Ask HN: Raising money for the first time, any tips? - <AUTHOR> hey guys so I have narrowed it down to 3 or 4 domains with functional MVP. I had about 10 but I really asked is this a vitamin or a painkiller and was able to narrow it down to a 3.
I want to raise money to hire 1 engineer to polish up the MVP and be the go to guy for changes.
I want a sales guy who will work on base salary and 15% comission.
I want a marketing guy who will spin content and accountable for inbound lead generation.
I am located in Vancouver, BC. Here's why I think Vancouver is a great place to start, #1 salary is super cheap because of the exchange rate. I don't need a 100x engineer. I already laid down the bare paths and need a few more bodies to help maintain the ship.
So about how much I need to raise I'm thinking to cover salary:
1 intermediate engineer = $65,000 CAD / year = $48,888 USD / year.
1 sales guy + SDR intern ($10.25 cad/hr minimum wage in BC) = $45,000 CAD / year + 15% comission cap + $21,320 CAD / year for SDR intern = 66,320 CAD / year = $49,890 USD / year.
1 marketing guy = $35,000 CAD / year = $26,000 USD / year.
So all together salary burn rate is $124,778 USD / year.
$10,398 USD / month + rent + supplies = $12,398 USD / month.
So roughly 13k USD / month to upkeep with 1 year of runway will be $156,000 USD. I want to target 1 million USD in sales in that period.
These are all B2B SaaS products that I've been able to spin off from my main SaaS that I've been working on for 2+ years alone.
No free plans, no $19.99/month, charge money and earn revenue from day 1.
Is this a realistic figure to raise in the beginning? What local meetups should you attend? Do you think it's wise to raise money from your own network instead?
Basically I'm looking to see if anyone is interested in going naked call on an option that expires in 1 year without time decay.
firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> > 1 intermediate engineer = $65,000 CAD / year = $48,888 USD / year

The gross annual amount of an employee's base salary is very different than the cost of hiring an employee with said base salary. I know CA != US, but payroll taxes, benefits, retirement contributions, unemployment and disability insurance, etc can't be that alien of a concept. Or is it? In the US estimate 130%-160% of the salary for base employment. Or is circa 30k for an intermediate engineer normal in Vancouver? In which case what would the entry level position make?

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a similar idea as you originally with my startup: build a functional MVP, launch with beta testers, recruit co-founders, raise seed capital, and then (finally) start to focus on growth.

I wasted probably six months going down blind alleys with this approach. Here are some of the lessons I learned:

1) A small group of beta testers will not give your product the time and attention you need to find product-market fit.

2) High quality collaborators, willing to devote all their spare waking hours to your vision, are extremely hard to find (and even harder to get up-to- speed). Especially on a budget. You'll probably see several promising co- founders come and go before you find a good match.

3) Even if you have a really sexy MVP and a great team, it's nearly impossible to fundraise until you can point to a handful of satisfied early customers. You might think you can raise $100k (chump change!) to fund your first six months of operations, but you're probably wrong about that.

The only thing you should be doing right now is getting your product into as many customers' hands as possible. In your post, you say you plan to "charge money and earn revenue from day 1".

Today is day 1. Go get some customers!

<comment><AUTHOR> My comments are being throttled so I have to be picky to which I reply and I think this comment is excellent since it reflects real world case.

Yeah my previous SaaS I launched with beta testers two years ago was a totally misplaced end user targetting. In an effort to "capture" all opportunities I ended up building everything to compete on features alone which increased price sensitivity and led to bloat which made changes harder.

My experience from this was to start from top to bottom, not starting with code. Picking your market, knowing who is using your product and finding copies of him, I tried to do this on my own last year but developing product, website, documentation, tutorial videos, writing blog posts, sales quickly was way more than I can chew.

It's from this point where I clearly know that I focused on the entirely wrong group of customers. _It was the naive belief that I could solve business problems with engineering and taking on more technical debt_ that ultimately led me to feeling burnt out (as you will see from my previous submissions).

1) I totally agree. Beta testers <<<<< paying customer. I've been there trying to aimless wonder the desert in hopes of finding water. It's so simple but I get it now after failing hard for a long time: "Be where your customers can pay you today not tomorrow or when this feature is ready".

2) Ironically this is where I feel the highest confidence but also where I take most caution. You don't know someone until you've worked with them for a while and sometimes I have misplaced expectations....they may not love your product, and not taking it personally....finding people would be quite hard as well and I think that in Vancouver there's a lot less people just striking out doing or hacking things on their own compared to SF probably.

3) 100% agreed.

> Today is day 1. Go get some customers!

I need to figure out how to get paid for the MVP and find people who will do that.

<comment><USER4> I'm not great at following this advice myself, but most of what I've read seems to indicate that the best way to actually find product market fit is to talk to potential customers and ask them non-leading questions about what their problems really are, rather than just trying to figure it out in your head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Forget about raising money right now. Build shit fast. Ship ship ship ship ship ship ship.

Read "The Lean Startup":

[http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs- Continuous-...](http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous- Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457387124&sr=8-1&keywords=lean+startup)

</comment><comment><USER6> Does the main SaaS make money? Use that money to get your first 10 sales. Do annual deals for cash-flow.

If someone told me that they will make $1mio in sales on a $156k investment, and they wanted that investment from me (not just do it themselves), I would think it was some kind of scam.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could be of more help, but I'm the wrong person to ask. On the bright side, the right people to ask (like YC partners) often hold "Office Hours" to take and answer questions.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=office%20hours&sort=byDate&dat...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=office%20hours&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER8> The salary for a marketing person is on the low side IMO. With rent prices being some of the highest in the world, can you even live in Vancouver for $35,000 CAD?

</comment><comment><USER9> Realistically I'd say double or triple your expense estimate. You are low- balling yourself. Everything takes much longer and costs more than you expect.

</comment><comment><USER10> You should probably put some money aside for tools and marketing budget. You probably need a server somewhere and a domain name. Marketing almost certainly needs an advertising budget.

</comment><comment><USER11> You're being incredibly optimistic with all of your estimates here. If you are looking at 3 employees your burn rate is going to be much closer to $300k.

</comment><comment><USER12> wow. around here (northeast US near Boston) you're lucky to get one decent guy for 125K.</comment>


Security expert calls out Costco and other retailers on bag searches - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/costco-retailer-bag-searches-1.5185488 <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that the basis of this story wasn't mostly focused on the fact that Costco is _different_ than other retailers, in that as part of your membership agreement (anyone who shops at Costco is a member, and, in theory (and usually practice) must provide evidence of their membership before entering), have to agree to allow a bag and receipt search on exit.

For normal retailers, no such agreement exists, and in the 20+ years of dealing with them, I've never once stopped at the courtesy check, and never once been called on it.

<comment><USER3> Not everyone who shops at Costco is a member. You can shop at their pharmacy without joining.

<comment><USER4> In a lot of locations you can also buy alcohol without a membership.

<comment><USER5> I can attest that's the case here in Indiana.

I usually buy alcohol from Sam's Club, since in Indiana its illegal to put any preconditions on an alcohol license, other than what is required by state law (21, not being drunk, etc). There's even signs over the Sams alcohol aisles stating state law.

The door guards aren't told of this, and will make you think that you _must_ be a member of Sams to even enter the store. My opinion: if they want to maintain exclusivity of a 'walmart', they can ditch the alcohol. Otherwise, follow the law.

Where I'm from, Costco is 1.2 hours away if no traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twice I've had a bad experience shopping or at the check-out stand, and decided I'd had enough of a particular store so I just kept walking past the "courtesy" check.

Nobody's ever protested or followed me. If they did, I'd tell them that I paid for my stuff and my business with their store is complete.

If some day someone presses the point, I hope I'll have the courage to keep on walking and let them try to send the police to my house to enforce some kind of receipt check. I'm sure the police will get right on that.

<comment><USER7> I had some kid stop me, after I'd checked out at a Target. He wanted to see my receipt and I asked him why. He couldn't really provide an answer without accusing me of being a thief. I not-so-politely asked him if he was accusing me of something and let him know that of he wasn't, he needed to walk away. My wife was angry, embarrassed and proud. Our daughter was barely a year old, so she won't remember but this is how we'll teach her to always handle situations like this. Don't let people treat you like a criminal.

<comment><USER8> Best Buy stations people near the exits to check receipts, as does Wal-Mart with greeters, and on busy shopping days Best Buy has been known to post signs saying all receipts will be checked and bags provided at the exits. I don't see it as that much of an inconvenience to stand in a line with everyone else as the receipt and items are checked one last time.

