Is sweat equity worth less than cash? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a graduating engineering student and an experienced programmer and have just been given an offer from a startup that seemed somewhat new and strange to me.
I'm being offered to join as a partner in a startup that currently has no in-house developers. As compensation, I'm being remunerated partly with equity. Let's say 30k cash and 30k equity if my market value is 60k. But the company is treating this 30k equivalent $ as an investment for sweat equity and is saying that 30k of cash investment is more valuable to them than 30k of work and therefore is reducing the value of this 30k$ equivalent of time investment to 66% to 20k$ cash value of sweat equity. Does this make any sense?
I already make 60k of guaranteed cash and am making a risky investment myself by risking 30k of income. The way I see it, my 30k of time investment should be worth 40k of equity if anything because of the risk. Is this a proper financial practice? <comment><USER2> Honestly, when it comes to compensation, there is no such thing as "proper financial practice". There's only what you are or aren't willing to accept. If you don't like the deal, turn it down.

That said, if a company gave me a deal like that, I'd say, "Well, if $30K of cash is only worth $20K of equity to you, why should it be worth $30K of equity to me? I'm taking a $30K pay cut to work for you - give me $45K of equity to make up for it (since their equity is apparently worth only 2/3 of its cash value), or the deal's off." If they accept, you've just upped your $60K compensation to $75K. If they don't, well, you probably don't want to work for people that play games like this anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support, I just wanted to make sure I'm not stepping out of the line and being weird to think that his deal is weird.

<comment><USER3> This deal is _extremely_ weird; in the 4 decades I've been playing this game in one way or another I've never heard of such.

Unless this is a company that started from a publicly traded shell company, the equity they're offering you is unmarketable, it's not something you can sell on the open market to get the equivalent cash (however they compute that).

Assuming you ever talk to them again, ask them how you can turn the equity into cash and then look at that for traps (e.g. "we'll buy you out" is something that at best you can enforce in the courts, which is going to be hard for such a small amount, what you'd see after paying your legal costs).

Their attempt to discount it now says it's not a priced in the future offering, what they're probably saying is that "this is a great deal, $20K today will be worth $20 _X K tomorrow". That completely ignores the risk side of the equation, the likelihood that the equity will be worth less than $30K when you want to cash out (most likely it'll be worth $0).

The other thing to consider is that equity is _cheap* compared to cash, after all that's why they're trying to pay you partly in it.

My strong guess is that either they're idiots or they're trying to cheat you; in either case I wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. Given that you're making a " _guaranteed_ " (well, your current job _could_ go poof) $60K in cold hard cash today, they need to make you an offer that's much, much richer if the cash is less and they're trying to make up the difference with very risky equity.

NOTE: if you don't understand something like this, if it feels "weird", it's never out of line to ask what it's all about, how it works, why they are doing it, etc. Since they are offering something unusual, it is incumbent upon them to explain it such that there is no mystery about it to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Generally cash is treated as more valuable than sweat equity in all investment cases. For example, people who invest cash typically get preferred stock which has higher seniority in the situation where a company gets liquidated, sold for a modest amount, etc.

The real question though is what 30K of equity means also. Assuming it's common stock, common stock is often valued at less per share than invested money, which means higher number of shares (for the same valuation), but folks will sometimes talk about it with the preferred share pricing in mind.

I suggest you read up more on how investing and stock setups (capitalization tables) are done, and it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to spend $1K on a startup lawyer for advice to understand what you're negotiating if/when you're negotiating.

<comment><USER4> and if you live in a jurisdiction that taxes income, and does it higher than on capital gains... and has 83b elections such as in the u.s., one can factor that into a valuation of opportunity cost... (yearly income taxation versus compounded growth resulting in one-time capital gain taxation)

<comment><AUTHOR> In terms of tax, I believe I can be offered "founder's shares", ie shares that have no value (from the taxman's perspective) that vests over a period. Therefore, my income tax for receiving stocks should be minimal. Canada has a 750k tax exemption from capital gain from owning small businesses so tax is not my top worry if it is done properly

<comment><USER4> then 20K of equity can be better from a tax perspective for you, as 30K in income after tax would be 20K or less i imagine right away.

at the same time, it's really worth digging into and understand what they mean by whatever equity they're offering, and how they would get to whatever valuation that means. also what % of the company it is that they're offering, what stage is the company at etc., to form your own estimation of valuation of the company etc. looking at % and yr estimation of valuation can be more important than what they're saying...

good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know the answer to this question, but here's a link that I've found to be helpful in answering questions like this: <http://www.payne.org/index.php/Startup_Equity_For_Employees>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, looks quite informative</comment></comment>


Tell HN: My Co-Founder Finder App - <AUTHOR>

I've been enjoying the looking-for-co-founder lists that have been floating around lately, and I've put my name on all of them.
They all work well as directories, but finding interesting people to talk to didn't scale very well. Scrolling through and reading a couple hundred descriptions felt inefficient.
So I wrote a simple app. You put in tags to describe who you are, you put in tags to describe who you want to meet, and the system shows you who you overlap with.
I want to get this out there to the community for feedback, please let me know what you think. In case you can't tell from looking at the site, I need UI help. Bad.
http://amb.itio.us/ <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://amb.itio.us/></comment>


Ask HN: I see virtual reality everywhere, except on HN. Why? - <AUTHOR>

It seems that everyone is talking about virtual reality those days, except HN. Why is that?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> Virtual reality was huge in the 90s. There were headsets, arcade systems, hollywood movies, but not really any valid long run business ideas outside of gaming. Consumers don't want to do anything that involves wearing a huge 90's style HMD or even anything that looks like Google glass. To many people, this is just 20 year old hype that is being resurrected. The technology is better but the applications and limitations are the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you point to some of these references you see "everywhere"? Perhaps you could submit some.

<comment><AUTHOR> On Business Insider for example:

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/valve-is-making-a-virtual- real...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/valve-is-making-a-virtual-reality- headset-2015-2)

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/virtual-reality-amusement- park...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/virtual-reality-amusement-park-oculus- rift-vr-gaming-tech-2015-5)

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/htc-virtual-reality- headset-20...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/htc-virtual-reality- headset-2015-3)

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/trying-samsung-vr-for-the- firs...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/trying-samsung-vr-for-the-first- time-2015-5)

[http://uk.businessinsider.com/virtual-reality-is-getting- rea...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/virtual-reality-is-getting-real-2015-5)

<comment><USER3> Then here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9417370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9417370) Oculus Reinvents Cinema for a Virtual Reality World (wired.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9424425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9424425) Facebook mum on large-scale Oculus Rift shipments for 2015 (gamasutra.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9428426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9428426) Oculus' Founder on the Pros and Cons of VR for Social Good (wired.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9430090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9430090) Facebook mum on large-scale Oculus Rift shipments for 2015 (gamasutra.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9432415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9432415) I just finished the development of my first Oculus experience

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440650) Oculus Rift and Robotic Heads: A Match Made in Geek Heaven (popsci.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9447298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9447298) Video Review: Samsung Gear VR vs. Oculus Rift DK2 (youtube.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9465479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9465479) 25-year old VR story totally explains why Oculus will be huge (medium.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472755) Explore the Damages of the Nepal Earthquake in VR (sketchfab.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9487267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9487267) Thomas Street's UI Exploration with the Oculus Rift and Leap Motion (leapmotion.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9497978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9497978) Retail oculus rift coming in first quarter of 2016 (polygon.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498029) First Look at the Rift, Shipping Q1 2016 (oculus.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498029) Oculus shipping in Q1 2016 (oculus.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498317) Oculus Rift Consumer VR System Pre-Orders Start Later This Year, Ships Q1 2016 (techcrunch.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9498909) Retail Will Play a Big Part in the Oculus Rift Launch (techcrunch.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9502969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9502969) Oculus to Ship Virtual Reality Headsets in Early 2016 (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517358) Facial Performance Sensing Head-Mounted Display (Oculus) (youtube.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9522952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9522952) Oculus to Ship Virtual Reality Headsets in Early 2016 (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9533636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9533636) Elements - A VR Periodic Table for Oculus Mobile VRJam 2015 (challengepost.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9548465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9548465) Van Gogh's Night Cafe Rendered for Oculus Gear VR (challengepost.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551463) Oculus Details Rift's Recommended PC Specs, 'Pauses' Mac Development (techcrunch.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551504) The Oculus Rift's Recommended PC Spec (oculus.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551693) Oculus Rift pauses Mac and Linux development, offers PC specs (engadget.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552495) Powering the Rift (oculus.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552979) This is the PC hardware you'll need to run the Oculus Rift (arstechnica.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554410) Oculus Rift Is Going to Drive Some Serious Graphics Card Sales (forbes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9556768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9556768) Zuckerberg sees Oculus Rift shrinking to the size of glasses (pcworld.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9563380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9563380) Oculus VR announces it has paused OS X and Linux development (neowin.net)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567200) Oculus has no plans to block virtual reality porn (variety.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because it was also "everywhere" before, when it was supposed to be the next big thing. Each time it looks like it is, but it ends up being _not quite_. Who knows, maybe this is it. I'm betting on the time after this one, though.

edit: typo.

</comment><comment><USER5> HN loves VR as much as anywhere else. I have an Oculus DK2.

