The Science of Making Friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-of-making-friends-1460992572 <comment><USER2> WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms.

I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because.

I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid.

Personal anecdote: At age 16 it was fun to hang around at a bus stop or street corner or whatever and just chat bollocks. Move forward a bit and in college we'd hang out in someone's dorm room or flat or equivalent.

Now everyone is off at work, spaced out all over the place. You might be able to get one or two people to do something, but it'll probably mean some sort of sanitized commercial experience (go and get pizza at a restaurant, pay to commute there, pay to commute back, etc).

And it's all because we've sort of decided that working all the time is more important than being social.

I think that's sad. I often wonder if it's how we end up with such warped political environments. No-one just relaxes, any more, it's all 40 hour weeks and 'scheduling appointments' months into the future.

You grow up, and what were 20 kids, become a banker, a lawyer, a janitor, a policeman, a nurse, a dropout, a homeless guy, and so on. And it just doesn't work, because of all these rules we've made up, status games, location, whatever. Why can't we just go to the park again?

And no, this isn't just about childhood friends moving away. It's the same story up and down the scale, in my experience. Everyone is busy, everyone is pushing.

The community takes a back seat to economic needs, it seems. Something like that. I'm not sure. I know we still got stuff done back then, I have a bit of paper with a hologram on it that proves it. But it wasn't all consuming, somehow.

<comment><USER2> Christ, in some ways, this thread makes me want to just like, teleport some people from HN into the local park with some beers.

I think we'd have a great time. No vi vs emacs, mind.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely doable. Anyone in SF wants to meet in the golden gate park today around 3pm?

Edit: Since this got a few upvotes but not many replies, feel free to come at 37°46'08.4"N 122°29'08.8"W ([https://goo.gl/maps/Vvyctgz4CAQ2](https://goo.gl/maps/Vvyctgz4CAQ2)). Will have a Linkedin tshirt/backpack.

<comment><USER4> Not in SF, but this is awesome. Hope it's fun!

<comment><USER5> Same here I can't. I live in France but as soon as I am back in SF I will!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "People with higher I.Q.s were less content when they spent more time with > friends. Psychologists theorize that these folks keep themselves > intellectually stimulated without a lot of social interaction, and often > have a long-term goal they are pursuing."

Therein lies the rub. Having friends makes you happier, as long as your friends are intellectually stimulating.

I've been trying desperately for years to make some intellectually stimulating friendships, and it's quite difficult.

In part, I think, because I am a generalist, and most smart people are specialists. As a result, I don't run in the same circles as they do.

When I do make a friend who is smart, chances are they will end up moving across country for a new job, or will disappear into their research, and I'm back at square one.

Are there any other generalists who have trouble making friends with other smart people, because they all seem to be specialists?

Do you have any advice for generalists in need of smart friends?

<comment><USER7> To start with, Put contact info in your hacker news profile. Then when you say interesting things, folks who are a bit more shy can contact you directly. Also reach out to those who interest you. Who knows, some of these brilliant generalists might have time to chat.

<comment><USER8> having contacts online isn't really the same thing as a "friend", right?

<comment><USER9> There's no reason a single email can't turn into a solid long term friendship if things click. Some of my closest friends live across the country from me after meeting online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know people keep trying (unsuccessfully) to make startups that help you "find friends", but it would be nice if one of these actually took off.

I currently live in an area where I find it somewhat difficult to make new friends, and I'm not entirely sure why that's the case. Generally speaking, the people where I live are more interested in football/beer than technology/startups, but I actually don't think that is the reason for my difficulty — I am good friends with some football fanatics, and there are some technically-minded people who I can't stand. (And I certainly don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with football and beer — I merely point out that these are not interests of mine!)

Honestly, I can't quite figure out what causes me to mesh well with some people and not others. I get along great with my girlfriend and my sister, and I can talk to them for hours even though neither is interested in science or technology.

And I don't think it's morals/values either — I'm friends with people whose political views are completely opposed to my own.

If someone can figure out what actually causes people to "click" with one another, then I think a startup for making friends might actually be successful.

<comment><USER11> I think/hope my start up, Krewe ([https://www.gokrewe.com](https://www.gokrewe.com)), has found the right formula. I believe the key elements are access and comfort. Krewe places people into a group with five of their peers, making it comfortable to hang out at first. You don't have to single anyone out, it works kind of how things worked in your youth. And everyone lives within a half mile radius, so it's really convenient to meet up often.

As you say, having lots of stuff in common isn't usually the defining factor in what makes people "click." I think most people can get along with pretty much anyone, so long as they spend enough time together. When you're in school, that's built in since you have to show up to class everyday. Krewe makes it possible to hang out with your group everyday since everyone's within walking distance and can get together for a quick beer or whatever.

<comment><USER12> Good idea. I signed up for fun. No one else in my group yet though. Too bad the network effect is so hard to overcome.

<comment><USER11> Yep. It's still very new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There used to be a place in the Bay Area called "a clean well lighted place for books" which was a book store (of course) but it was also a pretty decent place to hang out. Of course talking and reading were fun (sort of a library without the librarian shhing you all the time) but I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was more tech oriented.

Of course you would need something to hack on and I figured a wall of various embedded systems connected together in various ways so that you would have write code on the outer ones to talk to the inner ones etc.

What we got though were maker spaces, which when they work have a pretty cool vibe but sometimes it's like hanging out with a bunch of ghosts or something. All going about their business, not joining in or starting conversations etc. That was why I thought an ice breaker type activity like the wall of systems would be an interesting idea. Sort of like putting a puzzle out on the table at a dinner party. A safe reason to be hanging out.

Some day I keep thinking I'll build something like that.

<comment> eric-hu > I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was > more tech oriented.

Isn't this exactly a hacker space? Well...besides the clean part.

<comment><USER13> There are two ways in which the bookstore differed from the current implementation of hacker spaces; ad-hoc local usage (book browsing), and commercial activity (book buying).

The hacker spaces I've been too have all shared a common "mode" which is "bring your stuff and we'll work in the same room." The allure being the social aspects and the interactions with other people interested in your space. But that has two problems, generally "moving" your space from where you work to the hacker space (for small embedded projects that is really hard), and for software projects they aren't necessarily "shared" any better in a social context other than IRC.

Hence the idea of the 'hack wall' which would be some common infrastructure that everyone would be able to see and work with (from a distance on their computers) and a common understanding of the opportunity and constraints. My thesis is that this is what the jigsaw puzzle does as a party, anyone can share in working on it, skilled or unskilled. At a conference I attended there was a similar sort of idea with "craft sticks" (aka popsicle sticks) and hot glue guns, but I think the need to be "artsy" was intimidating some people.

In my imagination the wall would be constructed somewhat like sections in a garden railroad might be, where each square would have some standard requirements, like power on the corners, 3.3v data busses, RS-423 connections, and maybe a serial port. And you could put squares together using something like 80/20 extrusions, then jumper across to the "standard" connectors, and each square would have a page in a local gitlab server which described its makeup. So to talk to an inner square you would have to create interfaces from the outer squares (which might all have a RasPi on them) to get to the inner squares.

<comment> eric-hu I've only been to two hacker spaces, one in SF and one in HK. Both had hardware there to hack on, workshops for using various hardware tools, workshops on security, biohacking, etc. I preferred my own hardware, but I found the communal hardware and others projects fascinating.

I also wasn't too productive, but that's because I was busy meeting people and checking out their work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having gotten "old" by some definitions, I've increasingly experienced the "friend problem". The article seemed to be addressing a "non-old" segment of the population, so I think it's appropriate to offer a few observations from a different perspective.

It's not just me of course, even my very friendly wife notices dwindling friendships despite putting a lot of energy into keeping them going. We often ask each other "why is that?", but so far neither of us has a clue.

The circle diminishes gradually, incrementally, the loss is one by one. Friends known for decades die, develop dementia, or move two thousand miles away to be near family.

Friends are people and don't always change for the better. It's puzzling and painful when long-standing friends grow "weird" and unfriendly. It happens, no way to explain it, no known illness or infirmity removes them, just another kind of loss to grasp.

Losses of such kinda are truly irreplaceable. Sure making new friends is wonderful and necessary but never quite the same. Thankfully a few stalwart friends are still around.

Experts all agree having more friends is better, thing is, starting new friendships is a constant and steep challenge in later life. We find opportunity is sparse, contemporaries hesitant to take up the offer, or distracted by a plethora of family, health, and economic demands. The experts aren't saying how to solve these issues.

If there is a key it must be the willingness to be persistent, not give up the effort to enrich the network of connectedness. Here and there people do respond, and a relationship slowly begins to form.

<comment><USER15>
        If there is a key it must be the willingness to be
        persistent, not give up the effort to enrich the
        network of connectedness. Here and there people do
        respond, and a relationship slowly begins to form.

I think that's 100% right. I've lived in NYC for almost 10 years and the sad reality is that people come/go _frequently_. I've found persistence to be the only consistent factor in building all the friendships over those years.

Yes you need to click with someone, but we determine that within 5 minutes of talking to a new person. A lot of people make the effort to build a new friendship, but get too discouraged from a lack of reciprocation. 5 no's in a row can definitely signal "not interested" (ha) but a lot of people _are_ interested they just need more of a push.