I can't say it's effective at catching problems but it probably acts as a good deterrent on a very busy, crowded day... presumably they're trying to prevent someone from skipping the cash registers on their way out...

Canadian Tire, now there's a terrible shopping experience, security gates make it nearly impossible to leave without buying something and they still check your receipts as you leave.

<comment><USER9> > I don't see it as that much of an inconvenience to stand in a line with > everyone else as the receipt and items are checked one last time.

It violates your legal rights though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've always felt like a criminal when I leave Costco. I am forced under threat of membership cancellation to show my receipt, cart contents, and bag contents to an employee.

<comment><USER10> There have been stories about Costco exit check not being about theft at all, it's mostly about checking for possible errors or fraud on the part of the cashier

<comment><USER11> Back when Costco accepted Discover and allowed cash-over on purchases, when I took cash over, I would be asked by the receipt-checker, "did you get your $30?". On two separate occasions, I had in fact forgotten. One of those, I was given the missing cash immediately without question. The other time, the manager was skeptical but agreed to close and count the drawer, and I received the $30 immediately after that process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For Costco (in the US) and every other store I just walk past the guards. If they say something, I just say "no thanks". I decided I'd be happy to just stand there while they call their manager and then the real police, but I've never had too. IANAL but they can't detain you if they don't see a crime, much like a citizen's arrest. In any case if you are calm and polite the downside isn't that bad for you.

My guess is they are just counting on customers trying to be nice.

From FindLaw:

"Though these laws vary, store owners and their employees generally are allowed to detain an individual when they have probable cause to suspect shoplifting. However, any such detention of a suspected shoplifter must be reasonable in length and manner. Detentions without probable cause, for an unreasonable amount of time, or in an unreasonable manner may leave the store open to liability for false imprisonment and possibly other claims.

What constitutes probable cause to suspect shoplifting comes down to case by case specifics. Mere suspicion typically will not suffice. Most states require that the store or its employees have evidence which would lead a reasonable person to believe that shoplifting had occurred or was in progress. If the store bases its detention of a suspected shoplifter on information from a non- employee informer, that informer must have a reasonable basis for suspecting shoplifting." [1]

[1] [https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal- charges/shoplifting.ht...](https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal- charges/shoplifting.html)

<comment><USER13> The risk at Costco isn't them detaining or calling the police, the risk is revoking your membership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The official story is the the cart is compared with the receipt to catch errors more than shoplifting [1]. As far as I can remember ever seeing, Seattle Costcos just look in the cart, they don't search personal bags.

[1] [https://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Costco-exit- greeters-c...](https://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Costco-exit-greeters- check-receipts-door-13405328.php)

</comment><comment><USER6> FTA: "the fact that retailers, by law, aren't allowed to search customers' bags."

This is a Canadian story. Does anyone know if this is also true elsewhere?

<comment><USER15> I'm fairly certain that's the case in most of the US. I know when I worked retail (over a decade ago) we were specifically instructed that if someone didn't stop to do nothing. The worst case was to follow them and get a license plate number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the United states this has been an issue at Frys electronics and circuit city, but it really boils down to these two facts:

\- once you pay, and have a receipt, it is _your_ property.

\- guards can only do one of two things: 1. wave you by and tell you to have a nice day or 2. Detain you for shoplifting.

number 2 gets pretty ugly. If the "loss prevention officer" as theyre called has video evidence of you stealing, or can prove from witness that you are in possession of stolen property, they will detain you in standard police style handcuffs and march you to the office. only the police can legally remove the handcuffs at this point.

now, if you _havent_ stolen anything, and you are detained, this is unlawful imprisonment. You hire a lawyer, you go to court, and you count your settlement cash or push the company to do the unthinkable...not issue a public apology, but admit wrongdoing.

most companies have shied away from this kind of strongman tactic of inspecting bags for one reason. its not because customers dont like it, its because it can put the business at enormous financial and shareholder risk if it backfires for any reason.

<comment><USER17> ...and 3. 86 you.

The proportion of innocent people who will turn down a bag check if it means they can't return to a local retailer I estimate at 0.1%. For any right not to be searched to be meaningful, I'd have to be a right not to habe a search requested of you.

Especially since the outcome of refusing a search will likely be a policeman searching you in the parking lot, or on the side of the road during your walk/drive home.

<comment><USER18> I have refused such a check at Walmart and the result was an employee trying to physically obstruct my exit from the store, accusing me of stealing, and calling me rude names. I left anyway. No cops. No attempt to ban me from the store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the past purchase receipt check isn't about the shopper, it's about the person at the register. It is a check to be sure that, at a cursory level, everything was charged, and also to ensure that you have goods you paid for. In electronics stores this was one method of handling inventory shrinkage on expensive components.

Costco has never made me feel as if I did something wrong, and they found that I'd forgotten to pick up something from the cage at the service desk.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am fanatically opposed to random, suspicionless searches of personal property, whether psysical items or data. I don't find Costco offensive. They make it clear up front that's how it is and they search everyone rather than discriminating. Also, there are no bags, you take your items out in full view in an open cart, and after you leave you can do as you please. I don't have to shop there. Really, the confirmation of items leaving is just part of the standard checkout process.

Superstore has a no bag policy. Their security may stop you and demand you check your bag. They accept no liability for losing it. Due to their lack of offer to accept that liability I've declined to enter their store. I have no problem with it because we both have our own terms and if they aren't mutually acceptable we don't have to do business.

<comment><USER21> Do you have to comply if Superstore security asks to check your bag? Seems like the only authority they really have legally is to kick you out of the store, but I don't know that much about the laws surrounding that.

<comment><USER18> If you want to shop there, yes. They can deny you entry if you want to bring something inside that they don't want in their store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> not many comments yet, but i suppose people don't understand the point of the bag search isn't to reduce customer shoplifting, it's to prevent employee theft. employees not ringing items is a super trivial way inventory shrinks.

it's sad that the pain is borne by the customer. but, on the bright side, it means prices are lower than they would be otherwise.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. I used to work in a business that was peripherally related to the security industry, and the conventional wisdom was that shoplifting was typically either an inside job, or an inside job with a customer as a confederate. Most of the security products (20+ years ago) were oriented towards monitoring employees, such as a gadget that superimposed the register transactions on the security video tape.

That's why big stores have the highest concentration of security cameras above the checkout lanes, exactly where a customer is least likely to try and hide something.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tablo, Publish in eBook and paperback to nearly every shop in the world - <AUTHOR> https://tablo.io <comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/grandmagifs/status/986890684891185152?s=...](https://twitter.com/grandmagifs/status/986890684891185152?s=20)

Thought I'd gif-fy your headline.</comment>


Meet the Swarm Skeletons - <AUTHOR> http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MUfYjP78sB4J:https://medium.com/%40Swarm/meet-the-swarm-skeletons-83fb0627f438+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

<comment><AUTHOR> Poster took it down after being called out for disparaging comments about Belgians and his co-founder (and "pretty boys").</comment>


The Mongoliad App: Neal Stephenson's Novel of the Future? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1652609/mongoliad-neal-stephenson-bear-galland-novel-app-social-media-writer-writing <comment><USER2>
        ... possibly even more of a transformation than
        paper-based magazine publishers are attempting as
        they rejig their content models towards the iPad.
        Words like "para-narrative," "nontextual," and
        "extra-narrative" certainly suggest this.

I hope it's a little more thought-out and realized than the last hypertext revolution.

Rather than try to tell everyone how cool and game-changing this is supposed to be, they should just do what they're going to do and let people find out (or not) for themselves.

<comment><USER3> Dude, if it's 1/10th as mindblowing as plain-text Anathem, I am first in line to buy this thing.

The downside is that even if it is transformative, that only tells us one thing: that Neal Stephenson can do this. It certainly doesn't tell us the average magazine publisher can carry it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Those with iPads... are there other examples of apps with immersive media like this that you've discovered? I'm extremely curious whether the iPad/tablet form factor is going to enable a completely new medium or if it will (like the kindle) just translate an old medium with some bells and whistles?

</comment><comment><USER5> Man, so many of his tech imaginings are getting implemented.

And by so many, I mean two. Still, it's pretty impressive. (The first being the virtual world in Snow Crash, from which Second Life was based.)</comment>


Racket: Lisp for Learning - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/795385/d7f8fe54132b2013/ <comment><USER2> Carmack is a huge fan of Racket. He was going to use it as the scripting language for VR until the Oculus execs made him use JavaScript instead (boooooo)

[https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/807797812700348416](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/807797812700348416)

<comment><USER3> Last week I tried writing a new Love2d mode for Emacs in Emacs Lisp, but it was on Windows so my muscle memory for Paredit wasn't helpful. Editing s-expressions is a nightmare without some kind of automatic help. Last night I wrote the same plugin for VS Code which used JavaScript, and naturally it was effortless. It got me thinking about how s-expressions are inherently hostile to non-customized setups, whereas JavaScript just uses arrow keys.

