How the decimation of the IPO market has hurt the economy and worse - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2016/02/04/the-pre-cognitive-anti-trust-violationhow-the-decimation-of-the-ipo-market-has-hurt-the-economy-and-worse/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mark Cuban is an interesting character. I originally viewed him as the goofy owner of the Dallas Mavericks but now that I've seen some of his talks and blog posts as well Shark Tank, I am really beginning to appreciate his business sense.

300 of 330 employees becoming millionaires within a year of IPO. With the amount of dilution most startups go through after the multiple rounds, this is an unimaginable outcome nowadays.

<comment><USER2> Is it really business sense or just being lucky to IPO in a huge bubble?

Did Broadcast.com really create value for the economy that the employees were rewarded for, or were they just on the lucky end of a huge unsustainable wealth transfer from retail investors to startup founders?

<comment><USER3> All you have to do for startup success is find an accidentally rich sucker willing to pay $10k _per user_.

Good on Cuban for selling to a giant fool, but I'm not sure recognizing a sucker and selling to him or her is really all that broadly translatable a skill. My guess is the problem is the too-small supply of over-wealthy suckers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an investor I am familiar with often-cited data that shows how small and mid cap stocks have traditionally outperformed large cap stocks over time. I wonder if this cherry picking of returns whereby the fastest growing small companies leapfrog the public capital markets completely and only go public once they've captured the majority of returns will impact this historical trend.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think Cuban is spot on in his assessment. It's basically not worth it unless you can find a secondary market buyer. Feels like musical chairs. And whatever you can't sell, with preferred shares outstanding, makes it seem like all bets are off, unless you can IPO which at least gives you a chance.

</comment><comment><USER6> Strangely, the word "revenue" is not mentioned in that blog post once. Does anyone know if Broadcast.com ever made a meaningful amount of money before Yahoo! acquired them for $5.7 billion(!)?

<comment><USER7> Regardless of revenue, they were purchased for "over $10,000 per".

I call horse shit.

I agree with this statement, though, "It is undeniably destructive to our economy and future when many of our most innovative and exciting companies are bought by their competition."

Perhaps we're not building monopolies but huge diversified holding companies. My bet is on there actually being huge monopolistic effects of owning all the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I somehow missed the headbar, it wasn't until I got to these comments that I realized the author was Mark Cuban.

I thought he was spot-on even before I knew who he was.

I think one of the big problems is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act implemented after the fall of Enron due to accounting problems. We wanted to make sure that there were no IPO's defrauding the public, but the regulations went too far and made sure there were no (or very few) IPO's, period.

And the IPO's that do happen are much much bigger. This is bad because much of the wealth that's created by a new company is created during its growth phase. In the 1900's, you could have simply _bought_ shares in the young Microsoft or the young Apple -- at least there was a chance for some of that wealth went to regular folks who invested in the stock market. In the 2000's, the young Google and the young Facebook were only accessible to the rich -- VC firms and accredited investors with the right connections.

This isn't just bad for regular investors, it's bad for companies too. A public market has a lot more counterparties and is more competitive -- so (in theory at least) a publicly traded company shouldn't have to give up as much equity to raise a fixed amount of cash (because rather than being limited to making offers to a few private investors, there's a continuous bidding war for the stock in which pretty much anyone can be a buyer).

</comment><comment><USER9> The reliance on the stock markets is mostly a phenomena of the English speaking countries. It is supported by aspects of law, some of which go back to English Common Law, and most of which were shaped by the evolution of that law during the 20th century, especially as the law related to debt, fraud, and financial transparency.

Most developed countries take a different approach. In both Germany and France, and also in Japan, it is common for businesses to rely on close relationships with banks to get the financing they need.

Because of all this, I object to the tone of this paragraph, which makes it sound as if there is no way forward for business, except for the stock market:

"Why take it public ? Because the stock market was a source of cash that could help you grow. It was a marketing and validation opportunity that told customers and prospects you had arrived. It was a liquidity opportunity that while not guaranteed, if you could continue to grow the company over the long haul, would value your company at a multiple of earnings and allow me, my investors (many who were close friends) and my employees to increase our net- worth and cash holdings."

There is an alternate way to interpret the changes of law and finance during the last 25 years: that the USA is converging toward a model that has similarities to that used in other developed countries. There is nothing wrong with this trend. There may a lot of positives to this trend. Merely focusing on the end of the old system by no means proves that the new system is bad.

<comment><USER10> > The reliance on the stock markets is mostly a phenomena of the English > speaking countries

I know more about how it works in the US than in other English-speaking countries.

That listed US non-financial corporations attain capital via stock issuances, initial or subsequent, is a kind of mythology. From a century back until now, less than 5% of US non-financial corporate capital expenditures are from capital raised by stock issuances.

If you look at the numbers, it mostly works in the US in the same manner as Germany, France, Japan etc. To raise capital, corporations reinvest profits, they go to the banks, they sell bonds. The idea that stock exchanges are heavily involved with companies raising capital is a widespread one, but that has more to do with the aptitude of stock exchange PR departments than reality.

<comment><USER11> You can't go to a bank for advertising money or to write code. wanna buy a building got 20%-40% down and a revenue stream for the last 2 years to pay for no problem. equipment maybe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure I agree with his "dead money" assessment... if its parked in a bank it is still providing money to the bank, which can be doled out in loans.

<comment><USER13> There's this notion going around that money is stored in some "rich person warehouse" never to be seen again when it isn't invested in a clean tech / end income equality social venture

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It only seems bad to those in business of pushing out IPOs. To everyone else, it appears as a market correction.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is like saying that the decimation of the housing bubble has hurt the economy and worse. Broadcast.com is the classic example of a completely worthless business flipped to a clueless buyer.

</comment><comment><USER16> if a founder was recruiting you as an employee, and told you their strategy was to shoot for an IPO instead of shooting for an acquisition

would that have any tangible value to you as a prospective employee?

</comment><comment><USER17> Can private companies not offer dividends to their stock holders?

<comment><USER18> Of course they can. This has nowhere near the wealth spreading effects of an IPO though. First of all, most employees do not own shares but rather options. Option-holders do not receive dividends. You must exercise options to become a shareholder and most rank and file people cannot do this without selling the stock at the same time because it requires them to put cash in. The kind of middle class folks Mr. Cuban wants to enrich do not typically have thousands to invest in their employer.

I did this once prior to an acquisition of a company I worked for and lost the money. It's pretty much a stupid move unless you are already wealthy and a founder or controlling exec with better insight and control over the outcome.

Also, when an employee exercises options and then sells the resulting share in a public company, they receive a multiple of earnings. Earnings != dividends but suppose all the earnings in a period were paid out as a dividend (they wont be of course) -- the shareholder will get only that amount whereas if they sell the share, they will receive a multiple often 10-15x or more of earnings. Most people benefit more from an exciting lump sum payout than an unpredictable drip at a time.</comment></comment>


How Do You Solve a Problem Like Patzer?  A VC Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://permanentrecord.firstround.com/2010/02/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-patzer.html?awesm=frc.vc_39z&utm_medium=frc.vc-copypaste&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=site-basic <comment><USER2> Patzer claimed on the Mint blog ( [http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint- com-plus-intuit-is...](http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus- intuit-is-a-big-idea/) ) that one reason to sell to Intuit was to speed up the adoption of his personal finance ideas in the market place. Seems like a legitimate non-problem reason.

"In addition, by joining Intuit, we can accelerate our ability to add more fantastic new product functionality into both Quicken and Mint.com. This means more people will find it easy and affordable to stay on top of their money issues. Bottom line? I see this as a chance to take a big leap forward toward our ultimate goal of improving the national savings rate."

<comment><USER3> They could have possibly done the same thing by continuing to disrupt, raising a lot more money, and building a billion dollar competitor to Intuit.

Not saying that selling to Intuit was a bad idea, and I completely agree with what Josh is saying, a $100MM+ acquisition is life-changing after all.

<comment><USER4> My ex-partner used to say _nobody died making a profit_. Selling at $100++ is certainly not small change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thought this was a solved problem. Why did they not just buy a portion of Patzer's stock?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an awesome take on the VC game. I imagine it's not the only opinion, however. The metaphor he sets up with regards to customers and shareholders could also be twisted (and I'm sure is, by some VCs) to a more hierarchical idea in which the VC needs to answer to the shareholders. Some VCs may even want to stretch that notion further and say that the startup is answerable to the VC.

I think this is a less accurate analogy, but I could certainly see it giving rise to the idea of "the Patzer" as something less like a business decision and something more like a sin against the VC.

</comment><comment><USER7> Didn't he sells because he is providing financial advice to people and the best financial advice for people is to be cautious and he applied the same advice to himself?

</comment><comment><USER8> What is funny, that judging from the headline I first thought of chess not Mint.com

Patzer(I believe term originates from Yiddish) is a common slang term for a poor chessplayer.