</comment><comment><USER6> Right now VR is a failied thing, no startups, no venture capital is flowing to VR. Hype without money is nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe YC starts investing in VR: [https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/](https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/)

Moreover, the first VR accelerator has been lauched last year from Rothenberg Ventures: [http://www.rothenbergventures.com/river](http://www.rothenbergventures.com/river)</comment></comment>


Microsoft Edge Putting Users in Control of Flash - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/04/07/putting-users-in-control-of-flash/ <comment><USER2> "we're introducing a change to give users more control [...] Microsoft Edge will intelligently auto-pause content"

How is that more control? Also, is this just click-for-flash? A picture, instead of a (somewhat PR-filled) post, would have been helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> IE has the cheating husband problem. He says he'll never do it again, buys you nice things, hell, is even nice to your mother, but in the back of your mind there's always that latent fear that he'll cheat on you again.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I have to downvote this as an ad hominem comment that ignores the article's content indicating that Microsoft is making a measured, useful, and intelligent step forward.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly why I made the comment. I like what I'm seeing, not just here, but on a lot of fronts by MS. But I'm always a little reluctant to trust.</comment></comment></comment>


What is gained and lost with 63-bit integers? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.janestreet.com/what-is-gained-and-lost-with-63-bit-integers/ <comment><USER3> The SPARC has tagged arithmetic (TADDCC), to support Lucid Common Lisp and Smalltalk.

[http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/91-04-082](http://compilers.iecc.com/comparch/article/91-04-082)

[http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/SPARC_Assembly/Arithmetic_Instr...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/SPARC_Assembly/Arithmetic_Instructions#Tagged_Instructions)

Back in the late 1980's, a Sun employee jokingly pointed out that because the DECstation used the MIPS processor in little endian mode (it supported both big and little endian) to match the VAX, its processor should be called the SPIM. I asked if the SPARC supported little endian mode, would it be called the CRAPS? He was flustered, and told me to shut up and never tell anyone that SPARC spelled backwards was CRAPS.

<comment><USER4> Hi Don! I'm afraid TADDCC has gone the way of the dodo -- the 64-bit SPARCs don't have it.

<comment><USER3> Which way did the D0D0 go???!

There are much worse ways to go -- like the way of the Oracle, for example. ;(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If LEA is slow, don't use it. A simple ADD followed by DEC outperforms LEA in throughput, latency, _and_ size in recent Intel chips.

If you're willing to reduce integers to 62 bits (and assuming no overflows are allowed), multiplication can also be simplified: (2x+1)(2y+1) = 4xy + 2x + 2y + 1. So:

        t = x + y - 2; // + 1 - <USER2>
        p = x * y; // 4*x*y + 2*x + 2*y + 1
        return (p - t) >> 1; // (4*x*y + 3) / 2

In amd64, this can be done as

        ; input in rdi, rsi
        lea rax, [rdi + rsi - 2] ; slow, but runs concurrently with imul
        imul rdi, rsi
        sub  rdi, rax
        shr  rdi, 1 ; output

<comment><USER6> GCC generates LEA even for a regular addition, even with -O3 and -march=native on a modern Intel x86-64 system. A simple addition of int64_t gives you:

            leaq    (%rdi,%rsi), %rax

Whereas subtracting the tag gives you:

            leaq    -1(%rdi,%rsi), %rax

So pretty much the same either way, though you do get five instruction bytes for the tag version vs. four bytes without.

Here are the comparisons for multiply and divide, from "gcc -c -O3 -g -march=native" and "objdump -d":

        x * y:

          10:   48 89 f8                mov    %rdi,%rax
          13:   48 0f af c6             imul   %rsi,%rax

        (x >> 1) * (y - 1) + 1:

          40:   48 d1 ff                sar    %rdi
          43:   48 83 ee 01             sub    $0x1,%rsi
          47:   48 89 f8                mov    %rdi,%rax
          4a:   48 0f af c6             imul   %rsi,%rax
          4e:   48 83 c0 01             add    $0x1,%rax

        x / y:

          20:   48 89 f8                mov    %rdi,%rax
          23:   48 99                   cqto
          25:   48 f7 fe                idiv   %rsi

        (((x >> 1) / (y >> 1)) << 1) + 1:

          60:   48 89 f8                mov    %rdi,%rax
          63:   48 d1 fe                sar    %rsi
          66:   48 d1 f8                sar    %rax
          69:   48 99                   cqto
          6b:   48 f7 fe                idiv   %rsi
          6e:   48 8d 44 00 01          lea    0x1(%rax,%rax,1),%rax

<comment><USER5> 3-operand LEA has a different performance profile than 2-operand LEA on Sandy Bridge and later chips. The former has 3 cycle latency and only one execution port, whereas the latter has single-cycle latency and can be dispatched to two execution ports. So while gcc (and every other compiler) may rightly generate an LEA instruction to replace regular addition, it's not optimal when a third argument is added.

Curiously, if you need to move the result to another register (say, to respect calling conventions) the optimal solution is a 2-operand LEA plus a DEC:

      lea rax, [rdi + rsi]
      dec rax

I was wrong about ADD + DEC being smaller, though. I forgot that amd64 took away the 1-byte INC/DEC instructions to serve as REX prefix, so the DEC takes 3 bytes, not 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my toy scheme interpreter I used two bits, and so could store integers, pointers to C functions, symbols, bools and characters in an "immediate" form. With the caveat that cells (which contained things that couldn't fit in immediate form) had to be aligned on a four byte boundary.

Just showing the different things you can do with tagged pointers I suppose. It's pretty common in Lisp/Scheme runtimes. I love bit twiddling hackery.

[https://github.com/boardwalk/quuz/blob/master/quuz.h#L13](https://github.com/boardwalk/quuz/blob/master/quuz.h#L13)

<comment><USER8> Wait, with 2 bits you can represent 4 possible values, but you listed 5. What's up with that?

<comment><USER9> Not the GP, but bools and characters don't need 62 bits for the value. They can share an identifier, and you can tell them apart by the 3rd bit, for example.

<comment><USER8> Ah, yes that makes sense. I didn't think about characters and bools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain why a statically typed Hindley-Milner language like OCaml needs to box everything in the first place?

<comment><USER11> Additionnally from the GC, parametric polymorphism requires a uniform representation of values. For example, List.map does not make assumptions about the values in the list like their size.

<comment><USER10> That doesn't really explain this since `map` could look at the tag on the list/array instead of on each individual element.

<comment><USER11> Arrays of doubles are actually special-cased and do exactly this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Newton had 31-bit integers for the same exact reason. This resulted in the biggest Newton bug in its history: the Year 2010 bug. Like early Macs, the Newton's epoch was January 1, 1904. Times were represented with ints. 1904 + 2^31 seconds = 2010, at which point all sorts of things started failing.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Newton+year+2010+bug](https://www.google.com/search?q=Newton+year+2010+bug)

<comment><USER13> How can 1904 + 2^31 seconds = 2010 when 1970 + 2^31 seconds = 2038?

<comment><USER14> Parent poster mis-recalled details.

The bug is 30-bit signed ints (29bits) with epoch 1993.

<comment><USER12> Gah, indeed I did. The Newton actually has two different epochs, Jan 1 1904 for the OS epoch (same as early Macs) with 32 bits and Jan 1 1993 for the NewtonScript epoch with 29 bits. Someone's tired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ruby (at least MRI) also uses a similar scheme. This is a fairly common approach with dynamically typed languages.

<comment><USER16> >> This is a fairly common approach with dynamically typed languages.

That makes sense. The performance penalty might be incremental compared to the overhead of dynamic typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Almost every programming language uses 64-bit integers on typical modern > Intel machines.

That's not true. Most implementations which use a GC and/or are dynamically typed will have less than 64bit integers.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _Could we have a solution which would keep ints unboxed but have fast > arithmetic operations?_

Wait, is the answer not floating point? Using 64-bit IEEE 754 means the lower 52 bits (51-0) are significand, and bit 52 is implicitly 1, so setting bit 0 to keep track of GC stuff only introduces an error of ~1/2^52.

Floating-point multiplication isn't as fast as integer ALUs, perhaps, and you're now limited to 52-bit integers, but that's what Lua does and it gets by fine.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is similar to "fatvals" in SpiderMonkey (Firefox's JS engine).

IIRC SpiderMonkey stores doubles -- the fundamental numeric data type in JS -- as "unboxed" values, using this article's terminology. I'm not sure if there's good documentation about this out there, but it's an interesting hack, and much more complicated than just setting the bottom bit of the value.

<comment><USER20> I think you are thinking about a different trick called NaN tagging.

[http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/05/18/value- representation...](http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/05/18/value- representation-in-javascript-implementations)

The basic idea is that there are 2^53 different bit patterns that are counted as NaN by the computer but only one is actually used in practice. This means that you can "steal" the rest of the NaNs and use them to encode numbers or pointers.

<comment><USER21> I'm hacking on a fast little dynamically-typed language that uses that technique. It works fantastically well. I describe it in detail here:

[https://github.com/munificent/wren/blob/master/src/wren_valu...](https://github.com/munificent/wren/blob/master/src/wren_value.h#L400)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the link! I was actually surprised how hard it was to find a good description of NaN tagging yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Jane Street is a big user of OCaml and have published a sizable amount of code: [https://github.com/janestreet](https://github.com/janestreet)

</comment><comment><USER23> SBCL allows unboxed machine-word sized integers in certain cases. This allows for hand-tuned inner-loops and also efficient coding of algorithms with an implicit MOD 2^64

</comment><comment><USER24> Would you get simpler (faster) ops if you stole the high bit instead of the low bit?

e.g. x+y becomes (x + y | (1<<63))

Or does the loss of overflow detection hurt you more?

<comment><USER25> Setting the high bit would mean that the integer values are no longer automatically distinguishable from pointer values, which is kind of the whole point.

<comment><USER26> Why? You could just check if the high bit is set, instead of if the low bit is set.