A former employer was led by huge Clojure fans, who requested that the backend be Clojure, and highly encouraged me to use ClojureScript and something like Reagent for the front-end, which I recently noticed that they finished after my departure. But the more I think about it, the more I can't think of a single feature of ClojureScript that's inherently better than JavaScript, whereas s-expressions are inherently hostile and also have no real-world benefits. JavaScript has destructuring, closures, a flexible module system, object/array spread, basically every syntactical feature Clojure has, but without the s-expressions.

The commonly touted benefit of s-expressions is homoiconicity (code is data), which lets the developer customize the language via macros without needing to wait on the compiler/interpreter authors. But we have this exact same benefit in JavaScript with compilers like Babel. Maybe it's pushed onto another layer of development, but it's in no way less legitimate or useful. The slight benefit you get by being able to do this transformation _at runtime_ is negated by the inconvenience of s-expressions. (Although at first glance, it seems like we could use a better Babel API that lets us transform our code more conveniently. But I think they're working on that?)

The main other benefit I commonly see from people using Clojure or ClojureScript is _live development_. I saw technomancy made some blog posts about how he used Fennel (a Lisp that compiles to Lua) to do live-coding stuff in Love2d. I was impressed, until I realized that _none of these features were specific to Lisp_. So I borrowed the same underlying concept he utilized, and started to make a really cool Love2d live development thing just like he had, but in pure Lua.

Now I have the ability to press Cmd-E in VS Code while editing some Lua file, and if I have any code selected, it'll be sent to the live Lovd2d game that's running, to be eval'd, and if there's no selection, the whole current file will be sent. It's the coolest setup ever, almost identical to the awesome setup I had with CIDER + Clojure + Emacs, but without Emacs or s-expressions.

<comment><USER4> I've also came upon Clojure after investing much time in Lua/Love2d, but my takeaways are different from yours.

I enjoyed Lua's simplicity, portability and execution speed. It shares much of JS strengths, with fewer quirks. I was productive after a weekend of reading Programming in Lua book.

Clojure took some more time because I had to unlearn some habits. It's for the best, I think. It's not just about homoiconicity and REPL. In Clojure it's hard to do the wrong thing, compared to JS or Lua. The language makes it easy to isolate a small piece of functionality, develop and test it, and then and put it together into coherent whole. Clojure may be harder to learn, but the cognitive load is smaller and it scales better for large projects.

Persistent data structures are also huge step forward. They eliminate whole class of errors and allow for traceability and reproducibility.

As for s-expressions, yes, they can be a nuisance in editor without proper support. I'm getting by with SublimeText + zprint auto-formater. For REPL I found no better than Atom's proto-repl. Also I hated Lua's "if..then..else..end" and other verbose constructs. I'd say s-expressions are more consistent and compose better. Still, your frustration is familiar to me.

<comment><USER5> Have you seen/tried fennel[1] or Urn[2] ?

[1] [https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel](https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel)

[2] [https://urn-lang.com/](https://urn-lang.com/)

<comment><USER4> I've evaluated both (and also lumen) briefly. I disliked the half-way approach that doesn't isolate Lua's messy state handling from lisp model.

Clojure also interacts with Java, but it feels like CLojure is the host that runs Java methods as needed. The separation is clean and you know exactly when you are crossing the boundary into stateful territory.

I see the value of those languages for lispers wanting to script the platforms where Lua can run, but not really as a core language for modelling your domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Racket is a mixed bag for me.

I've found a little quirks in the standard library, with simple fixes, but annoying. Stuff like decimal->string (?) producing odd output. (It was a tiny fix on my end, but it's a little subjective, maybe the behavior was intended) Not a big deal, but maybe a little impediment for learners compared to python.

The article mentions Scribble, which I use as a static site generator for a a page with a leader board for EDH games (and maybe adding 9 ball lol). Some small CSS changes made it OK for cell phones (basic changes to make it responsive so it's ugly but readable), but as is it sucks, and the maintainers have no interest in changing that.

Dr. Racket is unfortunate. If I remember correctly it has a tabbed interface, but right clicking on the tabs does not bring up a menu, and the tabs might not have close buttons either? It's not bad, but inferior to any dedicated editor.

OTOH, I keep using it for little tasks, I like the language, and I seem to be one of the few people who are excited about the Racket2 syntax, so I think I will stick with it. I had been considering switching my lisp use to clojure.

<comment><USER7> Apparently we've had very different experiences.

\- Yes, there are some quirks in the standard library, but overall most of it seems very well designed. Having spent a bunch of time in Python, which also has a standard library with I'd argue even _more_ quirks. But most Racket libraries seem very carefully thought out IME; I'm not sure that something this old can not have some weird oddities though. \- We used DrRacket to teach a class to students who had never programmed before. What's amazing is that a) the students picked it up quickly and immediately... what other lisp can claim having something like that? and b) it's the only editor that I myself am happy to use other than Emacs. That's an interesting and unusual overlap, and deserves a pat on the back.

Yes, Racket has its quirks, but what doesn't? It's still an extraordinary project, community, development environment IMO.

<comment><USER8> What kind of machine do you have where DrRacket functions at an appropriate speed? Does it run better on Windows, maybe? It's noticeably laggy on my desktop with 5GB RAM free, a fast quad-core processor, and a fast SSD.

I like the design and the ideas it has for teaching, but I can't imagine it being usable performance-wise on the kind of machines that schools usually purchase.

<comment><USER9> Turning off "background code expansion" in the settings helps alot

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, I'm pretty sure this is going to go badly for me in the end, but I might as well leave this here:

[https://ihateracket.com](https://ihateracket.com)

<comment><USER10> And before any says it, yes, I do love the idea of students EVENTUALLY learning a Lisp/Racket kind of language before they graduate. I would even be happy with an entire course dedicated to it. But I don't want that to be the CS1. I've just seen it go so wrong for so long now.

<comment><USER11> I had a beautiful beginning with a lisp like programming language when I was 8 or something. Every other languages have been disappointments until I found Clojure a few years ago. I hope you will get it some day.

<comment><USER10> And I hope you will learn some empathy some day and understand the perspective of others. We all have some growing to do, it seems.

<comment><USER12> The only way I was able to grok programming was through Racket. I owe my confidence and understanding to Gregor Kizcales' How to Code, which makes clear to this art student what a dozen other language tutorials in a dozen other languages could not. I deeply love Racket and give thanks to its makers.

<comment><USER10> Great! I'm glad you found a path to computing, that is truly wonderful! And I'm not surprised that this approach worked so well for someone.

Now, let's make sure we're finding ways that can generalize. It's an important problem in the world today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really like Racket, but the potential breaking massive syntax change in Racket2 makes me really uncomfortable in using or recommending Racket to other people, at least until the situation is clarified.

<comment><USER14> What?! parenthesis are a feature not a bug. Parenthesis is part of what makes lisps so nice to use. Such a stupid decision. Makes no sense at all. Maybe they are on drugs or something or just bored.

<comment><USER15> what about parentheses has turned you into such a fan?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who are the current major users of Racket? Are there any large commercial codebases written in it?

<comment><USER17> It's mostly used in various education projects, and various commercial and research projects that are largely done by a single strong programmer (e.g., Carmack-ish people).

There's at least one large-codebase complex Web-based production system in it, which incidentally accomplished a first on AWS, but you've never heard of it, since it's internal-ish. It was a happy accident of history, that grew out of a lone super-productive programmer starting a complex data science infrastructure that I'd say few teams could've pulled off in a non-Lisp.

I've been waiting for another startup to decide they're going to do their first version in Racket, to do something non-cookiecutter. (It turned out neither myself nor my own startup co-founder had any interest in doing the CEO side of things, or I would've launched such a startup already.) But anything Scheme-related has a terrible curse for perception: students associate it with academic oddities in first-year classes, and then they focus on whatever "real" tools they hear employers or other companies are using.

<comment><USER18> Next time I get an idea for a side project, I'm thinking of giving Racket a go. I've used Clojure on past personal projects (and currently at work), but I'm starting to grow weary of the JVM.

If the next idea that comes to me happens to be/involve a web app, perhaps a Racket backend with a cljs frontend might be fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any good article recommendations that explain the reasoning to the switch to Chez Scheme as a platform for Racket?

<comment><USER20> [https://blog.racket-lang.org/2019/01/racket-on-chez- status.h...](https://blog.racket-lang.org/2019/01/racket-on-chez-status.html) and the links at the top should provide the explanation. This paper: [https://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/publications/icfp19-rddkmstz.pdf](https://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/publications/icfp19-rddkmstz.pdf) has more details.

