Apple and Qualcomm settle patent fight after one day in court - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/qualcomm-shares-up-20-percent-after-apple-agrees-to-settlement/ <comment><USER2> Makes sense. I'm sure Apple is paying an amount significantly less than Qualcomm was demanding, yet Qualcomm will still get a large infusion of cash. Neither side has to risk a long, drawn-out court battle. Meanwhile Qualcomm can aggressive pursue fees from other companies and Apple knows their competitors will likely have to pay more to get the same item meaning Apple can increase their profit margins a little more.

<comment><USER3> Nailed it.</comment></comment>


Gitrob – OSINT gathering tool for GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://michenriksen.com/blog/gitrob-putting-the-open-source-in-osint/

<comment> dj-wonk Please, don't blur if you want to redact. Instead, use a uniform, opaque color. See [http://dheera.net/projects/blur](http://dheera.net/projects/blur) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078747).

Context: I just looked at some of the screenshots showing example findings. While it is thoughtful to blur some sensitive information, it is clear that blurring is not enough. I hope that we can get this message out.

<comment><USER2> Looks like the author has since taken your advice although the thumbnails remain uncensored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The patterns definition file, listing the things that this tool detects as potentially sensitive, is worth a look: [https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob/blob/master/patterns....](https://github.com/michenriksen/gitrob/blob/master/patterns.json)

Special award for most meta pattern:

        "part": "filename",
        "type": "regex",
        "pattern": "\\A\\.?gitrobrc\\z",
        "caption": "Well, this is awkward... Gitrob configuration file",

</comment><comment><USER4> So, I guess the hint here is "Run this on your own organization before someone else does."

</comment><comment><USER5> Fantastic concept and execution.

I would note that by the time this sensitive code hits Github, its already too late. Criminals who mine PII/secrets use the Github event firehose to analyze code pushes in near-realtime.

It would be great to integrate this code as a pre-commit hook, so that code doesn't even get into the tree if its sensitive.

<comment><USER6> Excellent point. I wonder if it would be feasible to put this kind of check in a pre-commit pipeline to prevent it actually getting committed in the first place.

<comment><USER7> Or even better, github could have an opt-in (or even opt-out) server side variant for pushes!</comment></comment></comment>


Why Ubuntu Should Use KDE Plasma Instead of Gnome - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexl.netsons.org/blogposts/10-reasons-why-ubuntu-should-use-kde-plasma-instead-of-gnome/ <comment><USER2> You lost me at reason no.1</comment>


Fix for Golang runtime memory corruption bug - <AUTHOR> https://go-review.googlesource.com/#/c/34835/ <comment><USER2> One thing I like about rsc (and Austin) is that they have these well explained commit logs that let's people follow along at home. The changes seem like they are well justified and made for posterity. This change in particular is a story more than it is a 3 LOC fix.

<comment><USER3> I like going through Postgres's commit logs once in a while for exactly that reason, non-trivial commits (logic wise, they may be a 1LOC commit) get short- story-scale messages, often with references to ML thread(s) where the issue or change was discussed. It's a nice change of pace from $dayjob where a commit changing half the codebase in ways unspecified gets logged as "improvements".

<comment><USER4> > It's a nice change of pace from $dayjob where a commit changing half the > codebase in ways unspecified gets logged as "improvements".

The best (worst?) one is where you'll see a series of major changes with the following commit messages:

\- Add feature X ( _no explanation of what it does_ )

\- Fix feature X

\- Really fix feature X

\- Fix feature X for real

\- Finally fixed X

\- Fix test environment

<comment><USER3> I know you don't work at $dayjob because the last commit would be "fix X test which is dumb", which removes the test entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An alternative view: [https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b902a63ade47cf69218c9b38...](https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b902a63ade47cf69218c9b38c9a783fc8cfc3041)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does this mean every single application binary compiled with go in the wild up until today has a memory corruption bug?

If so, it's going to take some effort for this bug to be weeded out in every single deployment around the world...

<comment><USER6> I don't understand this comment, are you implying that it's the first time you see a runtime with a bug?

<comment><USER5> Well usually you can just update whatever library has the bug and restart your applications, but as I understand this bug will be statically linked in all application binaries so they will all have to be recompiled and redeployed?

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's what the grandparent is saying, this is a bug in the runtime, which you can't fix by updating libraries, you have to update the compiler/interpreter (depending on the language).

This is not a unique occurrence.

<comment><USER8> I think the original question was querying if the runtime is statically or dynamically linked.

It's also possibly a subtle dig at go, because unlike other languages go does not use dynamic linking, meaning bugs in libraries require recompilation (has positive effects too).

<comment><USER9> Yes it does, since Go 1.6.

It just isn't the default compilation mode, you have to explicitly enable it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some of the points are just ridiculous. Because you can't compare java and go or whatever. If you want complain about a language you should first checking the history of java or whatever. Maybe this language has runtime bugs in old versions as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised there was no test added to ensure this doesn't regress. Any reason why not?

<comment><USER12> Looks like it's a concurrency bug that is only triggered non-deterministically under certain circumstances. It is probably hard to reproduce reliably in a test, if this is possible at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if it'll get backported to at least Go 1.7?

<comment><USER14> Not sure, but I'd expect it to get fixed in 1.4, since that's the version needed to generate later versions if you're bootstrapping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat OT: Just having recently gotten into Go: How about changing the official name from Go to Golang? It's not ideal, but so wasn't the naming in the first place :/ Go isn't particularly search friendly. Quite ironic for a language coming out of the world's largest search company.

Just try searching for go in the otherwise excellent Algolia HN search engine:

Without quotes:

[http://i.imgur.com/8ztH48u.png](http://i.imgur.com/8ztH48u.png)

With quotes:

[http://i.imgur.com/5a229fC.png](http://i.imgur.com/5a229fC.png)</comment>


Only machines can understand the human brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/29/13967966/machine-learning-neuroscience <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone know enough about fMRI or similar technology to speak to whether this will ever be small enough for a wearable without an implant?

Also, curious to know if the problems with fMRI accuracy that invalidated hundreds of scientific papers were resolved?

See [http://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could- inv...](http://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-invalidate- decades-of-brain-research-scientists-discover)</comment>


Ask HN: Simplification of multiple payment processors? - <AUTHOR>

What's a good approach to handling support for multiple payment processors, with minimal tinkering?
Are there any existing libraries or services that abstract out the many differences between payment processors? I'm looking to write minimal server-side code, if any. Turn-key solutions (i.e. the sort of thing Stripe.js provides, but for other processors) would be ideal.
It doesn't need to be free, but free is good.
All I would need is for any payment completion to trigger a callback URL, and my server would handle the rest. I don't need subscriptions or anything fancy, really.
This must be a very common problem, but I can't really find anything that hits all these sweet spots.
Hell, even a simple HTML/JS generator that wires most stuff up for you would be nice. <comment><USER2> ActiveMerchant is a good one for Rails: [http://activemerchant.org/](http://activemerchant.org/)

There are a few for Django, but none that I know of that have the full range that ActiveMerchant does.

Another option is to look for processors with an iframe solution like Stripe Checkout or WePay Iframe Checkout (I think PayPal used to have one but they may have killed it). The nice thing about these solutions is that they take care of 100% of the payment form and annoying stuff like AVS, luhn validation, error response handling, etc.

Good luck! Payments is hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> ActiveMerchant is good, yes, but I'd really like to avoid sending sensitive customer data through my servers, so server-side solutions aren't really feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Other thoughts: A good example of the sort an ideal end-result would be how something like the Humble Bundle handles payments.</comment>


1600-Question Test Shows How Bad Siri Really Is - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5922332/google-search-beats-the-crap-out-of-siri-in-1600-question-test

<comment><USER2> When I first started playing w Siri I asked it every silly question. Then I stopped using it as the novelty wore off. But then I started using it again for very narrow tasks: Everything from asking the temperature to song requests. I think if you're looking for Hal that Siri isn't it, but on a small scale it works well.

From the point of view if usability the only thing I dislike about it is that I have to click to get Siri, if Siri could be summoned by just talking at the phone (no button clicks) that would be killer.</comment>


Astronauts escape malfunctioning Soyuz rocket - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45822845 <comment><USER3> "The Soyuz capsule has landed back on Earth carrying two crew members. Search and rescue teams are in contact with the crew and are en route to the landing location."

"Search and rescue teams report they are in contact with the Soyuz crew, who report they are in good condition. The teams are en route to the landing site."

[https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1050316612304175104](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1050316612304175104)

Possible implications:

"You can be sure Soyuz launches will be grounded indefinitely. Commercial Crew has to conduct a successful uncrewed launch next year before flying astronauts to the ISS (and no - they will not 'fast track' anything that involves crew safety)."

[https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/10503184728598405...](https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1050318472859840512)

<comment><USER4> May not be what we wanted to happen, but everyone got home safely. That's a win in my book, glad the emergency systems are working as intended.