IIRC, you can do this just by checking if it is less than zero.

<comment><USER8> First, pointers are typically _unsigned_ integers. Second, memory addresses are virtual, they don't have to exist physically. That is, you don't have to physically have up through 2 quintillion addressable bytes for a pointer with that value to be valid. This is especially true with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) security techniques employed by operating systems.

tl;dr: all valid pointer values are possible, regardless of how much memory you actually have.

<comment><USER26> So then store the pointer implicitly right-shifted by 1. Means that boxed access is slower, but unboxed access is faster.

And, when you get down to the assembly level, it doesn't matter - you can treat an unsigned integer as signed for a comparison if it makes things easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So this is done to avoid the hassle of having to implement a precise GC?

<comment><USER28> No the garbage collector in Ocaml is just a lot faster than a precise GC could be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> i think the symbolics 3600 had 4 or 8 bit for tags, ocaml is borrowing some more lisp ideas.

<comment><USER30> The ideas behind pointer tagging have been applied and reinvented an astonishingly amount of times, see Knuth and any number of book on the implementation of functional programming languages. To claim symbolics or Lisp invented everything is a bit silly and inaccurate.

OT: Thanks to Don Stewart for the two interesting links: [https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/Rts/Storage...](https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/Rts/Storage/HeapObjects) [https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/Rts/Haskell...](https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/Rts/HaskellExecution/PointerTagging)

<comment><USER31> I believe the basic idea dates to the Rice architecture of the late 1950s and 1960s [1]. Although there it wasn't just a programming language implementation technique, but a proposal conceived as a full-on alternative to the Von Neumann architecture [2].

Tagged values as a programming-language implementation technique do seem to take off more towards the early 1970s, though, with the ex-MIT team that would produce the Lisp Machine, and the Xerox team that would produce Smalltalk, both using tagged values prominently.

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

[2] A somewhat later (1973) paper referenced above: [http://www.feustel.us/Feustel%20&%20Associates/Advantages.pd...](http://www.feustel.us/Feustel%20&%20Associates/Advantages.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Minor correction: the Lisp Machine was created at MIT by MIT staff. Only after it existed did the commercial entities get spun off.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube - How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People (And... - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSFDm3UYkeE <comment><USER2> Some useful tips that can be applied to other areas too - not just open source coding projects. I liked the examples of dealing with time & resource sinks.</comment>


Microsoft Targets Chrome Users with Windows 10 Pop-Up Ad - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/news/351171/microsoft-targets-chrome-users-with-windows-10-pop-up-ad <comment><USER2> 1\. Setting->System->Notifications & actions

2\. Turn off Get tips, tricks and suggestions

3\. Done

<comment><USER3> Better yet, install an operating system that doesn't even have a setting to turn on or off advertisements, because there are no advertisements in it.

<comment><USER4> Or one where you opt-in instead of opt-out, at least.</comment></comment></comment>


Ton Roosendaal and Blender receives ASIFA-Hollywood Ub Iwerks Award - <AUTHOR> https://www.blender.org/news/ton-roosendaal-and-blender-to-receive-asifa-hollywood-ub-iwerks-award/ <comment><USER2> Blender is awesome. It really is one of the best open source projects out there. While it had a reputation for being inaccessible this hasn't been the case for a long time and 2.8 makes it even easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> I credit Blender for starting my career as a software engineer. I had programmed a little before starting to use Blender, but never really got into it past making some silly text-based adventure games and the likes. In the latter half of the 90s I developed a huge interest in 3d graphics, not least because of Pixar. My father took note and while I played around with some pretty crappy modelling software I'd found on a shareware cd at some point, he managed to find an SGI O2 for cheap in the late 90s. Amazing machine, loved it, but the OS was IRIX (which I knew nothing about) and all the 3d software that would run on IRIX was extremely expensive. Fortunately, this little studio in the Netherlands gave away this piece of software for free – Blender – and my older brother who was quite into Linux at the time helped me set it up. I didn't understand any of it, but thanks to IRC and this amazing little Blender community that popped up I learned how to work this thing and started making whatever I could imagine.

My renders were mostly crap, but it was great fun and I kept spending my time with it. Meanwhile, Blender grew more popular and gained a Python API with which you could actually add little scripts, programs that would run inside blender and make wheels on a car turn or what have you – it was absolutely mind blowing to me. It meant that now, as I felt I was hitting the limitations of Blender and grew increasingly frustrated by it, I wouldn't have to wait for Ton & gang to implement features, I could start doing it myself! Of course I had no idea what I was doing, so it was back to square one, but this time learning to program rather than modelling or animation. It was amazing though, that instant gratification of writing a script and seeing something other than text render on screen!

I was terrible at math, and never really understood why we had to study it in school. But all of a sudden I started realizing that trigonometry and algebra actually had some usefulness beyond academic exercises. Blender in a way forced me to start taking math seriously. It also improved my language skills since I had to communicate in English with all these strangers over the internet. Strangers who would take the time to teach a kid (though they probably had no idea) how to model a person's face (it was the holy grail of modelling for me at the time) or how to animate a car, or how to write a script that would make those wheels on the car turn as it moved forward...

I stopped using Blender around the mid 00s, partly because I then had gotten access to more powerful tools such as XSI, but also because I think the programming interest took over and indeed I stopped making 3d graphics around that time altogether as well. In -04 (or perhaps -05) I got my first paid job as a programmer. I didn't go to college, I never got a degree in comp.sci. or anything like that, it all really started with Blender. I'm now well into my second decade as a professional programmer, which is pretty amazing come to think of it.

Nowadays I tend to check in on Blender every once in a while and am always blown away by just how for it's come. All the amazing artwork used with it, and all the amazing people involved. A stunning success story, that I hope continues for a long, long time.

Thanks a ton, Ton – can't think of a better person to receive this award!

</comment><comment><USER4> Very well deserved. Blender 2.8 really is a wondrous multi-platform free-as- in-free thing.

<comment><USER5> Blender 2.8 is a huge leap forward in usability (and features too)! If you haven't tried Blender recently, it's worth downloading the 2.8 beta and giving it another try.

<comment><USER2> While I fully agree, moving from 2.7* to 2.8 default bindings is killing my muscle memory! I'll get there eventually.

For me eevee is probably going to make a huge difference, I throw together various renders and animations and bits of code to help my students understand what I'm teaching and the reduced render times really help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice achievement, maybe it will encourage more (short) movies like these to be created:

[https://www.blender.org/about/projects/](https://www.blender.org/about/projects/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Blender is great. It's well deserved. I'm actually amazed that it is an open source project.</comment>


The Sound of the Dialup, Pictured (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html <comment><AUTHOR> Last conversation was ~2.5 yrs ago so figured it might be interesting to some new folks

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635144)</comment>


Ask HN: Is Twitter sign in down? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not able to sign in with any of my accounts. <comment><USER2> "I MITMed Twitter for Android's login to see why it was failing.

The Twitter servers think it's 2015. Amazing."

[https://twitter.com/_Ninji/status/549365454322802688/photo/1](https://twitter.com/_Ninji/status/549365454322802688/photo/1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Happened to me as well. I was scared initially if it was hacked or something. \- Got notification on phone saying I am signed out. \- Couldn't sign back in from app or mobile web. \- Couldn't open my twitter page from mobile web. \- Couldn't sign in from Desktop web. \- Could open my page from Desktop web. \- Could sign in from desktop web. \- Still can't sign from Android app.

</comment><comment><USER4> I got a notification on Android that I was signed out and I haven't been able to sign back in. Everything's fine on my computer, though.

</comment><comment><USER5> As usual, we see an influx of people managing apps relying on those centralized services for authentication, the very gateway to the product those people are selling. How much of your livelihood are you willing to wager on the reliability on Twitter's servers?

Persona is decentralized _today_ , and no, it's not been abandoned by Mozilla.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Persona](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Persona)

</comment><comment><USER6> I got signed out of my Android client, can't log back in and if I go to my profile url the user isn't found. Kinda concerning.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Tweetdeck is showing all tweets as 365-364 days old in the stream, but has an accurate date when you click for the full view. Web Twitter seems to be unaffected. The forced mobile signouts started about a half hour ago (~7:20PM ET) based on what I've seen in my feed.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes. I just posted a similar link but it was taken down for some reason. I'm curious why my post would be removed, but yours remains?

<comment> mkr-hn flagkilled

Means enough people flagged it to kill it.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for letting me know. I obviously should have given it a better title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nothing here

[http://status.twitter.com](http://status.twitter.com)

<comment><USER8> Now there is.

[http://status.twitter.com/post/106461837558/sign-in- issue](http://status.twitter.com/post/106461837558/sign-in-issue)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Glad to see that others were "signed out." I was reluctant to retry.

</comment><comment><USER10> I just tried to sign in, just to check for you, and got an error message:

Something is technically wrong.

Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not able to logout from the web client.

</comment><comment><USER12> From Android only, it seems.

<comment><USER7> Nope. If you're not signed in on a desktop/laptop you will get the same message

<comment><USER12> Ok. Just confirmed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The android app loggued out

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes i think it was down

</comment><comment><USER9> Glad to see that others got "signed out." I was reluctant to retry.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes it is.</comment>


Predicting Startup Performance with Syllables - <AUTHOR> http://atbrox.com/2010/09/08/predicting-startup-performance-with-syllables/

<comment><USER2> _4 syllables: Wikipedia, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Mitsubishi, StumbleUpon_

Sorry, but "Wikipedia" is five syllables, and "Microsoft" is three.