Basically, Chez is a now-open-source runtime that's very close to what Racket needs, while also being written mostly in Scheme instead of in C (as the original Racket runtime & compiler is). Building on Chez allows us to cut the amount of C by a factor of ~10 while getting a better architecture.

<comment><USER19> Perfect, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I got into 'purely' functional programming with Racket. It's really fun to use, and you can truly understand the functional paradigm if you dig deep into it.

Along with it, I would recommend reading Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

<comment><USER22> SICP is an awesome book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does Racket support "real" multithreading yet? I remember looking at their documentation a few years ago and it only had support for a green-threading thing, which (along with the first-class hashmaps) steered me towards Clojure.

<comment><USER20> Yes, Racket support using multiple cores/OS threads. There are two mechanisms -- shared memory parallelism that is limited in what operations the threads can execute in parallel (called futures in Racket) and shared-nothing parallelism with message passing, more like Erlang (called places in Racket). Most real work using parallelism in Racket uses places.

<comment><USER23> I guess I was confused by this [1], specifically:

        Racket supports multiple threads of evaluation. Threads run concurrently, in the sense that one thread can preempt another without its cooperation, but threads currently all run on the same processor (i.e., the same underlying operating system process and thread).

Is this documentation out of date or am I looking in the wrong place?

[1] [https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/eval- model.html#%28pa...](https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/eval- model.html#%28part._thread-model%29)

<comment><USER20> That's about the `thread` construct specifically, which as it says is green threads. Mostly people who are spreading work across multiple cores will have a few places that communicate, each of which has multiple threads to handle internal concurrency.

<comment><USER23> Fair enough! That's what I get for giving up after the first piece of documentation.

Maybe I'll give Racket another try....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm glad that the Lisp language has so many derivatives.</comment>


H-1B: Government issues first-ever official estimate of visa population in U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/26/h-1b-government-issues-first-ever-official-estimate-of-visa-population-in-u-s/ <comment><USER2> The H-1B program definitely needs more regulation to prevent abuse by companies (especially when it comes to salary negotiations). But if anything we should increase the number - it's not like those people are just going to not work if they don't come to the U.S. They'll just work in different countries, either driving more offshoring of labor by American companies, or just competing with them directly. It's in the U.S.'s best interest as a whole to get as many of the best and the brightest in the world to work here, and then do everything we can to get them to stay.

Currently, 48M+ people in the U.S. were born outside the U.S. and we welcome a larger total number (like 1.2M+) of immigrants per year than any other country in the world. By far - it's like double the closest country easily, year in and year out. Basically all of Western Europe combined. Might as well have a lot of them be PhDs and other highly skilled/educated people.

Besides, half of Silicon Valley was started by immigrants or children of immigrants - maybe more. In my experience, third+ generation Americans tend to take what they have for granted. If you've worked your ass off and crossed the world to get to the U.S., you're the type of person we want here. It's been that way for literally generations. To quote Hamilton (which I just saw this weekend), "Immigrants. They get the job done."

<comment><USER3> H-1B1 is not the visa type for the best and brightest. That visa type is EB-1.

H-1B is about skills in high demand not extraordinary ability.

Many personal friends of mine are H-1B and they would not be even considered the best or brightest in their own household.

Of course, you have to be somewhat smart to meet the basic requirements: bachelor's degree or equivalent. But that does not mean you are among the _best_.

<comment><USER4> I have a friend with an EB-1 visa. She's good ("alien of exceptional ability") at her job I suppose, which is being a porn actress. Somewhat hilariously it was rather easy for her to meet the criteria (international prizes, being highly paid compared to peers, commercial success, being published in media etc.).

<comment><USER5> More anecdata:

I've worked with a handful of EB-1 holders. I wouldn't qualify a single one as "exceptional." Fine coworkers, sure, but to a one the justification for EB-1 strained credulity.

I have however worked with several H1-B holders of whom I would say the opposite.

<comment><USER3> The spirit of the visa is for Nobel prizes, Olympic medals and such, but in practice, it is a visa for people with immigration lawyers of exceptional ability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The H-1B system is terrible. I applied twice to it while I was on an internship visa, and ended up not getting through the lottery and had to leave the US. Then had to wait a year and a half to get a greencard in order to come back.

<comment><USER7> Is it worth it?

The more I read about this the more I question if it is actually worth the trouble. However I am a US citizen, something which in these conversations make me realize how lucky (privileged) I am to not endure this

<comment><USER8> Of course.... for many it is, even though it is very abusive and a terrible system. Let's be honest, it is a modern interpretation of 19th century 'in- tenured servitude'. It is almost Feudal system by nature.

It is very similar to workers having to 'pay their immigration' debts, while not directly, but by tying the visa to an employe, and making hard to move employers if you are going through the green card process (it can reset you green card process in many cases).

Who knew, the feudal system if live and well, in the 21st century. If you don't like it, banishment/expulsion from the community. (aka, deportation) to where you come from.

It is something that many put up, for a better life. If you are in the 'non capped' countries, usually it is few years to endure it until you get the green card, but for the caped countries, it can take decades to get the green card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like about 25% of software developers (broadly defined) are on H1B visas.

254k/365k of H1B petitions in 2017 were for computer occupations (those are predominantly in software development and computer programming). If we assume the proportion of actual workers is similar to petitions, we would assume there are about 400k H1B workers in software. About 1.5 million were employed in software development and computer programming 2018.

<comment><USER10> Not sure why you only count two occupations from the BLS list [1] Total of all Computer and IT jobs in 2018 was 4+ millions.

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information- technology/...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information- technology/home.htm)

<comment><USER9> H1B petitions in computer occupations are predominantly in software development and computer programming.

About 30% are for "computer systems analyst" or "computer occupations, other" but I don't really buy most of those petitions aren't actually for devs. All software developers on TN visas (NAFTA/USMCA visas) are officially "computer systems analysts" for example.

<comment><USER10> Not sure where are you getting 32% from. The table on p. 15 has "Systems Analysis And Programming" at 56% of all petitions. Other computer related occupations are 10.4%

[https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/reports- studies/Ch...](https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/reports- studies/Characteristics_of_Specialty_Occupation_Workers_H-1B_Fiscal_Year_2018.pdf)

<comment><USER9> "Systems Analysis And Programming" (62.2%) and "Computer Occupations, Other" (8.4%) are together 70.6% in 2017. That's the approximately the same population as "254k/365k of H1B petitions in 2017 were for computer occupations" which is about ~70%.

So 86% of of "Systems Analysis And Programming" and "Computer Occupations, Other" are "Systems Analysis And Programming".

If you want to assume "Computer Occupations, Other" are not devs, which is not a good assumption in my opinion then fine only 86% are devs.

<comment><USER10> Why are we switching to 2017 suddenly? Still, where are the 32% came from in your previous comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "estimate"? How can they not know exactly how many people have H1bs?

<comment><USER12> They know how many have h1bs, but not how many of them are actually in the US. Which is just amazing. We need to bend over and let them take our privacy away so they can fight the terrorists apparently, but the same government doesnt even keep track of how many h1b holders are in the country? If the data of who every citizen is calling on their phones is so important for national security- how is it not worth the government's time to collect and analyze data to figure out who is actually in the country?

<comment><USER13> When was the last time you traveled outside the USA? Did you notice how Customs and Border Patrol did not check and stamp your passport, like they do for incoming travelers?

Therefore, since there is no way to detect when an H1B worker leaves the country, there is no easy way to estimate the number of H1Bs currently in the country.

<comment><USER10> Common carriers used to collect paper I-94 forms when visitors were checking in for their return flights. Now they transmit this information to CBP electronically.

This site will let you search your own travel history with both arrival and departure dates - [https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/#/history- search](https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/#/history-search)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> End the H1B and other work restrictions. Let Americans hire foreigners freely, without fees and paperwork, without arbitrary limits, without inhumane processes that take years.

Make America free again.

<comment><USER15> I wish borders and citizenship didn't really exist. Just pay taxes to your current locality. It should be as simple to travel, live, or work between any country and the U.S. as it is between any two U.S. states.

<comment><USER16> Make governments compete in a free market like companies. It's an interesting idea, and compelling on its face. But that leaves open the question of how a government could ever be expected to invest in it's people. The incentive for other countries would be to not invest as much in education of their own, since anyone could up and move to a country with lower taxes immediately once they finished school. Or they wouldn't invest in healthcare, since you could just "move" to a country that has healthcare, get treated, and then move back to your low-tax country immediately after.