Do not be a P(p)atzer takes on a double meaning..</comment>


Ask HN: What can we do about climate change? - <AUTHOR> After reading up on the current state of climate change and what we are doing to mitigate or reverse the effects, it felt like there is a sense of lost hope for the world coming back from this. Beyond sitting back and letting the events unfold, does anyone think there's something that the people of HN can do with our varied skill sets? This may sound naive but I do wonder if there's more we could be doing that could have a multiplier effect on the effort to mitigate the factors that are causing climate change. <comment> open-source-ux Someone asked a similar question recently and I suggested an indirect option: use fast, energy- efficient languages and software.

It sounds ludicrous and you can decide for yourself if it is, but consider that there are _millions_ of servers (and desktop and laptop computers) in operation daily. Can you imagine the sheer volume of energy consumed globally? The tech community cares not one iota for such matters - in stark contrast to other industries that have strived for reduced energy-consumption. No, it won't stop climate change, but such wasteful energy use is an important issue that deserves more attention.

Anyway, rather than repeat myself, here's my original comment from the previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17762466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17762466)

<comment><USER2> Well, the MBs of ad-related (and other) JS loading with many/most webpages seems the most obvious low-hanging fruit there.

And writing this, my screen is shining white. How much energy would a default black instead of white save if used everywhere?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Going vegan or drastically reducing our animal product consumption might be the biggest impact we can make on a personal level. It slashes the energy impact we have on the environment by a factor of 10 - less polution, water usage goes down, forests are not destroyed (90% of the amazon deforestation is to raise livestock). As a bonus - it is good for our health

<comment><USER2> And most of the plastic in the oceans is nets and stuff dumped by fishing boats apparently. Not to mention severe 'over-fishing'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Support political groups challenging capitalism, since unrestrained capitalism is what is causing this problem.

2\. Plenty of work needed to build alternative infrastructure. So you can work for companies doing stuff ranging from public transit planning ([https://www.remix.com/](https://www.remix.com/)) to alternative energy deployments.

3\. Work on the open source scientific infrastructure that researchers rely on.

4\. Local political activity to get more public transit and bike infrastructure built, to get people off cars.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a fan of capitalism, but do you think capitalism and environmentalism are mutually exclusive?

<comment><USER4> Very hard to say. Certainly the current form seems pretty contradictory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Multiplier effects are the one thing. Personal choices are the other.

 _Everyone_ can make concious decisions about:

\- transportation, especially flying,

\- food, especially eating meat; also exotic food from far away,

\- consumption: do you really need that new thing you wanted to buy? Will it actually improve your live?

just to name some, imho most influential ones. Also, be informed, e.g. [https://www.drawdown.org/solutions](https://www.drawdown.org/solutions)

</comment><comment><USER7> You might like my talk from a few years ago [0].

0\. [https://www.tillett.info/2015/12/13/preventing-global- climat...](https://www.tillett.info/2015/12/13/preventing-global-climate- collapse/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Such an important question. I wonder how I can use my skills for it. Not easy to answer. I'm trying to get into cleantech, looking for a job currently.</comment>


Lucky Thirteen: Breaking the TLS and DTLS Record Protocols - <AUTHOR> http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/tls/

<comment><AUTHOR> Post on implementing the (rather complex) fix: <http://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/02/04/luckythirteen.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> @agl, it looks to me as if the timing differences they are measuring would be a complete wash in any realistic scenario?

The original "good enough" timing fix (in response to Vaudenay) was based on the assumption that an attacker would not realistically be able to measure the small remaining timing differences.

This paper has demonstrated that it is possible to measure the small remaining timing differences, but it seems as if that requires:

1) The server not to be doing anything else or processing any other TLS sessions.

2) The attacker to be in a hyper-controlled networking environment with extremely low latency to the server and zero interference.

Do you see this attack ever being possible in a practical situation?

<comment><AUTHOR> Against DTLS it appears to practical, both because the connection isn't destroyed and because the difference can be amplified by the researcher's Heartbeat trick from <http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/~kp/dtls.pdf>.

Against TLS it's tougher. The paper is suggesting a difference of ~10000 cycles, which may be ~5us. So, yes, you need to have a good connection to the server to be able to measure that difference, but that's not unthinkable to me. I know that you could get such a connection to a Google server if you were willing to pay some money to get a machine hosted in the right place.

But it also appears that it's fairly easy to get a process instantiated on the same EC2 host as a target application. Or maybe your server is running on a small ARM device and so the difference is much larger.

Don't get me wrong - this is a trivial issue compared to, say, the Java vulnerabilities that we've seen recently. But it's huge compared to the level of security that plain TLS should be providing. Saying that it's secure as long as you don't allow the attacker to be close by, or you don't run it on a slow machine isn't good enough for me.

But I admit that it's unlikely to anyone will ever actually perform this attack in anger. Although I would have said the same about MD5 collisions at the beginning of 2012 :)

<comment><USER2> Interesting. And beyond network position, do you think it's possible to measure these micro timing differences effectively against a server that experiences the type of load patterns Google's servers do?

(And yeah, I have little faith in DTLS generally).

<comment><AUTHOR> Scheduling jitter on a loaded server is going to make this attack much harder for sure. If you have a sufficiently good position against the server, you can just delay all other traffic going into it but, except for that, such jitter may well make the number of connections needed very high - such that it takes weeks or months to pull off. That might well be infeasible, yes.

However, many large sites have several serving locations, testing servers etc. If a location is drained of frontend traffic, or the testing server isn't being used all the time then you may well be able to find an idle server. After all, the attacker gets to choose where the traffic goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone with expertise provide details? From the description, it's a timing attack based on the content of the stream. But my understanding (and presumably that of the protocol designers) was that TLS post-key-negotiation was mostly deterministic and not subject to this kind of thing. What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> The attacker lets the handshake complete normally and then intercepts the transmission of the encrypted record that contains the secret that they wish to decrypt. (Assuming that the parties negotiated a CBC ciphersuite.)

The attacker can then alter the encrypted record and send it onwards to the server. Because the record has been altered, the server will reject it and close the connection. However, the amount of time that it takes to reject the record reveals something about the plaintext padding. If the client will repeatedly send the same plaintext secret (e.g. HTTP cookie) over many connections (e.g. a web browser repeatedly requesting a resource) then the attacker can learn a little from each connection and, after thousands of connections, start to decrypt the secret.

<comment><USER3> > _However, the amount of time that it takes to reject the record reveals > something about the plaintext padding._

This is the part I don't get. Symmetric cyphers in CBC mode don't traditionally behave that way. You encrypt the block and get your answer. Is there a variable-length HMAC in there somewhere or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> TLS does CBC wrong: it authenticates the plaintext and then encrypts the plaintext and MAC.

Since CBC mode needs to pad its input, this means that the padding is outside of the authentication.

So, when decrypting, the padding has to be removed and then the MAC can be checked. But the number of blocks hashed in the MAC depends on the padding. So the attacker can setup the padding such that a valid padding means that it's removed and one less hash block is calculated. An invalid padding isn't removed and the MAC takes one more hash-block worth of time.

Thus the attacker can tell whether a padding was valid and that's sufficient to completely break TLS.

<comment><USER4> How is it sufficient to know the padding to break TLS? I thought that if you know the padding, you only know the message length.

<comment><USER5> The attacker has an unknown plaintext byte P, and due to the way CBC mode works (together with the timing attack), is able to test if (P xor X) is a valid padding byte with X chosen by the attacker. Once the attacker finds an X that makes a valid padding byte, she can trivially determine P.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it about time that a new TLS version switches to Encrypt-then-MAC?

</comment><comment><USER6> If designing new crypto stuff, use a mode like GCM (Galois Counter Mode) or EAX. Avoid the old non-authenticated modes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both AES and GHASH have their own timing side-channel issues.

If you need to encrypt something, I recommend NaCl: <http://nacl.cr.yp.to/>

<comment><USER7> Are you saying that there is an equivalent attack for the AES-GCM TLS 1.2 ciphersuites? If so, paper please :)

<comment><USER8> There have been cache-based timing attacks on AES; these are hard to stop completely. To the best of my knowledge, this is not a knock on GCM specifically; but I'd be happy to learn more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


It May Be the Biggest Tax Heist Ever. And Europe Wants Justice - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/business/cum-ex.html <comment><USER2> They passed ineffective laws against it. To me that strongly suggests it actually was legal even thought the state didn't want it to be.

<comment><USER3> This sort of reasoning is why we have judges, though. If the law isn't capable of preventing something that requires a rube-goldberg machine of trades and positions, then a judge using common sense ought to be able.

It's pretty clear that one tax refund should be claimed one time, and suggesting the contrary (that claiming it twice is OK, e.g. that cum-ex is fine) is mental gymnastics to justify fraud/theft.

If someone is ok with stealing from the government (aka, your fellow taxpayers) then they should be willing to accept the consequences of being caught.