If the article can't get something this basic right, how are we supposed to trust the rest of its analysis?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, have fixed that now - thanks for noticing (I was mainly focused on the names with 2 syllables). Regarding the rest of the analysis I believe the list of names with few syllables speaks for itself, and regarding the predictions it is of course in the same tradition as a monkey throwing darts, but with slightly more empirical support.</comment></comment>


ADHD: A Disease called childhood - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3822755/adhd-disease-called-childhood/

<comment><USER2> No question that ADHD is overdiagnosed. It's probably also underdiagnosed. Some people who aren't are called ADHD; some people who are never get help. It also most certainly exists--I wasn't diagnosed until middle adulthood, but the pattern of chaos back to childhood was pretty obvious, especially in hindsight. My life would be far different, and probably better in many ways, had I gotten the help I needed then. Problem was, this same sort of pop psychology diagnosis denial existed in the 70s and 80s, and my parents wrote the teacher referral off. Wish they hadn't.

This whole article talks about the concept of ADHD stigmatizing normal behavior, but the diagnostic guidelines include A) that the subject isn't behaving in an age-appropriate way and B) that the issues are causing significant real-life problems in at least two settings. There are multiple checkpoints that the behavior isn't normal, not transitory, not limited to problems with one place or person, and not easily addressed or tolerated by the individual showing it.

I'm absolutely certain that some parents, teachers, GPs, even psychiatrists err on these, that the kid is just showing a minor developmental lag or a contextual issue. But at the same time, the people it helps, it helps a _lot_ , and at a really crucial time. School is a terrible, terrible place to not be able to get shit done and to establish bad life habits, which is ultimately what ADHD will do. Doesn't take much at that stage to ruin high school, college, chances at a career.

So yeah, skepticism, sure. ADHD needs even more tried and tested diagnostic criteria. And ADHD is largely an umbrella diagnosis with treatments mitigating secondary symptoms of unknown primaries, so we should keep looking for primary causes and address those.

But to write off the whole thing...I don't know. I think that kind of overreaction is irresponsible. Marilyn Wedge has more or less built her current career on this position, but my own experience, however anecdotal, and any number of peer-reviewed studies don't really back her story very well. And really, those of us who suffer from ADHD already face enough stigma and baggage without having pop psych articles in Time Magazine trying to invalidate the one pathway that actually has led to some degree of relief and success.

<comment><USER3> But what you've said doesn't mean you have a disease---it could just mean that what society expects of you is unreasonable given your temperament.

<comment><USER2> It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the other (edited) is a collection of symptoms with unclear origin, but which happen together enough to be their own thing. It's pretty likely different people acquire dysfunction from different circumstances, whether traumatic, epigenetic, genetic, or whatever else interacts with brain development.

But to your point, and without going into a bunch of personal info, I doubt it. There were plenty of issues and deficits that I can't imagine being appropriate in any setting.

Moreover, ADHD has been acknowledged for a long, long time. The term is modern, but the disorder is not. It was minimal brain damage, IIRC, prior to ADHD, and had a bunch of increasingly archaic terms as you go back.

You have to understand, the popular view of ADHD--stereotypical hyperactivity and scatterbrained behavior--yeah, those are part of it, but they're not the whole. The cluster of symptoms mimics prefrontal cortex damage. Executive function is responsible for a whole lot of stuff.

If you're willing to acknowledge that mental disability exists in general, and that there's a line where we say, OK, that person is impaired, then it's not a huge jump to understand that it can exist in specific physical areas too. When it affects executive function to whatever degree you're going to draw that line, that's ADHD.

<comment><USER4> >It's not a disease, it's a disorder. Big difference. One is a cause, the other is a collection of symptoms that are frequently observed together, and which cause an issue.

I'm not able to tell the difference about which one you are talking about even after reading your definition. Maybe there isn't much of a difference after all?

<comment><USER2> Disease is a root cause, disorder is a manifestation that either comes from an unknown root cause or from several root causes with the same effect.

Alternately, Google it. I'm not a doctor, and I'm sure it's explained better elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Via /r/adhd:

>"In her book she advocates a "gluten free diet" and makes the repeated claims that "big pharma" are pushing these drugs on kids, who are simply a bit "different""

I don't know about you, but IMO if a person is advocating against gluten to cure ADHD, they probably aren't worth listening to on anything.

If you want to have an informed opinion on ADHD, watch this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc- rkIfo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo)

</comment><comment><USER6> "If psychiatry aspires to be scientific, on a par with other branches of medicine, how can it be content with this peculiar practice of delineating the outlines of a disease by a drug treatment?"

Sigh, there is plenty of scientific evidence of a biological basis of ADHD, i.e. genetic and neuroimaging studies:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22306277](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22306277) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyDliT0GZpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyDliT0GZpE)

Of course, we don't know what is causing these differences, and false positives are a real problem, but the misinformation in this article is very irresponsible

</comment><comment><USER7> As someone who was once upon a time diagnosed with ADD (I didn't quite cross the threshold into ADHD according to my pediatrician at the time), I can relate to this, at least a little bit, and I agree with most of what's discussed.

That said:

        According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease
        Control and Prevention, 14 percent of schoolchildren
        are currently diagnosed with ADHD in Arkansas and
        Louisiana. In Nevada, the number is less than 5
        percent. If ADHD were truly a genetically based
        biological disease, wouldn't the percentage of children
        diagnosed with it be more or less equal across
        geographical areas?

Probably not. Genetic diversity, at least in nature, tends to correspond to geographic separation of populations. I'd be surprised if this was significantly different for humans, particularly those on almost-opposite sides of the U.S.</comment>


Adaptive Path: Where We're Going Next - <AUTHOR> http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/adaptive-path-where-were-going-next/

<comment><AUTHOR> #savedyouaclick: Capital One (yes - the bank)

<comment><USER2> Wow, unexpected but exciting. Online banking ux is still in the stone age.</comment></comment>


Hiren's BootCD Based on Windows 10 PE X64 - <AUTHOR> https://www.hirensbootcd.org <comment><USER2> there is a lot of WinPE interest in the thread. I was part of the core team that came up with the idea and built it[0] and it is great to see how useful it has been for so many!

I'm happy to answer questions if folks are interested.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Enviro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment#Overview)

<comment><USER3> Given that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE) exists and can also create a "portable Windows" from the original files of an installation media for a normal version of Windows, is it possible to manually create one's own WinPE in the same way? i.e. is WinPE composed of only the same files that can be found on the installation disc, arranged in the right structure, or is there something more to it?

<comment><USER2> the tools needed to create WinPE - that shipped in the OEM preinstallation kits (OPK) - did do some work against the original files to make the magic happen. it was mainly around the special registry dB needed to get it to boot, not changing the files themselves. we also did a ton to try to slim it down, originally to get it to fit on a CDROM or RIS/PXE boot. well before USB sticks got larger than CDROMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow great to see it updated.

This is what got me into IT when I was 15, many years ago.

The fact that I had a private windows environment on a USB drive awed my friends.

Happy to see it resurrected.

<comment><USER5> Funny to remember 15 years ago getting into tech by fixing people's computers with a literal WinXP Hiren's boot _CD_ loaded with avast and other spyware removal tools. Fitting your toolbelt to 650mb was hard!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Pros

\- modern Windows 10 PE (original Hiren's was Windows XP based Windows PE)

\- supports UEFI (original was Legacy boot only)

\- freeware (no pirated content)

\- USB/DVD bootable

Cons

\- UEFI only

\- 64-bit only

Edit: formatting

Included tools list on download page: [https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/](https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/)

<comment><USER6> > Cons: 64-bit only

I mean, when was the last time 32 bit CPUs were sold? In 2009 I bought a basic very cheap computer. It still had 64 bit.

<comment><USER7> I have some old PowerEdge 2650 servers that are 32 bit. Old, but useful.

<comment><USER8> Not really very useful, replacing them with something that is significantly more powerful and uses 1/4th the power (or less) would quickly pay for itself.

Which is why old servers on ebay go for very cheap.

<comment><USER9> This mentality is why many beautiful 80s home computers were tossed back in the day. They have aesthetic and cultural value that will be recognized one day.

<comment><USER8> 80s computers still wouldn't be worth much of anything if 99% of them didn't get recycled.

I don't think there is anything beautiful, interesting or unique about a couple of million outdated generic x86 2U servers, nor will there really ever be.

<comment><USER9> I felt this way about some of my early "generic" x86 systems and threw them out. Now I feel like an idiot because I'd love to fire up my old 486 again.

<comment><USER8> I don't think many people are ever gonna feel nostalgic about firing up their 48 server rack and paying a $1000 power bill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow I haven't thought of Hiren's in over a decade. I used to use it daily back in my desktop support days working with XP. Very interesting to see a new version.

</comment><comment><USER11> This does not contain goldmemory. I'm not sure when that stopped being part of it. I accidentally discovered (due to it being on hirens) that it finds faulty dimms very effectively. The same dimms will run memtest faultlessly but non the less cause a bsod. So i suppose im a fan of that software! It actually helped me alot, many eons ago i would build alot of machines for networks, and in trying to determine the cause of bsod or restarts i eventually discovered it was always purely ram at fault.

</comment><comment><USER12> Haven't used these tools in a long time but (WinPE 10-8 Sergei Strelec (x86/x64) 2019.10.02 4.1GB) is a good alternative since Hiren removed all the "full software". Also there was an Hiren's BootCD Reloaded somewhere.

That said, all the legal software is usually good enough for any need.

</comment><comment><USER13> Medicat or Stergei Strelec for the win. Hiren's is nothing with all the real software stripped out. Load up Strelec's and see if the amount of software on there isn't amazing.