It does come down to how badly you want to build that new friendship, but I think a lot of people are just not persistent enough at the beginning tbh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For all the negative things folks have been saying on here about SF (expensive, etc.) there's a huge positive that overshadows all of it for me:

I've made more new friends in the last 3 years since I moved to SF than, I'd honestly say, my previous decade living in NYC. I'm 37 now and feel like I have more of a community than in college.

I think the key to finding real friends and friendships is to be in a place where you're going to be surrounded by the kind of people you WANT to be friends with. It doesn't involve over-thinking or forcing it: I'm a 30-something dude who loves tech and being outside. There are a LOT of people like that in SF. I figured that out within a week of visiting 3 years ago, so I moved here.

Say what you will about monoculture, but it sure made it easy and fun to find a community of people I liked (and vice versa).

<comment><USER17> Strange. I had the opposite experience.

I made more friends in NYC in 2 years than real friends in SF in 4. That's not to blame people, because hey, it takes two to tango and my behavior sabotaged my own success. But even though I am in tech, I still never felt comfortable in the monoculture of SF than while in NY.

<comment><USER16> Interesting data point - thanks for sharing.

Tell me more: how did you meet and make friends in NYC?

In SF - I find there's a more intimate social scene -- more dinner parties than bar nights, so easier to have meaningful interactions. Maybe I'm just seeing the product of my own growing up...

<comment><USER18> I haven't been invited to any dinner parties with strangers to become friends with. My existing friends invite me to dinner parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm more recently a believer that the best way to make friends as a guy is to be in an environment where you make loose connections but have long-term repeated interactions. In short, join a club. Work is mildly effective at this but because of other factors not as good as a club. Work-related meetup groups aren't as awesome for it either - it should be more like a side interest so it feels more like play. It doesn't even have to be a club that aligns with your true core passions, just something you enjoy enough and have a good chance of running into the same people semi-frequently. After a few months you've increased your odds of finding a new friend massively.

</comment><comment><USER20> I worked on a boat in the middle of the ocean for many years. I've been grounded for the last few years and tried to make friends. The experiment has been a massive waste of time and energy. I did so much for so many people trying to be nice and helpful and got so little in return. From an economic point of view, I'm completely self reliant and don't need anything from anyone else. I invested so much in other people and I got nothing back.

There is one case where I watched some guy's dog for a weekend, took someone else's boat into the ocean to save him when his engine died, helped him move all this uncles' stuff after the uncle committed suicide, go drinking with him downtown even though I didn't want to go out, ect.. I moved into a new apartment and needed help putting up new blinds. He kept making excuses to not help me even though he is a contractor. From now on, I don't help other people. I work, make money, and if I need help, I'll pay a stranger. I'm fine with that.

I've grown convinced it is a myth that we need friends.

<comment><USER21> You are probably choosing the wrong people to be friends with. And yeah, doing things for people doesn't work in the same way that being the errant boy for the girl you liked in elementary or high school didn't work either.

<comment><USER22> Yeah pretty much this. Even though it seems OK from an "objective" standpoint to lend your aid when it seems obvious that you can do it and it is not too much cost to you, this doesn't really work in the making friends dept. Yes there are maybe 5% of people who will catch on to what you are doing and click but that is not good odds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> someone once said something along: _any relationship will thrive to a degree to which value is derived by both sides_

This helped me understand a few things. We all have childhood friends that once made sense but now if we met these people we wouldn't become friends. That's the exception to above rule, and i'm sure there are a few others, but generally that is a good way to understand why a friendship is working or ceases to be useful. It's something you can also use to acquire new friends or improve existing relationships. The value you offer may be as simple as being available (i.e. available to go out to meet possible romantic interests, available to pursue a new hobby together, available to blow off steam after work), actually listening and offering advice (advice part only works if the person looks up to you on a given subject and asks for it, unsolicited advice is the worst), being positive and seeking/seeing positivity in every situation/person (i've had friends that really helped me realize that people are in different stages of their life even when they seem obnoxious there's probably a good reason for it at the time so we shouldn't be quick to criticize and it's mostly a waste of time anyway). Most people don't actually think about this or put any effort into improving their value proposition but you'd be surprised how much difference that can make.

<comment><USER24> I would improve this to: any relationship will thrive to a degree to which _perceived_ value is derived by both sides.

I think a lot of people are stuck on a treadmill of success and would have a better life if they stopped to smell the roses, or talk to someone that maybe doesn't necessarily have an obvious way of _adding value_ to their life.

<comment><USER25> Whenever I thought long enough about value, I concluded that all value is perceived value, including any manner or definition of "intrinsic value".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've certainly found myself in the difficult position of having moved to a place where I know nobody. I read "How to win friends and influence people", hoping I could learn how to make better friends with it. It's easy to go to meetups and make shallow connections with small talk, but getting people to talk to me is like pulling teeth, a lot of single sentence reponses and no attempt to further the conversation.

<comment><USER27> From the body language you describe it sounds like those people don't actually want to continue talking with you (for whatever reason). Carnegie is great. Follow up by reading a book or two about body language. While it's far from a hard science, it'll give you some more insight into what a person is thinking/feeling.

<comment><USER28> I think the Carnegie book isn't that great, because it's easy to misinterpret the _rules_. An often mentioned strategy is to be a good listener. This gets repeated ad nauseam, but is it actually true? I found that people become more open if you put a story on the table first. It's like an investment. You open yourself a little bit and tell something about yourself, whereas a question about the other person asks them to trust you first.

<comment><USER29> This is true. The first step in any relationship is establishing goodwill or even just lack of malevolence (which if it's romantic and you're pursuing women is extremely important). Everything else comes after. People want to talk openly about themselves, but not unilaterally.

<comment><USER30> That's true. I read Carnegie's book as a teenager and for a long time tried to be the best listener, which I think I became. I asked thoughtful questions and rarely opened up myself. That's not the way things work. In my experience, one needs to have interesting stories before other people open up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >A study published in February in the British Journal of Psychology looked at 15,000 respondents and found that people who had more social interactions with close friends reported being happier—unless they were highly intelligent. People with higher I.Q.s were less content when they spent more time with friends. Psychologists theorize that these folks keep themselves intellectually stimulated without a lot of social interaction, and often have a long-term goal they are pursuing.

Does anyone have a link to this so called study? Funny how in academia you are required to reference everything but when it comes to journalism anything goes.

\---edit----

Please ignore my request, I had a temporary brain fart, a Google search helped me find it.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844)

<comment><USER32> This TED talk [https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good...](https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness) makes the same point and used data from an 75y study.

<comment><USER31> This is incredible, thanks very much for sharing this. I really needed this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> One point missed by this article (but mentioned by another commenter) is that it's not enough to just want more friends. It's not even enough to meet another person who also wants friends. What keeps friends together is perceived mutual exchange of value - it sounds callous, but I challenge anyone to describe a friendship that lasted where either party believed they derived no value.

Our lizard brains aggressively pre-filter potential friends by estimating expected value add. One property that contributes to perceived value is scarcity, and this leads to a sort of counterintuitive result: it may be easier to make friends if you don't really want or need them (or at least you appear that way). If you are self-reliant, happy, and occupied most of the time, your time and attention are scarce (from the perspective of others). This signals value and makes others want to be your friend. Obviously, this doesn't mean you should be constantly unavailable. But it does mean that being constantly available to hang out, talk, do favors, etc. will probably make you less desirable as a friend.

<comment><USER34> "The only way to have a friend is to be one" \- Ralph Waldo Emerson

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is friendship? Seriously. I'm curious to know how different the definition is across various people.

<comment><USER36> My personal definition: If I can call a person for no reason other then to tell them my cat just spilled my coffee and I'm annoyed I consider him/her a friend.

Maybe a strange one but I also consider people friends if I consider their insults directed to me funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have the opposite problem to most people, of having too many friends. And the number is ever-growing. Wherever I go - job, hobby, school - I pick up more friends. It's wonderful in that I am never lonely and I feel very loved. It is difficult though too because I sometimes feel overwhelmed and that I am not able to be a good friend myself. I have so many invitations, emails, texts etc that I can't keep up. I adore the majority of my friends - but it is quite difficult to extricate myself from a few friendships I have that are draining.

I've been thinking recently about why I am this way...and I believe it is down to 1) listening carefully to what people have to say, 2) being happy and calm, it is just my nature, I am quiet but I am always looking for something to laugh about. I like to crack little jokes and I appreciate humor in every situation, 3) being un-judgmental and kind.

Anyway i'm not sure what my point really is, except that you CAN make friends as you get older! It is not all doom and gloom :)

<comment><USER38> I'm glad you wrote this. I feel similarly myself, although it sounds like the making of friends comes more naturally to you. I have a surplus of friends that I know could become much closer friends if I was able to dedicate more time to those relationships, but the truth is that I already have a lot of excellent close friends.

It's absolutely lovely but exhausting. I too feel overwhelmed by texts, invites and the like and am trying to figure out how to handle this without compromising myself too much (life is tough right now and I feel like I need an increasing amount of time on my own right now). Honesty about it is the approach I've been taking - I try to be the best friend I can to all of those closest to me, but bear in mind that I am also the most important friend I have.