<comment><USER4> A principle like "one tax refund should be claimed one time" is not clear at all. There are hundreds of different rules for getting refunds on your taxes and many of them can be used multiple times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What was the actual mechanism they exploited that made them think or pretend to think that this was legal? There is some explanation in the Wikipedia article but it doesn't describe how the refund was untied from, say, actually receiving a dividend, or the payment of some tax that would get refunded.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CumEx- Files](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CumEx-Files)

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, it "wasn't considered illegal" and for some shady minds that means it is legal, even if highly dubious or morally wrong. The mechanism that made it possible was outlawed at some point, I think 2011, but the fraud continued.

There is a simplified explanation of the mechanism here [1], from which the following is taken:

> Simplified, cum-ex trading works something like this:

> Party One [..] "lends" its stock to Party Two, a bank. Under the agreement, > the title and ownership of the stock is temporarily transferred to the > borrower in return for a fee. [..]

> Party Two then sells the shares with-dividend to Party Three fractionally > before the Record Date [i.e. dividend soon-to-be-payed]. However, the shares > are delivered without-dividend just after.

> Like a magic trick, the shares "disappear" fractionally before the Record > Date and "reappear" with a new owner just after. The aim is to obscure > exactly who – Party One, Two or Three – owns the stock on the Record Date. > As a result, two parties can simultaneously claim ownership of the one > stock.

> Up until 2011, a loophole in the German tax code allowed both Party One and > Party Three [..] to claim a tax reimbursement. All colluding parties would > then split the gains.

[1] [https://theconversation.com/the-robbery-of-the-century- the-c...](https://theconversation.com/the-robbery-of-the-century-the-cum-ex- trading-scandal-and-why-it-matters-124417)

<comment><USER7> > As a result, two parties can simultaneously claim ownership of the one > stock.

interesting, a very special case of double-spending attack, but on a security? was this kind of thing much more commonplace before electronic trading systems came about

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Paywall bypass:

[http://archive.is/8J8tC](http://archive.is/8J8tC)</comment>


Show HN: Newon – Subscribe to anything on any website - <AUTHOR> https://newonapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Cool concept. But...

Request for Information;

1\. OS Support?

2\. Is it a browser extension?

3\. Does the Program/Extension poll sites for updates, or do a central server/cloud push updates?

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome extension only creates feeds and adds subscribe button. Crawler from our servers parses everything.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an app I've been developing solo for a long time. It is "early access" to test out core functionality, so don't judge it too harshly. But any feedback or advice will be greatly appreciated! Road map: Drag and drop in feed creation, image support, filters for feeds.</comment>


Philip Anderson 1923-2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=11698 <comment><USER2> A legendary impact on the field of condensed matter science and emergence.

I recommend go and read his "more is different" paper right now if you haven't. [http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72mo...](http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf)

It's remarkably readable for the layman.

<comment><USER3> Anderson was one of the most respected researchers in CM; he was the thesis advisor of a professor I worked closely with in grad school.

<comment><USER4> He was my[1] thesis advisors' thesis advisor. BD Josephson, also a Nobel laureate, was a student of his. Vijay Pande at Stanford is also a student of his.

[1] [https://academictree.org/physics/tree.php?pid=743767](https://academictree.org/physics/tree.php?pid=743767)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun story. In the Princeton Physics dept. corridors (ca. 2010) there were posters and papers talking about current research and results. One of them, not far from Anderson's office, was about broken symmetries and the Higgs boson. In it, a sentence described how "the mechanism of spontaneus symmetry breaking, proposed by Peter Higgs, explained the non-zero mass of the boson" (I don't remember the exact sentence...but it was something along these lines).

Someone had crossed out that sentence with a red pen, and corrected it by writing that the mechanism had been proposed by Anderson in 1962. I always wondered who had done that :-)

RIP

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain what he didn't like about string theory?

<comment><USER7> Here's a brief statement by Anderson that he wrote for the website www.edge.org. Apparently his main issue was that string theory isn't experimentally driven:

""" Philip W. Anderson Physicist and Nobel laureate, Princeton

Is string theory a futile exercise as physics, as I believe it to be? It is an interesting mathematical specialty and has produced and will produce mathematics useful in other contexts, but it seems no more vital as mathematics than other areas of very abstract or specialized math, and doesn't on that basis justify the incredible amount of effort expended on it.

My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance. It proposes that Nature is the way we would like it to be rather than the way we see it to be; and it is improbable that Nature thinks the same way we do.

The sad thing is that, as several young would-be theorists have explained to me, it is so highly developed that it is a full-time job just to keep up with it. That means that other avenues are not being explored by the bright, imaginative young people, and that alternative career paths are blocked. """

(source: [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/god-or-not- physic...](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/god-or-not-physics-and- of-course-love-scientists-take-a-leap.html))</comment></comment>


Rich Kids Stay Rich, Poor Kids Stay Poor - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/rich-kids-stay-rich-poor-kids-stay-poor/ <comment><USER2> Great article.

Think the thing about the kids from upper income families is extremely interesting.

Points out that they are more concerned with generating (and earning) capital income as opposed to labor income.

Just about what side of the divide you end up on...

</comment><comment><USER3> Couple of possible reasons of the drop off at the 95% mark could be kids feeling entitled and so they didn't work as hard as they needed to. Maybe they saw money does buy happiness so they rejected the whole game to "find themselves". Just couple ideas not mentioned in the article. Obviously, I'm sure it's multiple contributing factors.

</comment><comment><USER4> click-baity title, but interesting data

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this to be expected, given the heritability of IQ?</comment>


Customer Support Doesn't Have to Suck - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/posts/customer-support-doesnt-have-to-suck/

<comment><USER2> Having done support for my own startup, and now that I'm working at a startup where support is make for break for us, I totally agree with the pov of this post. But, ironically, I don't see any clear indication that GitHub sticks to this culture.

Every ticket or question I've sent in to GitHub support has been met with hostility. I submitted my third such ticket just this last week, a follow-up to an issue I had a day or two ago, and got a rather gruff response from Tekkub about how he had "already addressed this in the last ticket." His response might've made more sense if I had received the response prior to sending out the 2nd response, but my intent was simply to update with more info.

In general, I'm a fanatic zealot about GitHub. I think you guys have put together one hell of a product. It's like developer crack. Seriously, you guys even got Torvalds hooked now it seems. However, I've never gotten anything but attitude from the GitHub support line.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry you feel my replies were hostile, but I don't really understand why. Here's the timeline of your two emails:

September 02, 2011 @ 09:49 PM you opened the initial bug report

September 03, 2011 @ 08:06 PM you opened the second

September 03, 2011 @ 08:45 PM I responded to the first (we work from the oldest to newest). This was my reply:

> Thanks for the report. This is a known issue, we have a ticket open to get > it fixed.

I continued to work through our inbox, 20 minutes later at September 03, 2011 @ 09:04 PM I hit your second ticket. That was for the same issue, with a little extra info. I replied with:

> As I noted in the other thread, this is a known issue, we have a ticket > open.

I honestly don't see how these replies were hostile in any way. I thanked you for the report, I told you we had a ticket open to fix it, and then I acknowledged the second one so you'd know that we received it.

I'm open to any suggestions on how you'd have handled this differently.

<comment><USER2> Hey tekkub,

Intonation and meaning is lost over the Internet, which is often frustrating. I think this is exactly that kind of incident.

From my pov, when I come to a person about an issue and they respond with "as I noted in the other thread..." it can come across as somewhat gruff and dismissive. I totally get quickly clearing out a ticket and dealing with it simply, but the brevity and tone of the response made me unsure about how I flagged the issue. I immediately wonder if I've frustrated the support guy by giving him further information about the issue. It's certainly an inconvenience to get a dup, perhaps the support guy doesn't welcome updates on tickets? I'm left to wonder whether I've overstepped by supplying more info, and worse, I have to question if GitHub support cares about my response or if it's just been put in the bug bin of despair.

So, all things considered, you guys are doing fine, but maybe are thinking like devs rather than support people. Perhaps that is appropriate for GitHub: devs are your target market. Actually, my biggest beef with your support so far is I never was able to clear out a question about image linking in markdown files in a GitHub repo. Right now everyone in my startup has to add raw blob link to every single link, and this just seems like the wrong pattern. Why should I have to prepend [https://github.com/.../../blob/master/.../images/IMAGE.jpg?r...](https://github.com/.../../blob/master/.../images/IMAGE.jpg?raw=true) for every image I want to link in our flat file wiki? The last communication I had on the issue was never answered, so as far as I can tell, this is the only way to get images to show up in markdown files...

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. We try to at least get a reply to everyone, could you forward me the email so I can see if I can find it? firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Working at a high-touch hosting services vendor I understand all customer requests to be something that must be individually considered and addressed - but that's within the context of a much larger hosting partnership that funds such consideration on a regular basis.

Is there risk to the "positive" reputation you may get from doing this on in a B2C or low-touch B2B environment? Will this re-anchor customer expectations and lead to disappointment when receiving standard support?