<comment><USER14> To be clear "real software" means "pirated" right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I appreciate what they are doing, however I think some of the best utilities were the grayware semi-proprietary utilities that Hirens had all in one place.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a Linux user would this be an option for installing Bios and Intel ME updates on machines with Windows only tools available? Or is Windows-To-Go still a safer option?

<comment><USER17> Very curious about this exact question! I've got a Dell XPS 13 that I put Mint onto and the only way to get it to play nice with a dell WD16 triple-monitor dock is to update the BIOS and things of that nature. I did so on another XPS 13 I have (which still has Windows on it because it only has 4GB of RAM) and that sorted things right out. _fingers crossed_

<comment><USER18> Which XPS13 do you have? You can update firmware from linux with fwupd, going back as far as the 9350 model.

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

<comment><USER17> 9350 or 9360 I think. Still have USB A ports. This is great news! Hopefully I'll be able to get things going thataway.

<comment><USER19> I think the firmware on those models can just load the Windows firmware update executable. Save it to your ESP or a USB flash drive and try to select it in the firmware update menu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Someone help me understand how they're delivering

1) Windows 10

2) Driver support

3) Obviously MS branded

..yet free and legal?

<comment><USER21> As I understand it you're generally allowed to redistribute modified versions of Windows PE that are intended for its allowed use case of system installation, recovery, and configuration. It is common for backup software (ex Macrium Reflect) to include "recovery disk creators" that bundle WinPE with the backup software and drivers.

<comment><USER22> No, not any more - the PE licensing changed to only allow this if the PE image is created by the same user. Tools like Macrium now download the WADK SDK and generate an image at runtime.

Distributing prebuilt images like this violates the current PE license AFAICT.

<comment><USER23> Because of licensing issues like the above: I've a lighter version of the program like this (also based on Windows 10 PE) - called "MiniNT" ([https://github.com/VulpesSARL/MiniNT5-Tools](https://github.com/VulpesSARL/MiniNT5-Tools)), and is fully open source, including the scripts to build the ISO (and other images) from scratch. Is supported in both 32 and 64 Bit editions. The 64 bit edition also can execute 32 Bit executables. It also can boot from USB, CD-ROM as well PXE Network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I tried to use the old hirens about 5 years ago and it was too out of date. Glad to see its still chugging along.

</comment><comment><USER25> I just used Hiren's this past weekend!

I fubar'd MBR after trying to clone my main drive onto an new SSD.

10/10 would recommend

</comment><comment><USER26> Very handy when you need to break people back into their own PCs. Ntpasswd wasn't working on some newer UEFI based installs, but Hiren's has been solid.

</comment><comment><USER27> How useful is Windows Boot CD is? I used to care about them a lot, but for the last decade or so, Linux + DOS (for f/w updates) was all that I needed.

<comment><USER28> > How useful is Windows Boot CD is?

Very if you're doing Windows desktop/workstation support.

Hiren's isn't just a PE, it includes a ton of useful utilities that help you repair, troubleshoot or fix a number of problems. The full list of utilities is here[1], but includes:

\- BCD/MBR Tools

\- Data Recovery

\- Defrag

\- Hard Drive Diagnostics

\- Hard Drive Imaging/Cloning

\- File Explorers

\- Partition Repair

\- Low Level Formatting/Data Destruction

\- Windows Recovery

\- Virus/Malware Scanners

\- Key Finders (office, windows, etc)

\- Password reset/recovery

\- System Registry Repair

\- And more...

[1] [https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/](https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/)

<comment><USER29> Except that a lot of the stuff on Hiren's is pirated. You probably don't even have a license to run the version of Windows that is on it.

<comment><USER30> Latest release does not include pirated content. Including the OS:

"Windows PE does not include any Windows license keys. Also Hiren's BootCD PE does not violate Windows PE purposes and it does not change "72 hours of continuous use" limitation. So using Windows PE in Hiren's BootCD PE is legal in the terms of Microsoft's usage purposes."

<comment><USER31> The 72 hour clause is to qualify for the special WinPE licensing (vs having to license as regular Windows), it does _not_ mean Windows PE itself doesn't need to be licensed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great! I'll finally be able to update my SSD firmware as Linux is my main and only OS.

</comment><comment><USER33> Would be cool if a respected publication could vet this for malware.

<comment><USER5> Gonna guess you're new to the industry. Hiren has been trusted for two decades.

<comment><USER33> This thing isn't by Hiren. It's by "fans" of Hiren. If Hiren had anything at all to do with it I wouldn't have said anything. The fact that a totally anonymous group is appropriating Hiren's name means I won't be touching this thing with a ten-foot pole until someone has vetted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Will this run Office? Looking for the smallest footprint to run windows office.

<comment><USER5> That's not what it's for. Sure it could, but using a USB drive as your program space is gonna be a bad time

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Microsoft should go down the SyaInternals route and aqui-hire Hiren's distro. I mean, why not?

<comment><USER36> I doubt Microsoft wants to toy with all those licenses from all those 3rd party products.

Microsoft DART works perfectly fine actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is a nice tool, however it may not serve certain scenarios. Windows 10 based Boot CD will take too much memory, and if there is problem in memory module, the CD wont boot. Back in 99, I had a PC with multiple SD RAM module. One of RAM module was damaged. Any boot software requiring high memory would not boot on this machine. I was able to boot it with barebone image containing memtestx86 only, and identify the bad SD RAM module. Removing the bad module fixed the PC.</comment>


PC market flat, as Surface becomes a top-5 computer brand in the US - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/pc-market-flat-as-surface-becomes-a-top-5-computer-brand-in-the-us/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see how much difficulty they are having defining a PC.

I.e. if half of otherwise identical Asus machines are excluded based on chromeOs then Asus has a better than stated position on hardware volume but not Microsoft licenses. OsX has an entirely different situation and luckily easy to separate yourself but is included..

</comment><comment><USER3> id actually argue that a chromebook is less a "PC" than a surface myself, while i see the point in the cheapo chromebooks as long battery life web browsers i dont get the point of premium chromebooks like the pixel etc, why would you need an i5 or i7 to run apps that can comfortably run on CPUs of half that power

not that im a fan of things like the surface either, i see why theyre useful for designers and such but to me a laptop needs a decent keyboard and the surface keyboard cover just isnt

but maybe im just old fashioned as i dont even see the point of a non convertible laptop with a touchscreen, reaching over the keyboard to press something feels much more awkward and less intuitive than just using the touchpad

personally id be tempted to just separate the markets by OS as that is likely the deciding factor before anything else, eg no matter how powerful the hardware you wouldnt buy a chromebook as a gaming machine as there arent the games for it.

yes OsX may be more general purpose than ChromeOS but to me it still has a specific market, if youre buying a mac you either need it for a specific app or youre not doing anything particularly important (web browsing, document writing, video watching) and just want something fashionable (or youre used to the OS and dont want to change)

</comment><comment><USER4> Good luck maintaining a fleet of this junk. Want to get your data from a non booting machine? Gotta break the screen! Batteries can't be replaced with breaking the screen either. Defiantly not a "business class" machine you can swap parts to keep your fleet going... Try fumbling around with one for more than an hour, garbage!

<comment><USER5> On the flip side, they are tamper resistant. It would be incredibly difficult for someone to tamper with a Surface tablet siting in a hotel room without leaving marks. This is probably good for travel with a corporate device.

<comment><USER6> Do you really think anyone short of a state agency is going to break into your hotel room and attempt to install malicious hardware? Since I assume you'd have drive encryption in such a hostile environment?

<comment><USER5> Full disk encryption does not protect against hardware keyloggers, but obviously tampered hardware (broken screen) could lead to the user not entering the passphrase.

Also, this is not for my threat model, but it could be appropriate for certain corporate travelers or journalists.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gavin Andresen on BitCoin and Virtual Currency - <AUTHOR> http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.html

<comment><USER2> Best comment from the show's host: "I hope some of my colleagues will find this of interest."

A decentralized, global currency is truly a foreign concept to economists.

In the early 1990s there were many who immediately realized the potential of this thing called the world wide web. But there were only a few who were articulate in delivering the message: "I hope you will pay attention, THIS IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL".

</comment><comment><USER3> Technically, I think BitCoin is extremely cool. However, I can't help but be skeptical of many of its apparent consequences:

During the financial crisis, many on the left expressed concern about a deflationary spiral. I don't claim any economic expertise, but the concern seemed valid. Bitcoin, by slowly reducing the speed at which currency is produced, effectively ensures long term deflation. Couldn't this have all kinds of bad consequences for the economy?

I favor ideas like "campaign finance reform". I also am not a fan of various forms of fraud, bribery, and organized crime. Of course these things all exist now, but bitcoin would seem to make them scale much more smoothly. I don't want government to micromanage the economy, but I also want it to be able to create and enforce laws that help correct problems caused by extreme economic freedom.

I also think taxes are needed. I think a bitcoin-driven economy is one that is hard to tax because it's hard to prove that person X has, or has received, some amount of money. Even sales tax seems difficult to collect. Is there some form of tax that would still work?

Also, will lenders be wary of bitcoin since they have little recourse to collect money from someone? Will something like credit cards still work? Will investors be scared to invest in startups since it becomes harder to trace where money is going?

I'm not trying to debate the free market with the libertarians out there. I'm curious if someone can explain why my concerns are invalid, due to my misunderstanding of the economic consequences of bitcoin.

<comment><USER4> Think of the BitCoins as something like gold - gold is also a finite resource and gets incrementally more difficult to mine, yet no deflationary spiral has set in (afaik). You can also trade gold and cash in dark channels and evade taxes, but you don't have to.