FWIW, I'm exactly with you on your points 1, 2 (replace calm with excitable sometimes though!) and 3.

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I'm one of the most open, positive and optimistic people I know and I just want everyone to enjoy life and being alive as much as I do. Perhaps people like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you use Facebook as a proxy, you can actually see that you max out on friends when you are in late teens to 20's and then its downhill from there.

Stephen Wolfram (mathematica fame) did a deep dive into the numbers and there are quite a bit of interesting insight..

[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of- the-f...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-facebook- world/)

</comment><comment><USER40> What goes unchallenged is the article's assumption that people with more friends are happier (I think?)

I have a _much_ better social life now than I did when I was younger. Younger was lots of sort-of-friends, who I didn't really like, based on convenience/availability.

I have far fewer friends now, but I've known many of them 10+ years and like them much more than my childhood friends.

<comment><USER41> You likely know yourself a lot better now too, so the people you choose to build relationships with would reflect the qualities you value most.

People with more friends can seem to be more happy externally (perpetually busy, always invited to events, always texting etc.) but if those friendships are all shallow, then it can be lonely and mentally-taxing. But regardless of the number of friends, the key factor is the quality and resulting strength of those friendships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I find it difficult to find friends who are reliable. Many who seem to like me when we hang out are almost impossible to make plans with. They often respond by saying they need to check their schedule. Perhaps it's just a polite no. When we do get together everything is great but it seems so shallow. I have a lot of friends like this.

Beyond the reliability issue I find it particularly hard to find highly intelligent friends. Most of my intellectual stimulation comes from my work but sometimes I find I want more. Many of the people I meet who are intelligent and in my field are socially inept. They can be intellectualy stimulating but deeper friendship is difficult.

<comment><USER43> Ditto. I've managed to meet one or two smart friends in each stage of my life. But they're kinda all over geographically so hard to be close with or see often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is is more 'The science of losing friends' with unscientific advice on gaining them.

I would be interested in science of making them.

Or even a more analytical approach other than kinda obvious stuff.

<comment><USER45> Agreed, yet another article that promises to teach something, it's artificially long and the bottom line is stuff everybody knows...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> What did you like about this article? The headline suggests it's going to explain something new and it just states the obvious. I see many articles fitting this pattern. Kind of the "5 ideas to lose weight" we saw a while back.

</comment><comment><USER46> Made a bot that was used for dating. Nothing smart, just visiting pages of other persons randomly between 1/3 days and normally triggering alarms.

Girls thought I was shy.

I thought nothing, only that my model of human beings was right: people prefer 100 bouquet of one rose then 1 bouquet of 100 roses.

Since then, I stopped using bots even though it was successful and I prefered to learn from the bots : just be considerate, and even if you don't think of it consciously, because you may come back to where you were, you might influence positively people's opinion. Even cats and animals comes to me on a regular basis now (probably uncorrelated, but who knows?)

Being polite and considerate does not always mean being lowering your eyes when you see a bully :)

Since then, I make friends slower, but with more quality. and since my "turn over" in friendship is low, I kind of do not mind having enough time to share quality time with them.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've seen 'Friends' and 'Couples' sitting at restaurants staring at their phones, the whole time they are together. It's already difficult with age to make friends, if you add the 'mobile' factor you can dwindle the probability to zero ...

</comment><comment><USER48> A better article on how friendships change over time and in adulthood by the atlantic.

Key takeaways: (well, don't have time to write this out today, sorry)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/how- friend...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/how-friendships- change-over-time-in-adulthood/411466/)

</comment><comment><USER49> It's very beneficial in society to have lots of friends and know lots of people. Unfortunately the default mode of making friends is very extroverted and thus the usual advice is as well. Just chat up someone...that is not something that a decent chunk of the population is comfortable with.

I haven't read the science but I'm a bit skeptical about the claims. As an introvert I'm often uncomfortable in mid-size+ social gatherings and need to recharge afterwards (with a good book for example). The article claims health benefits form having friends and seems to imply that making more friends is the way to go. I very much prefer deepening existing friendships. Being around very good friends is sometimes exhausting as well. I'd be very interested if the claimed health benefits have been tested on groups that were split into intorverted/extroverted. I often feel like these "self help by making more friends" articles are very biased towards the extroverted mode of living.

</comment><comment><USER50> or u can just Rent A Friend : [http://www.afar.com/magazine/the-incredibly- true-story-of-re...](http://www.afar.com/magazine/the-incredibly-true-story- of-renting-a-friend-in-tokyo) \-- proven to work in japan. perhaps it could be repurposed for the US market. (although i dont think it would play out very well )

<comment><USER51> I always thought it was fun when I was in a random group of people at a party and a couple of individuals were stoned... kinda rambling their ideas but really going far out there with the whats and ifs. It would be fun to have a service that paired you with an individual or group who wanted a 'guide' for their herb trips as they walked around the city / city parks / recreational outdoor areas.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Like, people could pick 'flavour' of guides. E.g.:

[ x ] This Person A likes to talk and share his knowledge about bikes.

[ x ] This PersonB likes to talk about Kant/Heigel and some other western philosophy.

[ x ] This PersonC can do card tricks and has hilarious stories about his time overseas staying at 'X'. (ok now this is getting farfetched here, but hey people like doing stuff!) He also can wear a cape if you send a special request and bring a small jade plant.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

MIght not need to even be monetized or anything, I think it would just be fun to connect with other random groups of people and put on a 'facade' of the 'guide', which in turn might create real friendships. (When we meet new people we usually are putting on a neutral facade of some sort and really only show our deeper layers once the intimate connections have had time to be laid down).

Also , I think this meetup format is less akward because there is a preset goal in mind: E.g: THis person is going to be talking/showing/interacting around this theme/subject/activity. So this is similar to when people take courses in college (with preset goal of learning about course subject) and can form friendships more easily with people beside them/in discussion group (as the relationship has the prebuilt support already there to help it build around).

This is kinda fun to rant on so maybe i will continue later but yes.... Rent A Friend style idea seems to have potential it could be sooo much more.

could work on ideas of: Homogeneity of English Language. Would be fun to rent- a-friend but with goal of learning their native language. (E.G. hmm i am bored on a sunday afternoon, I know , I will practice my language with a rent-a- friend japanese speaker because I love the phonetics. (maybe the pairing will also speak japanese as 2nd language but that makes for another commonality base to talk around)

</comment><comment><USER52> This article was deeply personal for me. I have moved around a lot during my 20-something years of life due to a lot of factors including, but not limited to: genocide, civil war, family house foreclosed, crossing the Atlantic, taking a new job in a city 1500 miles away from my "home" state. In all those times, I have made a lot of friends some whom I am still in touch with today and others, I have drifted apart from. As I get older, it is just get too tiring to recreate new friendships. I am quiet and picky and not the kind of personal who has tons of acquaintances. I have gained new insights from this article;be right back as I text an old friend to ask how he is doing...

</comment><comment><USER53> Just wondering: can beginning a startup with new people be considered a good way to find new friends?

<comment><USER54> Wouldn't you usually know them already before cofounding a startup with them? It seems like a pretty big committment.

<comment><USER55> I agree that it sounds risky ti srarr a startup with people we dont know well enough to tell if our vision and interests align. That being said, I'd be willing to work on a not-for-profit side project or proof of concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Most people also will expect there to always be some level of talking in social interactioms and feel awkward around pauses and silence. I believe this is because internally most people have not built up a constructive environment and use external activities and talking as a distraction rather than truly growth-inducing times.

It feels awkward without the pauses though. If internally we need change - (WE do.) Change comes from within. - we need to make sure we aren't running on the same programming. Responding instantly and avooding pauses is not a new experience...

</comment><comment><USER57> Yet another of these superficial articles that is equating quality and quantity. This obsession with "how many" because it is easily measured is the same thinking that leads people to pump up their Facebook friend count.

OKCupid used to make the same mistake in their blog entries analyzing their message traffic. An ad that gets more responses must be better, right? Well, no. Getting one response from the right person is better than twenty responses that you are completely uninterested in.

</comment><comment><USER58> I (right not 30yo) consciously balance time spent "old friends" and "new acquaintances". While most the "acquaintances" never move into good friend, even a tiny fraction is worth it. (Also, it is wonderful for networking; being confined to one's circle of friends makes it harder to reach out.)

</comment><comment><USER59> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation)

</comment><comment><USER60> I think the most important thing is to have a long-lasting, monogamous relationship. At that point you can decide on expanding your social circle if you feel like it.

</comment><comment><USER61> Perhaps someone should create a "learnxinyminutes" for this.

</comment><comment><USER62> Sort of reminds me of that fake book from Numb3rs :P

</comment><comment><USER63> Where exactly do I find the science here?

</comment><comment><USER64> obligatory [http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/bigbangtheory/images/f/f...](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/bigbangtheory/images/f/ff/Freind1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121011222658)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you consume meal replacements like Soylent? If yes, how often? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I switched my diet to Soylent for a period of time, but then switched to my own creation because it tasted better and felt more "natural" _(heavy in oats, mainly)_.