I'm trying to think of a B2C company that's known for freebie's and a "customer is always right" attitude (names are escaping me at the moment). I'd feel slighted if I didn't receive that exceptionally high service level associated with the brand.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think exceptional customer support is one of the most critical and yet most overlooked aspects of running a startup. It's how you turn customers into fans, and fans is often the difference between winning and losing.

Through our previous app (<http://fivesecondtest.com>) and our current (<http://bugherd.com>) I've always tried to go above and beyond. Every time we have an unhappy customer I go so far above and beyond to help them that I more often than not turn a hater into a fan. Turning a negative support request into a positive Tweet shout out is a major win for me.

I can't count the number of times we've resolved a customer complaint and had them the very next day start paying us money. Yesterday we found a customer complaint in the "spam" folder from 3 weeks ago, we responded, apologised and let the customer know that we're changing to Zendesk as a result. Today they signed up to our top tier plan. THAT is a customer support win.

Today someone responded to our "how are you finding Bugherd?" email saying they hadn't had time to try out the app, so we extended their trial without them even asking. We do this all the time. It costs us nothing, and may win a paying customer.

We'll offer refunds to users who we can't help, we'll give discounts when our plans don't suit, we'll give away free months when a customer is waiting for a feature we haven't built yet. Anything to ensure that customer becomes a fan. Even if it turns out they leave us, we want to ensure they leave happily.

</comment><comment><USER6> Holy shit, he read my mind. We're just wrapping up our yc application for <http://inboxissues.com> \- a browser extension that is a bridge between customer support emails and the github issue tracker. We've been calling it rapportive for support, but it also goes the other direction: commit a fix to a feature or bug? notify customers when the feature ships.

Apologies for the landing page, we just finalized the idea on Saturday and we're feverishly working on updating the site with more info!

</comment><comment><USER7> Anecdotal: I remember seeing this from KLM a little while ago. They take customer service (not necessarily even support) to an extreme by committing random acts of kindness for passengers waiting in terminals: <http://surprise.klm.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> You don't need to operate in the first tier of customer support to help them either. We have a forum that developers monitor & post to (<http://forum.brightcove.com/brgh/?category.id=developers>). It's easy and not disruptive to interact with customers this way and it has the advantage of serving as a record so future users with the same problem. Users help users too, it's not only developers posting.

</comment><comment><USER9> I do all the support for Tiki-Toki (<http://www.tiki-toki.com>) at present and, to my surprise (I am quite a grumpy person), I quite enjoy it.

It really helps you get to know your own software and pinpoint areas where people are struggling and usability improvements are needed. Plus, you learn what new features people want.</comment>


Why I chose ClojureScript over JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://m.oursky.com/why-i-chose-clojure-over-javascript-24f045daab7e <comment><USER2> > If you have worked on any sizeable JS code base, you have probably dealt > with some of JS's language quirks such as function context (this), hoisting, > prototype inheritance, number array sorting, and the list goes on….

so clojurescript is just another language for people who don't want to bother learning javascript?</comment>


Ask HN: What programming language is business folks friendly? - <AUTHOR> I will be teaching introductory programming to students at a business school. What programming language should I choose? <comment><USER2> Depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Python is a pretty good all around language though. If you're in business school and will deal with numbers often, then it will be very beneficial due to the numerous math- related packages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really programming languages, but Turing complete: HTML and CSS. Useful for business students and allow to ease in into more traditional programming eventually, even if it's Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER4> COBOL -- COmmon Business-Oriented Language

:P</comment>


How to Pretend That You Are Smart - <AUTHOR> https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/07/how-to-pretend-that-you-are-smart <comment><USER2> Good lord, the author comes out swinging at Paul Graham. I encourage upvoting the article to prove to ourselves that this is a truly open forum (regardless of my or your opinion on it). We cannot believe that without being confident that even a sharp invective towards one of its cofounders can feature on the front page. Otherwise, HN would be more like Al Jazeera, which is one of the best news outlets in the Arab world, but unfortunately is tainted, on the margins, by its inability to criticize its patron Qatari regime. I know other articles disagreeing with Paul Graham have been upvoted, but this is on another level. A free forum is one that is worth your time. Yes, I know there are rules, and that's part of what makes HN so good.

<comment><USER3> PG probably takes an attack from Robinson as a compliment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The initial discussion of the article on YC almost touched on what the article hits, noting that Paul Graham is actually quite vague in specifically what behaviors he finds troubling, or what debates he thinks can no longer be had. But, I think the article does a really good job of demonstrating how empty his argument really is.

<comment><USER5> The author of this piece engages in a lot more of the vapid argumentation that he's accusing Graham of than Graham himself has ever been guilty of.

<comment><USER4> Would you mind being specific? Are you making a claim about the author in general, or this particular essay? What is an example of a claim in the essay that you think is vapid?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel vindicated for the downposts on calling out the original posting of that PG article here on HN as excuses for treating others poorly.

<comment><USER7> It could be used that way, but do you think that's the inevitable conclusion of his argument?

<comment><USER6> I doubt PG would use his own reasoning to harm others, but by placing his incomplete and non-comprehensive reasoning out in the world, he invites others to take his essay as advice. Advice that can cause misery if followed by a less accomplished, less astute individuals. His essay lacks acknowledgement of compromise, as any essay tends to do, but with content detailing how to judge others pushes the essay into dangerous ethical territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like the thesis of this diatribe is that people recognized generally or in their own niche as intelligent may not be, which is supported by saying they expressed ideas which allow the author to call them trash, which means they aren't smart after all.

Isn't that a self-defeating argument? Recognition makes them noteworthy, but being wrong makes them notorious idiots?

<comment><USER4> That's not anywhere close to the author's core argument. I'll let the author speak for themselves:

        'They also are both good examples of a kind of fake social science, whereby you simply make unsubstantiated observations about human beings that confirm things people already believe, and the reader's pre-existing feelings (their pre-judgments or "prejudices" if you will) are doing the work that evidence should be doing. I would argue that this kind of writing is extremely common and that we need to watch out for it because, if we share the prejudices of the author, we will end up believing things that may be totally untrue, and we will think we have read a good argument when we have in fact just been told that we were right all along.'

Robinson does note that the respective authors' fame, in some ways, insulates them from realizing the vacuousness of their prose:

        'Incredibly, Graham says that he had nine people review and give comments on his essay before he published it, including Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis. Apparently not one of those people asked Graham "What the hell are you talking about? What is this referring to? Could you please buttress this with some examples?"'

But the vast majority of the articles is dedicated to explaining why the essays are poorly-argued and poorly-sourced, without appeals to the authors' notoriety.

<comment><USER7> Disproving their points is secondary to the argument made by the author, which is rhetorical - don't listen to pseudointelligence just because it comes from the 'Very Smart' (using the author's sarcastic phrasing here).

It's not as though the subjects didn't put forward thoughtful arguments, but the author doesn't agree and so goes on to say that their arguments are vacuous and the subjects are vacuous, which is an extraordinary leap.

<comment><USER4> Robinson argues that two particular pieces of work are poorly structured logically and insufficiently backed by evidence. He posits a particular source for how these arguments were constructed in the first place (that the authors mistake the assertion of their worldview for evidence of that worldview), and says that this is something the 'Very Smart' can get away with essentially because they allow themselves or are allowed by others to rest on their (earned or unearned) laurels:

        'A lot of time in college is spent teaching students that they cannot simply expound their theories of the world without reference to any scholarly literature. But once you have your credentials, and have made your way into an intellectual sinecure, whether in academia, media, or as a rich guru whose opinions are valued because people think the rich are smart, you no longer need to follow the rules.'

I can't argue for the Mead article (it was behind a paywall and was retracted ten days after its publication date: [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12115-020-00496-1...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12115-020-00496-1?shared- article-renderer) ), but I think Robinson demonstrates this pretty well for the PG essay. As he notes:

        'I want to draw your attention to what is common between these two pieces of writing, because while most of us will probably wave away an essay like Mead's, the actual *reasoning* in Graham's is no better.' (original emphasis)

I don't think Robinson makes a claim that the subjects of the articles are _vacuous_. In the PG case, he claims that the subjects aren't even specified:

        'It's hard to know what Graham is even talking about most of the time. What ideas does he think are not being debated? What restrictions have been put in place? What are some examples of things that are being affected by the inability to pursue certain lines of thinking? Which norms have eroded and in which institutions and to what degree and what consequences are imposed for Thinking The Forbidden Thoughts? How are we to evaluate whether there has been a loss to intellectual discourse without understanding what has been lost?'</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pissed with shitty Lead Magnets – I built an experiment suggesting a refresh - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Abhishek_Nandi/future-of-lead-magnets-ed84ec64b200 <comment><AUTHOR> I would love to know what you think?</comment>


An Ansible Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://serversforhackers.com/editions/2014/08/26/getting-started-with-ansible/ <comment><USER2> I love Ansible.