I expect we'd end up with a system pretty similar to the one we have now, with each country demanding a certain "investment" from the prospective citizen before they be granted the benefits of citizenship (e.g. certain number of years spent there) or that they are bringing something valuable to the table (e.g. in-demand skills or qualifications).

<comment><USER14> I don't want a government that invests in me, my education, my healthcare, my retirement, tells me what to do, steals my money and gives it to others, and changes the rules every year.

I want a company that protects my life and property, at a fixed cost, on a contractual basis. There are many others like me, who see the purpose of government as protecting life and property, not as central planners ruling every aspect of their subjects' lives.

<comment><USER16> A government _is_ basically a company, in the sense that they are both just groups of people associating for their collective self-interest. The real difference, at least in the US, is that the government is much more transparent and everyone is granted an equal voting share at birth (theoretically). Those are the biggest differences in the recipe, the outcomes differ because of those ingredients.

I don't see how doing away with our current company and hoping that more opaque groups with more concentrated voting power could be expected to produce any better results. It would essentially guarantee extreme concentration of power and wealth. A group that includes everyone that are under it's power, and taxation of those members, are the only ways to avoid the prisoner's dilemma and ensure that everyone is contributing to things that are beneficial to everyone instead of competing in ways that are detrimental to everyone except the owners of the group. If the only situation the central government could ever intervene in was direct threats to life and property (I assume you are including contract enforcement?), then there is no incentive for companies to avoid social traps [1]; anti-competitive behavior, price gouging, indentured servitude (they signed the contract, after all!), pollution... there is no amount of external cost too great as long as there is even a modicum of internally-captured benefit. It makes the game not even zero-sum, but negative-sum. The basic argument is that avoiding these issues in education, healthcare and retirement are all already forms of protecting everyone's life, property, and liberty. For instance, the only reason you're even able to earn "your" money that you claim the government steals is because of roads the government has built. What's to stop a company from buying the sidewalk and road outside of your property and charging you half of your salary as a subscription fee to use it? In fact, allow a company to buy up the road networks across the nation and charge as much as people are willing to pay; they'd make tons and tons of money, but introduce huge friction into the entire economy (and likely destroy GDP).

Government control can cause problems and create inefficiencies, certainly. It can create moral hazards too. And there is an argument to be made that the control that the government currently has is too much, and dialing it back could cause a wellspring of beneficial innovation. I think that's likely the case in some industries (healthcare, especially). However, it would also cause a huge surge in innovation in negative ways too; there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in unsavory areas that companies haven't pursued because it's been illegal to do so. Throwing out nearly all of the oversight, checks and balances that have been devised can only make sense if you completely ignore the outsize effects that everyone benefits from due to the controls that we do have in place. The benefits are often invisible (or nearly invisible), so they can be hard to see and so they are easy to ignore in crafting the ideal world in one's head. When thinking of the government, we are naturally more often going to think of the times it's failed us. I just urge you to reconsider. There are places that are run on principles closer to the libertarian ideal, and they tend to be run by power-hungry madmen and be much worse places to live than democracies unless you're at the very, very, very top.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The H-1B program is terrible and needs to be reformed. It is supposed to temporarily shore up the supply of critically skilled workers that are in demand.

While it does this, when the program was envisioned no one imagined H-1B visa holders working here for 10+ years.

If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their negotiating power for salary to zero...

Not to mention by artificially suppressing H-1B salaries over time, it puts negative wage pressure on US workers in similar positions.

I believe H-1B workers should be offered green cards if they are here for more than 2-3 years, so they can negotiate on equal footing with US citizens.

<comment><USER18> > If only there were a word for the importation of minority labor and locking > them into employment with their sponsor, effectively reducing their > negotiating power for salary to zero...

It really doesn't do that. To be fair, H-1Bs are supposed to be in-demand specialty workers, to meet the spirit of the program. That means they have, by definition, negotiating power. I've spent a lot of time in H-1 status and I have definitely negotiated my compensation -- with both current and prospective employers.

This data is available for you to search, and it's all public record. You can find my salary in the database. [1]

[1] [https://h1bdata.info/](https://h1bdata.info/)

<comment><USER8> This is so wrong, it is comical. You have a lot less leverage, especially if you want/are in the process of getting a green card.

As a former H1B holder (and currently on a Green Card), being on a H-1B has prevented me:

1\. Not accepting a higher salary offer, but going with a more 'safe option'

2\. Having to negotiate for asap Green Card application, vs. salary

3\. Not being able to accept a promotion to a manager, as I had a ongoing Green Card application as engineer/ic, and that would jeopardize my green card application

4\. Not being able to create, or join a very early startup

5\. Having high anxiety, for all the paperwork required, and the RFE recieved after switching jobs...

6\. Inability to switch jobs, if you have a Perm/Green Card application ongoing, as it will rest it (even for non-capped countries, it might take 2+ years for the whole process to go through)

etc... etc..

You must be young and naive if you believe being on a H1B doesn't suppress one's salary, or potential.

The current H1B system is in-tenured servitude, and a continuation of old Feudal System, by tying the ability to work for a class of workers to their employer. Yes, you can switch employers, but at great costs, and at risking eventual deportation (if you don't play the immigration game right, and get the Perm/Green Card in time).

<comment><USER19> Not to be pedantic, but the term is indentured servitude, at least in regards to Europeans coming to North America.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


2010 kicks off era of hidden Linux - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2010/01/05/2010-kicks-off-era-of-hidden-linux/ <comment><USER2> I dunno -- kicks off?? For years I have assumed that any device I am dealing with runs a linux. Most of the time they are. Heck, my TV runs linux!</comment>


Richard Hipp on improving performance using micro-optimizations - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJrsl3fHQ74 <comment><AUTHOR> Richard Hipp explains the techniques he used to optimize SQLite. While this was a presentation at a TCL event, there's nothing in his explanation that's particular to TCL.</comment>


Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months - open-source-ux https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48964736 <comment><AUTHOR> It's always ~12 months away.

It was 5 years ago and will be in 5 more years.

I've got a strong suspicion that it's game over already. Perhaps various grades of game over still exist.

<comment><USER2> It's 18 months because of upcoming UN meetings. Which means nothing, so it's making an alarmist headline to tie to a story, which has no bearing on the reality. The UN can't keep humans from slaughtering each other, so what chance at "Saving the planet", for whatever that means?

<comment><USER3> The UN was created to do one job: prevent World War III. Everything else it has done is a bonus.

<comment><USER4> But the climate/energy crisis might very well lead us to World War III, still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These sensationalist "Climate Emergency" articles and protests actually undermine the core arguments for climate change action. It's obvious no matter how much political will we will be unable to make a 45% cut in 18 months.

In the end these deadlines will come to nothing as technology advances and we develop novel solutions like a space based sun shield (launched by SpaceX starhopper?), seeding oceans to grow carbon absorbing algae, nuclear fusion, and new energy storage solutions. Just like "peak oil" and "global food shortages" predicted decades ago.

Also never mind we have an excellent solution to carbon emissions in nuclear power but the same green left protesters oppose it too.

<comment><USER6> Solar power will come online faster than nuclear anyway, just need to make 100x more solar panels per year to have solar for all energy usage in a few years. Seems to take 10 years to build nuclear power plants. Store excess power in batteries or convert to chemicals. There's enough gas in the gas pipes of the world for days of energy.

<comment><USER7> To make solar panels certain materials are needed, which we do not have an abundance of. There's also limited space as to where to put them. On the other hand, if there weren't as many people consuming energy, we wouldn't need as much. But killing off 95% of humanity is unethical, after all.

<comment><USER6> Only needs a small area compared to the size of the planet.

As for mining certain minerals, seems like it's mostly economics, we've only mined 1% of places after all.

<comment><USER7> Humans don't only live on a small area, so how do you get the generated electricity to where the humans live? And what if someone attacked this small area? Seems like a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretending that the US could solve it single-handedly, and it were dispersed among every US citizen, what would that look like? Is that just about buying carbon offsets from non-profits that plant trees?

I'm tired of "we gotta do something", I want to know what to do and what the math implies in terms of personal responsibility. Carbon neutral or carbon positive behavior.

<comment><USER6> Switch to electric everything (heating/cooling/transport) and buy renewable electricity. Stop eating meat. Stop buying stuff you don't really need.

<comment><USER8> I don't doubt that that is necessary, but I'm not sure that would be sufficient. Like, if everyone in the US switched to electric heat/cooling and went vegetarian, does that make up for China, India, and Africa?

I feel like I want a Drake equation for climate. Number of petawatt hours / year, number generated by fossil fuels, how much it needs to decrease (or have its growth slowed) to reach 1.5 degrees by whenever... but something simple that larger amounts of people can understand.