<comment><USER5> I wonder what it's like for the astronauts. One moment you're sitting in a rocket ready to spend the next six months in space, you've said your goodbyes, you're thinking about what it will be like, what sorts of pictures you want to take, what you'll say when you make that first phone call home from space... and then ten minutes later you stumble out into the Kazakh wilderness and start scanning the sky for rescue helicopters.

<comment><USER6> Yea, wonder if they felt disappointed or relieved. Regardless, they are part of a very small club of "astronaut's whose rocket broke during launch and are still alive". I wonder who else is in that club?

<comment><USER7> I honestly cannot think of any such incident happening in all the years of space exploration. Crewed or not-crewed capsule. And I've watched enough documentaries on Apollo and other space programs.

It's the beginning of a very very small, exclusive club, one that will hopefully not be too big.

<comment><USER7> Learned something new today.

The other Soyuz incident in 1983 was Soyuz 7K-ST No.16L, sometimes known as Soyuz T-10a or T-10-1.

Found below from wiki.

 _It was an unsuccessful Soyuz mission intended to visit the Salyut 7 space station, which was occupied by the Soyuz T-9 crew. However, it never finished its launch countdown; the launch vehicle was destroyed on the launch pad by fire on September 26, 1983. The launch escape system of the Soyuz spacecraft fired two seconds before the launch vehicle exploded, saving the crew. It is the first case in which a launch escape system has been fired with a crew aboard._

In early US space program, in one of the test flights before Apollo program, a 2 stage rocket failed mid flight. The rocket escape system attached on top of the capsule fired and successfully saved the capsule. But there was no crew in the capsule.

Just watched this PBS special on the US space program. Pretty interesting footage. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jia78xRMTEc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jia78xRMTEc)

<comment><USER5> The best part about that Apollo test flight is that it was intended to be a test of the escape system, but it was not intended to involve the rocket exploding underneath the capsule. It ended up being an even better test of the escape system than was planed.

There have been some other, less consequential manned launch failures.

Apollo 12 was struck by lightning during ascent, and only some quick thinking saved the mission.

Apollo 13 suffered extreme vibration in the second stage center engine that nearly tore the rocket apart. (This is unrelated to the more famous problem Apollo 13 experienced later in the mission.) Fortunately the vibrations messed with sensors which caused the engine to shut down, and the launch continued on the remaining four.

STS-51-F lost an engine a few minutes after launch. It was still able to make orbit on the remaining engines, but ended up in a lower orbit than planned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Presumably this will push up the schedule for the live abort tests for the SpaceX and Boeing systems. That would appear to be the "nut" in the schedule before those systems become operational.

Of course there is still a Soyuz attached to the Space Station and it can return the crew, but that that would leave the station unmanned. Not something it is really designed for as I understand it. And even before that drastic call is made we can still send supplies up so it isn't like they would be in danger of running out of stuff.

Personally I'm very impressed with the reliability of the Soyuz system. Still I would love to have Boeing and SpaceX get certified sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER9> Boeing decided years ago to certify their in-flight abort using simulation only, and NASA let them.

SpaceX probably can't create a simulation in a few months to not need in- flight abort test because developing a simulation that NASA would consider "proof" probably takes years.

NASA has indicated today they are not going to rush commercial crew [1][3], to not press SpaceX and Boeing into go-fever which NASA has learned is very dangerous.

Because the timing of SpaceX DM-1 (uncrewed demo flight of crewed Dragon 2) depends on ISS visiting vehicle schedule, it might move to the left if visiting vehicle schedule gets reshuffled.

NASA has indicated in today's briefing that crew must be present on station to oversee commercial crew tests [2], so if ISS is de-crewed in December, SpaceX DM-1 can't go in January as scheduled.

3 - [https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1050423979561824256](https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1050423979561824256)

1 - [https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1050423063655768065](https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1050423063655768065)

2 - [https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1050421610270752768](https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1050421610270752768)

<comment><USER8> So somebody stows-away aboard DM-1 and then claims ownership of the ISS by right of possession. :-) That would make for an excellent young adult adventure novel.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure that's when the US Airforce launches the X-37b and claims ownership by repossession.

<comment><USER8> Yeah but they can't have anyone on board the X-37b, how can the claim possession? (just keeping the plot line interesting here)

<comment><USER10> I dunno, there's probably a cargo bay in it. Stuff an airman in there with a couple of tanks of oxygen and a rifle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I want to remind everybody that Soyuz spacecraft - including the one with the famous drilled hole in the orbital module - is manufactured in Energiya, Korolev - about an hour drive from Moscow. The Soyuz-FG rocket - the one used and malfunctioned in today's launch - is manufactured by Progress in Samara, a major industrial center on Volga river, about 17 hours by rail from Moscow. Rocket design is traced back to Energiya historically, but Progress was making them last 40+ years.

Soyuz-FG is planned to be replaced with modified version of the rocket, Soyuz-2. Soyuz-2 is already used for launches of unmanned supply ship, Progress. Yes, I know, a lot of similar names makes things confusing.

</comment><comment><USER12> It'll be interesting for how long this will ground the Soyuz fleet.

The next scheduled Soyuz launch is Progress 71P on October 31st. I'm curious if that's going to happen, considering crewed and cargo use the same launch vehicle.

There's also 3 more (unmanned) flights scheduled for Soyuz in November (MetOp C, Glonass M and EgyptSat-A) - so there might be pressure to find/"solve" the problem as quickly as possible.

The next human flight is scheduled for December 20th (ISS 57S).

<comment><USER13> Seems like madness to me. The Soyuz is very well proven at this point. I'd happily hop straight on board the next one even after this incident, which is more than I can say for SpaceX - don't get me wrong, I have every faith in them and am personally a big fan, but the numbers are heavily in Soyuz' favour.

<comment><USER14> Even if the design is well-tested, there may be a new process issue in the rocket's construction that is undiagnosed.

Maybe there is a new person on the assembly line that doesn't know not to pinch o-rings when assembling fuel tubing? Maybe a swaging tool has worn out to the point that it is causing leaks? Maybe the vendor who supplies body panel rivets got a bad batch of aluminum? There are so may possible situations that it is not worth risking launches or lives over until a root cause has been found.

<comment><USER15> I do doubt those scenarios. The other capsules have all flown very well over the years and this one's safety system worked perfectly well.

<comment><USER16> First let me agree that spaceflight is hard, even the billions that NASA spends has led to so many disasters.

The problem there is with manufacturing and quality control. They've had endless problems with other recent rockets and it's natural to think their qualty problems hit this time. Spaceflight is one of the few area where the us and Russia are cooperating and I hope this isn't the end. [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2013/07/10/200775748...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2013/07/10/200775748/report-upside-down-sensors-toppled-russian-rocket)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Crew now in helicopters and heading back to the launch site, not Moscow. Nick will be picked up by NASA and flown to the States.

[https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/10503432631636008...](https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1050343263163600896)

UPD Crew photos:

[https://twitter.com/roscosmos/status/1050351423022669825](https://twitter.com/roscosmos/status/1050351423022669825)

<comment><USER12> It's sad to see them so disappointed! They were lucky as fuck considering that the incident happened approximately when the escape tower gets jettisoned (i.e. it wouldn't have been an option even if the booster RUDs), but I'd probably disappointed as well when I'm planning on getting the most amazing views possible for months, but get a short high-force roller coaster ride instead.

<comment><USER7> They are indeed lucky and unlucky AF.

Lucky to be alive after such an incident.

Unlucky to have gotten on top of a Soyuz rocket system that failed, when it's been proven to be so incredibly reliable all these years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This video has the crew audio with a translator. It amazes me that the telemetry is faked (all is good and well), yet the audio is legit. [https://youtu.be/c0l5QBmqQoI?t=271](https://youtu.be/c0l5QBmqQoI?t=271)

<comment><USER12> On one hand, it's indeed odd to hear that shit's on fire whilst the screen shows an all happy scenario; On the other hand, it's the cheaper way of doing things - instead of having to live-render the spacecraft and all telemetry that you need to get from a probably isolated system, just play a video. Trajectory and events are predetermined, so unless something goes wrong, the video is fully sufficient.

I'm reminded a bit of the moment when I learned that the action movie heroes are just actors.

<comment><USER18> I do agree on the cheap and pragmatic approach, yet they could display actual telemetry over the 3d render. Speeds do not match reality in graphs. It is not a movie but Science to me here.

I'd love to hear from a SpaceX engineer if their webcasts indeed shows live telemetry (speed / altitude) or not. Also SpaceX's webcasts illustrations looks like they run in a game engine which is both cheap and highly customizable with input data.

<comment><USER12> Yes, SpaceX puts a lot more effort into the webcasts. I don't know if their telemetry is live or precomputed (though it is likely live, see below) - <USER2> the fact that they show live feed of the rocket rather than a simulation (except for Stage 2 coasting periods where they render the spacecrafts' orbit) already gives the entire display a different feel. (At this point it's also important to note that this live feed got them into trouble once [1]).