<comment><USER3> > yet no deflationary spiral has set in (afaik)

Gold isn't currently the currency (in most places), so I'm not sure what you mean here. If you listen to the podcast, the right-leaning (but generally fair) host makes a convincing explanation why there would be deflation under bitcoin. Also, gold and deflation are part of a popular story for explaining the great depression. I say all of this not to debate any of these points, but to point out that there is a case to be made that bitcoin would deflate over time and that it might have negative consequences.

I think bitcoin is somewhat different than gold because it is more decentralized (in practice) than having a national currency backed by gold. For example, it may scale more cleanly than gold and cash for corrupt uses, since bank accounts and the sources of money can be more readily hidden. I'm skeptical that this is a good thing.

<comment><USER5> During all 19th century gold and silver were the main currency. Economy was on the rise (industrial revolution) but there wasn't any problem with deflation nature of gold.

<comment><USER3> The link below suggests that you're right---the price of gold was remarkably steady for at least the second half of the 1800s.

<http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf>

Why would the price have been so steady? Was the supply of gold increasing at just the right rate to keep it steady (unlikely) or was the economy so much less efficient at the time that prices didn't tend to fluctuate as they should (my guess). Perhaps the government played a role by owning a massive amount of gold? I don't think any of these explanations would apply to bitcoin (or gold, now).

Is there a better explanation? (and does it also apply to bitcoin?)

<comment><USER6> From Gregory Clark's _Farewell to Alms_:

> However, in preindustrial England, and indeed in many preindustrial > economies, inflation rates were low by modern standards. Figure 8.7 shows > the English inflation rate from 1200 to 2000 over successive forty-year > intervals. Before 1914 inflation rates rarely exceeded 2 percent per year, > even in the period known as the Price Revolution, when the influx of silver > from the New World helped drive up prices. In a country such as England, > which had a highly regarded currency in the preindustrial era, the crown did > not avail itself of the inflation tax, despite the close restrictions > Parliament placed on its other tax revenues. Only in the twentieth century > did significant inflation appear in England. By the late twentieth century > annual inflation averaged 4–8 percent per year. Thus there has been a > decline, not an improvement, in the quality of monetary management in > England since the Industrial Revolution. > > ...Thus in Roman Egypt wheat > prices roughly doubled between the beginning of the first century AD and the > middle of the third.[12] But that reflects an inflation rate of less than > 0.3 percent per year.

I submit that it is unlikely that any of your explanations would operate over most of England's post-Invasion history and also in Roman Egypt a millennium before.

<comment><USER5> I couldn't find the data right now, but if i'm not mistaken, long term there was deflation, not inflation (though there were fluctuation due to wars and influx of precious metals from New World).

E.g. compare 1800 with 1900 with the help of CPI: <http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppowerus/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 3 Bitcoins and $4 will get you a Starbucks latte - comments on Bitcoin at [http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/bitcoin-madison- hour...](http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/bitcoin-madison-hours-and- musical-banks-alternative-currencies-virtual-physical-and-fictional/)

<comment><USER8> If you sell your three bitcoins on an exchange, at the current price of 63 cents each they'll cover a grande coffee.

<https://mtgox.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. I emailed Roberts (and NPR's Planet Money while I was at it) back in the beginning of March saying an episode on Bitcoin could be fascinating. I didn't receive a reply so I figured it wouldn't happen.

Listening now.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is far from a benign endeavor. Look what feds are up to:

Fake gold and silver Ron Paul coins seized: [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836699/ns/politics- decision_08...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836699/ns/politics-decision_08/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Unrelated: If anyone wants to purchase Bitcoins, feel free to contact me. (email@example.com - PGP 5539 AD00 DE4C 42F3 AFE1 1575 0524 43F4 DF2A 55C2)

<comment><USER11> Might be a stupid question, but what's that hexadecimal code?

<comment><USER12> EDIT

As pointed out in this thread, that's not a bitcoin address. That's just a GPG key fingerprint. Nothing to do with bitcoin itself. Terribly sorry for the foobar.

The original post:

 _> It's a bitcoin address, used for both sending and receiving. If you want to trade with a person, you enter that address as receiver's address in a transaction.

Nb., each bitcoin user can freely generate several addresses to protect privacy; up to and including using one-off addresses (i.e., address for just one transaction). _

<comment><USER11> Hm, OK, last time I looked, bitcoin addresses were given in base64.

<comment><USER10> They're base58.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visual Basic .Net dead? No, it's fifth most popular programming language - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-visual-basic-net-dead-no-its-fifth-most-popular-programming-language/ <comment><USER2> Visual Basic is still my preferred language for hobby code. It's the first language I learned, and it's still where my headspace defaults to when I'm writing code. Kinda like my personal native language. If I'm writing in another language, for instance, I might go "I need a Select Case" in my head, and then have to process what it is in that language, like "switch". So when coding for myself, it often saves me a lot of time and effort to just write in VB.

Now that VB .NET is moving towards being fully supported (it's own namespaces like My, especially) in cross-platform contexts in .NET Core 3.0, there's really no downside to using it.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are some things about VB syntax over C# syntax that I like.

1) Having the type-name come after the variable name makes for more readable code (in my opinion). The variable itself is more important than its type. (Other languages use a colon. Example: "counter: int;")

2) Having the block "ender" name match the starting name makes for less confusion and block-related IDE miss-matches. All the C# "}" look the same to the IDE and human eye. However, I do wish VB's block naming were more consistent, such as "while...end while" instead of "while...wend". (The later versions mostly fixed this.) In other words, _always_ have the pattern be "X...end X" so you don't have to think.

3) Better switch/case syntax, because it's set-oriented. Needing "break" is silly.

4) Not needing parentheses in IF statements.

<comment><USER4> Most of these are all true for F# too.

On 2, most of the syntax is indentation sensitive, but for types you can optionally annotate them with `class`/`struct`/`interface` and the keyword `end` to finalize them.

Pattern matching in F# is more powerful than simple switch/case statements.

<comment><USER5> TIL again! I've always wanted to try F#, so I might give it a whirl now. I like learning about these little quality-of-life titbits before jumping into something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The language may not be dead -- just the souls of the people forced to use it.

</comment><comment><USER7> unfortunately

<comment><USER8> why?</comment></comment>


Why Apple will never bring manufacturing jobs back to U.S. (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/17/technology/apple-china-jobs/ <comment><AUTHOR> "There's another catch, and it's one that politicians don't like to talk about: China has many more skilled engineers than the United States does. Steve Jobs, Apple's late CEO, brought the issue up during an October 2010 meeting with President Obama. He called America's lackluster education system an obstacle for Apple, which needed 30,000 industrial engineers to support its on-site factory workers."</comment>


Visualizing Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://zacgeis.github.io/visualizing-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> Could not get it to work on Chrome 57 (MacOS). Works on Safari.</comment>


A Y Combinator Company Copied Our Design and Data Viz: We've Arrived - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/ycombinator-copycat/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008)

<comment><USER3> I think the more interesting part is the comments that crept out of the wood work days after the article was posted to HN.

hautit 5 days ago (1 comment - account created 324 days ago) Get over it, CBInsights, your UX sucks.

theUXclub 4 days ago (brand new account)

CB Insights, cheap and creepy as always. A 'low-drama' group of people that decided to tweet and share the story all over the place claiming something like 'Look! They copied us!'\- Your UX is bad as hell, I wouldn't be very proud. Plus, your site is Bootstrap (a framework created for people who have no skills or time to invest on CSS or design), did you also invent it and they copied you as well?

frumpywooly 4 days ago (brand new account)

"...12 folks from their team have signed up for our free trial since September including the CEO, head of product, designer, product manager and a senior ruby developer." CBInsights, creepiest company in America

<comment><USER4> So, not only plagiarizers but active smear campaigners too...

<comment><USER5> >smear campaigners

Wow, multilevel irony!

CB Insights actions, arguably, constitute a large scale smear campaign that is not adequate to the original transgression of the startup.

Your comment, arguably, constitutes a low scale smear campaign as you have no proof that startup founders have posted those comments. Any other CB Insights competitor/enemy could use that opportunity.

So much drama out of a non-issue.

<comment><USER4> > _CB Insights actions, arguably, constitute a large scale smear campaign that > is not adequate to the original transgression of the startup._

"Blame the victim" much?

They just reported it on the web AFAIK. What else would be "adequate to the original transgression of the startup"?

> _Your comment, arguably, constitutes a low scale smear campaign as you have > no proof that startup founders have posted those comments._

Sure, no hard proof. I only have a guess, based on decades of living in a human society, that accounts that were created days before, and that say the same things, and in favor of the transgressor, are somehow related to them...

Is there any competing theory? Random internet people that decided to sign up to HN just to vent against a company?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, a competing theory that I've included in my original comment. Anyone with a grudge against CB Insights could have registered those accounts.

>Random internet people that decided to sign up to HN just to vent against a company?

Obviously, trolls exist. Copyright/plagiarism/"inspiration" discussions are a feeding grounds for those kind of people.

That's two competing theories. And yeah, it's ironic to state with confidence that someone is "actively running a smear campaign" with no plausible data confirming the statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jesus, besides the merit of CB Insights' claim, this whole thing reeks of incompetence. You're a YC-funded startup and you can't do your own visual design? I'll admit that when I need ideas/designs, I'll often head over to the D3 gallery page, copy the relevant parts of the code, but at least modify it so that it looks different, and actually meets my needs. What's comical is not only did they purportedly rip off a design, but they ripped off a pretty prosaic one. And I don't know what's the worser sign of their operational capacity, that they signed into a competitor's product to take code/get inspiration, or that they couldn't even be bothered to come up with fake email addresses, or that it required 12 employees to go in and successfully make off with the designs.