What's scary about shell scripts is the lack of idempotence (if you accidentally run them twice, things break).

What's annoying about chef/puppet is the bootstrapping overhead -- you can't start from a blank slate system, because you still need to install puppet- client or ruby+dependencies. So now you're paying to store a bunch of semi- pre-configured images with some out-of-date ruby gems or an old puppet-client. If you want to start from a blank image, then you're using shell scripts to install the toolchain that will let you avoid using shell scripts (or worse - doing it by hand!).

Ansible is idempotent ssh + shell scripting, so it solves the 'blank slate' problem nicely. It only requires python, which is bundled by default on ubuntu servers.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what bootstrapping overhead you're talking about. You can do a knife bootstrap to bootstrap nodes, not sure about puppet.

<comment><USER2> I didn't say it was difficult, I said it was annoying. The bootstrapping step isn't just easier when using Ansible, it doesn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This weeks edition of Servers for Hackers goes from using ad-hoc commands (shell and other modules), to Playbooks and finally abstracting everything out to a Role with templates, files and variables.

</comment><comment><USER4> I clicked on this thinking it would be something involving the ansibles from the Ender's Game series which allow instant communication across large stretches of space. I should probably take my lunch soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be awesome, but sadly I haven't figured out beating the speed of light for intra-galactic communication.

<comment><USER5> Forget intr-galactic communication, we need c+ to talk to the bleedin' cluster.</comment></comment></comment>


Our approach to the future relationship with the EU [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/886168/Letter_to_Michel_Barnier_19.05.20.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm actually rather impressed by the EU performance in this. The strategic idea of Brexit was, to leverage the better geostrategic position of Britain compared to Ireland to make bilateral trade deals. And frankly, four years ago I would have thought that should work at least kinda Ok-ish. However Junker then did reaffirm European solidarity with the Irish at every opportunity.

Now, there are of course three reasons, why the UK will not get a good trade deal, first they don't have leverage, second they told the EU that they hate the EU, which combined with one is of course sound negotiating tactics. And last, the EU would rather like to keep Scotland.

<comment><USER3> I always saw the UK mostly dominated by the finance sector in London, but they left as soon as the Brexit was on the table. Ireland does this tax evasion thing plus protection from the Gdpr. So from a business perspective I would see Ireland in the better position from the start.

What points for the UK did I miss?

<comment><USER4> You seem to have missed that the financial sector has not left London

<comment><USER3> I was thinking that the stock exchange was heading to Frankfurt. Obviously not closing down completely but majorly

<comment><USER4> Has anything significant left?

<comment><USER3> I honestly can't answer that. Was there anything significant in the first place. I guess I just heard some rumours or rumblings in the media.

Huh... I really don't know

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Almost 4 years into a process that was meant to take 2 years max, the uk government still thinks that demanding things and making rude public statements is a "relationship".

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not well versed on this matter... But if you read through the spin it reads as if the UK thinks they can cherry-pick sections for all the free- trade-agreements the EU have made with other countries.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unless there is someone here who can shed more light all I can see is from way the EU members treated Greece it made it very clear the EU was never going to let the U.K. leave and profit from the deal.

<comment><USER8> You seem to be blaming the EU for the choices freely made by Greece and the UK. The EU doesn't exist to coddle self-destructive nations at its own expense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The EU is made up of two types of countries: small nations, and countries that have not yet realized they are small nations. The UK simply has much less leverage in these negotiations than does the EU, and EU will not reward the UK for leaving the common market.

<comment><USER10> Germany, France, Spain etc are small nations? What's the criteria for one then?

<comment><USER11> Germany on its own would not be on on equal footing when negotiation trade agreements with the likes of China, the US or Russia. The EU is.

<comment><USER12> Germany has more than twice the GDP of Russia. They could reasonably handle themselves. US and China are considerably larger however.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Every Major Silicon Valley Investor Is Using To Find The Next Big Thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/product-hunt-2014-6

<comment><AUTHOR> There are 600-800 VC's on Product Hunt and I know of at least three deals that have been sourced through the site:

1) Taptalk + SV Angel 2) Fitbay + Steadfast Ventures 3) Move Loot (YC) + Index Ventures

And I'm sure there are several others.</comment>


Oracle Solaris Moving to a Continuous Delivery Model - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_moving_to_a <comment><USER2> So what does this mean now?

Solaris was basically confirmed to be dead.</comment>


WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum: "Most of startup ideas are absolutely stupid" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@techandthecity/whatsapp-co-founder-jan-koum-most-of-startup-ideas-are-absolutely-stupid-501ae81d28aa <comment><USER2> Another great interview ruined by idiotic click-bait title. Whoever decided on that title should be ashamed.

<comment><USER3> Yes; I think his statement is more trying to describe his own inability to separate the wheat from the chaff; Most startups do fail and he can't differentiate between the good ones and bad ones; And after all, whatsapp was once a startup was it not? I don't believe he is putting down startup founders by his comment.

<comment><USER4> It's a straight forward sentence, I don't think you can just redefine it's content detached from the words in it.

However, the sentence is not even close to describe the interview and creates a weird focus by making this side topic present in the headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not OP mistake, but the title is click-baity as hell. Yes, it is a direct quote, but that was mentioned in passing to a question of whether he'd invest in any.

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "In which direction does WhatsApp develop? Which new features are you going to introduce? We usually do not announce what we are building right now or plan to launch in the future. That is our policy. But we have a simple task to make our product easy to use and fast. That sounds easy, but it is rather difficult to implement."

Well with that last update WhatsApp became harder to use.

</comment><comment><USER7> Jan sounds like a very humble guy, really focused and passionate about doing good work. I especially like the comment about sitting with a smart face, I wonder where that expression came from.</comment>


Protecting against spam by receiving more spam - <AUTHOR> https://0day.work/protecting-against-spam-by-receiving-more-spam/ <comment><USER2> I've been using this technique for several years now, making sure that my honey-pot addresses are widely available. Any email that matches a whitelist gets through immediately. Anything that matches my blacklist goes straight to spam.

Everything else is put through a comparison filter that looks to see if it's similar to something that's been blacklisted. If so, to goes in the spam folder.

If something is then still unclassified it goes through a Bayesian filter trained on the explicitly black/white messages, and prioritised accordingly. Anything that's closer to black than white gets delayed a day or two, anything that's nearly white goes in my inbox.

Works a treat, and in my experience, even with only a comparatively small amount of email, it beats the gmail filters, because it's trained on _my_ data.</comment>


World's deepest pool to open in Poland - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-deepest-pool-scli-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> I wonder what engineering challenges are involved in this. I'd imagine it's more complicated than just digging a bigger hole and adding more water filters

<comment><USER3> Every 10m of depth adds about 1 atm of pressure. Not sure what challenges specifically that introduces though.

<comment><USER4> Leaks. Water at those pressures finds holes, opens cracks and eats away at foundations. A little trickle quickly becomes a sinkhole, or your structure starts to float away. It all depends on the soil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's also the pool with the least pronounceable name. Staring at "Mszczonów", most non-Polish people will just give up, I suspect.

<comment><USER6> For those who are intellectually curious, this site has two recordings of how to say it: [https://forvo.com/word/mszczonów/](https://forvo.com/word/mszczonów/)

<comment><USER7> Odd, I don't speak Polish, but my mom and grandparents did. Even that small exposure was enough for me to get that pronunciation 100% correct. I wonder what the minimum exposure to any given language is to allow someone to correctly guess pronunciation. I speak a little German and French but regularly get the pronunciation incorrect, but I didn't grow up around native German and French speakers.

<comment><USER8> Polish pronunciation is actually incredibly easy, there's a direct mapping (a mathematical function) from a simple partition of letters to phonems. Unlike in English, where we have weirdnesses like "vehicle" or "colonel". There's a price to pay for quick and massive import of words, lack of centralized language development coordination body and conquering the global stage of accents, I reckon.

Example for the town: Mszczonów -> Mshchonooff (Americanized).

<comment><USER9> It's not easy, it's very very hard, even for other slavs, but it's very predictable based on spelling.

<comment><USER5> I blame the Poles for the muteness of their non-slav neighbors.

<comment><USER9> Ah now I finally got it! Nemtsy, makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised such pools don't already exist. 40m is the limit you can dive without extra training and probably special gas.

I guess it must just be really expensive to build and maintain a pool this big.

<comment><USER11> I thought it was 18m (60ft) for PADI open water.

<comment><USER10> Looking it up, you're right, and the Advanced Open Water says 30m max. I don't know if it changed or if I just misremembered. I'm pretty sure I did 40m as part of the deep diving segment of Advanced Open Water, but that might not be accurate either. It was about 10 years ago.

<comment> saiya-jin I never met instructor who was very fond of keeping strict limits as per our current certification, I guess those folks are rather laid back and don't care about some rules that much.

I recall when doing my original SSI Open water cert in Croatia (max should be 18m), the instructor took us to 33m, it was maybe 4th dive in the course (and in my life). I was a bit worried and showed him the depth meter, he just signaled back OK, so I went along (like I could do anything else at that moment).

