders must have needed cash at a critical time so they must have had a reason to put their shares second to the shares of the equity firm.

It makes no sense to feel bad for them. They knew what they were doing and they got more time out of the business than they would have gotten otherwise.

Yes, it's not the greatest outcome but it really is,"just business."

<comment><USER23> Well yeah, legally - financially. Still, it doesn't seem "fair".

<comment><USER24> It may not seem 'fair', but the reality is that the company that the founders had equity in died in the 2015 round of financing. It was replaced with a company which needed to make a big bet (lots of ad spending) to stay strong in this particular market and the bet did not pay off. If you take $200M+ of financing then the people writing the check are expecting you to exit no lower than $1.5B -- ~$500M is, to use the parlance of this particular company, a single when the team needed a home run.

<comment><USER25> If it doesn't seem fair, it usually isn't. Maybe not even if founders knew this could happen and accepted it willingly (which I doubt they did). This is just the more powerful and experienced squeezing out the weaker ones to grab as much profit as possible.

<comment><USER24> It was completely fair if you actually look at the probable course of events. In 2014 FanDuel needed money, a lot of money. They had a valuation approaching a billion but were losing ground to DraftKings and as the space was heating up they needed to grow fast. What probably added urgency to this need to grow was that both companies were starting to court various teams and leagues for partnerships, and no one wants to partner with the also-ran. FanDuel picked up the NBA and a handful of NFL teams, but DraftKings got the NHL and NFL (and the NFLPA) so DraftKings was still pulling ahead. Then in late 2015 New York and other states put the brakes on the entire industry by declaring it illegal sports betting. FanDuel has just accepted a big chunk of money and now their ability to continue operating was suddenly called into question. I have no idea what choices they made at this point, but it is pretty clear they made the wrong ones. An attempted merger with DraftKings was called off when the DoJ indicated it had anti-trust worries, and since 2016 when various state laws were changes it seems DraftKings has tacked hard into becoming an online sports book with partnerships with various casinos (including several in New Jersey, which coincidentally is challenging the constitutionality of the national gambling restrictions in the Supreme Court) while since 2016 we see a whole lot of not much from FanDuel. My guess is that when the DraftKings merged died they started spending the war chest trying to buy growth with an eye towards an exit. This is also when new management stepped in, so it is possible that the investment round was a proxy investment in a potential DraftKings buyout and when that died the company had to start looking around for a fast exit.

And please spare us all the 'powerful' squeezing out the weaker BS; the FanDuel founders would have had incredibly high-priced legal counsel for an investment round of this size and knew exactly what the upside and downside was for every possible variation of success.

<comment><USER26> > (including several in New Jersey, which coincidentally is challenging the > constitutionality of the national gambling restrictions in the Supreme > Court)

An update on that: New Jersey won, 6-3, with Kagan joining the conservative wing of the court in this majority. The conclusion is that Congress and the states each have concurrent power to regulate sports gambling. Congress hadn't actually done that directly, but rather had banned states from legalizing it. That's been struck down.

Opinion analysis from the excellent SCOTUSblog: [http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/05/opinion-analysis- justices-...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/05/opinion-analysis-justices- strike-down-federal-sports-gambling-law/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I met Nigel + Leslie at a conference in 2010 I believe as they were starting to talk about raising funding and shifting to the US Markets.

Was always impressed with their growth, but it seems to be a good reminder to be wary of the cost of that growth.

</comment><comment><USER28> I suspect the founders took some cash off the table in prior rounds.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can someone familiar with the current funding climate say if standard deals at all levels involve liquidation preference nowadays? As in, if Im considering a seed-round, will there be any sophisticated investors doing no preference? Have talked to some investors in the scene (UK) but cannot seem to get a clear picture on this.

Is declining to accept a liquidation preference at seed level a red flag for any serious investor? What about subsequent rounds?

<comment><USER30> As an investor who invests at the Seed to Series A stage, I can tell you that a non-participating 1x liquidation preference is standard. I would refuse to invest in any deals that didn't include it, but won't be asking for anything more.

I think it's a pretty fair term. It prevents investors getting screwed by a sale for less than the round valuation, which could look quite attractive to a founder who could get their first million, screwing their investors in the process.