<comment><USER9> Some numbers from Saul Griffith at Otherlab:

Decarbonizing with massive electrification will bring about a new American abundance. [https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and- gnd-b8d...](https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and- gnd-b8ddd569de16)

How do we decarbonize? We don't need a miracle. Everything we need to solve climate change is already here. [https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we- decarbonize-7fc2f...](https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we- decarbonize-7fc2fa84e887)

Green New Deal: How much does fixing climate change cost the US? A real-world argument with numbers you can check for yourself. [https://medium.com/otherlab-news/green-new-deal-how-much- doe...](https://medium.com/otherlab-news/green-new-deal-how-much-does-fixing- climate-change-cost-the-us-d542bb9e67c8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hottest days ever recorded in half of Europe, but no reason to panic, right?

I assume everyone realises that we're going to die, and we're too stupid to spend 5% of GDP on fixing it, which is why the world's gone a bit crazy.

<comment><USER5> The problem is the world won't end, it simply changes, for every piece of land in a Bangladeshi river delta that gets flooded there's a piece of Siberia where the permafrost will melt and become fertile farming ground.

<comment><USER10> Assuming we don't have runaway warming. There's a lot of co2 locked up in that permafrost. When siberia gets too hot, where do we go after that?

<comment><USER6> Seems like everything about the Earth is a positive feedback loop for global warming.

      More ice melting, less reflection
      More ice melting, more methane released
      Co2 released from soil
      Less rain, less amazon rainforest
      More forest fires
      More deserts
      Clouds changing
      More water vapour

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In case you want a pointer to thorough, well-written material on real things, you can look for the State of California 2017 Climate Plans.. e.g.

[http://resources.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DRAFT- Saf...](http://resources.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DRAFT-Safeguarding- California-Plan-2017-Update.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hyperbole like this is not helpful. The planet will be fine in 19 months and everyone will just crank the "boy who cried wolf" factor up a couple of notches. Also, this is a statement by Prince Charles of all people, might as well have Taylor Swift chime in while we're at it.

This who discussion needs to be reframed. "The planet" is not ending. Humanity is not ending. We will survive. The ability to do so will rely on innovation as it always has. The media stoking the fires of fear with pure clickbait isn't helping the situation at all.

<comment><USER6> It's ok, only millions will die, not billions?

Then mass migration as crops and water supplies fail, leading to xenophobia, racism, riots. Already started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What can the average person do to help? The scale of the problem sometimes seems so large that it's impossible to imagine how one person riding a bike or purchasing "green" energy from PG&E can really have an impact.

How can one person have a bigger impact on such a global-scale issue?

<comment><USER5> Looking around me it seems to be stand in the street, hold a sign, block traffic and mess up everyone's day...

Or we could continue to be agile and innovate like humanity and technology has always done.

<comment><USER14> This is not an "innovation" problem. We know how to solve climate change. It is a policy and funding problem. It is a political problem. We need more protests!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's 12 years to zero carbon if we want to keep below 1.5C, without assuming massive removal of carbon from the atmosphere from the mid century. Obviously this doesn't stand much chance of happening, but it gives you an idea of the scale of the challenge.

The Paris cuts are very much within our ability to do, and likely without damaging the economy, although of course some special interests with holdings in fossil fuels will lose their money. That's a good start, even if it ends up being 2-3C that's infinitely better than the alternative.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's just the Earth's immune system finally kicking in. We need to stop fighting against nature and start working along with it. We cannot sustain ourselves without this planet and we're not going to find a replacement anytime soon.

The intelligence that makes a seed grow into a flower is the same intelligence that will protect the Earth from these insane beings who live on its surface.

<comment><USER17> Anthropomorphizing Earth does not do anyone any good. It's not a living creature, nor does it contain a single "immune system."

<comment><USER16> If an organism were 'alive', self-sustaining and fully conscious in space what would that look like?</comment></comment></comment>


Primate-Ape Common Ancestor Was No King Kong - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/primate-ape-ancestor-was-no-king-kong-151029.htm <comment><USER2> This type of headline is annoying. Nowhere does the researcher say anything remotely close to "King Kong"? It's not even insinuated as far as I can tell. Pure editorial sensationalism.

<comment><USER3> What are you talking about? The headline says the exact opposite of what you seem to think.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: virtual credit card number service? - <AUTHOR>

The linode "incident" HN thread has a couple examples[1] of banks using virtual CC numbers you can use for one transaction only: BofA and CityBank
Does any one know about other services like this?
1- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5553723 <comment><USER2> In Portugal there is MBNet (<https://www.mbnet.pt/>), it is activated in ATMs, and will be bonded to whatever debit card you use to register.

If you have a VISA debit card, it will create virtual VISA credit cards, and if you have a MasterCard debit card, it will create virtual MasterCard credit cards.

It has an option of creating a virtual CC for only one transaction, with a value limit, and another option of creating a virtual CC that can be used several times, with a limit of up to 12 months, and a value limit as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I had my CitiBank credit card, there were actually 2 options for virtual credit card numbers. One time use and max dollar use. The max dollar version could get charged repeatedly (e.g. Netflix or other subscriptions), until they hit your cap, at which point they were invalid.

I got rid of that card because they wanted to implement an annual fee, and I wasn't even getting good rewards, so I dumped it. That was at least 4 years ago though.

<comment><USER4> More specifically, the BoA and CitiBank virtual CC numbers can be used for one Merchant only (the first one charged, rather than one transaction) and you set the max dollar limit and expiration for both options. The 2nd option for reoccurring, just helps you do the math for reoccurring so you have the right total and expiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been using entropay [1] as a virtual credit card for quite some time. It isn't restricted to one-time-only transactions though.

1 - <https://www.entropay.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I use vikingcard [0]. You can get a real or a virtual card. <https://vikingcard.com/en/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Citicards does this. I don't pay an annual fee for my card so it might be worth taking a look at

</comment><comment><USER8> discover card apparently does (never owned one though)</comment>


The Endgame for LinkedIn Is Coming - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lancengym/the-endgame-for-linkedin-is-coming-31d4a8b2a76 <comment><USER2> I think the problem is that it's trying to become some sort of "pro facebook".

But I have no, zero, interest in actually visiting unless I'm a recruiter. I don't _care_ that someone posts a motivational video or a colleague celebrates 10 years at Innotek. All I want to do as a non-recruiter is maintain a reasonably sized network for that time in 5 years when I _do_ want to check my network. Until then, I don't ever want to log in.

So to me it it does proide value, but how much value do I provide? I suppose my aging profile does provide some material for recruiters so that the keep spending for pro recruiter features. But I don't think they'll ever be a facebook that can have significant ad-revenue from recurring visitors.

<comment><USER3> I would think, and I'm speculating here, that the idea is that the kind of ads they have, justify a high CPC, precisely because you only go there when you're looking to hop jobs. Fewer people clicking that ad out of curiousity, with no possibility of applying for the position posted. $5 CPC makes sense if it gets you a new employee, since (even if it's only 1% of those clicking who you hire) that is a small part of total cost of employee acquisition.

I have no idea if this is actually the strategy, or if this is actually working, I'm just floating it as a possibility. You only go there if you're a recruiter, or thinking about getting new work, or you have been asked by somebody else to endorse, and that would be a good thing, in this scenario, since it improves the signal-to-noise ratio.

<comment><USER4> To paraphrase the point in the context of the GP comment, you might only be checking it once every five years when you're looking for a new job, but this means that when you _are_ looking for a new job LinkedIn is the first to know.

<comment><USER3> Wow that is way better than the way I put it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know a single manager or leading figure in management who isn't utilizing LinkedIn. It's used for recruitment, idea-sharing, networking, following and genuine discussion.

I fully understand how that can go unnoticed, because I didn't notice for a long while. Before I was invited to help formulate national standards on enterprise architecture I rarely used LinkedIn. It's not where developers network, not by a long shot. But I entered these multi-municipal networks, and through that work I was exposed to the greater sum of LinkedIn.

It's not an understatement to say that it's a platform you can't ignore if you work with any sort of management, and project/change-management applies to this. Today it's the only social network I have installed on my phone, precisely for this reason.

On my morning commute this morning I learned about a new AI project in our neighbouring municipality as an example of just how useful it is. I probably would have heard about it eventually at one of the yearly events the project owner and I both attend, but now I heard about it in time to enter the project with them.