I was on this for about 19 meals a week for roughly 8 months _(my memory is fuzzy, it was a few years ago)_.

Overall I disliked Soylent, but liked my own blend. I enjoyed how I felt sated, but never overly full. While my meals lasted, my hunger came back strong when it was meal time.

I started it, and stopped it, mostly due to laziness. I dislike eating, so it was a natural concept for me to latch onto. However it was a lot of upkeep since I made my own, and pretty bland, flavor wise.

Eventually I made my way to low carb, which has been amazing. Over the years (mostly from childhood) I developed what I believe to be mild blood sugar level issues. Fats over carbs have been amazing for me. I feel sated far longer, I never feel weak like I did on carbs, etcetc.

Anyway, that's my story.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to share your secret recipe ?

<comment><USER2> Long since forgotten unfortunately, sorry. I remember it was heavy in oats, as they were the majority of the carb intake. It was ~7 various powders that I blended up with water which would be a days worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some of my friends are fed via naso-gastric tube. This would be for a maybe a week.

Some of them also take Ensure Plus.

Both are ad-hoc, when needed, under medical supervision, in settings where they don't have much choice.

</comment><comment><USER4> I drink 2-3 Soylent Cacao per day.

I don't usually eat breakfast but if I don't then I will suffer fatigue 2-3 hours after waking up. Now I start my day with a Soylent which is easy enough that my lazy self will have nutrients in the morning.

I will eat a small meal around 11, then I'll drink another one around 2.

I usually go out to eat dinner, or will cook at home.

If I work out or play soccer later in the evening, I will drink a 3rd one after that.

It has definitely helped me put away the random junk food snacking or helping with not knowing what to cook/eat and just getting on with my day.

Also - I hate all the flavors except the cacao one. Especially Coffiest, yuck.

</comment><comment><USER5> MealSquares. Solid and no soy. 800-1600 Cal per day.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why would you do this unless you're an athlete/bodybuilder or have a medical need? Is it purely convenience?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, including the conditions you mentioned there are multiple scenarios where I find it essential. 1\. The food you eat may not have all the vitamins, minerals you need to f unction at your highest level. 2\. You are in remote area and you can't afford to cook or perhaps cook vegan meal. 3\. You are busy and just don't have time to eat a food and want to save 80% of your time without a loss of nothing.</comment></comment>


Why big IT projects always go wrong - <AUTHOR> http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/21/fred-brooks-complex-software-projects

<comment><USER2> Direct link to the research mentioned in the article: <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.0265v1.pdf>

It concludes that Big Bang risky projects should be avoided and smaller projects with comprehensive contingency plans should be preferred instead.

<comment><USER3> Strange the article doesn't mention the conclusion. Looks like the advice is not to do anything...

<comment><USER4> The only winning move is not to play. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my opinion the problem lies in planning. The bigger the project the more the entropy can start to have fun with it :)</comment>


Larry Summers Joins V.C. Firm Andreessen Horowitz - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/larry-summers-joins-andreessen-horowitz/ <comment><USER2> Lots of folks in the "Skype's Evil Ways" threads (pt 1 & 2) were bemoaning how this signaled the beginning of the end for Andreessen et al. Interesting development.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2700338>

</comment><comment><USER3> The guy who said the Facebook idea wasn't worth anything is now joining Andreessen Horowitz? What?</comment>


The Tomorrow Project: science fiction commissioned by Intel - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.intel.com/docs/DOC-1490

<comment> wes-exp I would like to see some good science fiction that actually attempts to imagine what our real future might be like. For some reason it seems like writers (or maybe it's the fault of people funding TV/movies) can only imagine a future having to do with space and/or aliens. What about the future of internet, computers, and/or mobile devices?

I don't think it's a coincidence that Star Trek and so on emerged during the Space Race period. The public consciousness was very much focused on space travel. The fiction was well-timed then, but now?

I would gladly read a story or watch a show about the following:

\- What happens when we have automated every last low-skilled job? Utopia? Chaos?

\- What happens when every single action is recorded about your daily life? Crime-free paradise? Totalitarian nightmare?

\- What impact would a computer super-intelligence have?

I'm just going off the top of my head here. I'm sure some writers can come up with better stuff than this.

TL;DR: Space was a hot subject during the Space Race. Now, though, it's time to see some science fiction address the future of other technologies that we are now approaching. If the tomorrow project does that, I'm all for it.

Update: I followed the link to Cory Doctorow's story Epoch in arethuza's comment. This in turn brought me to the full book With a Little Help. Its introduction reads:

"It turns out the future doesn't really care about space travel. [...] Luckily, we have Cory Doctorow; he thinks about the Internet, a lot."

I'm sold.

<comment><USER2> The "sci fi" distributions channels that you're describing were taken over by the "horror/moneymaking" people. I wouldn't even call most of that science fiction.

For more recent works, you might like:

      Vernor Vinge
        "Rainbow's End"  -- more near term and what you describe
        "A Fire Upon the Deep" & "A Deepness in the Sky"

      David Brin
        "Earth"  -- again, more near term, although with a fantastic ending
        The Uplift Trilogy (a bit more fantastic, but very well done, particularly the 2nd and 3rd novels)

There are many "classic" authors and novels. One novel that receives somewhat less attention/accolades, but which I think speaks to some of what you ask, is:

      Arthur C. Clarke
        "The City and the Stars"

Neal Stephenson' _The Diamond Age_ might also resonate. And while both more "near term" and historical, his _Cryptonomicon_ has some very worthy reflections and speculations.

And I guess I really can't pass up suggesting Carl Sagan's _Contact_. Superb.

As for films, I'm not the most versed, but the following, more "real" science fiction films come to mind:

      GATTACA
      Blade Runner (yeah, yeah, but I just re-watched it)
      And I'll mention that Star Trek (particularly, for me, The Next Generation), is now on or coming to Netflix

P.S. And of course, William Gibson's _Neuromancer_ and, was it the next one or the next two novels? His short story collection, "Burning Chrome", fits well into these two or three.

And as for a certain pragmatic perspective on human psychology, behavior, and possible near term societal/political developments, the classic Heinlein ouvre, while perhaps sexist or interpretable as such, and also in other ways somewhat "archaic", is nonetheless insightful.

Probably not what you're looking for, but now that I've rambled on, there it is.

P.P.S. I found Asimov's original "Robot" trilogy a very insightful allegory for the competing demands of public knowledge and privacy in the modern world. Set aside the robotic aspect, per se, and look at how the different societies lead there lives and social conduct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The story "Epoch" by Cory Doctorow was commissioned by Mark Shuttleworth (the Ubuntu chap) and really is rather good - it is the story of the first "real" AI and the system administrator who gets the job of turning it off:

<http://craphound.com/?p=2337>

As with all of Cory's work - strongly recommended!</comment>


SpaceX lands first stage on Drone Ship - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/spacex/status/718542066041532416 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11457263](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11457263).</comment>


jQuery Deconstructed - <AUTHOR> http://www.keyframesandcode.com/resources/javascript/deconstructed/jquery/

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting resource. If anyone wants to take an even deeper dive into the code and philosophy underlying jQuery, I recommend reading Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig. Amazing book.

</comment><comment><USER3> This one supports the latest (and older) versions of jQuery - [http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/](http://james.padolsey.com/jquery/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very interesting, someone should create an IDE that automatically does this.

<comment><USER5> What's stopping you?

<comment><USER6> Possibly the hurdle of creating an entire IDE. Why not just make a plugin for an existing IDE.</comment></comment></comment>


Multi-view Wire Art - <AUTHOR> http://bit.ly/wireart <comment><USER2> Try resubmitting using the original URL instead of the bit.ly version.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know what it takes to become Hacker for FBI/CIA/NSA? - <AUTHOR> Another thread showcased how much they earn... now I'm curious how one becomes a hacker for these agencies... as it seems pretty lucretive. <comment><USER2> It's not much different than other jobs, you can simply apply directly to the agencies.

[https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/support- profession...](https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/support-professional)

[https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/nsa/nsacyber.html](https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/nsa/nsacyber.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, being a sell-out and having horrible ethics would be a good start..

</comment><comment><USER4> Step 1: Spell check your internet posts.

</comment><comment><USER5> Step 0: A desire to be part of an authoritarian apparatus.</comment>


Business plan is fairytale - <AUTHOR> http://alexsblog.org/2014/04/20/businessplan-is-fairytale/

<comment><USER2> Business plan is useful for yourself too.</comment>


Chumby One for $49.99 (+$5 shipping) - <AUTHOR> http://www.woot.com/?

<comment><USER2> Grabbed one. I've been thinking about Chumby as a platform to build a stupid- simple radio interface for my grandfather. All he needs is a large clock and 4 or 5 clearly labeled radio preset buttons.