<comment><USER31> In the USA or UK ?

The UK tends to have stronger protection for employee shares -not that there haven't been some dodgy deals BAXI getting taken over by carpetbaggers and screwing the owners is a well know case in the UK.

And I have been on the receiving end of losing $1,000,000 at Poptel if only ICANT weren't such a bunch of ass%^&&S and the CoOp had been a bit more tech savvy - still water under the bridge.

Poptel was a worker co op btw so I had .5%

<comment><USER30> This is in the USA. While I've invested in a few foreign companies, I'm not familiar with how other countries deviate generally from SV norms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there any reason for founders to ever deal with these investors ever again?

Unless the investors were trying to retire, this seems incredibly short sighted.

<comment><USER33> From the perspective of a founder, I would be quite nervous about accepting an investment and drawing any kind of salary if the deal didn't include liquidation preferences. They are so standard (at least in North American tech) that if they were missing, I'd worry about their competence.

Structuring a deal without LPs would mean that founders could push for extremely early exits, cash out with modest (though life changing) returns and investors could lose most of their investments. Adding that kind of risk would make it even harder for first time founders to raise a round.

<comment><USER32> I posted this in another reply, but it's not the liquidation preferences themselves so much as the fact that it was the investors pushing for liquidation at a price point that precluded the founders from getting any money

<comment><USER34> Isn't that a bit like asking why they sold for $465M instead of demanding $930M? Presumably, they sold for the highest amount they could get. If the company falls off the hockey stick, there may be no better time than right now to sell it for what you can get.

<comment><USER32> $465M was right at the point where investors still got ROI while investors got nothing. It's not like they took a loss. If I were a founder I would be beyond pissed that the investors sold right in the band where they made money but not the founders and employees. Granted, I don't know the exact terms of their contract nor the full context

<comment><USER24> Alternative explanation is that the company was already sinking. It had dropped past the point where founders and employees were going to get anything out of the deal and was started to approach the point where investors would lose money. Investors stepped in at this point and dumped the company to prevent an even bigger loss. It is unlikely the investors were waiting around for the valuation to drop to this point for the sole purpose of screwing the other parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you're shocked or surprised by this, you should give Venture Deals, Third Edition: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson a read.

[https://smile.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer- Capita...](https://smile.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist- ebook/dp/B01M3UIVW3/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1531078548&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER36> "Under FanDuel's management incentive scheme, there has been a sixtyfold increase in total shares and a corresponding dilution in the rights to them. This distribution increases investors' ownership in the company from 54 to 71 percent of the 4.4 million total shares, The Herald reported."

Why would a merger blocked by the FTC trigger a clause like this?

From here : [https://www.legalsportsreport.com/14930/fanduel-equity- inves...](https://www.legalsportsreport.com/14930/fanduel-equity-investors/)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm sympathetic towards regular people people being legally scammed by nasty contracts, but how did that happen here?

This was not a clueless Joe being forced to sign a non-negotiable contract with a giant company. Presumably those clauses and investment contracts were negotiated between lawyers of both parties. Why did they accept such clauses?

<comment><USER3> > _Why did they accept such clauses?_

They're super standard and for the most part make sense.

Liquidation preferences say if your firm is worth $90 million, and I invest $10 million, I get my $10 million back before you ( _i.e._ the common stock holder) get anything. If the firm sells for $200 million, I get $20 million and doubled my investment. If the firm sells for $20 million, I get $10 million back and the common splits the remaining $10 million. If the firm sells for $9 million, I get it all. This makes sense because management (a) owns lots of common stock and (b) manages the company. As a risk-sharing measure, it makes sense for the people closest to the operations (and extracting a cash salary) to bear more downside risk.

Drag-along rights are the corporate equivalent of collective action clauses [1]. They exist to prevent a person who holds two percent of the company from preventing shareholders who own 60% from selling. (Approving mergers requires supermajorities in most jurisdictions.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_clause)

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Consult with a lawyer before negotiating fundraising terms._

<comment><USER38> You're describing participating preferred (that is, investors get paid out once as preferred and again after conversion to common). A liquidation preference is more common than participating, where the preferred investors get paid out (for example) at least 2X their investment (can be any multiplier, the highest I ever heard was 5X).