When training for Advanced OW, or diving after I obtained it in various places, nobody cares about precise limit (should be cca 30m for SSI IIRC), generally 35-40m is the limit for real dives.

At least they all rigorously follow decompression stops on a way up, wrist computers help greatly with more precise measurements. You just need to stick to +- same depth as instructor, not be constantly 5m below him chasing creatures.

<comment><USER12> Dive computers will give you _precise_ instructions, but they aren't necessarily _accurate_. Many people fail to appreciate the difference between precision and accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's already small swimming pool complex in Mszczonów city, built on thermal spring source - hence the name Termy Mszczonów.

That pool is going to be a part of larger aqua park located 5 km away from Mszczonów, in Wręcza village.

</comment><comment><USER14> Near the bottom there's a picture of a different pool, the current largest. A "mermaid" is swimming around without scuba gear. Here is a video I found about that:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAdSdzAdi0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAdSdzAdi0)

</comment><comment><USER15> Cool!

Other deep pools are:

* Nemo 33 in Brussels, Belgium

* Y-40 "The Deep Joy" in Padua, Italy

<comment><USER16> All of these pools are in the EU. As Americans, we cannot allow a deep-pool gap!

<comment><USER17> Agreed. I'd love to see one in Texas. We've already got artificial surf parks: [https://www.bsrcablepark.com/cable-park/texas-surf-park- bsr-...](https://www.bsrcablepark.com/cable-park/texas-surf-park-bsr-surf- park/)

Now we just need a good scuba diving park and there's no need to visit the coasts ever again!

<comment><USER18> [crocodile dundee accent] That's not an artificial surf park, _this_ is an artificial surf park: [http://www.kswaveco.com/](http://www.kswaveco.com/)

<comment><USER9> Yes but how to visit? The website doesn't even say where it is! Shut up and take my money!

<comment><USER18> I know, right? For now, you have to know somebody who knows somebody who knows Kelly. :-)

Word is that they're going to start opening up reservations for full-day events, sometime this year. Maybe $30k for the day (but that's just a guess). One wave every four minutes. 7 hours in the day. You can bring a dozen friends and surf until your arms (and legs, because the rides can be a full minute long) are noodles. Or you can bring 30 friends and still get eight or ten waves for the day.

After being lucky enough to tag along to a group that surfed there last year, I've spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about what my income level would have to be for the $30k to seem like a "reasonable" outlay, once a year. The answer is "a lot lower than is sensible." It's a clean, head-high face, a super-fast down the line wave, and two legit barrel sections. Better than the best waves anywhere on the California coast outside of a handful of days a year.

Of course, $30k is just the entry level option. They are starting to think about licensing the plans and tech. For maybe $10M you could build your own! (No idea what it costs to run it per year.)

<comment><USER9> Hm, for 30k I can build a cablepark, my brother just got a quote. A 2.0 cable but still, I wakeskate so for me it's perfect.

There are "wave gardens" in other places too, one in England and one in Spain I think. But I still haven't figured out how to visit any of them...

But thanks a lot for the info, now it makes more sense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Superpond at APG, Maryland run by the DoD is 46meters (150ft) deep.

<comment><USER20> Closed indefinitely due to deaths in 2013. [https://patch.com/maryland/aberdeen/aberdeen-proving- ground-...](https://patch.com/maryland/aberdeen/aberdeen-proving-ground-super- pond-closed-indefiniteldd2cbfdefb)

<comment><USER19> That article is out of date. It's still operational and in use. Policies changed after three deaths in close succession. Still, the point is that manmade pool exists and has for years contrary to the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could be an interesting place to train for free diving.

</comment><comment><USER22> China doesn't like not having the biggest of something. I expect this to be beaten within the next couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER23> "How low can you?" \- the opening sentence of the article as I type.

Probably will be corrected soon, but pretty amazing how sloppy copy editing is on one of the largest news sources.

<comment><USER24> There's no copy editing anymore, that's something that disappeared around the time on-line news happened...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It will include a hotel with rooms for a view, but a view for whom? Hopefully the hotel room windows have one-way glass.

<comment><USER26> Or curtains?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension that finds HN comments for the page you have open - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DanielDe/FindHackerNewsComments <comment> ga-vu Glorious</comment>


Study: Citizens United as Bad Corporate Law - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3233118 <comment><USER2> Personally I thought the decision was excellent.

It so unleashed a torrent of money into the political system as to make all money basically worthless. It was a case of massive devaluation of influence in a sense.

The recent campaigns have been telling. Candidates are losing who are outspending their opponents $30 million to $2 million (15:1). That should not be happening. But the influence that money buys you anymore is weak, and if anything makes you look worse.

It did suck for the first few years with the Koch Brothers, but now even the Tea Party hates them (thank god).</comment>


Web might have stopped Hitler, says Nobel winner - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10117763-71.html

<comment><USER2> What utter nonsense! The problem was not that no-one knew what the Nazis were up to; everyone in Germany knew! The Nazis were _elected_ , they didn't seize power in a revolution!

But as I always say in such discussions, you cannot evaluate history out of context. In the 20s and 30s it was perfectly normal to be what we would now consider a political extremist. It was _fashionable_ be a Fascist or a Communist. Everyone gets swept up in the zeitgeist in any era. I guarantee that the next generation will look back at us over some issue and say, _WTF were they thinking?!_

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, that is baloney. The rampant and pervasive anti-semitism of Weimar Germany wasn't the key to his getting into power, it was that the other powers in Germany saw him as an easy-to-manipulate dupe that they could control. And Hitler played them like the fools they were.</comment>


Mayer's acquistion spree starts to solve core problems - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/07/25/baby-steps-mayers-acquistion-spree-doesnt-turn-yahoo-around-but-it-starts-to-solve-core-problems/?grcc2=8ac707a7041dc368bc0a66ea38a9d63f~1375301915162~98c84adcf72f4f5888fe14a7b4b7dec4~cb9b1569fa031c97d24a781fa7f80646~1375301915253~598~5~0~0~0~-1~-1~-1~15~5~34~H4sIAAAAAAAAAIVQu67dIBD8lfgD1uYNvmVSpUpxdesIw_ocIgwO4CO54dtDkj6Z1Wq0D-2M9tna-bYsp00-exviPbt8LIxQvhC9cLpUfGECH0q74VFCG1TQRqjNlnadELHWnCq0p23gcm1wIDA4Qowhp6WDNpwpLRWXnCpNySr785-iTC6b3e6hgGeFw95YKlj38wq1jZNQz4IIPmNNDdpVEtz2mTPYkq_kYbsahPbX37CVoeb4wmGtIJwlbxGPuvSVqd7larohfTXOCOvdrtkudmmM2ZEKqzexaY9O_H-h9xoafvVveiV6gAohiF4V52z97uxx2vBIYwyMUs0NE0xxJQVXwrBORtCRH-_TRxpn_Kf3ZhvWiRM-fc5X9FgmLekkyEyonIASOTNN1J_m9OVbx22UKHcrlRZSM4pMGEmcortzxJvOyDozLmbGBtNefzgK9gyEjHr8xM-P8uq7jRX7b_wCtrF2bxUCAAA

<comment><USER2> If this is about hiring for talent, then Yahoo is in serious trouble. I will give her this - people are talking about Yahoo again. Some of that was the old board, but she deserves some of the credit too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if this solves Yahoo's "core" problem or if they even have a "core" problem as opposed to a shitload of small problems. I know I'm not sure about a lot of what Yahoo has done over the last year, and I'm pretty skeptical if Yahoo can even be turned around but I'm giving Marissa at least 3 years before making any judgements.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article is full of fluff. How exactly do each of the acquisitions start to solve the core problems of Yahoo?

</comment><comment><USER5> Each of the acquisitions tells us more about what Yahoo wants to be. Thus far, it's been dilutive to the brand but overall strategic. I have faith they will integrate these products and teams much better than they did in the past.</comment>


The 2 degrees scenario looks impossible (Bloomberg NEF) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bnef.com/dataview/new-energy-outlook-2016/index.html <comment><USER2> Somehow this forecast doesn't induce a lot of trust. There is a history of underestimation of solar (or wind) power rise; oil prices are notoriously difficult to predict (and what's going to happen to coal over decades?); some developments, like decrease in energy consumption in developed countries, aren't easy to predict either.