</comment><comment><USER3> I grabbed one - gonna try to hack it and make a web server. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great deal for a new chumby one.</comment>


Could the 'platinum coin option' solve the U.S. debt crisis? - <AUTHOR> http://washingtonpost.com/business/economy/could-the-platinum-coin-option-solve-the-us-debt-crisis/2012/12/06/d6dc7956-3fe5-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_story.html

<comment><USER2> No. Even if it's legal, the fight over the legitimacy of US debt beyond the statutory limit reduces its value as a stable place to put one's money. It's arguably worse for the US to take this - admittedly clever - way out of the debt ceiling fight than to go through ugly (stupid, grandstanding, bullshitty) fight we need to have.

But, part of me wishes Obama would do this, just so i could marvel at the colossal brazenness it'd require; and, honestly, the entertainment value of congressional Republicans' incandescent fury and sputtering would be close to worth the whole debacle. Finally the GOP could talk about impeachment for reasons that venture into legitimate territory.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would actually be funny IF I thought there were still serious grown-ups in Washington who were actually trying to find a real solution. I don't.

</comment><comment><USER4> this is not from the onion</comment>


Denthor's Graphics Tutorials: Why I am a Programmer - <AUTHOR> https://www.alfie.wtf/programming/why-i-am-a-programmer.html <comment><USER2> I'm noticing a good deal of BBS references lately in HN stories, and I can't help being amused by this...because, as it happens, the company I started in 1989 when I was fresh out of school wrote realtime interactive BBS software.

If you are so inclined, check out page 6 of this "ancient" scan of a newsletter (yes, advertising for online software used to be done by newsletter :) produced around 1993...my company, MagiComm, wrote an online search engine, very nice ANSII realtime interactive games like Sub Striker and Backgammon (with ELO ratings no less), and other pretty cool stuff.

[http://pdf.textfiles.com/zines/MAJORNEWS/majornewsv4i1.pdf](http://pdf.textfiles.com/zines/MAJORNEWS/majornewsv4i1.pdf)

Code was straight C, with BTREE tables (no SQL) on 386/486s and, in the beginning, a 640k memory limit.

You may not approve of my development choices but you sure can't say I was behind the times.

Anyway, it's super gratifying to read about kids being inspired by BBS software, knowing I created a tiny part of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Although BBS doors in C could have been risky _cough_.

> it's super gratifying to read about kids being inspired by BBS software

Inspired? Man... I remember one time I was online and the SysOp initiated chat mode. After a while he told me he wrote some of the doors for his BBS. At first I didn't believe him because he was one person and not a giant company with fancy computers, but he convinced me and I was completely blown away. Programmers were my heroes growing up.

<comment><USER2> No..it wasn't doors.

This was the MajorBBS, by a company called Galacticomm, which was the only BBS system that allowed realtime interactions and gave developers the ability to access shared memory that stored game state and player information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hang on... you worked on MajorBBS? Wow that's cool!

I was fond of PCBoard though because most of the local l33t boards used it and they had PPEs :)

Edit: sorry can't concentrate as I'm minding the kids and being distracted... you STARTED Galacticomm? That's awesome. I'm so happy my post has brought in the big guns to comment :)

<comment><USER2> No..I didn't start Galacticomm :)

That would be Tim Stryker, a true genius and a friend of mine, who sadly succumbed to deep mental illness in the 90's.

My company, Magicomm, built add-ons and did deep custom modifications of the GC codebase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh wow, I was thinking of writing a very similar post too. Denthor's tutorials were one of my first introductions to programming, and I too fondly remember typing them all into Turbo Pascal and trying to understand exactly what they did. I've always wondered what Denthor / Grant Smith was up to in the years after the tutorials, and if he ever thought about how many people he might have helped get interested in programming.

If anyone's curious you can actually find Denthor's tutorials here: [http://textfiles.com/programming/astrainer.txt](http://textfiles.com/programming/astrainer.txt)

I also searched around a bit and found this good thread that seems to indicate Denthor is doing well these days and lives in England with a family: [http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=7530&page=1](http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=7530&page=1)

<comment><USER4> When I was a kid, I spent a huge amount of time reading everything I could find in the msdos programming archives on x2ftp.oulu.fi: ftp://ftp.lanet.lv/pub/programming/mirror-x2ftp/

Denthor's tutorials were also included in the "PC Game Programmer's Encyclopedia" (also on that site) which collected many useful documents. I had been programming for a while, but Denthor's tutorials were among the first that allowed me to go beyond simple text adventures and graphics with the BGI (Borland Graphics Interface!).

All that stuff had a profound effect on me; not just the technical information, but the idea of communicating that information for free in a way that was comprehensible to novices.

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah, I loved that FTP site! It was one of the only internet addresses I had memorized by heart.

<comment><AUTHOR> There were also a ton of stuff on xs4all.nl

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started "programming" in the mid eighties during primary school. I made little games, and made the PC play music and that sort of nonsense. As I got older the games got more advanced, I even built a simple graphical OS so my parents didn't have to use DOS.

Strangely I never considered my hobby as a possible career path.

It wasn't until 1997 that I realised I could make a living out of being a developer. At the time I was working in my uncles PC store repairing computers and doing some basic web development stuff (for free) for his customers.

One day my uncle introduced me to a guy in his late sixties. He was a farmer that had taught himself to code and had written a piece of software called FarmBase. He wanted my help to update the application for Windows (until then it ran only in DOS). After talking at length he offered to sell me the software for some nominal fee essentially as long as I promised to "do it justice". At that time he was making good coin off the app, but couldn't keep up the maintenance (he was earning 5-10x what he offered to sell it to me for, so I'd make back the investment in 2-3 months). Sadly, I didn't have the money and let the offer pass.

The upside is that until that moment I'd never considered "writing code" as something that could be a real career. Not only was I inspired to write code for a living, I was inspired to (eventually) run a software company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep :)

I've asked a lot of people throughout the years about how they got into programming. And more than just a handful of people said that they got into programming because of the demoscene, and more specifically, Denthor's graphics tutorials. And only because it was fun and exciting, and something they wanted to emulate. Some pursued it as a career, but a lot didn't (this was pre-Internet bubble so computers weren't something you could get a job with!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was the first demo I ever saw:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2suZ1KkZ9HI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2suZ1KkZ9HI)

Which one of my brothers downloaded via BBS (amazingly, my small hometown had a BBS when few people even had PCs). I had no idea what it was at the time, but in retrospect it is pretty impressive - there were really no popular 3D games at that time that I can recall.

A lot of the Spore (EA/Maxis) team was composed of demosceners - I was later invited to work on it but never took up the offer (after reading some horror stories about EA hours).

<comment><USER7> Arjan Brussee, the main coder of VectorDemo, went on to develop Jazz Jackrabbit, made a few more obscure games, then founded Guerrilla Games of Killzone fame. He recently rejoined Cliffyb and they are probably building something awesome again. :)

Back then it was interesting to see many democoders try to make games on their own, and fail due to the large amount of (comparatively) boring work required, but Arjan was a pretty strong-willed individual.

<comment><USER8> Didn't you build a racing game around that time, too?

<comment><USER7> Yeah the ill-named Speed Haste, which unfortunately does not seem to work in the recent Internet Archive DOSBox thing:

[https://archive.org/stream/msdos_Speed_Haste_1995/Speed_Hast...](https://archive.org/stream/msdos_Speed_Haste_1995/Speed_Haste_1995.zip?module=dosbox&scale=2)

For the record, the source code for the game is available on GitHub:

[https://github.com/TheJare/SpeedHasteSrc](https://github.com/TheJare/SpeedHasteSrc)

We were bit oddballs in the demoscene because we had been making games and professional software for years, and we were 5-10 years older than most sceners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All I wanted to do was play shopkeeper. A kid of 8, I was a happy tester for the inventory control software my dad wrote in the 1990s. I bought items and sold them. I had brand-name goods in my inventory master, with MRPs and re- order levels. Virtual lemonade stand. I still find that idea fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tinkering is where it starts. It's like a drug dealer telling you that the first one is free. You give it a shot, have some fun, and get hooked!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat article.

About 20 years ago I saw a demo called 'Ambiance' by Tran (aka Thomas Pytel). I became so taken with it (and the very humble readme file that accompanied it) that I wanted to try my hand at creating something similar. This sent me down a similar path of learning to program first from Denthor's files, and then to a simpler technology I became fascinated by: HTML.

20 years and a successful web-app programming career later I've done some x86 demos for fun, but still haven't recreated anything as magical as that demo was to me. I owe such a debt of inspiration to all the demo crews... maybe one of these days I'll do a WebVR version of Tran's work to say thanks. 360 degree Luminati?

I wonder if these folks know how valued they are to some of us?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment :)

> I wonder if these folks know how valued they are to some of us?

That's partly why I wanted to write the article - as a thank you to all the people in the scene.

Shout outs to .-=+ The Humble Guys ~X~ Future Crew ~X~ Denthor +=-.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> These "tuts" are amazingly nostalgic.

Between this and Fravia I probably learned more about how computers worked than any other course or article. I remember running through most of these to build up my own personal GFX library. Silly things like "draw random lines" versus "draw random lines REALLY FAST" kept me interested long beyond any reasonable attention span. Thanks @tdicola for the link to the texts!

I'm only sad that I've forgotten so much, and that it's getting harder and harder to make cool stuff like this - there are still ways to get a 1:1 array:pixel mapping and have at, but they're all more complicated than MOV AX, 13h; INT 10h; and $A000.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another gem from those times was "CRACKING 101" and "Cracking On the IBMpc" both by Buckaroo Banzai.