Most investments in Silicon Valley are clean deals, with a liquidation preference of 1X and nonparticipating preferred. Companies without a clean deal usually were too thirsty for unicorn status ($1B valuation) or had difficulty raising money.

<comment><USER3> > _You 're describing participating preferred_

I'm describing non-participating preferred, which as you point out is far more common.

Here's how it would go with participating preferred. As before, I invest $10 million at a $90 million pre-money valuation. If the firm sells for $200 million, first I get back my $10 million. Then I convert to common and get 10% of the remaining $190 million, or $19 million. Before I got $20 million (10% of $200 million). Now I get $29 million. (In the down round scenario, the outcome is the same.) Participating preferred is--nowadays--increasingly confined to distressed finance.

TL; DR Participating preferred gets to have its cake and eat it too. Non- participating preferred must choose between (a) its preference or (b) converting to common.

<comment><USER38> I misread your comment, thanks

These terms are by no means confined to distressed finance. Many unicorns got their "billion dollar" number using adverse terms such as these

Which explains this outcome, Fanduel was a "unicorn":

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4010443-fanduel-unicorn- bac...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4010443-fanduel-unicorn-back-fast- track)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Feels like the old maxim, learn from the mistakes of others. I wonder what they could have done differently? Seems like raising capital to promote the business was necessary due to competition, but ultimately the amount they raised was their trojan horse.

</comment><comment><USER40> I will reiterate my prior statements: if you take a job that pays you (in part) in stock, with no path to sell it pre-IPO, you should never accept anything other than the highest class of preferred stock. If the company is unwilling to give you that, then you should assume that their, or their VC, long term plan is to screw you.

At this point there have been enough cases where startups have clawed back the shares the issues, never gone public even when they've "made it" so you can't sell your stock, or in this case outright stolen from their employees by changing the company charter to retroactively devalue all the stock that they used to pay their employees.

[edit: charter is not spelled "charta". I'd swear I used to be able to spell...]

<comment><USER3> > _you should never accept anything other than the highest class of preferred > stock. If the company is unwilling to give you that, then you should assume > that their, or their VC, long term plan is to screw you_

If this is your mentality, don't work for a start-up.

Employees don't get preferred stock. _Founders_ don't get preferred stock. Your downside protection is your cash salary. Asking for preference as a non- capital contributing stakeholder conveys a fundamental mis-understanding of start-up financing's tradeoffs. (I would be highly suspect of a company throwing preferred stock at employees. It smells like something between incompetence and a scam.)

<comment><USER40> Based on this article alone anything other than preferred stock isn't viable. Unless executive have skin in the game - say no executive can make money off a sale of the company or a funding round unless all the employees who have been paid in stock have been given first rights to convert their stock before any member of the executive or founder team. This seems reasonable, as it prevents the founders or executive board from doing what happened here: theft.

<comment><USER41> Actually, if a company exits at some multiple of the money raised, the common stock will have some value. But it is true that once a company has raised more than 50 million or so things become less likely. That is why I advise people to value their options at zero in terms of financial plans.

<comment><USER42> Possibly--factors such as liquidation preferences > 1x, dividends due on change in control, and ordinary debt can still leave nothing for common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Quick question to those in the know, what payment is the founding team getting then, the one mentioned at the end? Is that some kind of executive termination pay?

<comment><USER44> That's not the founding team, that's the current executive team -- who are getting a "retention bonus". All the founding team seem to have left the company (but presumably still hold shares)

<comment><USER43> True so basically founding team didn't get anything after 10 yrs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Gee, not even $500k or a mil?

My heart breaks for them.

This is why VC's are called vultures. They claim they want you to have skin in the game, yet the founders get screwed. I know folks are thinking but the VCs are not making much, so what? Their entire game is to make it all up from another startup 100x which is why they take massive equity for $$$ invested.

<comment><USER46> Arguably, this is why this may be a foolish move for them. If the next 100xer avoids them based on a history of penny pinching on non 100x deals, they've been penny wise and pound foolish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Possibly worth noting that the actual story being sold here is essentially: _Scottish_ entrepreneurs screwed out of company by _non-Scotish_ investors.