I also agree with your sentiment that the movie removes a bit of the scientific aspect.

 _Insert here a good 30 minutes spent on watching launch footage and writing down numbers_

Ok, at this point I'm deep in looking at launch footage, and I'm more disappointed by the Soyuz launch footage. Whilst it's possible that they followed the exact same launch trajectory (on paper and reality), it's unlikely: MS-08 [2] and MS-09 [3] had the exact same speed, altitude and downrange distance throughout the time telemetry was visible. In contrast, SpaceX showed very different telemetry during launches to the ISS ([4], [5], [6]). Also, it doesn't seem pre-computed: The telemetry during the CRS-7 webcast [7] at least doesn't just continue when the rocket explodes, indicating that it doesn't just display pre-computed numbers.

In Soyuz' defense: They probably have a different (older?) system to get telemetry, and it might bear additional challenges to feed them into a publicly accessible live-stream.

[1] [https://www.space.com/40153-spacex-launch-video-noaa- restric...](https://www.space.com/40153-spacex-launch-video-noaa- restrictions.html)

[2] [https://youtu.be/iDebCdDHHpg?t=365](https://youtu.be/iDebCdDHHpg?t=365)

[3] [https://youtu.be/00uftjSjcnk?t=364](https://youtu.be/00uftjSjcnk?t=364)

[4] [https://youtu.be/C_Gmgj3N_Z0?t=1270](https://youtu.be/C_Gmgj3N_Z0?t=1270)

[5] [https://youtu.be/FCCyVCvN2bo?t=1179](https://youtu.be/FCCyVCvN2bo?t=1179)

[6] [https://youtu.be/rUDLxFUMC9c?t=1036](https://youtu.be/rUDLxFUMC9c?t=1036)

[7] [https://youtu.be/JYFLoTgO-xQ?t=1286](https://youtu.be/JYFLoTgO-xQ?t=1286)

<comment> orbital-decay > They probably have a different (older?) system to get telemetry, and it > might bear additional challenges to feed them into a publicly accessible > live-stream.

That is correct. Proton-M launches, on the other hand, had a live stream with probably the most detailed telemetry ever. That particular stream wasn't public, but was available to anyone on request.

<comment><USER19> Is there a recording available somewhere or an image of how it looked?

<comment> orbital-decay Here's a screenshot of their lowres public telemetry stream dated back to 2009 (Eutelsat W7, if I remember correctly). [0] Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots or recordings of the by-request one, but it had tons of info, down to the bus voltages. The L2 section of nasaspaceflight.com might have something available, but I'm not sure.

They seem to have closed it somewhere around 2014 or 2015, possibly to avoid bad publicity or speculations.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/2pzbGNV.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/2pzbGNV.jpg)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the link and info. Will d some more looking later this evening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> First the mysterious hole and now this. Quality control at Energia is looking really questionable. Commercial Crew can't get here soon enough.

<comment><USER21> The Soyuz-FG which has been used since 2001 has had a 100% success rate till today. Seems pretty good to me.

<comment><USER20> I agree that the Soyuz has been very reliable historically, but two major incidents involving it within a few weeks has the appearance of a trend.

<comment><USER22> Soyuz is literally the most reliable launch vehicle and two datapoints are not a trend. Any two datapoints form a line, ie a trend.

<comment><USER23> > Any two datapoints form a line, ie a trend.

Two datapoints are not a trend.

People who use run charts (control charts,time series charts) talk about trends being a set of five points all going the same way. [http://www.qihub.scot.nhs.uk/media/529936/run%20chart%20rule...](http://www.qihub.scot.nhs.uk/media/529936/run%20chart%20rules.pdf)

<comment><USER22> While I generally agree, I'm being more generic.

A single data point doesn't establish any direction or trend at all.

With two data points you can establish a trend and make a prediction about the next data point. However, any two data points form a line, so any two results can be used to make a trend, however wrong it may be.

Only when more points are used can you confirm the trend and reduce the probability of being (un)lucky.

<comment><USER24> Two in a row is a coincidence, three in a row might be a rule

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does this mean we're out of options to get humans to the ISS?

SLS is nowhere near, Dragon is coming next year. Soyuz has been extremely reliable but with two incidents they'll surely ground flights for a while.

Is there any other option?

<comment><USER26> Perhaps this means the priority of SpaceX manned flights will be pushed up. We could end up seeing this much sooner.

<comment><USER27> They already said they won't rush anything because that's just as dangerous as using the Soyuz again before figuring out the reason for the failure. That said this does open up a visiting vehicle slot that Dragon could use for their unmanned test flight. That'd only push it up about a month though compared to their current estimate and would require SpaceX to be ready to launch earlier than planned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This occured minutes ago.

This live stream coverage shows the failure in the end [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8d9CqS2cvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8d9CqS2cvc)

NASA live stream last minutes have audio track (in russian and translated to english) following the failure. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDcYgYQbHg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDcYgYQbHg8)

Both streams were abruptly halted, but links work for now.

Crew survived.

<comment><USER29> Timestamp of booster failure / eject seems to be 3:06:36.

[https://youtu.be/O8d9CqS2cvc?t=11194](https://youtu.be/O8d9CqS2cvc?t=11194)

<comment><USER30> Between 3:06 and 3:07 they're reporting first stage separation was good and the rocket is performing well.

3:07:15: The male Russian voice says "Booster failure, right? Two minutes, forty-five seconds."

<comment><USER30> Other sources are saying the problem happened at booster separation. Maybe that was the initial cause and the actual failure developed some seconds later?

Not sure how to reconcile that with this audio.

<comment><USER31> The telemetry will tell. Rockets send back heaps of data from dozens, if not hundreds of sensors. All that is stored precisely so there's no guesswork based on a ground camera and the real-time audio needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > There is already much discussion about the current state of Russian industry > and its ability to maintain the standards of yesteryear. Whatever the > outcome of the inquiry, this event will only heighten those concerns and > will underline to the US in particular the need to bring online new rocket > systems. These vehicles, produced by the Boeing and SpaceX companies, are > set to make their debut next year.

Is it just me, or is this unnecessarily hostile writing? This is literally rocket science, and the escape mechanisms seem to have worked perfectly. And at least the Russians do have (had) a working way to get stuff to iss, so I don't think these (uncited!) accusations are called for

<comment><USER33> I agree, the writing seems quite hostile. Everything get politicized immediately nowadays which is quite sad.

<comment><USER34> Sir, there was nothing political about the quoted paragraph assuming that it is accurate that the industry have been discussing russian space reliability. In fact it would be you who has politicized it now.

<comment><USER32> I'm not following news about space, and was just going from what I read. he article did not provide any context or sources for these claims. Now that HN has filled in thw gaps, it does sound like Russia might have a problem with their tech. But imo BBC should have quoted either other articles or experts on the matter when making statements like this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's amazing that the escape mechanisms worked, though we have yet to see the crew's conditions. I thought these mechanisms were only put in place to put people at ease but were never actually going to work (kind of like how the seats in commercial jets serve as flotation devices but how likely are they to be used in most flights).

<comment><USER36> I think the escape towers have always been considered as workable. The Space Shuttle had a few emergency modes that were considered as very questionable. For example there was one where they would turn the Shuttle around and fly back to the launch site which was considered as very difficult to say the least.

<comment><USER5> The commander of the first Shuttle flight said, "RTLS requires continuous miracles interspersed with acts of God to be successful."

<comment><USER37> John Young!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> FTA :

>>> The crew had to return in "ballistic descent mode", Nasa tweeted, which it explained was "a sharper angle of landing compared to normal".

is it me or is it a very diplomatic qay to sell : "fallen vertically" ?

<comment><USER39> My understanding is that "ballistic" means without any form of propulsion (except the initial one sending it on its way). In other words, like a projectile (or a ball), just subject to the forces of gravity and air resistance.

In other words: falling, yup.

(But note that one could "fall" upwards or sideways initially - not like Arthur Dent [1], but like a bullet (or indeed rocket) fired upwards).

[1] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy states: "There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties."

<comment><USER40> I believe the Soyuz SAS has engine thrusters for the landing sequence. So ballistic may mean the thrusters were not operable and they may have landed a bit harder than normal (normal for an abort sequence at least). Meaning they were still under canopy, just falling at a higher impact velocity than intended. So maybe rather than a gentle landing at 5m/s it was more like a car crash at 20 m/s. Beats blowing up with the rocket or hitting the ground at terminal velocity, though, and presumably the reports of "good condition" mean there are at most some concussions and broken bones.