> I'm only sad that I've forgotten so much, and that it's getting harder and > harder to make cool stuff like this - there are still ways to get a 1:1 > array:pixel mapping and have at, but they're all more complicated than MOV > AX, 13h; INT 10h; and $A000.

That's another blog post. Give me time :)

<comment><USER12> And for those who can't hold on to their hats until that lovely write up:

"CRACKING 101 - part 1": [http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/CRACKING/c101-90.000](http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/CRACKING/c101-90.000)

"Cracking On the IBMpc - part 1": [http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/CRACKING/copyprot.txt](http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/CRACKING/copyprot.txt)

The following parts are available at [http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/CRACKING/](http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/CRACKING/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Besides the Asphyxia Trainers, back then there was also HelpPC [0], PCGPE [1], RBIL [2], and mammon_'s work in ASM Journal [3] available on BBSes and early interwebs.

[0] [http://stanislavs.org/helppc/](http://stanislavs.org/helppc/)

[1] [http://www.oocities.org/siliconvalley/2151/pcgpe.html](http://www.oocities.org/siliconvalley/2151/pcgpe.html)

[2] [http://www.ctyme.com/rbrown.htm](http://www.ctyme.com/rbrown.htm)

[3] [http://mattst88.com/programming/AssemblyProgrammersJournal](http://mattst88.com/programming/AssemblyProgrammersJournal)

</comment><comment><USER14> How to hook a 13 year old on a life-long love of bare metal:

I actually learned how to code in C and x86 asm mostly from Denthor's tutorials discovered on some local Boston-area. It lead me to GCC (DJGPP), Linux and love for low-level kernel hacking. I went in a different direction career-wise, but what I learned at 13 from those tutorials taught me something fundamental about computing hardware. I made fire. I mean, I made plasma effects by talking directly to the hardware to put it in the mode I wanted, kicking off inline asm to do the twiddly stuff. How fun is that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Although these days I'm living several layers above bare metal (Linux and Perl), I do miss the DOS days as once you ran your code there was nothing between you and the silicon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Geez, completely forgot about FILE_ID.DIZ. When seeing it, it instantly brought back heaps of memories!

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't know how much fun I had writing it. Each paragraph was an instant flashback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I doubt you could call this programming but I copied my first program from a magazine called Nibble (Apple ][ mag) for a cheat editor (it was either for Wizardry or Ultima, I don't recall) when I was 11 or 12. So many pokes and peeks :-)

Ran a BBS in the 80's and hacked at the software a bit (anyone remember Forum- PC, I think it was written by a 14yo!) that was written in Pascal. That was probably my first taste of coding.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I doubt you could call this programming but I copied my first program from a > magazine

We all had to start somewhere. I bet the typos you made while transcribing from the magazine taught you something about getting your syntax right :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still re-read these every few years for fun. At the time, I had two Pascal compilers. Borland Turbo Pascal 2.0, and Microsft QuickPascal (not sure what version).

The code didn't work out of the box in either compiler, someone on a newsgroup showed me how to convert the asm calls over.

Later on I got an Andre Lamothe book and basically stalled out, trying to learn C programming and game programming at the same time. Fun stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Andre's "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus"... now that brings back memories. I leant it to a friend who didn't know programming... now he's a programmer :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I learned a lot from Denthor... I even emailed him back in the day and asked him about the first election after apartheid and if he voted (he was South African) and he responded and said that he did. Seemed like a great guy.

I also learned a lot from a book called: Flights of Fantasy (taught you how to build a flight simulator).

</comment><comment><USER19> That is basically my origin story too... only I was in a different part of the world. I even read through that very same text file.

My story differs a bit in that I didn't have many friends and was making my own games in BASIC on my Amiga 500 before I found BBSs and started my journey there.

</comment><comment><USER20> These tuts were how I got started too, only a bit later than BBS (I believe I got them from the hornet archive, which I got a LOT of tutorials from). I would never have gotten into coding if it hadn't been for all the awesome demoscene tutorials that got me hooked.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, haven't thought of these in 20 years. At the time, I was thirteen or so and remember being stumped by the use of sin and cos (pronounced as you'd expect a kid to), magical functions that let you draw cubes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I took all the trig as rote, but stumbled hard once I hit the matrix maths in TUT8.TXT

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since nobody else seems to have advertised it here, there's a demoscene event in San Jose this March!

[http://nv.scene.org/2015/](http://nv.scene.org/2015/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was always my dream to fly to Helsinki and enter a demo in Assembly:

      http://www.assembly.org

Australia's demoscene is still alive with Flashback (Sydney) and Syntax Party (Melbourne):

      http://auscene.org/

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> BBS demos also got me into programming, but I started with C even though everyone was using Pascal. I don't recall why. Anyway I never made any BBS demos haha.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm willing to bet that a majority of demo coders were using Pascal because they started learning with Denthor (which was Pascal) and didn't know any other language! Meta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At my first job interning out of college, I named my box Denthor as a vote of thanks to the person who showed me the difference between average and mind blowing.

</comment><comment><USER25> I got these tutorials on a CD that came with some kind of Book. I found them to be quite inspiring.

It's a pity that nobody can figure out what became of Denthor.

<comment><USER25> Scratch that... looks like somebody found him.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that given that a lot of people have put out the word to find him over the years and he hasn't cropped up yet, he definitely wants his privacy. Because of that, I specifically didn't put a call out to him... but by the sounds of things, he's happy living life. Good on him!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A bit off topic, I really like your website design. What did you design it with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha thanks! I copied it off my Twitter profile, but it's forged with my bare hands in Vim :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You brought a smile to my weary eyes.

I myself wanted to be a farmer. Everyone has to eat, you see, so I figured I could charge as much money as I wanted to. I'd be rich!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

I had the post almost complete over the Christmas break but that C64 post today made me smile :)</comment></comment>


Here is the source code to friendblur.com - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ryancole/friendblur

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote Friendblur last week. It was my first backbone.js application. It's a game that requires you to guess three friends, at random, based on their profile pictures. The pictures are blurred out using blur.js, which was posted here on HN last week. (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3682365>)</comment>


19-year-old auctioned off 10 percent of her salary for 10 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2013/19yearold-auctioned-10-salary-10-years-fund-startup/

<comment><USER2> At 3% gain per year from relatively safe investing, $125k would end up being $168k after 10 years. She'd have to earn an average after-tax salary of $168k for the next 10 years for the investment to be equivalent.

That's fairly high, especially for someone just getting their career started.

And if she's very successful as an entrepreneur, running a business doesn't mean you have to pay yourself some inane personal salary, especially not if you'd owe 10% of it to an investor, so if her company becomes wildly successful but she only collects some salary of 100-120k and equity which is perfectly livable at only 90% after taxes, she could still walk away with an enormous amount afterwards, yet the investor would have a significant loss.

I don't see how any investor would prefer this over equity, it seems like a guaranteed loss?

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, if her startup gets bought out and she ends up with millions of dollars as a result, the investor's gonna get 10% of that.

<comment><USER4> If her startup gets bought out, she ends up with millions of dollars of capital gains, which isn't salary.

<comment><USER5> > It doesn't matter where the income I receive comes from, whatever the after > tax sum is for each year, the investor will see 10 percent of it.

They would still get a piece of that pie.

Edit: added quote from the article

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a really just a disguised angel investment - it converts between a 100% ownership in her company and 10% of her salary for 10 years, at HER preference. It's actually a great deal for her - she's got very little skin in the game:

If her company fails, she'll just convert the investment so she doesn't have to actually pay out a cent and the investor gets 100% of zero (the value of her failed company).

Also, even if the company succeeds, she'll be working on her pre-revenue startup for a few years, and she won't have any meaningful income for a significant portion of those 10 years.

<comment><USER6> The biggest problem for her and her company may be that this exotic arrangement may make it difficult to fund her company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This just is how society currently works, except instead of $125,000 the young person gets four years of classroom lectures. And it's more like 10% of income for 20 years, depending on the school.

<comment><USER8> Student loans actually come on _less_ friendly terms; with loans, the amount of money you pay doesn't depend on your post-school income, so the financial burden falls equally on everyone regardless of their ability to bear it.

Imagine, hypothetically, that the student loan system were replaced with percent-of-income contracts like the one in the OP. This would give investors an incentive to maximize the total future income of the students they invest in, minus school cost. There are some problems with that, but frankly, I much prefer those incentives to the ones created by the current student loan system, where the most profitable strategy is to get students in as much debt as possible.

<comment><USER9> That is how student financing works here in Australia: below a certain threshold income (about $37k in a country with median wages of about $50k) you pay nothing, then you pay a percentage of your income over that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At what point does this come close to breaking antislavery laws? Where do you cross the line into indentured servitude? At 51% of salary, 100%, where?

<comment><USER5> That seems a little over dramatic...

If anything, this is a decent-sized loan, with a very safe, variable repayment amount that is defined to always be a small amount of her income, and the collateral is a company that may or may not succeed. More than that, the investor only even takes the company if she's dishonest. There's almost no downside for her here.