</comment><comment><USER48> "Answer this survey question to continue reading the article".

1\. This is terrible UX and while I understand the need to make money this roadblock does nothing but increase bounce rate.

2\. "Continue" is pretty deceptive unless you count the article headline as part of the article.

3\. I assume this survey is trash but I am going to take it as an experiment then report back.

4\. I wish HN would develop a policy on articles that rely on subscriptions or other inputs to actually read. I don't think they should be banned but they should be paywall flagged so they can be turned off. Its better for comments (people actually read article) better for users not downloading data they can't use and then being disappointed they can't participate

Edit: it was a demographics survey for a giftcard drawing that would probably be sold onwards to a marketing firm if you provide an email. I guess it's not too much to ask for but I suspect many people will be unwilling to do it because they are skeptical, not interested enough or simply have no idea how long it will take and arent willing to invest the time.

<comment><USER49> The survey didn't come up for me. That kind of thing makes policies against this more difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I literally can't parse the semantics of this headline

<comment><USER51> FanDuel founders = The founders of FanDuel

To receive no cash = will not receive any money

From sale to = as a result of the sale of (FanDuel)

PaddyPower Betfair = to the company Betfair, which itself is owned by PaddyPower

The founders of FanDuel will not receive any money as a result of the sale of FanDuel to the company Betfair, which itself is owned by PaddyPower.

<comment><USER50> I figured it out, I was just making a lighthearted joke

<comment><USER51> I'm another victim of Poe's law.

<comment><USER50> I think I'm the victim, given how many downvotes I'm getting...

<comment><AUTHOR> As the writer of the headline, you get a pity upvote from me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> _THE PRIVATE equity backers of Scottish technology business FanDuel have completed their boardroom coup by ensuring that none of the firm's founders or employees will be able to share in the proceeds of its impending sale to Paddy Power Betfair._

That's slightly more people than just the founders. I'm sure the employees were expecting some compensation.

<comment><USER16> In a company which isn't generating a profit such as FanDuel employee equity is pretty much worthless. If you get offered equity in a startup you should value it at nothing unless the financials are very solid and the employees between them have a sizeable stake such that their interests are well represented at the board level.

<comment><USER52> I was commenting on a headline that could of added two extra words and conveyed that this isn't just a founder problem but something that has affected all of the employees also.</comment></comment></comment>


'Infinity Computer' Calculates Area Of Sierpinski Carpet Exactly  - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27656/?ref=rss <comment><USER2> I took a quick look at the arXiv paper behind this article, and it looks suspicious. I didn't take the time to be 100% sure it's vacuous, but it has many red flags, such as being published in "Chaos, Solitons & Fractals," a poorly-regarded journal. Another red flag is the existence of theinfinitycomputer.com.

Now for some real math related to this:

The Cantor Dust and the Sierpinski Carpet really do have area (measure) 0 in the traditional sense. The normal area of the Sierpinski Carpet, during construction, starts at 1 (a full unit square), and is multiplied by 8/9 per iteration. The iterations never stop, so the area goes to zero.

Its 2D measure is 0. There are infinitely many length-1 lines within the final product (any line with equation y=p for any constant p in [0, 1] with no 2's in it's base-3 representation), so it has infinite 1D measure.

So we can look for a dimension between 1 and 2 that measures it, which is where the Hausdorff dimension comes in.

If you double a unit (length-1) line, its measure doubles. If you double a unit square, its measure is multiplied by 4. If you double a unit cube, its measure is multiplied by 8. Here's a pattern we can generalize to non-integer dimensions!

We work from the idea that any measurable set S, when multiplied (scaled) by scalar r, will have its measure (eg length, surface area, volume) multiplied by r^d, where d is the dimension of S. Using m(S) for the measure of S, we can write:

m(S * r) = m(S) * r^d

which means

log [m(S * r) / m(S)] = d * log r

and then

d = log [m(S * r) / m(S)] / log r

This isn't the formal definition of the Hausdorff dimension, but it is the idea behind it, and provides the correct dimension for iterative fractals like the Sierpinski Carpet.