So... I'd like to have more, better data before making any conclusions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The last chart is pretty explicit: [https://www.bnef.com/dataview/new-energy- outlook-2016/index....](https://www.bnef.com/dataview/new-energy- outlook-2016/index.html#section-13)</comment>


Yahoo updates its homepage to app like interaction - <AUTHOR> http://yahoo.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> I visited the homepage, not something I normally do. I have to admit it's pretty good. Loaded fast, not outrageously cluttered relative to the typical web page, and scrolls well.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you want to touch the screen? - <AUTHOR>

So touchscreens though an old concept are becoming very popular and I can see the big gain for cellphones since controls generally are awkward.<p>But for normal computers, what is the real gain? I already have to wipe my screen too often, I don't want to wipe more often. I don't want to be negative to new technology(you usually end up looking like a fool) but I have never really felt like "Damn if I could just click the screen instead!", or maybe I am so used to using the mouse that I dont even consider that clicking would be very nice. Another thing is precision, don't we still need the mouse for a lot of tasks? A finger is quite blunt and clicking a small file might be hard. Maybe the whole interface would be changed though.<p>(Btw is there a saying for not judging things in their wrong environment? Like "don't judge a book by its cover" but in the form of "don't judge a F1-racing machine on a normal road" or something like that.) <comment><USER2> A touchscreen doesn't replace a mouse - as you've noted it's not precise enough. It can work with a UI that's designed for it specifically. But you give up a lot of screen real estate to make that work. (I've spent the last 3 years working on a touch-screen kiosk app...)

What's really interesting is the multitouch stuff, especially with very large displays. Once large, very high resolution displays become affordable, I think multitouch will take off in a big way.

<comment><USER3> The key phrase being "UI that's designed for it specifically".

Personally I think Apple did the right thing with the iPhone. I'm a lot more enthused about using the touchscreen on that vs. sticking to only the stylus on every single other mobile device with a touchscreen I have owned. I'd almost feel that a stylus would ruin the point of the iPhone, unless you needed precision accuracy, and it's been a year (just a bit short of that jailbroken) that I've had the iPhone and I still can't think of anything in particular that would need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to have a screen that gives an electric shock to anyone who gets their greasy, grubby fingers near it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know I'd like to touch a screen when prototyping stuff, or for fast-paced creative sessions (i.e: brainstorming and such)

On the other hand, I'm also a keyboard junkie, so you can happily ignore my point of view :)

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Actually now when I think about it there are a lot of obvious applications for it. Paint and photoshoplike programs for example.

But getting rid of the mouse altogether? Hmm maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never used one, but every review of the Cintiq I've ever read is roughly "Best device ever! Should have bought it years ago! Worth every penny! From my cold dead hands!". This suggests to me that for at least a significant minority of use cases, more direct manipulation is quite useful.

You admit it's good for phones but bad for "normal computers". But your phone is more powerful than your PC was 10 years ago. Lots of people have already given up desktops for laptops; is it so hard to imagine one day many people will have given up laptops for even smaller devices?

I think it would be great for collaboration. Two people and one screen is OK, but you either have collaboration software (complex) or have to share input devices (awkward). A touchscreen bring back the immediacy of sketching something out on a whiteboard together.

As you point out, the interface will need to change. (When I was typing commands into my terminal, I never thought "Damn if only I could drag a bar of soap around my desk to do this!") The mouse is a local maximum. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem: you can't write software for hardware that nobody has. So if people want to build touchscreens, I'm all for it. Maybe somebody will build an interface for them that doesn't suck.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd love to touch my screen! I'd also like my keyboard, mouse and monitors to be touch sensitive screens (same form factor but made with a 'screen' layered over them. So my mouse/keyboard can be completely customizable to the task at hand.

Now if they can get the screen surface to change texture AS WELL as the light that it emits it would be amazing. Rough and smooth surfaces for buttons etc.

Touch screens don't need to just be classic 'screens'.

<comment><USER8> how about optimus maximus : <http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/9836/>

<comment><USER7> yeah that's a good start... but the keys need to be virtual so they can move around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Touchscreens are great for applications that don't require a keyboard. Non- technical people like touching screens. It usually means a simple UI and a small feature set.

<comment><USER3> I like touching screens! It feels a lot more relaxed and natural to manipulate certain things by touch vs. using a keyboard or some other input device. It's almost like mouse gestures except so much better.

That's not to say the keyboard doesn't have its uses, and that it's my favorite input device in general though. Although I do love my logitech mx revolution mouse too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Being an iPhone user I often find myself out of habit sliding my finger up my screen to scroll down when browsing the web. I promptly bang my head on the desk and feel like an idiot when nothing happens and there is now another finger smudge line on the screen.

I'm in favor of this new interaction so long as I get to keep my keyboard!

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd rather not touch my screen but I do want multitouch controlling of onscreen objects, e.g. in games or graphics apps, or for sorting through photos, organising research snippets/post it notes (digital ones of course), moving icons around, etc.

My proposed solution is this: a flat digital touch-sensitive keyboard (I know, some people like tactile feedback!) that can switch to a touch 'screen' mode with the flick of a switch - and though contact is required to manipulate objects, it senses hand positions without contact so that cursors are displayed onscreen where each fingertip is about to contact (so you can hover + seek, then click/drag)

\</comment><comment>--- alternative idea: multitouch phones used as bluetooth (multi)touchpads for your PC

</comment><comment><USER3> All four of the displays for the computers I use often have fingerprints all over them. Also I occasionally have a finger that feels sore from overestimating the distance from my lap with the keyboard to the display.

Stupid iPhone with its multitouch touchscreen display.

</comment><comment><USER12> One thing that I hate most is having to switch between interface methods and devices. If I can't do everything I need to do quickly, intuitively, and accurately with a touchscreen, then I don't want one. I don't want it for the 10% of the time that it might be useful if I still need a keyboard for the other 90% of the time.

That's not to say that I don't think that it COULD be useful at some point. If I had a computer that only had touchscreen and had excellent voice recognition capabilities, that would be a workable solution for the right application.

</comment><comment><USER13> "You make a better door than a window"

seriously, though: "on their own grounds / in context". But you're right, no pithy phrase comes to mind.

OT: I was looking for stuff like this: "Linux: can't blend margaritas", which is kind of the idea.

and I found this fun Google query: <http://www.google.com/search?q=%22worst+*+in+*%22>

</comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone combined the ideas behind the theremin with the touch screen? - This way you wouldn't have to ever touch the screen and there would be an extra degree of freedom in the distance from the screen.

<comment><USER5> Nokia is already working in this direction. Google "nokia touchless" to see some prototypes.

Can't wait to see the day you can wave your hands in front of the screen saying "these are not the bugs you're looking for" :D</comment></comment>


Guys Figured Out a Way to Get Endless Free McDonald's - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/4agvdw/mcdonalds-hack-free-food <comment><USER2> In the USA, McD's are often franchised by local owners. So not fleecing a mega-corporation out of free food, fleecing one of your neighbors. FWIW.

<comment><USER3> You think your neighbors own chains of mcd franchises?

<comment><USER2> Our local 'chain' is 3 stores, so, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hat tip to Bruce Schneier: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/02/hacking_mcdon...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/02/hacking_mcdonal.html)</comment>


Clojure Distilled - <AUTHOR> http://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html

<comment><USER2> I am really suggesting to try some classic Scheme course first, like my favorite CS61A by Brian Harvey, or that wonderful Racket-based course (what's the difference?) on Coursera by Gregor Kiczales (which is worth watching even if you are mere a brainwashed Java dev).

Another way is through pg's books, especially, of course, "On Lisp" and Arc tutorial and then arc.arc (original version from the 2009 arc3.tar which isn't cluttered with silly docstrings and other nonsense).

There is also the way of CL. For that there is pg's ANSI CL, but before that a much better "CL Language Concepts" from Symbolics (pdfs are available from bitsavers).

Then, perhaps, one will have slightly different view of what Clojure is really. Yes, it is a real marvel of software craftsmanship, especially that it was originally a solo effort, but no, there is no miracles in it.)

<comment><USER3>
        which is worth watching even if you are mere a brainwashed Java dev

and this is why so many people are repelled by the Lisp (or Scheme) evangelism. I don't particularly like Java, but I use it for Android development. Calling people _brainwashed_ because they are using Java is simply rude.

<comment><USER2> In my opinion Java is the biggest fraud and waste in the history of IT (next comes SAP) - nothing but hype, ignorant parroting of silly memes by "managers" (so-called bandwagon and peer effects) lies, and taking advantage of ignorant.

People who "know no better" (cannot even visit the rosettacode.org, dismissed plain old C - these evil pointers!, Erlang - functional programming is for academy, or CL - not an enterprise level, etc, etc) are, well, brainwashed.

I am not blaming the people, I am just describing reality as I see it, and my view is by no means new or even "original".

Java was just a way to make money (in 2000s) like "derivatives traders" in the last 10 years. Same manipulations, same techniques.

For example, almost all of the very few popular apps I have installed on my Nexus4 are _NDK_ apps - FB, Viber, Skype - you name it.

<comment><USER3> Java is just a programming tool and, while I would have preferred to use C++14 for all my Android projects, it is what it is ( _NDK_ make sense only for heavy duty applications).

Now, imagine for a second that you are a junior programmer, that only knows Java. You've heard of this thing called Clojure and you want to read and learn more about it. What would you think if someone called you _brainwashed_ just because you only know Java ? For most people this means EOD (end of discussion). Calling someone _brainwashed_ just because he doesn't have your level of expertise with other languages will just make it ignore the good parts of your comment.