If you want to be concerned for someone, I'd be concerned about the investor.

<comment><USER10> The point is to take legal scenarios like this and see how far they can be pushed. What if her parents were the ones auctioning her potential earnings off and using the money to pay of a mortgage. What if the following year they did it again for another 10%? Things get really sketchy when you draw up these kinds of contracts that revolve solely around an individual.

<comment><USER5> Okay, so you're suggesting this seems to set a dangerous legal precedent with slippery slope potential? I still say it's just a loan. To your argument here, can her parents legally take out loans in her name? I don't actually know the law there, but I don't think a lawyer would have a hard time answering that.

To your earlier question about 51% or 100% of her salary, if an investor loans me $500,000 at 0% interest to pay back in 10 years, and I only make $50,000/yr, that would suck, but I'm not becoming a slave to that investor. I can't afford to pay that back, so I'm going to default on my loan. There's a huge difference between that and literally being owned by someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny because I was doing the math on this exact question the other week. I was thinking zero coupon bonds but conceptually they are similar. Basically computing the discount rate for a STEM degree in terms of forward earnings potential. Consider a technical degree with a starting salary of 75K going to 150K in year 10. With a linear progression that is basically about $1.0875M in salary over 10 years. 10% of that would be $108,750. Lets make the face value $100K, The question being what discount rate would you need to offer a bond at that matured in 10 years? 10 year treasuries [1] are currently at not quite 2%, junk bonds might be 6 - 7%. So at the low end we sell our bonds for $85K, pay them off in 10 years at $100K for an approximate 2% annual yield. But at 7% you have to sell them at $50K for an annual yield of 7%. So depending on how risky investors in this persons bonds considered them, would affect the discount rate for them. Then you could bundle these bonds into tranches and sell off the high end as treasury equivalent and the low end as a more speculative investment :-)

[1] [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/in...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield)

</comment><comment><USER12> Mike Merrill's experiment sounds similar -- <http://www.wired.com/business/2013/03/ipo-man/all/>

Can't say I'm not fascinating in such an idea

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't say that I wasn't unimpressed with your double negative.

<comment><USER12> how about I triple it

I can't not say that I'm not impressed

<comment><USER14> Please take this sort of thing back to reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is common, though most people just call it a student loan.

</comment><comment><USER16> If she didn't care about her reputation, she could screw over the investor pretty badly by deferring her income. She could even sell her company (for stock of the acquirer) and then hang onto the stock until the payback period has ended. The sale transaction could be structured to avoid a current tax hit, which would also result in the investor being cut out of the loop.

Additionally, there's the possibility of shifting income to family members (and the complicated question of what happens if she gets married and has income from the investment of community property assets).

This type of auction could also raise questions of legality/constitutionality. Although it doesn't seem that bad to give up 10% for 10 years, it would feel different if someone sold 90% for 90 years. Starts to sound like a bit like slavery, albeit voluntary at the outset.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Warren Buffet once said that he'd give college graduates $100,000 now for 10% of their lifetime income. This kind of reminds me of that. And begs the question, should somebody build a platform to make transactions like this more easily possible?

Edit: I just remembered Upstart (<https://www.upstart.com/>)

<comment><USER18> We already have things that give you money now and take 10% of your lifetime income. They're called colleges. Well, except the "give you money now" part.

<comment><USER19> Bingo. 250,000 paid back over a decade with interest is a sizeable chunk of lifetime earnings.

<comment><USER20> Are people actually going into $250k of debt just for an undergraduate degree? I wouldn't even consider that sort of debt unless it was for medical school.

<comment><USER21> No, no one is (without some weird circumstance like their guardians are able to pay for the college, but would rather take on debt for tax/other reasons). Average debt is about an order of magnitude less, and I believe the mean is even less. Avg is pushed up by bad schools charging absurd fees.

<comment><USER22> You mean the median is even less, right?

<comment><USER21> Yikes, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would have taken 10% of her company + 10% of her salary so that in all cases my interests would be aligned with hers.

If her company is successful then she might just stay on with nominal CEO salary (<200k) so not much upside from the salary component.

10% of her salary would be my hedge (and hers) if the company failed.

</comment><comment><USER24> My original reaction was surprise since ten percent after tax seemed like a lot but after thinking about it this really is that bad of a deal for the entrepreneur, ten percent is a tithe.

</comment><comment><USER25> The cynic in me wonders if the "deal" is with a rich family member to give her a ton of free press.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is why it's silly for people to go into debt to pay for college.

</comment><comment><USER27> Any idea which college she goes to?

</comment><comment><USER28> More impressive (and useful) would be an auction of _time_. Percent of salary can always be gamed.

I'm considering offering 5 years of a one-Saturday-per-month (12-hour day) consulting commitment for somewhere around ~400-800k. Taken as an hourly rate, it seems very high, but:

(a) I'll code, make introductions, advise, or whatever else is needed.

(b) smart people can add high value in small amounts of time ("fresh pair of eyes" effect). I'm sure there's someone out there who could extract that much value from me.

(c) if I became wildly successful, the person would be able to "pimp" my consulting services out to a client at a higher rate and pocket the difference, and

(d) with the 5-year commitment there's a huge call option involved that's probably worth more than the underlying.

<comment><USER29> Sounds to me like you are just offering to be employed on a somewhat unusual schedule.

<comment><USER28> It's different, because it takes advantage of the nonlinear value of time. It's specifically designed not to preclude other employment, hence the Saturdays.

A highly competent person's marginal value per hour starts very high, then drops around the 100-hour per year mark, then goes up slightly again from 500 to 2200 hours. Most people are paid based on the bottom of that U-shaped curve.

For example, pretty much any company would benefit from hiring someone like me at $1000/hour for a few hours at a time, because I'm very good at spotting problems and coming up with plausible solutions... but very few companies could justify a full-time retainer at that hourly rate.

So that's the economic theory behind it. I feel like career modularity is going to be more important in the 21st century anyway. The evil of the current arrangement isn't working for other people or "being employed"; it's the lack of diversification and the fact that people are coerced into a one-size-fits- all model that has ceased to add value, especially at the upper end.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News, for iPhone and iPod Touch - <AUTHOR> http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/ <comment><USER2> I built a very thumb friendly HN interface: <http://mhm.gd/hn/> It takes the HN RSS and formats it with big links and text, all loading very quickly.

I use it on my Android all the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use this as my default way to browse HN from my phone. Typically I don't vote much while on my mobile, so sometimes I'm not logged in through the app. I think it works well. My biggest request would be Instapaper support.

</comment><comment><USER4> Please please please add Instapaper support for this.

<comment><USER5> Until there is Instapaper support, I think I'll keep using <http://icombinator.net/> in Safari, which lets me add articles to Instapaper.

I'll be watching this app, though, as it does look nice.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is anyone using this? Is it any good?

<comment><USER6> It's ok. I wish he would do some updates though. There are some annoying bugs and I haven't ever seen this updated.

<comment><USER7> hey. I'd _love_ to hear about these bugs! you can either post them in this thread or email me at email@example.com. feature requests are also very welcome.

<comment><USER8> Two feature requests:

1\. Let me pull down the reply field to see the comment I'm replying to. Having to reply blind is frustrating.

2\. Figure out how to make it so that I can select text from comments.

Instapaper support would be nice, but not immediately necessary for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using it on and off for the last week or so. It has a nice interface and works pretty well overall. I do wish it had the ability to copy and paste the URL of the articles or allow you to open the links in a browser other than Safari, such as Atomic Web (which can be called using the atomic:// protocol).

And actually on that note, if you haven't tried Atomic Web, I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't Readability still require the whole thing to be downloaded, which takes ages? Wouldn't it be better to have an option to use the Google reformatter?

<http://www.google.com/gwt/x?u=http://news.ycombinator.com/>

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it has to download the entire page. Readability just does a script injection and reformats the page.

My only problem is text size. The google reformatter does strip out a lot of the cruft, but I can't say that it's easier to read, which was my goal.

Example, A NYTimes story: <http://cl.ly/bC6>

<comment><USER8> Maybe the two pieces can be combined?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So just a question is this legal? Taking something that is free and charging for it on the app store. Just a question, because I like it and want to use something like this on my android(going to try <http://mhm.gd/hn>)

<comment><USER12> It's legal for the reason that there isn't any law that would make it illegal. But it also isn't charging for something that's free. The charge is for the app's features, not for access to HN.

<comment><USER7> It's like buying bottled water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i like this. there's a really simple free version for the android platform and i would collaborate to improve it if it was a opensource project. Including readability to it is very important.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just a note for you, on your website, when you click the screenshots they show up underneath the demo video that's playing - this is on Win7 Google Chrome.

<comment><USER7> thanks. can you send me a screenshot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would buy this Right Now... if only it was also for my iPad...

<comment><USER7> coming soon ;)

<comment><USER16> So if I buy it now will for my iPod, will I have to buy it again for my iPad?

<comment><USER7> nope, it will be a free update.

<comment><USER16> Just bought it and am posting this with it. Seems to work...

<comment><USER7> thanks! let me know how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What did you use to capture the video?