What is d for the Sierpinski Carpet? When we scale it up by 3, we get 8 copies of the original. So m(S * r) / m(S) = 8, and r = 3. So

d = log 8 / log 3 = 1.892789...

for this shape. If you wanted, you could use a factorial-based expression for the size of an n-dimensional sphere, along with the fractional version of !, the gamma function, and use those to get a reasonable number for the exact measure of such a shape.

One more thing. There are numbers of infinite size that you can perform meaningful arithmetic on. My personal favorite are the surreals, championed by John Conway about 40 years ago. This number class basically starts with the ordinals (so including many sizes of infinity) and builds real-number-like operations on those. If omega is the first infinite number, then you can talk about sqrt(omega) in the surreals, and it's a meaningful quantity larger than any finite number and smaller than omega, for example. There are also hyperreal numbers which offer similar freedom of expression.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article in Technology Review shows a disturbing lack of comprehension of how math works. It is not worth reading. As for the article itself[1], Wikipedia claims[2] that Fractal dimension has been studied since 1975 and Cantor's transfinite numbers[3] since the late 1800's. Perhaps someone else can find insights in this paper, but my own impression is that the authors have not advanced the field, but rather have failed to understand the basics of the field.

[1] <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.3150v1.pdf> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_dimension> [3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfinite_number>

<comment><USER4> The linked paper on the arXiv is pretty bad. The idea as it stands appears to be very mundane -- that we define some new number, which he calls ① and I'll call m, to denote the size of the natural numbers N = {0, 1, 2, ...}. Then m² is the cardinality of N × N, you see. And we could say things like m + 1 > m, surely, and everything would be peachy keen.

Well, not so fast. That sort of mathematics is fraught with difficulty. So, for example, the set of pairs of natural numbers is called N² = {(0, 0), (1, 0), (0, 1), (2, 0), ...}. How many of those are there? The arXiv paper very distinctly says that there are m² of these numbers. In doing so he's apparently unaware of the huge breakthrough that Hilbert made: that in a deep sense, there are only m of them. For every pair, you can associate a number. It's not even hard, the function is:

        def n(x, y):
            return (x + y + 1)*(x + y)/2 + y

It's only a little tougher to invert this mapping, which is not strictly necessary, but is always nice:

        from math import sqrt
        def pair(n):
            row = int(0.5 * (sqrt(1 + 8*n) - 1))
            col = n - row * (row + 1)/2
            return (row - col, col)

Mind you, that's just with examples that he _uses_. The whole mathematics is poorly defined. Supposing that you remove one element, like the number 0, from the natural numbers, he wants to say that there are m - 1 numbers in the set {1, 2, 3, 4, ...}. And if I take away 2, then presumably there are m - 2. And if I remove 2n for each n in N, I have performed m 'remove' operations, and you would presumably say that the set {1, 3, 5, 7, ...} has m - m elements, no? And even if you say that the resulting set of odd numbers has a size "something like" m/2, how do you know it's not m/2 + 1 or m/2 - 1? Suppose we define the sum of all the odd numbers up to the n'th one as {1, 1+3, 1+3+5, 1+3+5+7, ...} -- this surely has m/2 elements, correct? No -- those sums are {1, 4, 9, 16, ...} and this has sqrt(m) - 1 elements. Wha...? Does sqrt(m) even exist? His other publications suggest that he usually expands calculations in terms of (positive/negative) integer powers of m; there is little discussion about fractional powers, but presumably they must exist.

In short, we must accept that the mathematics of m has no correspondence (or only ad-hoc after-the-fact correspondence) to the natural numbers M. When you do this and uncouple the two, you'll probably discover that his "Infinity computer" is just a normal computer which can represent polynomials, and his ① is just the polynomial's 'x'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> First line:

> Mathematicians have never been comfortable handling infinities...

I stopped reading there, since that is badly false.

</comment><comment><USER6> Huh. This is not my field, so I am hesitant to comment in detail. However, a few things quickly strike me as troubling about the original paper:

* The work is based on "a new applied point of view on infinite and infinitesimal numbers", the cited source of which is six papers by the same author as the current one. Apparently, nobody else has chosen to work on it.

* The postulates behind this method include the statement that "We shall not tell what are the mathematical objects we deal with", and because of this, "such concepts as bijection, numerable and continuum sets, cardinal and ordinal numbers cannot be used in this paper". In other words, the author is knowingly setting aside most of what I consider to be the essential features of mathematics.