Edit: Also, as a data-handling-person, the startup's defense that their inspiration is "only the way data is displayed" is annoying...data display is _very_ important...but also, data display is the first thing people see, and I imagine is the thing that makes it into slidedecks in lieu of actual proof of quality of data analysis and data research...if you have the resources to be great and different at the "backend" part of data work, you most definitely have the ability to not just borrow someone's design...as good data display often follows a bespoke understanding of the data itself.

Also, I must credit HighCharts and its well-documented API as getting me through various crunch-time _oh-shit-I-need-a-web-graph-right-now_ situations [http://www.highcharts.com/demo](http://www.highcharts.com/demo)

<comment><USER7> The thing that irritates me is that naive users would assume CB Insights were the ones who copied, as they don't have the YC brand.

Not YC's fault per se... just how people generally use brands as a shorthand for merit. At this point YC is almost more like a meta-corporation with its individual startups as departments.

<comment><USER8> >> "At this point YC is almost more like a meta-corporation with its individual startups as departments."

Yup, that's the idea. It was designed that way from square one. Deconstruction and postmodernism are the spirit of the age, after all.

<comment><USER7> It's quite interesting.

There's one attribute of capitalism that I think is largely responsible for its success, and is likely the single largest factor that contributed to the USA's victory over the USSR:

 _Capitalism allows permission-free innovation._

In my opinion, markets get too much credit and are actually secondary to this. A market is just a way of performing goal-directed gradient descent and aggregating decision making. Markets are _not_ by any means "efficient," and are highly vulnerable to getting stuck at local maxima like any other gradient descent algorithm.

I think the ability to engage in permission free innovation is actually a much more significant advantage than markets. You could nix the market and implement some kind of socialism and I think you'd still have a fast, innovative economy if you allowed people to negate the bureaucracy. I'm not saying markets don't have advantages, just that they're not a panacea.

I saw this when I worked as a government contractor. There was an incident within the org where I worked that had the effect of temporarily suspending the bureaucracy, and for that brief period of time it innovated like a small agile private company! Everything felt like it went vertical. Then the bureaucracy came back and all innovation halted. Now you had to ask permission, so nothing could happen.

Thing is: as the size of a corporation approaches "big," its internal procedures and politics start to resemble government. Microsoft, IBM, and yes even the venerable Google start to look a lot like government agencies internally. As they grow they take on a lot of government's problems, like sclerotic bureaucracy.

The meta-corp model avoids this by allowing individual "departments" to function with an extreme level of independence. It uses mechanisms like equity finance to capture upside while creating enough autonomy to allow permission- free innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Practially speaking, design is legally indefensible as intellectual property - if you actually paid lawyers to make a case for you, you'd only be depleting your own war chest to make your copycats go through the relatively small hassle of a redesign. The only effective way to counter it is loudly naming and shaming the companies responsible.

Kudos to CB Insights for doing exactly that. Not only will it make the copying more trouble than it was worth to Techlist, but the threat of public embarrassment will help deter copycats in the future.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. A design patent for a user interface would do the trick. So would some clever copyright registrations.

[http://adlervermillion.com/user-interface-design- patents/](http://adlervermillion.com/user-interface-design-patents/)

Not every lawyer knows/understands IP and user interface design. But if you find a lawyer who specializes in the two, and you lay the groundwork _before_ your design is copied, you should have a strong legal position when the copycats arrive.

For an early-stage startup, it may not make sense to sink a ton of $$ into design patents. But companies with more revenue/capital should think about it.

<comment><USER11> I disagree from a practical, as well as financial standpoint.

It's _very_ difficult to patent a software interface design as you have to prove a lack of existence of prior art and the patent must describe the specifics of what you are patenting.

These days there's very little new under the sun. I don't see anything remarkably unique about that particular interface. I'm certainly not saying that it wasn't lifted by their competitor, but that analytics dash also bares a striking resemblance to Google Analytics and a host of others, not to mention Microsoft Excel. Okay, it's blue and has large Helvetica numbers- is that what you're going to patent? Okay, I'll change mine to a green color scheme with Arial fonts. Your patent is no longer enforceable, and your IP attorneys who tend to be paid quite well will charge you tens of thousands of dollars to prove that.

I can imagine it feels like a major violation and annoying to be ripped off, and I don't condone that strategy, but I doubt that CB's competitive advantage is a color scheme and some data labels. A design patent would have basically no value in this scenario.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anand, CEO of CB Insights here. Surprised to see this here again (prior discussion - [http://cbi.vc/1DhMQT3](http://cbi.vc/1DhMQT3)), but if any questions, feel free to ask. I'm at a conference but will try to reply during breaks.

If you're really bored :) and want to read more on this, Connie Loizos of StrictlyVC dove in a bit more ([http://cbi.vc/1vk4lLY](http://cbi.vc/1vk4lLY))

<comment><USER13> You're a genius. Getting this much free publicity AND painting a competitor as incompetent and second-rate.

YC should have invested in you :)

<comment><USER12> Ha.

Our master plan is to get a Sequoia Capital portfolio company to copy us. Mu ha ha ha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When did YC companies change from being the little guys/underdogs to being the big strong evil Lord Business?

I don't know if it's schadenfreude, or simply that HN is full of people who resent YC because they didn't get in (myself somewhat included)

But, this propensity to try to destroy someone who wronged you, without a pragmatic outcome you are trying to achieve, other than to be punitive, goes completely against my own moral compass, and It really bothers me that no one else here seems to agree.

and the excuse that "we have a right to know" or that "if they did this, what else are they dishonest about...we need to know who they are to protect ourselves." etc... are all built on a house of cards with a foundation called, "we like to watch the mighty fall."

I try to never bring up religion, but there is a beautiful Jewish Law called Shemiras Halashon (guarding your tongue) that bans "Gossip, bad mouthing people, and talking about others in a way that can be construed negatively, even if its true... unless there is what's called, "Toeles" which is a set of criteria the story must meet to be justified to share... [http://www.torahmediaatlanta.com/assets/Uploads/MiriamFeldma...](http://www.torahmediaatlanta.com/assets/Uploads/MiriamFeldman/5-partShmirasHalashonSeries%205771/Shmiras%20Halashon%20%2801%29%2011-03-10.pdf)

This idea that our words don't hurt is a falacy, and while I am certainly guilty myself... when it's an egregious effort to be punitive, with no pragmatic goal...it just seems wrong to me.

<comment><USER15> Punishment has a very simple pragmatic goal: to discourage this behavior from other people in the future.

<comment><USER16> In this case the "punishment" (seriously?) had the immediate effect of forcing them to change the design they stole.

<comment><USER14> Yes,but not immediately, the initial reaction of the perpetrator was to defend the decision on twitter, thats what happens when you attack someone, they go on the defensive...

..but that same objective could have been achieved privately. A nice email from the victim stating that they see they copied their design and would greatly appreciate them changing it ASAP...would have likely yielded a quicker and cleaner result.

Regardless, my initial comment was less addressed to the victim here, but rather to the HN community for pouncing all over it.

<comment><USER16> I don't disagree that people get weird about YC companies here, but let's be honest: YC can take it. This startup can take it. A week of bad publicity is a minimal amount of adversity compared to what they'll endure in the future, and there were a few lessons they needed to learn. What we're seeing isn't some kind of lynch mob, it's a few people shooting the breeze on the internet.

More importantly, I think the notion that a victim - a real victim, making a truthful accusation - is obligated to remain silent is very badly thought out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No surprise -- YC promotes launching fast and copying / plagiarism facilitates that.

This has happened before with a YC company ([http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-apologizes-for- copy...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-apologizes-for- copying-37signals/)) and YC companies are also known to copy (often verbatim) legalese from a bigger competitor and find / replace with their own company name.

Having started two companies, as a non tech founder, I can understand why they did this _at the start,_ as there are many other more important things to do than CSS and TOS. But this isn't an excuse as soon as they had the resources to make the change.

<comment><USER18> > YC promotes launching fast and copying / plagiarism facilitates that.

You don't copy someone's unique look, when they don't want you to copy them. There are so many inexpensive ($12 - $49) CSS templates that look good enough or even cool, that what happened is both inexcusable and just stupid. Most of them are already built to use either bootstrap or foundation as well, so it makes the launching fast part trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Playing devil's advocate here. How much change in the design would people think it is not a rip-off? If they changed the color scheme? If they changed the font? The type of visualization shown seems pretty standard (looks like a treemap plot?). I don't want to denigrate the importance of stylistic choices as they are very important in data visualizations, but it seems like a pretty standard visualization.

Perhaps it is the dimensions they chose to represent out of the data that was a rip-off? Ripping off methods of visualizing subtle aspects of the data that conveys information would be a more egregious offense to me.

<comment><USER20> Hey I made the CB Insights design. I completely agree the viz is standard (the treemap was my first d3 viz actually!). A lot of people are stopping at the charts and saying "well it's just a bar chart and a treemap, get over it!"

To me the fact that the entire layout outside of the chart, even the copy is exactly the same is the main offense. Even the table below the chart (when you click to see the data) is exactly the same. It would have taken them 20 minutes to just shuffle things around, but no they just replicated it.

We put a lot of time in figuring out the best way to present information so that users don't actually have to spend a lot of time to get answers. They skipped that part and stole our work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _Our terms of service which all these users agreed to prohibits this > explicitly – You may not access the Services if You are Our direct > competitor, except with Our prior written consent._

Is that something that is actually defensible?