<comment><USER7> I used Snapz Pro X for the screen capture.

Here's a great blog post about creating iPhone screencasts by Loren Brichter, who made Tweetie (recently acquired by Twitter).

[http://blog.atebits.com/2009/03/not-your-average-iphone- scre...](http://blog.atebits.com/2009/03/not-your-average-iphone-screencast/)

<comment><USER18> Did you use SimFinger?

<comment><USER7> Yep. Snapz Pro X let's you hide the mouse cursor.

SimFinder code is on also github; <http://github.com/atebits/SimFinger>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Glad to know that people are selling my posts for $3 in the app store. Time to write something offensive so the app gets banned.

<comment><USER20> If Opera started charging $3 for Opera Mini in the App Store, would you be upset? You're paying for a nicer interface to something that is free, not the content of HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Finally.</comment>


This Preschool is for Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-preschool-for-robots/#hn <comment><USER3> This is so cool! Although, I'm sure it will take quite a bit of time to actually use these robots in everyday settings.

I was wondering if they could create multiple copies of robots and give them all different tasks and then combine the knowledge, to speed up the process. However, due to randomness of learning I would assume each task has to be taught to one single robot or it might not be as efficient?

Also, I'm curious to know, would a robot need to relearn a skill if a part like the arm changes shape because the basic building block on which it relies on has changed?

<comment><USER4> For your question, "would a robot need to relearn a skill if a part like the arm changes shape", for the currently commonly used style of machine learning which is also implied by the article - deep convoluted neural networks - <USER2> situation is that it would need _some_ relearning/retraining but it would be much smaller than starting from scratch.

When you need to train a system for problem X that limited data available, a possible approach is to train a system on some related problem Y where the data is plentiful, and then use that network (with e.g. the final layer removed) as input for a smallish network that solves the problem you need, but piggybacks on all the patterns discovered by the original network.

In a similar manner, if you had a system that works on one style of arms, then it would be usable training a (much smaller) neural network that "converts" from that system to outputs of another style of arms.

<comment><USER5> This may be a simple question. Can you take "snapshots" of AI and then load multiple robots with the same robot model learned in a classroom like this?

I.E. Do the training with a prototype robot, then send the learned behavior to a factory where they can send out pre-taught robots with what the prototype learned?

I can't see a reason this wouldn't work, but maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER6> Yes, absolutely. With almost all implementations, any learned/trained parameters are stored in a file or database and can be backed-up, restored, or transferred to a duplicate.

Some systems are sensitive to precise calibrations of sensors and actuators, which must be done per-device. But usually this stuff is low-level detail that is decoupled from the AI stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of having only a single physical robot, what if you had a virtual (unity3d?) robot. I imagine you could speed up the learning process immensely if you didn't have to have a ~200k robot actually manually performing the tasks. Just do the physics simulation and fake the sensors and other inputs. I'm sure that's a pain to set up, but probably way more effective and cheaper in the long run than trying to train a single PR2

This was done a long time ago on a smaller scale:

[http://www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu/pr/neural_controllers/evo_co...](http://www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu/pr/neural_controllers/evo_control.html)

[https://youtu.be/0fg1Jj8ehHs](https://youtu.be/0fg1Jj8ehHs)

[http://youtu.be/n6uMBveqbyE](http://youtu.be/n6uMBveqbyE)

I'd love to see something like that tried with more modern computers / neural algorithms. Does anyone know places that are actually doing this?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if we can do good enough physics simulations in real time so that the behavior of manipulator grip on e.g. a bottle cap and the stumbling of the bottle cap against the bottle as you push it around matches reality. Perhaps we can, but not with the common physics engines used in unity3d games and physics demos.

In any case, dealing with the actual physical actuators and sensors, their limitations and feedback is the hard part of the problems - if you have a solution that works perfectly in a virtual environment, then IMHO you have achieved something like 10% of the progress needed to do the same in real life.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Fo2slT2WA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Fo2slT2WA)

Any 3d software is more than capable of creating perfect physics simulations in real time. I'm not sure what you mean by matching reality but in a physics simulation the only reality that matters is the virtual simulation, which can be done perfectly inside a program.

<comment><USER4> If the mind learns from the simulation that sending output X to the robotic hand will successfully screw a bottle cap on the bottle, but in real life it turns out that the same outputs result in the bottle cap slipping and falling out of the hand, then the simulation was not appropriate.

You can do physics simulations that match some properties of reality that you are modeling. However, for robotics, you would need very detailed simulations of the exact hardware you'd be using, and it is very difficult to simulate the relevant aspects of it, a CAD drawing of the hand isn't enough - when some joint will wiggle slightly or the friction of a 'finger' surface will be different than you'd expect, then it will cause different behavior and the simulation will not match reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the TV series "Extant" where a human family adopts an android child in order to give the android the real human experience.</comment>


Shhhh, don't tell Mal (Aus PM), but tech startups are a terrible investment - <AUTHOR> http://www.crikey.com.au/?p=527826 <comment><AUTHOR> _" The key features of a tech start-up are this: it has no customers and a strong chance of going broke. What most of these businesses do is funnel capital (investors' money) into work nobody asked to be done. They build a product for which there is no market, exhaust their funds, close. They're a bit like a make-work project."_

YC in 2014, > 640 startups worth USD20B from 2014 numbers. [0],[1]

[0] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-25/y-combinat...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-25/y-combinator- owns-stakes-in-startups-worth-more-than-20b)

[1] 13B in 2013: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/422815186437685248](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/422815186437685248)</comment>


Ransoming Citizens, Europe Becomes Al Qaeda's Patron - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/world/africa/ransoming-citizens-europe-becomes-al-qaedas-patron.html

<comment><USER2> >Several senior diplomats involved in past negotiations have described the decision to ransom their citizens as an agonizing calculation: accede to the terrorists' demand, or allow innocent people to be killed, often in a gruesome, public way?

At least if they're killed in a gruesome, public way, their killers are outed as the barbarian savages that they are. This may be a widely-known thing in the West, but not everyone has gotten the message.

And if you're going to pay the ransom, don't _deny it_ later. If you deny it, you're leaving the kidnappers with absolutely no downside - people don't even have to know how these organizations are funded.</comment>


Ask HM: Suggestions for MS hosting services? - <AUTHOR>

We have some legacy ASP code with an MS SQL database that we are essentially going to be putting on life support but continuing to support for archival purposes.<p>I'm looking for a cheap but reliable shared host for the Microsoft stack to move this code base to. Does anybody have some suggestions or experiences (good or bad)? <comment><USER2> Amazon provides windows instances now...might want to look into that

</comment><comment><USER3> DiscountASP.NET</comment>


Series seed -documents now available for Finnish startups as well - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/02/01/seriesseed-fi-first-to-bring-standardized-legal-documents-for-startups

<comment><USER2> Actual documents can be found at <http://seriesseed.fi/></comment>


Author Suggests Tech Focused on H1B Visa Hires to Detriment of Women, Minorities - <AUTHOR> https://slashdot.org/submission/8371110/author-suggests-tech-focused-on-h1b-visa-hires-to-detriment-of-women-minorities <comment><USER2> Reality is that a woman can do better than going into tech. Getting an MBA is easier than an MS in computer science, pays better and hours can be better too. More flexibility in case there is a second dotcom bubble.

<comment><USER3> Problem with that mentality is that on a macro level, you only need a certain number of MBAs. Not everyone is cut out to be an MBA, and not every MBA is going to use that degree to the full extent. Not to mention this completely ignores brain wiring and interests/skills.

Women engineers are underrepresented in every part of the world, and the problem has to be fixed by helping the (mostly female) teachers and counsellors from the primary school level so they can talk about the subjects to girls. The less they know about the subject, the more they'll talk about what they know.

<comment><USER2> My point is that "underrepresented" means nothing if there are other, possibly better, professions to enter into. Do we complain about the number of women in the Alaskan commercial fishing industry (which is highly paid but very dangerous)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Scandinavian countries with almost no h1b equivalents the amount of women in tech is substantially lower

[http://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem- girl...](http://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem- girls-3848156-Feb2018/)

Few of my acquaintances are high school teachers and almost all the girls have an image of IT as nerdy / geeky with overweight guys banging on the keyboards.

IMO you need to get rid of the image of STEM being social awkward, male dominated field.

I took some of their girl students to my office and showed them various kinds of IT work and how it can be interesting and surprisingly a huge number of them signed up for IT in their University

</comment><comment><USER5> Allow H4 visa holders to work and see how that number shoots up. Also what minorities are they talking about ? Jewish, Hindus and Muslims are very well represented in tech. Blacks and Hispanics lag behind in all STEM in general but they was substantially better in other areas such as sports where you dont see a Asian or Hindu.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tech H1B = Cheap labor.

<comment><USER7> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER6> It's not unsubstantive at all. Per Glassdoor, tech H1B's earn substantially LESS than US Citizens (especially Software Engineers!). The OP's article is tech H1B's. I will edit the original comment for accuracy.

[https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/](https://www.glassdoor.com/research/h1b-workers/)

<comment><USER8> Unsubstantive != unsubstantiated. This context and evidence should have been included in your first comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>