This is anecdotal of course and maybe this is a Danish thing, maybe it's even more profound in our public sector, but I think LinkedIn is rather valuable and increasingly so.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely true, casual users don't realize how valuable LinkedIn is for recruiting and sales in general. Once Microsoft is able to push a real CRM competitor to Salesforce and have it integrate with their other cloud offerings like LinkedIn...it's going to be quite something. I don't think anyone will be able to compete with it, if I'm being honest. The blog comically says this will lead to "monopoly" status, and I don't see how.

The blog post says all this integration is never going to happen, but I don't know if they have ever worked for a large corporation or not...but it takes a while to get the wheels spinning especially after an acquisition. Anyone that thinks LinkedIn was a dumb purchase by Microsoft does so at their own peril.

<comment><USER7> > Once Microsoft is able to push a real CRM competitor to Salesforce

Given how Salesforce is squeezing every last cent out of users (new or long- time) that day can't come soon enough.

I like Salesforce (the product) and enjoy working with it more than I ever enjoyed Dynamics CRM, but their price hikes are getting too much for customers to stomach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Wow. It's the first time I see a professional chart that triggers such a strong optical illusion:

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*r_I_go-Ei2NmUndXx...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*r_I_go-Ei2NmUndXxD3Ybg.png)

Is the zero axis horizontal?

<comment><USER8> According to KRuler, it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Linkedin will still remain valuable in the recruiting industry. I hate it, but I've decided to keep my profile because it'll raise a red flag to potential employers when they see I'm not in it.

But as for everything else, most people are consumers. They consume content - whether it's cat photos, videos, news, etc. Linkedin offers none of that. People just go there when they need a job. So I don't see how they can increase engagement in a platform where 99% of people in the world just want to consume.

<comment><USER10> > I've decided to keep my profile because it'll raise a red flag to potential > employers when they see I'm not in it

Really? Do you think people base such impressions upon solid logic, or is it simply some sort of employer groupthink?

I like to think that potential employers will respect my decision to avoid the vacuous LinkedIn crazy town, rather than mark me down for it.

Depends who's hiring I guess. If I'm the one doing the hiring, then not being on LinkedIn certainly makes a positive impression upon me :-)

<comment><USER11> > If I'm the one doing the hiring, then not being on LinkedIn certainly makes > a positive impression upon me :-)

Isn't it kind of the same sort of thing as "wearing pants to a job interview" now? Just part of the expected decorum for functioning as a professional? I understand it can be a bit of a crazy town, but there's a difference between "being on there" and "putting up inspirational quotes at 15 minute intervals".

<comment><USER10> You may well be right. That's a good point about not having to engage heavily with it. Most other people in this thread seem to be indicating that this is how it is (wearing pants is required), and that I'm a no-pants outlier.

If I ever get within a sniff of being near the breadline, then of course I shouldn't rule out re-joining LinkedIn, in order to protect myself from destitution, but things are okay for me right now.

I originally left because LinkedIn triggered my "3 strikes and you're out" policy on spam and sneaky dark pattern preferences UI. Have they improved their behaviour in that area?

Oh, they exposed my password to the internet and they also stole all my Google contacts in the early days (2009?) without my permission. Nasty stuff.

I'm also worried about exposing too much personal history in terms of identity theft. The less data out there, the better (?).

<comment><USER11> I mean, if you're having success as a no-pants outlier, you do you, live that dream. Yeah, they haven't been great (spam, passwords, contact hijacking), but I just see it as the cost of working.

<comment><USER10> > I just see it as the cost of working

I sincerely mean this without any snark or sarcasm: You've given me something to think about. Thanks!

 _Goes to look for pants..._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm,

Fall behind in search, spend billions on Bing.

Fall behind in mobile, spend billions on Nokia.

Fall behind in social media, spend billions on LinkedIn.

Hmm, so what was that definition of insanity again?

<comment><USER13> All true. Yet somehow, as of today, they're still relevant. Perhaps not insane but certainly somewhat of a surprise.

p.s. Given what happened with the iPod / iTunes being behind isn't always a bad thing.

<comment><USER14> > Given what happened with the iPod / iTunes being behind isn't always a bad > thing.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. When the iPod and then iTunes entered the scene, the MP3 player market was very small and immature. The product they put forth was untouchable because it didn't address one or two gripes with MP3 players of the time, it addressed almost all of them. The failed Microsoft products all entered mature markets with very strong incumbents.

When the iPod arrived on the scene it was half the size of the Creative HDD based MP3 players that here hot shit at the time and wasn't trying to look like futuristic discman. It featured a high speed interface (Firewire) so it didn't take weeks to load your music. The interface actually helped you quickly browse your gigabytes of sound files unlike everyone else whose UIs were d-pad based nightmares that made browsing more than a few hundred MP3s a hassle. It had a rechargeable battery that lasted longer than any other player of which most were still using AA as power. The most compelling alternative to the iPod was probably the iRiver H1xx series and it didn't arrive until 2 years later and still had a horribly crippled UI but equally high price.

All the incumbent tech giants including Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and Google entered the markets they dominate when those markets were very immature and relatively new. Their products had multiple advantages over the competition, if any, and quickly captured the market before anyone realized what happened.

<comment><USER13> Fair? Perhaps not line for line. But it's not important at that level of detail.

My point is, I think if you asked most people "Who invented the MP3 player?" they'd say Apple. That's just not the case. Refined it? Yes, obviously. But they certainly weren't first.

Long to short, execution matters. There a tons of ideas sitting in the idea gravy yard, not because they were bad ideas, but because they were executed badly.

<comment><USER14> The comparison is completely invalid. If Apple was entering a mature market with an incumbent MP3 player that was comparable to the iPod or even better, then Apple would have had an uphill battle. They didn't. They entered a market with clearly the best device by a fair margin and people flocked to it.

The Search, Social Network, and Mobile OS markets were very mature when Microsoft entered market and the products they offered weren't discernably better let alone substantially better.

<comment><USER13> For the record, it's because of Apple that you can say the MP3 player market was not yet mature.

Regardless, my point - which might be different than your point - is first isn't always best; and that Apple's reputation as a ground-breaker can be, at times, overstated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I, and many people it seems, agree with several of the criticisms—LinkedIn ads are terrible, LI's core product is not enjoyable as a user, and the gaggle of branded apps are an absolute clusterfuck.

However, the piece gets sloppy when the author starts speculating that Office 365's growth will lead to antitrust suits.

</comment><comment><USER16> To succeed, Microsoft needs to make LinkedIn the anti-Facebook in terms of content, usefulness and trust. So far, this does not seem to be the case. I see fake profiles, click bait, flamewars, and ever-present recruiter spam.

It isn't Microsoft's fault, per se. It's a hard problem.

<comment><USER17> It's amazing how bad the content has become. It feels the same as Facebook, if not worse. Sometimes I'll log on just to "people watch", but that's about the extent of my usage.

<comment><USER16> Yes, my naive assumption was that if people presented their real names and their jobs in the same place, the discussion would be more civil — aren't we in the era where people lose their jobs for Twitter rants? - but the negative content persists to the point that people are making memes(!) to push the idea of making LinkedIn more civil. Strange times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about the value of the data? For a B2B company like MS, seems to me that the goodwill would really be worth that much if it generates future intangibles (useful data). I still see almost every professional with a linkedin account, even if nobody uses it. Imagine what you can infer about what projects other companies are working on just by the social graph. To explain what this article was complaining about, that doesn't give much incentive to make LinkedIn better.

Another reason why we need more itemization on intangibles in public filings...

<comment><USER19> The internet needs a single sign-on. Perhaps that's why Microsoft bought LinkedIn?

<comment><USER20> The Internet needs no such thing. The possibility to have different personas in different parts of the Internet is one of its best features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article makes a lot of good points about the acquisition of LinkedIn. Such as, the ultimate play of LinkedIn user integration into the Microsoft suite as the billion dollar idea for Micrsoft. However, near the end, the author points our a painfully obvious contradiction of his knowledge on Linkedin by saying, _" there is no transparency as to how LinkedIn's revenue has grown..."_ While I understand the Facebook comparison, I believe it to be a little off base. LinkedIn has two distinct business lines, advertising (like Facebook) and a B2B recruiting software platform.

On the advertising front, I could not agree more with the article. Working in the B2B marketing space for a while, we completely cut LinkedIn ads due to poor reach of our defined target audience. Working in the fintech space, we targeted the appropriate persona, yet came away with hundreds of likes from irrelevant professions. Coupled with the price, we left almost immediately.