<comment><USER39> Wikipedia has some pertinent (and interesting) details:

> The Descent Module (Russian: Спуска́емый Аппара́т, tr. Spuskáyemy Apparát), > also known as a reentry capsule, is used for launch and the journey back to > Earth. Half of the Descent Module is covered by a heat-resistant covering to > protect it during reentry; this half faces the Earth during re-entry. It is > slowed initially by the atmosphere, then by a braking parachute, followed by > the main parachute which slows the craft for landing. At one meter above the > ground, solid-fuel braking engines mounted behind the heat shield are fired > to give a soft landing. One of the design requirements for the Descent > Module was for it to have the highest possible volumetric efficiency > (internal volume divided by hull area). The best shape for this is a sphere > — as the pioneering Vostok spacecraft's Descent Module used — but such a > shape can provide no lift, which results in a purely ballistic reentry. > Ballistic reentries are hard on the occupants due to high deceleration and > cannot be steered beyond their initial deorbit burn. That is why it was > decided to go with the "headlight" shape that the Soyuz uses—a hemispherical > forward area joined by a barely angled (seven degrees) conical section to a > classic spherical section heat shield. This shape allows a small amount of > lift to be generated due to the unequal weight distribution.

So, maybe _ballistic_ refers to the fact that no lift was generated? (A glider is not considered ballistic, even though it has no propulsion.)

An, and indeed, that's what Wiktionary says:

> _ballistic entry:_ when an entry vehicle has only drag with no apparent > lift. An axisymmetric entry vehicle would have no apparent lift if its > angle-of-attack time averaged out to zero, e.g. sinusoid angle-of-attack > centered or trimmed about zero lift.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)#Descent_mod...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_\(spacecraft\)#Descent_module)

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_atmosphe...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_atmospheric_reentry)

<comment><USER41> Here's a diagram of the descent module, if you are having trouble with the description:

[https://i.stack.imgur.com/BUYME.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BUYME.png)

Edit: BUYME?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> NASA Twitter feed has near real time updates on the developing situation: [https://twitter.com/NASA](https://twitter.com/NASA)

</comment><comment><USER43> It says escape, as in past tense, in the title, but is there confirmation of this? The article body seems to suggest they are still in the air?

<comment><USER44> NASA TV reports that the capsule is down and the S&R team is in contact with the astronauts, who are in "good condition".

<comment><USER43> Phew, thankfully a good ending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I was just reading Phillip P. Peterson's Paradox - On the Brink of Eternity, which starts (mini spoiler alert) with an adventure with a Soyuz module, so when I read this news for a moment I though I was still dreaming after having fell asleep on the book.

</comment><comment><USER46> Ballistic descent mode is an interesting euphemism for falling like a rock.

The US really needs to invest more in our own infrastructure and astronaut delivery system.

<comment><USER22> The crucial difference is that (IIRC) in ballistic descent you don't angle the craft to gain altitude and prolong reentry.

Normally you'd slightly angle the craft downwards or upwards to alter the trajectory in the air, during reentry this allows you to stay longer at high altitudes and burn off more speed before you burn it at lower altitudes (literally).

The shape of the craft not being a wing is largely irrelevant, with sufficient speed even a brick can fly.

<comment><USER39> Yes, _ballistic_ here apparently means without propulsion, and without generating lift (only drag).

<comment><USER47> Means like a _ball_ in the sense of 'cannonball'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's worrying that there isn't an escape system on SpaceX BFR.

<comment><USER49> Escape on BFR will likely be similar to escape with Falcon 9/Crew Dragon: that is, BFS itself has more than enough thrust to very quickly distance itself from a failing BFB, and it would probably be able to land itself on a nearby but safely distant emergency landing pad.

Now an argument can be made that BFS needs an escape pod or two, but those would mostly be useful in circumstances other than failure during launch.

(For those unfamiliar, BFB = Big Falcon Booster, BFS = Big Falcon Ship. BFR is both working in unison)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The system with worst or no abort procedures is the Space Shuttle. Earlier versions had ejection seats, but they got rid of that. Imagine if they had Soyuz like capsule which can popped off. Both Challenger and Discovery crew would have been ok. No wonder they discontinued that program.

</comment><comment><USER51> Long ago I watched this video that describes Soyuz reentry. I thought it was cool at the time, and I think it really gives context to the occasion. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l7MM9yoxII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l7MM9yoxII)

<comment><USER16> That's a great video. Around the 14 minute and 40 second point they discuss briefly ballistic return but they don't really put any details. A few minutes before that they do talk about the return. That's actually the best video I've ever seen about the specifics of returning from space. Thank you so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Does "ballistic descent mode" mean that the braking thrusters were inoperable, or just that the launch escape system was not in use?

<comment><USER53> It means that the angle of descent of the capsule was much greater, so they encountered thicker atmosphere quicker than ideal, causing greater decelleration forces on the capsule than they would normally experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> A little more footage from moments before the failure of the booster which happens sometime between 3m39 and 4m39s in the video, listen to the Russian comms: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0l5QBmqQoI&t=3m38s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0l5QBmqQoI&t=3m38s)

</comment><comment><USER55> I've seen multiple reports that the crew's first indication of a problem was that they felt weightless and that objects in the cabin were floating. Maybe there was also an instrumentation-based warning for the crew or ground, but it's odd that nobody is mentioning it.

</comment><comment><USER56> With the holed one docked to the ISS that no one is keen to de-orbit with and this flight having one crew less they are getting into some situation now.

I guess they could send Soyuz MS-11 without crew so the current ISS crew has a more reliable craft for their own return.

<comment><USER57> The hole in [the orbital module of] the docked Soyuz is on the part that is jettisoned before re-entry.

"The orbital module is a spherical portion of the Soyuz that allows more gear to go up with the spacecraft. Unlike the lower crew capsule, the orbital module does not survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere."[0]

[0][https://www.space.com/41738-soyuz-spacecraft-air-leak- hole-o...](https://www.space.com/41738-soyuz-spacecraft-air-leak-hole-origin- report.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The footage inside: [https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/inside-soyuz- capsule_...](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/inside-soyuz- capsule_uk_5bbf2083e4b0b27cf47adfe1)

</comment><comment><USER59> This footage appears to show the the Launch Escape System striking the booster as it separates:

[https://youtu.be/sE4BSAcQCfo](https://youtu.be/sE4BSAcQCfo)

<comment><USER60> Those might be the boosters separating. And probably a small explosion, or just the gases from the separation.

Edit: the boosters separated, and due to failure it might activated the escape capsule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> "The malfunction became apparent about 90 seconds into the flight" _Shows 90 second video_ I am annoyed..

</comment><comment><USER62> everyone that thinks spacex will transport people soon is naive / drunk on hype. they are at least 5 years away from flying humans in space. depends on how many test flights they can do. you just can't rush this. it is one domain where "move fast break things" is a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER63> Why is this a bad thing? A working abort system is a very good thing. Rockets fail.

</comment><comment><USER64> "ballistic descent mode" == "falling".

</comment><comment><USER65> Hmm...it's the 2nd emergency situation with Russian Soyuz happened within ±1 month. is there anything SpaceX can do to safely deliver austonauts in ISS?

<comment><USER66> Add an emergency escape system.

<comment><USER67> SpaceX's crewed Dragon _is_ the escape system. It's built into the capsule, and has been successfully tested. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8)

The BFR, to my knowledge, lacks one. Not sure if Musk has commented on that; I'd imagine his likely argument is that airliners don't either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Why are we doing this with Russia?

</comment><comment><USER69> Didn't even make any news sources that I've seen. 8-(

</comment><comment><USER70> Everytime an article mentions ISS my brain immediately parses ISIS...

:)

</comment><comment><USER71> TIL: every start is blessed by Orthodox Priest (what? :) ). They claim that only the capsules they didn't bless might crash. The very this capsule was blessed [1]. So the Russian Church might have a hard time to explain how the crash happened :)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/nasahqphoto/status/1049897639393861632](https://twitter.com/nasahqphoto/status/1049897639393861632)

<comment><USER72> Hey, so... Orthodox priests bless literally everything. It's so common for them to bless things like rifles, tanks, parachutes, liquor, et cetera, that it's kind of an in-joke in Orthodox cultures and regions. But you go look online and you'll see them blessing I mean literally everything.

<comment><USER73> It's not just orthodox church either.....in Poland it's extremely common for Roman Catholic priests to be invited to military and government events to bless things too.

<comment><USER74> this just makes me think of scene from life of brian :') blessed be the cheesemakers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I'm gonna need a new spacesuit

</comment><comment><USER76> Looks like diversion from competitors.

</comment><comment><USER77> Some Gell-Mann amnesia urgently required. A local paper headlines that "*a rocket with two astronauts has made emergency landing".

Same media house which some years ago told me that the Voyager spacecraft was provided with "a radioactive fuel ensuring continual thrust".</comment>


Dan Ariely on Hacking Human Behavior - Good Life Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.goodlifeproject.com

<comment><USER2> I read Dan's book, Predictably Irrational, which has been an incredible eye- opener on human behaviour.

I no longer get worked up by people's useless habits or our susceptibility to marketing. I am also better able to understand my own issues and better equipped to address them.

Thanks for this video!