<comment><USER22> Why wouldn't it be? They say you have to agree to it to get access, so the copiers that made accounts agreed to it.

If you mean, "would be defended" or "could know about it", then probably not. It just adds more to the name and shame tactic they decided to do.

<comment><USER23> Here in Belgium, there are terms that people put in their legal document that shouldn't be present and would be considered invalid (as if they were not present) irrespective of the fact you agreed to them.

Examples that come to mind: prohibit people renting an apartment to have a cat, reduce the time you have to return a product bought online (and get a refund) to less than the legal time, ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would be interesting to get Y Combinator's take on this.

<comment><USER25> This is hardly the first or worst example of a YC company copying something. For example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523024) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529607)

Being prepared to do this kind of thing is a core part of the YC values: [http://paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://paulgraham.com/founders.html)

>Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.

<comment><USER26> While I've never been particularly interested in YC itself, that quote is something I'd never read, and honestly it's really sad. That he straight up admits that he's looking for people who are [synonym for evil that doesn't make him look as bad] is really telling and sad.

Maybe I'm just too idealistic in general -- entirely possible -- but when I read "breaking rules, but not rules that matter," I wonder who gets to decide which rules matter. Because someone obviously thought they mattered enough to _be rules in the first place._

<comment><USER27> So basically you support Adolf Eichmann's claim that "following orders" was a legitimate excuse for participating in the Holocaust? Either that, or you do not understand PG's argument.

<comment><USER24> Godwin's law in action right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Disappointing that the YC staff has not commented on this. It also fell very quickly from page 1...

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow Techlist didn't steal from a Billion Dollar company, They stole from a Bootstrapped Startup.

<comment><USER30> It could go either direction. There was an startup Innopage in Hongkong news these two days claiming that the design of its iOS App "Worthy" was copied in merely 2 months by China's Alibaba after the latter sent a 10-member delegation team to visit Innopage in Hong Kong. Alibaba responded that "there is no factual and legal basis." What can a startup do?

(The following articles are all in chinese) Founder Keith Li's article: [http://www.grandline.hk/2015/02/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E6%B2%92%...](http://www.grandline.hk/2015/02/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E6%B2%92%E6%9C%89%E5%90%91%E9%A6%AC%E9%9B%B2%E5%AF%84%E5%87%BA%E7%9A%84%E5%85%AC%E9%96%8B%E4%BF%A1%EF%BC%9A%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B7%B4%E5%B7%B4%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E6%8A%84%E8%A5%B2/)

News: [http://startupbeat.hkej.com/?p=1197](http://startupbeat.hkej.com/?p=1197)

Alibaba's response: [https://thestandnews.com/finance/%E8%A2%AB%E6%8C%87%E6%8A%84...](https://thestandnews.com/finance/%E8%A2%AB%E6%8C%87%E6%8A%84%E8%A5%B2-%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B7%B4%E5%B7%B4-%E7%84%A1%E4%BA%8B%E5%AF%A6%E4%BE%9D%E6%93%9A/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's cool to see the startup growth analytics industry heating up. I thought Mattermark was first, but it looks like CB Insights was founded before them.

Regarding the plagiarism, I think this will blow over pretty quickly. Not a fan of what they did, but as long as they weren't stealing data, it isn't unforgivable. UIs are almost always influenced by one another, they just made the mistake of following their inspiration too closely.

</comment><comment><USER32> This was posted last week. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008)

</comment><comment><USER33> I've used tree-maps for data visualization before too...I've never heard of cb-insights though. Furthermore, I've written an additional piece of code that let's you decide what colors to use...so it _could_ be blue and white...

While I agree that there's some suspicious similarities in content (potentially plagiarism, although you're in the same vertical...) and style, the use of tree-map visualizations isn't plagiarism, nor is using bar-charts with a line on top.

<comment><USER34> Obvious plagiarism is obvious. It has nothing to do with tree-maps in blue palette.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Looks like you both copied an original source and wanted to save time by not modifying the original lib source.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I read the article my first thought was... So go to war. Don't be proud that you bootstrapped and they got funded. Go to war.

Go to the VC community and raise a ton. You have proof of a strong product and yet you are not capitalizing on first mover advantage. You are asking these guys to copy you and trump you.

Go to war. Raise. Build. Grow. Expand. Offer more things free to limit competitor entry points. Offer even better metrics. Go to war.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER37> Everyone is copying everyone. Grow up.

<comment><USER4> "Everyone is rippinf off everyone. Grow up".

Here I fixed that for you. Works great in other contexts too:

"Everyone is abusing everyone. Grow up".

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Generic charts with a blue/orange color scheme. Clickbait bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER39> The article's passive-aggressive tone is overbearing. Why can't they simply present the evidence, say they are very disappointed with the YC company for stealing their design and be done with it?

</comment><comment><USER40> Oh shocking that a tech "journalist" does shady stuff. Pretty much expected of "journalists" these days.

<comment><USER41> Who's the 'journalist'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> again? really? I guess it didn't get enough attention a week ago, let's rolllllll it all out again.

ffs. _The article itself_ links to the previous discussion ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008))

<comment><USER4> So? Things are posted on HN twice (or more) all the time.

I, for one, missed the original discussion.

<comment><USER42> Well, I guess the 'previous thread' comment being the _most upvoted comment_ in this thread is kind of telling.

You do the math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Funny that segment design looks exactly like disk space analyzer for mac... [http://lifehacker.com/5915508/the-best-disk-space- analyzer-f...](http://lifehacker.com/5915508/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-for- os-x)

<comment><USER44> No it doesn't. There's a big difference between taking inspiration from somewhere, and copying it.

CB Insights and Disk Space Analyzer use blocks to visualize size, but that's about as far as the similarity goes. This company not only copied CB Insights's color scheme and layout, but also the text "The color represents the amount of funding and the size represents the number of deals."

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So, has the wholesale design/concept cloning of (mostly) american startup web services become an everyday-thing in Singapore too now?

(In addition to e.g. China and Russia.)

<comment><USER4> Dunno, but it seems racism has come to HN now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> There is nothing wrong with companies "copying/stealing" designs. But it is wrong when you are criticizing others for doing so while you are doing it.

See TechInAsia previous rants on "copying designs":

[https://www.techinasia.com/flightfox-copy-rip-off- nomadlist/](https://www.techinasia.com/flightfox-copy-rip-off-nomadlist/)

[https://www.techinasia.com/china-startup-copy- listener/](https://www.techinasia.com/china-startup-copy-listener/)

</comment><comment><USER46> What gets me about this whole flap is that I just don't see anything particularly interesting or innovative in the UX design for that page CB Insights is so fiercely proud of. So it's a heatmap combined with slider -- how original is that?

As if everyone hasn't been stealing from everyone else's UX, like, all the time, since the public internet became a thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> The CEO of the YC company apologized in the other HN thread and said they are changing it...why is this still a story.

To be fair, I would be upset and annoyed like CBI, but on a pragmatic level...what more do they want.

No good comes out of publicizing others shortcomings (no matter how much they deserve the public shaming). This should have been handled privately...not through Twitter and HN.

If they insisted on doing something publicly why not spin it in your favor and make a slogan, "Data so awesome, our competitors steal it like a possum."

</comment><comment><USER47> Everything blows about this post.

\- Are blue treemap your only value CBinsights? Well if you felt like you had to write about it, so maybe...

\- Also public shaming using "Y Combinator company" instead of naming the company is shameful. Don't lump together all the YC companies for your own greed of getting attention.

\- Your TOS blows. Close their account and send them a mail if you didn't want them to use your product.

<comment><USER48> I pretty much agree with this. They created a D3.js treemap and probably even used a standard Colorbrewer blue color scheme, as seen in this d3 example:

[http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063582](http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063582)

Was it terribly uncreative for the other YCombinator company to do the same thing? Yes.

Was it plagiarism, copying, or unethical? No way. You did not invent the treemap nor a strong blue on light blue color scheme. Your UX is not unique enough to claim design infringement here.

Lastly, your TOS is probably the most alarming part of this story. You should not be so afraid of competition that you attempt to prohibit 'competitors' from using your product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> No, the design is not copied. Period

This is like saying a blog copied another blog because they're showing sequences of articles in a vertical column that scrolls.

That style of heat map is not unique nor exclusive to a site. Nor it is to use shades of blue.

Oh wow they have a blue bar graph with a red line, "they're stealing our IP!!!!"

"Oh the fields are the same" Similar software needs to deal with the same data, obviously.

This article is enlightening. It's free publicity for the Y Combinator company, and I'd take them more serious than a company that greatly overstates their IP.

<comment><USER50> But they _said_ the design was copied. Also, non-trivial parts of the design are in the _exact_ same positions in both examples -- it seems to me like the question isn't even if the design was copied, but more of whether we should care.

<comment><USER51> And on top of that, the exact same capitalization and abbreviations are used. At least they took the effort to rename "last year" to "last 4 quarters" in one occasion..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Hi everyone.

Forgive me for saying this, but "The more the world changes, the more the world seems to stay the same".

Didn't something very similar to this happen a long time ago with the Apple vs. Microsoft "Look And Feel" copyright lawsuit?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp).

And as it turns out, both parties probably copied design elements created by Xerox PARC... which were probably originally created by some researcher(s) there who read scholarly articles by other researcher(s) who probably wrote about the possibility of things similar to the created design elements existing in the first place...

So who invented what, when?

I sure as heck don't know!

But what I think is amazing is how _computer history tends to repeat itself_... <g></comment>