* I have serious doubts that results or concepts that boil down to "infinity minus three" or "infinity times 8/9" would prove to be robust if you considered different infinite sequences with the same limit. I haven't looked up the author's other papers on the subject, but I don't see any evidence that he has addressed this issue.

* This paper (and several of the earlier ones) was apparently published in the journal "Chaos, Solitons, & Fractals" in a 2009 volume. You may recognize that title from recent discussions of Elsevier: a scandal unfolded in 2008-9 where the journal's editor, El Naschie, was found to have published hundreds of his own papers (whose merit has been questioned) and accused of poor editorial standards.[1] It may or may not be meaningful that the current paper's first four references are all to El Naschie's work.

In short, my impression is that this paper is based on decidedly non- mainstream mathematics, and I see no reason to be excited about its claims or conclusions.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Chaos.2C_Solitons_.26_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Chaos.2C_Solitons_.26_Fractals) [http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/11/chaos-solitons- and-...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/11/chaos-solitons-and-self- promotion.html) [http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/that-hard-to- find...](http://elnaschiewatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/that-hard-to-find-baez- material.html) (The archived posts by Baez here are the point; I know nothing about this site itself.)

</comment><comment><USER7> The article on Arxiv makes no sense, it uses ill-defined notions, methods used there are contradictory, and most of the references it gives are from "Chaos, solitons and fractals" journal, which many professional mathematicians consider to be a joke.

Mathematicians are great at handling infinities -- it just turns out that Lebesgue's measure is not usefyl when studying fractals. That's why other notions were introduced, like for instance Hausdorff dimension.

</comment><comment><USER8> so this guy claims he "discovered" Cantor's alef-null?

article is full of wrong statements beginning with the very first one.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if this is exactly like aleph-null.

> Because it is governed by the other axioms of real numbers, grossone behaves > much like one too. So it's possible to multiply grossone, divide it, add to > it and subtract from it, just as is possible with other real numbers

How much is aleph-null minus aleph-null? How much elements have set that is difference of two sets with aleph-null size? Can be anything.

If they solved this somehow, it's huge. But I can't imagine how they did it, and article had not explained it.

<comment><USER8> there is no way to _solve_ it because it's not a problem. it's a set of not- defined behaviors by defining which in regular ways you get absurd results. if he managed to define them in a way which doesn't produce nonsense and still useful for solving some real problems - it's cool. but i still don't see the problem itself - mathematicians know how to handle fractals and calculate their properties for decades.</comment></comment></comment>


No playtime for Toys R Us, shuts 200 more stores - <AUTHOR> https://news.alphastreet.com/no-playtime-for-toys-r-us-shuts-200-more-stores/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately it was not surprise to anyone. 95% of the toys that had could be purchased through either Walmart.com or Amazon.com. The only thing you really went there for what the super limited addition Barbie / Star Wars toy. No one goes for Jeffery branded bike anymore.

They stopped most advertising. Their website is 2 generations behind. The loyality program is laughable. The POS's are slow. ToysRUs is KMart.

Can they make a come back? Yes, but they need to either become the Big Lots of toys or go highly specialized. Also maybe take a lesson from the early days of Radio Shack (1962 era of Tandy Corporation).

To quote from Wikipedia:

Tandy closed Radio Shack's unprofitable mail-order business, ended credit purchases and eliminated many top management positions, keeping the salespeople, merchandisers and advertisers. The number of items carried was cut from 40,000 to 2,500, as Tandy sought to "identify the 20% that represents 80% of the sales" and replace Radio Shack's handful of large stores with many "little holes in the wall", large numbers of rented locations which were easier to close and re-open elsewhere if one location didn't work out. Private-label brands from lower-cost manufacturers displaced name brands to raise Radio Shack profit margins; non-electronic lines from go-carts to musical instruments were abandoned entirely.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack#Tandy_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack#Tandy_Corporation)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it has more to do with the vultures at Bain Capital and Vornado pillaging the company

[http://inthesetimes.com/article/20600/how-private-equity- kil...](http://inthesetimes.com/article/20600/how-private-equity-killed-toys- r-us)