<comment><USER3> I highly recommend Dan's blog.. <http://danariely.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting insight from my favorite human behavior researcher of our time.</comment>


XORSearch and XORStrings – Reverse engineering files - <AUTHOR> http://blog.didierstevens.com/programs/xorsearch/ <comment><USER2> For those of you who don't do RE CTF's, anything XOR'd _usually_ (yeah yeah there are exceptions) indicates 'oh this region is interesting because someones trying to obfuscate something'. Sort of like "oh hey, this has binary has been packed with __, there's a fair chance it's been done for for malware purpose".

Things are a lot more complicated these days with FLEXlm and network authentication (KMS type stuff), but previously that'd be the first place one would look to start designing keygens (rather than just patching your JE -> JNE; JZ -> JNZ haha).

Take a look at Didier's Github. (1) It has basically the 'batteries included starter kit' of the Immunity/Olly/IDA plugins that are useful.

1: [https://github.com/DidierStevens/DidierStevensSuite](https://github.com/DidierStevens/DidierStevensSuite)

<comment><USER3> Interesting you mention FlexLM - it seems very unreliable, even when used legitimately. Got any more info on how it can be broken?

<comment><USER4> I'm also interested in this - it is certainly done quite a lot in the wild, I'm curious if there's a knowledge base somewhere for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is from 2007...</comment>


Big Money Does Not Build Great Online Products - <AUTHOR> http://blog.estately.com/2010/08/02/big-money-does-not-build-great-online-products/

<comment><USER3> Nice post, Galen.

It seems like everyday I read another post talking about how VCs are dead...VCs are evil...don't take VC money. This brings to mind two thoughts:

1\. Does anybody have anything good to say about VCs?

2\. Is it possible that consumer-facing web-based businesses just aren't suited for VC money? I mean, a hair salon or pizza joint isn't suited for VC money, but nobody is complaining about that.

If my second point is true, what businesses are suited for VC money? Green technology, for sure...what else?

<comment><USER4> I think it's crazy to assert that VCs are dead because companies like UrbanSpoon and Xobni, both of which required little more than time and some basic infrastructure to start, are not good candidates for VCs.

Companies once backed by VCs - Google, Intel, Cisco, etc. - make up a significant chunk of the American GDP. In all of those cases, it is obvious that they required significant up-front investments in infrastructure to break even. For example, Google required a vast server farm to index the web. Cisco and Intel required resources to manufacture and sell complex physical products.

Consumer-facing products that do trivial things that spread mostly by word-of- mouth - like recommend a restaurant in your area or search your email - <USER2> not good candidates for multi-million dollar, early-stage VC funding. They are too easy to bootstrap, and I think the impression many would-be entrepreneurs have that they need to raise oodles in venture cap is a holdover from the dotcom era they missed out on.

In these cases, Y Combinator and the rest are much better options if you do need enough cash in the meantime to, for example, provide enough Ramen to feed your team of 3 college students.

<comment><USER5> I tried to be really clear on this that I am talking about online startups.

But I think you missed the point: It takes a lot of money (VC or otherwise) to create companies that go public, but it doesn't take much to create a great product.

Google is a perfect example: they didn't need significant up-front investments to create their first search engine - they ran it out of Stanford on borrowed computers. They built a product and had users way before they raised a ton of money.

<comment><USER4> That's a point I absolutely agree with. However, your hyperbolic introduction (which admittedly isn't coming from your fingertips, but nonetheless one you say you agree with) seems to be arguing that VCs are dead PERIOD, which I don't buy at all. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good post.. But I do think this general line of argument is a bit one sided. IMO there's just no one size that fits all. Some things have more R&D up front and that costs cash, others less so. Each business needs to try to figure out a reasonable tradeoff of how much needs to be done before entering the market.</comment>


Sriracha founder reveals the 'secret' wholesale price of his sauce - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/numbers/exclusive-sriracha-founder-reveals-secret-wholesale-price-his-sauce <comment><USER3> God bless Sriracha. I'm willing to take the dent in my average post score, that's how much I love the dang stuff. Long live Sriracha.

P.S. You haven't smelled a bad factory smell until you've driven past the sugarbeet processing plants in Nampa, Idaho, or the miles upon miles of factory farm dairies in eastern Idaho. Maybe Sriracha could use something like that for their Chewbacca defense.

<comment><USER4> Dairy farms are nothing compared to pig farms. Absolutely foul. The smell is so penetrating it feels like you can smell it through your eyeballs. Cow manure you can get use to, but I could never get use to pig shit.

Papermills are also infamously smelly, though you can get use to those pretty quickly.

<comment><USER5> Slaughter yards are the worst. Drive north on I-29 from Omaha to Sioux City and you can smell the city from 30 miles out. Its nickname is Sewer City, and it actually made it hard for Gateway Computers to attract talent.

<comment><USER6> I think your information might be a little out of date. The Sioux City stockyards have been closed for over 10 years: [http://amarillo.com/stories/032802/usn_smelly.shtml](http://amarillo.com/stories/032802/usn_smelly.shtml)

I grew up in Sioux City in the 80s and you could smell a little, but even then the stockyards were significantly scaled back from their 1924 peak. I was there a few months ago and there is no smell any more.

<comment><USER5> I make that drive at least six times a year. Still stinks to high heaven. It's about the only thing that makes my kids look up from their iPads. With the stockyards closed, perhaps it's a longterm residual smell, or processing plants that are still around?

On a side note, I wonder how many head of cattle were slaughtered there over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've read lots of interesting stories about the founding of this company, and of course I love the product. It's nice to see an entrepreneur that values the quality of their product first, before business considerations.

As for the dispute with the city, it's the city that enticed him to move his operations there, then he invested his money, and now they're trying to shut him down. Very shady business on the part of the city of Irwindale, something that demands a judge's attention...

<comment><USER8> Here's an LA Times story that corroborates your comment, and adds some additional insight: [http://www.latimes.com/local/la- me-1110-sriracha-20131110,0,...](http://www.latimes.com/local/la- me-1110-sriracha-20131110,0,262971.story)

> Inspectors from the South Coast Air Quality Management District have visited > the plant several times without issuing a citation. Tran said in court > documents that the complaints about the smell originated with an Irwindale > city councilman's son.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, I would've never imagined the Sriacha founder to be such a nice, conscientious guy. A Nobel Peace Prize for him:

> _Q: What do you think about copy-cat Srirachas? A: "It's good…[take] a red > flower, it looks good but [it's] not colorful. You need to have green and > yellow ... So [in] the market, [if there was] only my hot sauce, [people] > cannot compare. More competitors [are] better for consumer [choice]."_

> Q: Inflation has more than tripled food prices since you started making the > hot sauce, but you have never changed your wholesale price. Why? A: "The > price has increased…but we can cover the increased [food] price. We just > want to sell more product….[also] if we export to some expensive country, I > don't have two prices. Not domestic price and another country, another price > – only one price."

Q: What do you think Sriracha's fandom? A: "I enjoy it. I enjoy it because more and more people enjoy my product. I need to say thank you [to] everyone. Help me big or a little bit – I thank you."

</comment><comment><USER10> Given his relative success (the article states its a multi-million dollar business) running the outgassing from the plant through a water bath should be pretty straightforward. Basically blowing the air through pipes which bubble it underwater. The water runoff would then have the pepper oils in it.

Next up Sirachi Spicey Hot Bottled Water!

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't you need to add some sort of detergent to get the non-polar oils to dissolve in water? Disposing of that mixture could be tricky.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't just regular old soap do it? Soapy water mixed with pepper shouldn't be too nasty, but then again, California....

<comment><USER11> You want to dispose of _soapy water!?!_ What are you, some kind of environmental terrorist? Get a hazmat team in here, STAT!

\-- California

<comment><USER12> Soapy water contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Californian NIMBY-ness strikes again.

> a request from the southern California city of Irwindale to close the hot > sauce's factory because of complaints over smell from neighbors.

<comment><USER14> In fairness to the NIMBYs, the factory has grown immensely in the last few years and the "smell" is aerosolized peppers, basically pepper spray.

To quote the LA Times: "...the hot sauce's production facilities are, residents are complaining of burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches caused by a powerful, painful odor that the city says appears to be emanating from the factory during production."

<comment><USER15> In fairness to the factory, every resident everywhere to ever live near anything they didn't like, from power lines to roller skating rinks, has developed burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches. It could be true, but half the time people don't even realize they have symptoms until a "spokesperson for the community" reaches out and informs them of the terrible conditions they're living in.

<comment><USER16> My intuition tells me there exists a more causal link between airborne chili and jalepeno peppers and burning eyes than exists between a roller skating rink and burning eyes.

Yes, people actually do get watery eyes from cutting onions. It's not just that they are sad and blaming it on the onions out of shame.

<comment><USER17> At what part per million do burning eyes actually happen?

At what part per million does the factory actually affect the surrounding atmosphere?

Without any idea at all about these numbers your intuition is worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think being transported to the International Spaaaaaace Station [1] is one of the highest honors a commercial object of any kind can receive. I remember reading about it in this article [2].