However, I believe that LinkedIn is expanding on a B2B play. Selling recruiting solutions. LinkedIn is calling them "Talent Solutions." In October, LinkedIn purchased Glint, based out of the bay area [1]. Glint focuses primarily on B2B HR solutions, using surveys and AI to comprehend employee engagement and satisfaction. With LinkedIn's talent solution + Glint's HR solution, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, is making a horizontal play onto the HR landscape.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/linkedin-acquires- employee...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/linkedin-acquires-employee- engagement-and-retention-platform-glint/)

<comment><USER22> > Selling recruiting solutions

Sadly the "Jobs you might be interested in..." from linkedin are, despite knowing quite a bit about what my skills are.... almost always completely irrelevant.

ie. They have the data... they are mind blowingly incompetent at using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I can't see LinkedIn ever having the kind of engagement Facebook gets but it also seems harder to leave completely than Facebook. When I decided to stop using Facebook it was fairly easy and had little to no impact on my life. Though I don't really like the experience of using LinkedIn it's harder to avoid as I'm often asked to look at profile of job candidates there for work and I imagine if I'm ever looking for work in the future my profile will need to be updated as part of the job search.

</comment><comment><USER24> I just don't get any social signals from LinkedIn's UI. Whenever I open the homepage I immediately look away from the news feed as it is utter garbage. The same goes for groups.

I think there is some potential to make LinkedIn work, but it has to start with a thoughtful redesign. Of course, the right way would be that users themselves communicate rather than having the design do it for you. But at this point the platform has dug itself in too deep of a ditch.

</comment><comment><USER25> LinkedIn represents in spectacular fashion how the internet runs primarily on wide-eyed, childlike gullibility: anybody can claim to be whoever or whatever they choose to portray themselves as, and no one the wiser. During my time using LI a few years back I found it occasionally a venue for some halfway decent discussions, usually on topics having precious little to do with business, management, recruiting etc, but its focus on matters of business was laughable. The "INfluencers Program" was little more than a bully pulpit for self-important yuppies to work their personal brands, and the way some of these vacuous outbursts passing as articles by their so-called "INfluencers" would be boasting tens of thousands of views within hours of posting made it look like a conspicuous pay-to-play scam with authors paying for artificial read stats to elevate their own profiles. Meanwhile, I encountered so many scammers and spammers obviously hiding behind false identities as to make it a rival for twitter in terms of its lowlife untrustworthiness as a serious means to make contacts for serious purposes. Probably these comments here trumpeting its legitimacy as a corporate recruiting and networking tool are written by LI employees or on contract by ghostwriters, because you could stand on a street corner with a handmade sign saying "I Am Someone Important, Honest" and you'd be making a more credible representation of yourself than anyone with the sense God gave geese could possibly see LinkedIn as being useful for.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a historical analysis that's a couple years out of date. Under Microsoft, LinkedIn revenues have re-accelerated growth to 33% Y/Y in the most recent quarter vs. LinkedIn decelerating substantially to ~20's % Y/Y growth independently. We're about at the point where Microsoft expected LinkedIn to become earnings accretive as well, though that's more difficult to tease out from numbers.

</comment><comment><USER27> Linked in is a great network for recruiters, if you're recruiting other recruiters.

For people who actually do a real job, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER28> LinkedIn's continuing existence is a good argument that decentralisation is harder than people think. To a large extent it's just competing with "job boards" and "CVs", but it adds just enough value as an intermediary that it's persisted.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Every time this LinkedIn commercial pops up on YouTube I am reminded of how low the company has fallen to."

I recently thought the same when facebook started advertising (to me at least) on silly mobile game (the ads those games show)

<comment><USER30> Wait, they're advertising Facebook itself? Like "Sign up for this new social network...it's called Facebook!"

<comment><USER31> After the whole Cambridge Analytica thing I even saw physical facebook ads on the train, talking about how they weren't creepy and fake news is bad. It was strange to see.

<comment><USER32> I'm still seeing these on the underground.

<comment><USER31> They were all over the L in Chicago, but I haven't seen them for quite some time. Though I think Facebook and Zuckerberg in particular might have an even worse image over there than they do here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Compiling to lambda-calculus: Turtles all the way down  - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/compiling-up-to-lambda-calculus/ <comment><USER2> While this is a nice article on compiling to lambda calculus, the uninitiated might find Barendregt's "Introduction to Lambda Calculus" (ftp://ftp.cs.ru.nl/pub/CompMath.Found/lambda.pdf) an invaluable resource. (IMHO, it's the best work for groking lambda calculus, at least it was for me and my learning prefernece/style)

</comment><comment><USER3> "The other direction requires more thought: how do you coax such a simple language into providing the features we expect of a modern programming language, such as numbers, Booleans, conditionals, lists and recursion? "

No, the other direction requires simulating a Turing machine with lambda calculus.

<comment><USER4> Good point.

But, those are exactly the language features that make it easy to implement a Turing machine.

<comment><USER5> Hey Matt,

Just a quick little note to thank you for your series of posts, not just this one. I've been trying to get my head wrapped around the lambda calculus and your posts have been by far the most enlightening ones on the subject.

Thank you very much!

<comment><USER4> Thanks for reading! I'll keep the posts coming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm always a bit awed when recognizable functions like 'if' and 'let' start emerging from a mess of lambdas and Xs. It amazing how simple items and simple rules can combine to create fantastically intricate systems (i.e. the entire space of computable functions). Thanks for sharing, Matt.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been working on a combinatoric approach with Fexl, "compiling" all the way down to my two turtles S and C, e.g.:

<http://fexl.com/blog/9>

I'm also relying on two higher-level combinators L and R to reduce the size of the combinatorial forms, e.g.:

<http://fexl.com/blog/10>

The bottom line is that the entire Fexl parser is defined in terms of the two primitive combinators S and C.

<comment><USER8> I was confused a while till I saw you talking about Moses Schönfinkel. From everything I've seen people usually refer to those as SK combinators not SC combinators.

<comment><USER7> Right, that's "K" as in "Konstanzfunktion" in the original German. The book "From Frege to Gödel" uses "C" as in "Constancy Function" in English, and I got in the habit of using that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't fully understand lambda calculus, but i inferred a stack overflow from his tattoo?

Went to buy the book and its beyond my budget at the moment ($215 on Amazon).

<comment><USER10> $215? When I clicked through to the book, I see "Available from these sellers. 9 used from $597.95"

WTF?!??

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0444875085>

<comment><USER11> Click on the hardcover edition link.

<comment><USER10> Aaah, I see.

Still, I give a big "WTF?!??" to the idea of paying $597 for any version of this book. I mean, I'm sure it's a good book, but $597 worth????

Heck, even $215 seems a bit crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Barendregt is a helluva drug."

Not sure I agree: his lectures are quite sleep inducing these days. Though reducing programming to something so simple and mathematical does open lots of possibilities...

<comment><USER4> That thick yellow book rocked my world once upon a time.

Never saw him lecture though.

<comment><USER12> He teaches classes at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, specifically my "Languages and automata/machines" class. He has a "zen" something going on with lots of interesting comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nothing like posting a picture of the y-combinator on a ycombinator.com site :)</comment>


Lobsters - <AUTHOR> https://lobste.rs/about <comment><USER2> Surprised it's still up and running.</comment>


An Open Letter to Sam Altman - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ryanstr/an-open-letter-to-sam-altman-f9089241c609#.pdn8g0prm <comment><USER2> Ryan, this is not a good strategy. Especially given this bit: "I also watched Kinnard vehemently explain to others that he never planned on selling BitBox, and that the money component doesn't matter to him at all (he wasn't kidding, either)."

YC funds businesses that have the potential to make a lot of money. A founder who doesn't care about the financial side of things does not bode well.

</comment><comment><USER3> BitBox was accepted into the most recent class at Boost VC, a venture capital firm and startup incubator located in downtown San Mateo, California.

[http://www.coindesk.com/founder-of-bitcoin-exchange- bitbox-o...](http://www.coindesk.com/founder-of-bitcoin-exchange-bitbox-on- compliance-banks-and-bitcoins-future/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is from 3 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is all very interesting, but none of it is a justification for acceptance into an accelerator.</comment>


We Fixed the Glitch - <AUTHOR> http://greatscottgadgets.com/2018/02-28-we-fixed-the-glitch/ <comment><USER2> Beautiful work. Totally shows what embedded engineers have to deal with sometimes to get their systems to work.

Software guys will point fingers at hardware guys and vice/versa, and once in a while it's everyone's fault simultaneously.</comment>


Vote for 1-Shopping Cart to allow Stripe - <AUTHOR> http://ideas.1shoppingcart.com/forums/20399-big-ideas/suggestions/3188926-provide-stripe-please-allow-integration-with-stri

<comment><AUTHOR> Context: 1-Shopping does a fantastic job of providing one-click upsell functionality and ability to manage affiliates but currently does not offer Stripe integration so we are stuck with sucky merchant account vendors and payment gateways</comment>