<comment><USER4> This. It was pillaged by corporate raiders. Bain Capital and Vornado killed toys r us and not market conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Makes sense. They don't want to be a free display for Amazon.</comment>


Make Demo Videos Great Again - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/buglife/make-demo-videos-great-again-d369e46c0f15 <comment><USER2> i thought this was going to be something about Trump but it's a very well done video ad promoting an SDK ios devs can include in their project. But rather than being dry or boring, it's produced hollywood style with BIG voices and BIG acting. i.e. imagine football players using xcode need a commerial like this that will actually get their attention. It's unusual because nerds that use xcode usually don't get marketed to like football players do. TLDR; the ad asumes their audience is cool where other demo videos kinda assume hey we're all nerds here so lets get to the point.</comment>


Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2011/sep/18-your-brain-knows-lot-more-than-you-realize/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

<comment><AUTHOR> Reading this article made me think of this: <http://paulgraham.com/top.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3209601></comment>


Startup Quote: Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder, GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/1370665647

<comment><AUTHOR> Do things that allow you to win and that allow someone else to win. It is not a zero-sum game.

\- Tom Preston-Werner (@mojombo)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an extension to block sellers on Amazon? - <AUTHOR> I was thinking today it would be nice to block product pages or have a warning banner appear on the page if the seller has a large amount of fake reviews or many recent reviews that are not good.<p>I was looking at buying a print off Amazon today and just before checking out I remembered to run it through fakespot. Even though everything looked good to me, the ASIN I was looking up got an F grade on reviews. It'd be nice to just avoid sellers entirely who use fake reviews. <comment><USER2> I also think that the whole profitable business model could be built that is entirely based on presenting clear and transparent view on amazon sellers and products.

Amazon is clearly capable yet unwilling to eliminate fraudulent sellers and fake reviews from it's platform and third party solution is long overdue.

<comment><USER3> I think the idea is great, but doesn't it have the same potential problem as making apps involving Twitter's API?

<comment><USER4> This is probably better as you aren't relying on Amazon's API. Scrape every product, get all the sellers, then start flagging each seller as valid or not. Amazon won't really be able to shut you down. Even better is once the extension runs on the users computer, you will be able to scrape using your customers which makes it harder to block. This looks like a great idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should write one. Most people don't perceive the problem to the extent you perceive it. Traction and customer acquisition will be very hard, so it depends on if you can make it worth your time.

Many fake reviewees engage in the practice not because they're not shipping product as agreed, but because they perceive cheating as necessary. You'll also have to handle the edge cases of when the only seller for an item is disreputable (or faux-reputable).</comment>


Anonymous hackers shut down the web sites of some central banks - <AUTHOR> http://www.anonews.co/anonymous-hackers-shut-down-federal-reserve-bank/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like they shut down the _web sites_ of some central banks, which is a far cry from shutting down the banks themselves. The infrastructure for their public-facing web sites is almost certainly completely separate from their transaction-processing systems.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. As usual, it's some overhyped BS about a publicity stunt. These banks make their money on investments, loans, transaction fees, and non-transaction fees. Mainly. They didn't disrupt any of that.

Instead, some working to middle class IT people were running around panicking about what to do given their management didn't care about DDOS mitigation. Past that, nothing happened, banks kept making money, and rich are still rich while probably never hearing about this. Stuff like this from Anonymous actually shows how resilient elites are despite activists with more weapons and tech than ever. Quite the opposite of their goal.

Note: If they disagree, they can feel free to bring all the Goldman and government crooks to justice for 2008. The names of certainly guilty parties are known. Let them use their activist and hacking power to put Goldman's elites in bankruptcy and stock at nothing. I predict they'll stay rich and working hard on next, profitable crisis. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure I like the idea of a vigilante groups having a large influence on society any more than large banks.

</comment><comment><USER5> Since this only took down websites, it'll be interesting to see how this affects the price of bitcoin...

<comment><USER6> News announced shortly after May 16 22:00 UTC

Price pre-announcement: $454.48 USD

Price 2 hours after announcement: $453.64 USD

Change in price: -$0.84

Price difference: -0.0018%

So.. Not much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fsociety.</comment>