Love the stuff, it's on the table in front of me now.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/n1Y7B.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/n1Y7B.jpg) [2] [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-21/sriracha- hot...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-21/sriracha-hot-sauce- catches-fire-with-only-one-rooster)

</comment><comment><USER19> Serious? I have like 2 of those bottles in my closet on 5 feet away from me. Someone always brings it along from Brussels... (live in Belgium), so this is quite awesome. Really didn't expect this :-D

Great hot spicey sauce!

<comment><USER20> I've always wondered this: What is availability like for this stuff in foreign countries? I can go to the store now (NE US) and find the original plus another 4-5 knockoffs. Even cheap places like Save-A-Lot has bottles sometimes for $3 or so.

<comment><USER21> In recent visits to Asia, I haven't seen it in restaurants/food stalls in Vietnam, Malaysia, or Taiwan. Haven't looked for it supermarkets.

<comment><USER22> It's because it really is an American invention loosely based upon a Thai hot sauce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Previous to the past couple of months, I had never seen any interviews with the founder of Sriracha. The Google Trends data also shows a big increase for searches on his company, Huy Fong Foods.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Huy+Fong+Foods#q=Huy%...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Huy+Fong+Foods#q=Huy%20Fong%20Foods&cmpt=q)

Aside from increasing awareness about his product, why do you think he started doing interviews?

<comment><USER24> This may be a legitimate grassroots social media phenomenon - the sort that big multinationals try to create but fail at.

Sriracha has obviously been a mainstay at Asian restaurants for years. But like bacon, it didn't become A Thing until Digg/Reddit/the greater internet subculture rolled around.

Folks like the Oatmeal started writing digital love letters to the sauce[1], which helped boost its mythical status amongst the Reddit crowd.

I'm guessing he started doing interviews when people actually started wanting to interview him. Prior to the internet's obsession with sriracha it was just an easily-overloooked condiment associated with Asian food.

[1] [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/sriracha](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/sriracha)

<comment><USER25> Before Digg/Reddit/The Internet every college kid in California was obsessed with it. I still an old roommate who travels around the world with her own little bottle in case she can't find it locally.

I remember an article from around 2009 where he talks about the drunken voicemails he received. It was in the NY Times so it isn't like they have been hiding.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/dining/20united.html?_r=3&](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/dining/20united.html?_r=3&)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hot peppers can be deadly to people who are not used to spicy food. I bought a few raw habañeros a few weeks ago. I have cooked with jalapeño and serrano's but never habañero. Wow! Just a thin slice was hot beyond description. My wife is hyper-sensitive to spicy food. I was so certain these things were dangerous to her that I threw them away after using a couple to cook with. Here it is in numbers [0].

I can see the potential for fumes from the manufacture of hot sauces being irritating a lot of people. Sriracha isn't particularly hot. If you really want to try hot buy a bottle of Dave's Insanity. BE VERY CAREFUL IF YOU DO. They ask that you use it one drop at a time. Believe me, that is good advice.

Those not into hot sauces don't believe that these sauces actually have taste. And sauces such as Dave's and Sriracha taste really good. There are many sauces that just burn. I don't know many hot sauce afficionado's who enjoy sauces devoid of taste.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale)

<comment><USER27> Peppers are particularly difficult to cook with. Their oils are what is spicy, so you get variations based on growing conditions as well as how you prepare it. To reduce spiciness, remove all seeds, rinse with cold water and put it in a cold salt water bath for a couple of hours. Not enough to change the flavor, but just until you start to see the oils collect on the surface. This only works with raw peppers. If you then lightly sear the outside, you can get more of the flavor without the spiciness getting into the rest of the food as much. With the right sized pieces, you can then pull out the spicy chunks and still have the nice flavor.

<comment><USER28> > To reduce spiciness, remove all seeds, rinse with cold water and put it in a > cold salt water bath for a couple of hours.

This is popular opinion, but I've also heard from cooks that the seeds don't contain much spiciness in them, but the pulp around them does. Could it be that the outsides of the seeds are covered in oil and the insides are actually neutral?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> so, nobody asked, because they _assumed_ it was a trade secret? Hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER30> This would be a great place to bootstrap a startup. Cheap rent, this sauce is great on ramen, and the smell would make it so only the most dedicated co- founders who really love their product can stand to work on it. Almost zero distractions because no one would come to visit. It would also help with the 'elevator pitch' although you would have to get your timing down to sub-floor latency because everyone is certain to leave at the next stop.

</comment><comment><USER31> You know how the Soylent guy wants to have tap water and tap soylent in homes of the future?

In my humble opinion, I think we need tap sriracha in homes of today! Down with soylent!

<comment><USER32> Alternatively you could combine the two. Some sriracha might make make soylent a bit more palatable...

(This comment is intended as humor... I have never tried soylent)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would have asked why they need to put preservatives in a chili sauce. Most have none and yet can sit on a table for years.

<comment><USER34> A lot of hot sauces have vinegar as a core ingredient, which acts as a preservative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I buy it for like $2.50 retail, so that's kind of awesome.

</comment><comment><USER36> What I find most interesting about this company is that he's never advertised. He started selling it locally to cooks and it spread by word of mouth.

<comment><USER37> Or taste in mouth, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The smell they're complaining about... does it smell like the product? Because if it smells like the product, I'd love to live next door!

<comment><USER39> You'd love to live in a Mace pepper spray cloud?

<comment><USER40> With sriracha it's always worth the pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If only he had followed it up with the recipe..

<comment><USER20> It's primarily just chilis. From the bottle:

Chili, sugar, salt, garlic, distilled vinegar, potassium sorbate, sodium bisulfite and xanthan gum.

Remove the last 3 ingredients then just shoot for texture. for any given bottle, probably 75% chili, 10% vinegar, salt, sugar, garlic for the last 15%.

If you can match the consistency, you can probably match the flavor. You just need a line on fresh California Red Jalepenos.

I'd probably throw out the salt and just go for MSG.

<comment><USER42> Your macbook air is just plastic, metal, and some silicone. Just throw a couple of those together too while you're at it.

<comment><USER43> I'll go out on a limb and say that cooking is a tad easier and more accessible than building a MacBook Air.

<comment><USER44> i disagree. to create tasty hot sauce, one must first create the universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Hmm, impressively humble and forthright. As the Germans would say, I have nothing to complain about.

</comment><comment><USER46> No need for sales nor marketing!

</comment><comment><USER47> So it's popularity has a lot to do with the 2$ a bottle price?

Sure, it tastes good but can we track down a fair bit of the popularity/availability on shelves to the cost factor?

<comment><USER48> It's cheap, so a lot of students tried it. They loved it, told their friends, told their parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I remember when I had this in Vietnam for the first time four years ago - <USER2> was blown away. I wondered why it hadn't been sold in the USA, why I'd never heard of it, and lo and behold, the very next year, it started showing up in various places.

<comment><USER50> Is "four years ago" a typo? Huy Fong Foods, maker of the most popular brand of Sriracha in the US has been in business since the eighties.

<comment><USER49> No, you just suck at reading comprehension.</comment></comment></comment>


James Randi on "Global Warming" - <AUTHOR> http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-revisited.html <comment><USER2> There's certainly legitimate causes to doubt AGW, but the Petition Project is not among them. Frankly, I'm shocked to see Randi engage in such a blatant appeal to authority, and an irrelevant authority (that is, scientists primarily not in the climate field) at that.

</comment><comment><USER3> So first we had a bunch of pundits "discovering" that the peer review process is flawed. Then, next step, we have a bunch of scientifically-untrained pundits and non-specialists jumping into the debate and giving loud opinions without understanding all the research already done.

This is debate is just becoming more ideological and less scientific.

P.S.: No, I don't know who this Randi is. But I am sure he's not a climatologist.

<comment><USER2> James Randi is a professional skeptic: he's the one behind the million dollar prize for anyone that can demonstrate the paranormal under reasonable conditions.

<comment><USER4> "professional skeptic" ... lol. as opposed to "professional gullibles"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The two things I don't understand about the "climate change is not man-made" point of view are:

1\. What is the actual, plausible motivation for the entirety of the IPCC to mislead people about climate change?

2\. Why are measures to reduce carbon output so maligned? At worst, they will be a wasted effort. At best - if climate change is indeed man-made - they will prevent huge environmental disasters. (Bangladesh mostly vanishing under the sea, global food production collapsing, the oceans' food chain collapsing due to acidification, etc.)

<comment><USER6> 1\. Political power and money. They want a permitting system for most equipment powered by carbon-containing fuels, and those permits will be approved and audited by political appointees. Your pizzeria competes with a Senator's nephew? The application for its oven gets "lost". You organize a political rally against the incumbents? Your home furnace gets audited that winter, and its thermostat locked to 50 deg. F until the "discrepancies" can be explained.