In the end it is about what is more important to you: vent some steam about how much you hate Java or guide someone to learn more about a Lisp language.

<comment><USER2> Not so long ago a student of a good school in US would know Scheme and C, not Java or Python, and the move to Java as the language for teaching CS is, in my opinion, the result of the same regrettable process of brainwashing.

btw, I never talk Java issues in a context of a personally, only in a broader sense of a "social phenomena" partly explained by well studied "effects" in social psychology.

Unfortunately, Clojure will not be suitable for Android development in observable future exactly because "Java" cannot fulfill its promises - Clojure's runtime is "too heavy and too slow" (too wasteful) to run even on a newest smartphone hardware, and in this, again, so-called reality re-asserted itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been working with Clojure for 18 months now, after a bit more than 10 years of Java. I'm having so much fun I don't think I could ever go back.

Also, this is an excellent summary / introduction to key clojure concepts, well done to the author.

<comment><USER5> Seconded. I was working with a mix of Java and Ruby for roughly a decade. I've been working full time with Clojure for about two years now, and on and off for a couple of years before that.

Fantastic introductory guide. Clojure really needs something like this. There are some good books on Clojure but I find they are aimed at either the determined beginner or the experienced (or both.) This though I feel I could pass around to anyone that wants to get an idea of what Clojure is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not done reading but it seems like a very nice introduction to people not familiar with the function style of programming.

This is also one of the few document that can be converted from html to epub without much pain. It looks quite good with

        pandoc ClojureDistilled.html -o ClojureDistilled.epub --indented-code-classes=clojure

</comment><comment><USER7> I love clojure, and dream of the day I can work with it.

But do you know why more people get into ruby or js? It's community is beginner friendly. Most texts on the subject of lisps feel like wannabe dissertations, preferably with the Computer Modern font and 5 pages long.

<comment><USER8> I would never suggest a programmer learn Clojure as their first language, because of the enormous Java stacktraces. Then there's the setup involved (Java, usually Leiningen) to get to "Hello, World" compared to Python or Ruby. Just too many places where the student can get seriously stuck. Clojure's strengths (immutable structures, expression freedom, macros, Java interop, JVM) are not relevant to the new programmer.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the Java stack traces are probably the worst "ugly" thing in Clojure but from my experience the simplicity of syntax (not to be confused with familiarity, familiar != simple) makes it much easier for someone who's never programmed before to start writing Clojure code vs many other languages where there's a lot of syntax to that you simply need to "know" to get going.

Also, on a more advanced note, I've used [https://github.com/ptaoussanis/timbre](https://github.com/ptaoussanis/timbre) with great success to get nicely formatted and colored Clojure errors and stack traces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Extracting keys from maps into a definition, with common-lisp (using my macro defk)

(defk login (user pass) (and (string= user "Bob") (string= pass "secret")))

(login (list-to-hash '(user "Bob" pass "secret")) (list-to-hash '(user "Bob" pass "secret"))

Given the following definitions:

(defmacro defk(name h-list &rest body) `(defun ,name (h) (let ,h-list ,@(loop for k in h-list collect `(setq ,k (gethash (quote ,k) h))) ,@body)))

(defun list-to-hash(list) (let ((h (make-hash-table))) (loop for (k v) on list by #'cddr do (setf (gethash k h) v)) h))

<comment><USER11> It's probably more idiomatic to implement something similar to the with-slots macro by using symbol-macrolet:

      (defmacro with-keys (keys table &body body)
        (let ((gtable (gensym)))
          `(let ((,gtable ,table))
             (symbol-macrolet ,(loop for k in keys
                                     collect `(,k (gethash ',k ,gtable)))
               ,@body))))

This way you can both access and set the keys:

      CL-USER> (defparameter *table* (make-hash-table))
      *TABLE*
      CL-USER> (setf (gethash 'a *table*) 10
                     (gethash 'b *table*) 20)
      20
      CL-USER> (with-keys (a b) *table*
                 (list a b))
      (10 20)
      CL-USER> (with-keys (a b) *table*
                 (setf a 100
                       b 200))
      200
      CL-USER> (list (gethash 'a *table*)
                     (gethash 'b *table*))
      (100 200)

If you really want to destructure a hash-table when its an argument, it is not much harder to write a new version of defun on top of with-keys or zeroyzeroa's solution (his/hers only takes a single argument).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm currently learning Clojure. For all the "aha!" moments, there are plenty of "WTFs?", too. Not that it's a fault of the language, it's just that it requires a different way of looking at things. I've only skimmed this article, but look forward to reading it in depth later. Thanks!

I'd be interested if anyone has some similar pieces to share.

<comment><USER13> Most of my Clojure WTFs were not related to the language itself, but rather the tooling. This was years ago, but everyone used to say, "Before diving into Clojure, you should really learn _emacs_ and all these other things first." I'm glad I ignored them and sputtered along in a text editor while learning the basics of the language, because I would've otherwise burnt out.

With apps like Light Table now available, maybe beginners have an easier ramp these days.

<comment><USER12> Good to know! I started with emacs, but decided to use Light Table for now. Nothing against emacs, but I don't want to make things harder by learning a new language _and_ a new editor at the same time. Aside from Light Table (and presumably Leiningen) do you have any other tooling recommendations?

<comment><USER14> I will say that cider has done a very nice job of getting interactive development using Emacs to work well. I am a 20+ year Emacs user and _love_ working with Clojure via cider. I will say that I think getting started with Light Table is a great way to start, but don't leave Emacs too far behind!

Good luck go you!

<comment><USER15> I also am a long time emacs user, but whenever a plugin freezes emacs I immediately stop using it. Is is cider now stable? I know nrepl.el would crash emacs frequently if you asked it to evaluate the wrong thing.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure how long this feature has been around, but C-c C-b will abort any running evaluation(s)... I've used it more than once to save a non-responsive cider repl session.

<comment><USER5> Well I've been using cider / nrepl.el for a long time and never knew this. Don't know how I missed it.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      Higher order functions can be easily chained
      together to create complex transformations:

      (filter even?
        (map #(* 3 %) [1 2 3 4 5]))
      =>(6 12)

This will need to be updated to make use of transducers, I guess.

<comment><USER18> Only if it enhances the poetic value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a very good summary.

</comment><comment><USER20> When using rawgit, please follow the owners request about using cdn.rawgit.com for anything that might result in heavy traffic. I guess links submitted to HN often results in heavy traffic.

[https://rawgit.com/faq#diff-between-rawgit-and- cdn](https://rawgit.com/faq#diff-between-rawgit-and-cdn)

<comment><USER21> So the url should be changed to this (which loads for me):

[https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/Clo...](https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/ClojureDistilled.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That link is down for me, but I think this is the same content?

[http://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html](http://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html)

<comment><USER23> also this works via rawgit: [https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/Clo...](https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/ClojureDistilled.html)

<comment><USER24> But the "real" URL also would have proper CSS etc. and looks slightly less broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The main link's stopped working with a message to use the cdn version instead:

[https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/Clo...](https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/ClojureDistilled.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> correct link here [https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/Clo...](https://cdn.rawgit.com/yogthos/yogthos.github.com/master/ClojureDistilled.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm really enjoying reading this - thanks!

For those that don't want to tax the owner of rawgit - try github pages - it's just HTML, right? [http://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html](http://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html)</comment>


Introducing BooTV: A Paywall Publication for Dogs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/39d2483be040

<comment> vezzy-fnord I'm not sure if this satire is against PG or against Valleywag.

Judging by the final sentence, it seems like the former.</comment>


How I Used Excel to Create Abstract Album Artwork - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@cdr6934/how-i-used-excel-to-create-abstract-album-artwork-fee740d4414f <comment><USER2> Nice. The official rules ask to use the original title like you did, but in this case it would be helpful to add "Spirograph" somewhere, because I was expecting something more random like a bad imitation of a Pollock painting.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this to be fascinating and thought I'd share it with the rest of you. I hope you enjoy it!</comment>


Ask HN: How would you tell someone that a system has huge technical debt? - <AUTHOR> Joined a new project team and the system has lot's of duplicate, unnecessary code, and weird dependencies between generic files.<p>How do I tell the tech lead that the system has a lot of technical debt? <comment><USER2> What I'd consider doing is (I've done exactly this, but not specifically in a software project, more infrastructure):

\- Write personal notes with a list of problems, broken up into a description of the problem, why it's an issue or a disadvantage to have things in that state, and what a suggested remediation is.

\- Go to the project lead / manager / etc. and say, hey, I know I'm new here but I've been noticing a few items that I feel could be improved in order to make the development process faster. I've written my own personal notes on that. Would you be open to / have time to review that if I send that to you? I feel it'd be useful and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

\- If yes, then set up a meeting and send them the doc before hand.

That's one approach.</comment>