2\. Because the necessary remedies would result in severe productivity destruction, probably exceeding WWII (including fatalities). Energy is the life blood of economic activity. The present depression is mostly a result of an approximately 2% decrease in energy consumption for part of 2008. The AGW reduction targets are 5% a year in perpetuity, which by linear extrapolation leads to economic apocalypse.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Sounds frankly paranoid. There are lots of ways of "screwing with the little people" already. Carbon output reductions can be done by tax incentives instead of a permitting system.

And why would a scientific panel be interested in giving power to a bunch of political appointees?

While we're speaking of money, how about the motivations of the people with the large stock portfolios they don't want to see devalued? The people with the kind of money to hire PR companies to, say, astroturf a conveniently timed "AWG is a lie" campaign?

2\. You do realise that we _are_ going to run out of resources on this planet eventually, right? Saying that we must keep on increasing economic activity at all costs lest disaster strike is a surefire way to guarantee disaster, not just via climate change but via overfishing, deforestation and the resulting land loss, pollution, etc.

Also, the decrease in energy consumption is clearly not the _cause_ of the depression, but rather one of its _effects_. Things _can_ be done in a much more energy-efficient manner.</comment></comment></comment>


The Witches of Salem - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/the-witches-of-salem

<comment><USER2> The book Wicked Plants gives evidence that the strange and "satanic" behavior by the young girls in Salem was actually due to a toxic fungus called Ergot which can distort thinking.

It had infected their rye and contaminated their cereal and bread.

The book: [https://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/wicked- plants](https://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/wicked-plants)</comment>


Remains of 17th century bishop support Neolithic emergence of tuberculosis - <AUTHOR> https://www.shh.mpg.de/1825450/neolithic-emergence-of-tuberculosis <comment><USER2> I recall being fairly surprised at one point to learn that TB and leprosy were things that many people had an innate immunity to.

You think about all of those nurses, nuns and priestesses who took care of people with chronic illnesses in an era before we really understood infectious diseases. You were playing a single round of russian roulette with your own health, but your odds were good enough that we could ascribe your outcome to fate or gods.

It often makes me wonder if the disease is maladapted or if they are truly ancient and most of us are descendants of the survivors.

<comment><USER3> We didn't help things by preventing immunity being passed on to future generations, not many nuns have children.

<comment><USER4> Not that I have formation or experience in the field but my understanding was that only antibodies were passed from the mother to the children, not lymphocytes or immunity memory.

But now that I google it, there is a rather new body of research about the genetic and epigenetic component of immunity. Like [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27102489/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27102489/) for example. What an exciting time to be alive.

<comment><USER5> I interpreted the GP's words "innate immunity" as meaning "genetic". Was I wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did a double-take at the mention of seals in the phrase "...not only were the ancient strains unexpectedly related to those circulating in present-day seals, but comparison against a large number of human strains..." and wondered whether it was an autocorrect mistake. But apparently not: "Seals brought TB to Americas" [https://www.nature.com/news/seals-brought-tb-to- americas-1.1...](https://www.nature.com/news/seals-brought-tb-to- americas-1.15748)

</comment><comment><USER7> > passed away in the winter of 1679

> "Discovery of the Bishop's lung calcification gave us the opportunity to > revisit the question of tuberculosis emergence with data from an ancient > European"

Their definition of "ancient" is obviously different than mine:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/srd3e/how_ol...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/srd3e/how_old_does_something_have_to_be_to_be/)

I don't know if it's just "lost in translation", something specific to analysis of old DNA or something else.

<comment><USER8> The meaning of "ancient" is always sensitive to context. "Ancient Greece" is probably around 500 BC. (More broadly, 700 BC forward.) By 500 BC, Egypt is _over_ ; it's been conquered by Persia. (It will experience a renaissance of sorts later, but will not regain self rule until the 20th century.) " _New Kingdom_ " Egypt ends in the 11th century BC. There were Greeks at that time, but we call them "Mycenaean Greeks" \- "Ancient Greeks" would refer to people from a much later period.

The Chinese are happy to refer to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) as "ancient" (古). Obviously there's a world of difference between that and the Spring and Autumn period (771-476), but if you _need_ to know exactly how old whatever you're talking about is, you'll just use more specific terminology.

<comment><USER9> Using a Palm Pilot is ancient in comparison to todays' Iphone 11.

Does that count?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Time to add to the TODO lists for the second edition of "Against the Grain", I guess.</comment>


Do you keep your own javascript "standard lib"? - <AUTHOR>

And if so, what is in it?
What I mean is a .js file full of functions that you commonly use, and include in every project.  Right now, I'm building myself one, and so far have stuff like:
A basic function for loading an external JSON.
A function called "modal", pops a jquery superbox.
A function called "chomp", which removes trailing newline characters from a string.
What I'd really love, however, is to also be able to include an "init" function that:
A) Loads necessary "helper" js, like jquery, jquery-ui
B) Loads necessary "helper" css, like css for jquery-superbox <comment><USER2> Underscore.js is my standard lib.

<comment><USER3> Underscore makes me wonder if people really understand JS.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by this? Typical _.js users don't really understand javascript?

I ask because I feel like _.js is a fantastic library that I've been using in almost every project of mine since first trying it out. I've really grown to like it, but am interested in what you mean by your comment.

<comment><USER5> I don't know the grandparents reasoning for the statement but if I where to assume, it would be that many of the popular implementations support much of the functionality natively. If which it may be that the grandparent is not considering the case that many use underscore as a polyfill to support such functionality on a broader array of clients that may or may not support the functionality of underscore natively. The grandparent may have other reasoning but that would be my first guess.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


ESR: Abusing Alan Turing - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4422 <comment><USER2> "The centennial of Alan Turing's birth brings us the news that Alan Turing probably did not commit suicide by eating a poisoned apple, was not depressed at the time of his death, and that the hormone treatments intended to suppress his homosexual urges had been discontinued a year before he died."

Raymond is referring to this BBC article: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-18561092>

It was (distastefully IMHO) published on the day of the centenary and makes a number of schoolboy errors about Turing and suicide:

1\. It omits to mention that a significant amount of cyanide was found in his stomach in liquid form. But does mention the fact that the 'apple was not tested for cyanide'. If you omit the former and mention the latter it sounds suspicious. And why would you test the apple for cyanide?

2\. The article makes great play of Turing's happiness shortly before his death. This misses the fact that many suicides are outwardly 'happy' before taking their own lives and is so basic that I'm amazed the BBC allowed it.

3\. The article plays up Turing's mess in the house and mentions: "The electrolysis experiment was wired into the ceiling light socket.". This was a common practice in those days and I remember adapters wiring things into light sockets as a child in the UK.

4\. The article also likes to try to downplay everything negative. For example, "It is often repeated that the chemicals caused him to grow breasts, though Turing is only known to have mentioned this once." The second clause seems to be the most important.

5\. The article is rather ugly in that it engages in a bunch of speculation and then ends with the 'expert' saying it's best not to speculate.

But the worst part of the article is that it contains nothing new. The doubt about Turing's suicide is well known and documented by his mother, Hodges and Leavitt. There was nothing newsworthy in the story.

"More: behind much of today's hagiography there seems to lurk a sort of perverse insistence that if Turing hadn't been gay and a suicide he would be less apt for veneration, as a founder of computer science or anything else."

I'm not sure where Raymond gets this.

<comment><USER3> > 4\. The article also likes to try to downplay everything negative. For > example, "It is often repeated that the chemicals caused him to grow > breasts, though Turing is only known to have mentioned this once." The > second clause seems to be the most important.

Well, thank goodness, maybe he didn't actually grow breasts. Must not have actually have been that bad being forced to take hormones for no good reason.

There's also a very, uhm, disheartening tone that a lot of commenters on that blog post are taking -- what sort of people is ESR attracting? People are suggesting that Turing's castigation was a preventable result of his homosexuality he should have predicted and avoided. "Just stay in the closet and shut your mouth."

Gross. Really, really gross. ESR should be ashamed.

<comment><USER4> > ESR should be ashamed.

For saying that Turing should be remembered for his accomplishments rather than for the circumstances of his death?

<comment><USER5> For the company he keeps. Comment on that blog enough and pretty soon a regular will threaten to come to your house and beat you up. This has happened to me twice and I've seen it happen to others; multiple perps, regulars and seemingly friends of ESR.

Basically, the crowd he attracts is smart in some ways but uncivilized. It's a waste and a disappointment.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that police complaint worthy?

<comment><USER5> If I thought they meant it. But I actually think it's just an aggressive thrashing about on having their sacred beliefs threatened. The closed epistemic system of that crowd shows defense signs similar to those of Christianity.

<comment><USER7> It sounds like someone who hasn't matured since middle school.

But maybe I'm just stuck in the statist mindset, where the government has a monopoly on the use of force. Perhaps they're merely advancing the anarcho- capitalist idea that private entities ought to be contracted to the various roles that have been usurped by the state. So, like private police, presumably there's a market for private jackbooted thugs to oppress dissenting ideas. There's no doubt some heavy ratiocinations I'm missing which make this morally acceptable, rather than the doing of violence to another that it seems on the surface.

Long live the market!*

*sorry

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's evident from some of the comments that many HN readers have misunderstood ESR's points about Alan Turing. What ESR is saying is that "a homosexual who committed suicide because of anti-gay oppression" has become a key part of the Turing narrative, not because of the facts of the matter, but because it serves the political agenda of those who propagate the myth. This dynamic manifests itself both in the co-opting of genuine giants (Turing, Noether) and in the creation of false greats (Lovelace, Carver).

Not that ESR is _not_ contradicting any of the following:

      * Alan Turing lived in a society generally intolerant of homosexuals
      * Anti-gay oppression is bad
      * Triumph over adversity is laudable

To see where ESR is coming from, imagine that people knew Einstein as "a physicist whose persevered in the face of antisemitism". ESR might say, "Yes, yes, antisemitism, etc., but the man _helped lay the foundations of quantum mechanics_ and _discovered both special and general relativity_. His triumph over antisemitism is at most a footnote to his story." To which the HN commentariat might reply, "OMG, I can't believe that guy hates Jews!"

To ESR (and to many other non-progressives), this sort of politically motivated myth-making diminishes the object of the myth. When he writes "Yes, yes...", what he's saying is _and it's just so damn tiresome_.

<comment><USER9> I read through some of the comments. Raymond is clearly arguing that Turing was _not_ the victim of oppression. The mental gymnastics he contorts through to arrive at this conclusion are baffling.

<comment><USER8> English law punished homosexuality with chemical castration, but (according to ESR) Turing could easily have avoided this fate. Was Turing thus a "victim" of "oppression"? We're quibbling about words. Your notions of "victim" and "oppression" are simply different from ESR's. (Note: I'm confident that ESR isn't in favor of chemical castration for homosexuals.)

<comment><USER10> He could have easily avoided this fate? How? As far as I know, Turing's choices were either 1) chemical castration 2) prison 3) stop having sex with people he was attracted to. Which of those alternatives qualifies as "not oppression"?

<comment><USER8> You're arguing with ESR, not with me. ESR implies that there was another alternative. My role in this is to explain ESR's position and to defend its correctness _assuming his premises are true_. My role is _not_ to defend his premises, which in fact I am unqualified to do.

<comment><USER10> Not sure I understand the point of that. Is ESR somehow less wrong for saying Turing wasn't a victim of oppression if he says this because he's mistaken about what Turing was faced with?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ESR is wrong.

On his birthday, Letters of note published this letter from him on the eve of his trial: [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/yours-in-distress- alan....](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/yours-in-distress-alan.html). Turing's own words:

"I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.

Turing believes machines think Turing lies with men Therefore machines do not think

Yours in distress,

Alan"

This suggests Turing was greatly concerned with how society's attitude to his sexuality affected how he might be perceived by history, and how that might undermine even the impact of his ideas. That society has moved past those prejudices and is able to look back at his work with admiration, and shame for his treatment, is a gratifying refutation of his fears, not a convenient retelling of his story to fit modern agendas.

</comment><comment><USER12> > "Yes, yes, repression, anti-gay prejudice, I know all right-thinking people > are supposed to be horrified by such things"

You know, the academic jargon about "white male privilege" is kind of cliched, but this quote could serve as the poster child for what they are talking about. "yes, yes, repression, how tedious, how gauche to bring it up" when talking of homosexuals -- but try enacting some gun control legislation and then see if "repression" is something to be handwaved away.

Honestly, to see this guy as a spokesman for hacker culture makes me ashamed to be identified with it.

<comment><USER8> My comment at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158468> addresses some of your concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, it matters that Turing was gay. Yes, it matters that he committed suicide after being forced to undergo hormone treatment. Children and adults still get bullied every day for being gay, and people still feel uncomfortable coming out of the closet. Countless governments around the world, including the United States, still don't recognise the civil rights of gay humans, which broadcasts an unequivocal message to me and others like me that we are unwelcome, abnormal, and should be ashamed of ourselves. Turing was a genius, doubtless, but the tragedy of his suffering because of an oppressive government is a harrowing case study in how absolutely screwed up things can get, no matter how smart or important you are. The brilliance of Turing, and the shocking circumstances of his death, do not detract from one another. I strongly disagree with the portrayal of this as some kind of zero-sum match between the two aspects of his life.

The LGBT community has been actively fighting oppression for nearly a century. 80 years ago, the Nazi party started ostracising and killing homosexuals. 43 years ago the Stonewall riots occurred, during which LGBT Americans staged an act of civil disobedience that is still remembered in Pride and Christopher Street events around the world (and yet it was only in 2003 that 'sodomy' laws were ruled unconstitutional). We're looking back on decades of an AIDS crisis where gay men in first-world countries have had to _fight_ [1] for access to life-saving experimental drugs, and looking forward to a future (which may still be a long way off) where the United States, and other governments, recognise that gay people are people too.

So you know what? I think we're allowed one measly fucking 'hero' figure. And if you don't want our gay voices ruining your programming idols, here's a very simple solution: stop persecuting the gay ones.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power#FDA)

</comment><comment><USER14> I try to ignore this stuff. It doesn't really matter if he committed suicide or not, and the folk mythology is just silly.

If you want to learn more about Turing and the Entscheidungsproblem I recommend Charles Petzold's "The Annotated Turing". It has some great supplemental explanations to go along with Turing's paper plus interesting historical details. Petzold strikes a good balance between presenting the actual work and talking about Turing's personal life.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's a somewhat parallel effort by esr, where he attacks anti-torture activists because they don't adhere to some arbitry rules that he pulled out of his ass. The real evildoers, by the time he is done, are not the torture advocates and implementors in the Bush administration, but the people who opposed them.

<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1742>

Now with Turing, rather than condemn the people who hounded him to death, he is going after those who don't treat his life-story in exactly the manner that esr, lord of propriety, has decreed.

I can't believe anybody buys this crap, and I can't believe I am spending time on it, but esr is often taken to be a spokesman for the entire hacker community, so occasionally stopping to point out his nonsense seems to be a necessary thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER15> "A figure of little consequence in [his] own time..." I thought of Raymond himself. Who decided that this guy deserved to be one of the lucky few with canonical hacker initials?

<comment><USER16> The main reason people know his initials is because he was one of the more influential people behind the "Open Source" concept and branding, as a distinct thing from the Free Software movement. He also wrote some fairly well-known books. His fame has declined since then, but his membership in the Three Initials Club has remained intact.

Here endeth the history lesson. Incidentally, you could have googled this if you were interested in hearing an answer rather than signaling indignation and/or contempt.

<comment><USER15> I'm well aware of the history. I was ironically posing the question in a probably slightly mean-spirited attempt to poke fun at him for not having written any notable software. I suppose he deserves credit for the philosophical contributions. The whole initials thing is ultimately pretty stupid. Maybe I was trying to get at why it's even become a convention. Why there is so much ego in the field in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ESR's libertarian take is unimpressive as always. ESR has his own political reasons for minimizing the likely connection between Turing's suicide and his hormone treatment--as if hormone treatment weren't gruesome enough, and were completely free of psychological side effects. A logician would invoke Beth's theorem on unions of theories and ignore a math professor's tawdry speculation on the circumstances of Turing's death.

<comment><USER16> How is this article at all related to libertarianism? Its theses are -- and here I'm summarizing rather than stating my own views --

1\. That (according to the article he links) Alan Turing's persecution and death were heavily mythologized.

2\. This is not surprising, considering the nature of the myth: a great person becomes a martyr of a persecuted minority group.

3\. This is a shame, since it distracts from Turing's actual achievements, which were pretty amazing, and perpetuates the association between heroism and downtrodden martyrdom.

(As an aside, if #1 is true, then I can get behind #2. It seems to be a common enough pattern of folk-hero-making to raises suspicion. Not sure about #3.)

I don't see any libertarian ideology in here. Could you point it out for me?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we just delete this entire meme before it gets started? This is pathetic.

Edit: To clarify, I mean everything said by ESR here. Yes Turings accomplishments are great. However, it's because of those great accomplishments that what the British government did is even more atrocious. Turing made key and irreplaceable contributions to the Allied war effort, and this was repaid by bigotry.

Also, when ESR blamed turing for his castration was just... bigoted.

</comment><comment><USER19> I must be missing something. Is there anyone who actually thinks Turing wouldn't be worth remembering if he hadn't been mistreated for being gay?

<comment><USER20> Church (arguably) contributed as much or more to computer science, but is not idolised in the same way as Turing.

<comment><USER21> I'd say that Turing's accomplishments as a whole were somewhat more notable, though of course Church is also a giant of the field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One theory is that he staged it to look like an accident to spare his mother the grief of his suicide. I may have read that in Hodge's book, but I can't remember.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes of course Eric, it's all just liberal propaganda. We should all hate gays just like you since a bullshit article claims Turing was pretty happy. Certainly people who advocate for basic human rights are just "partisans".

<comment><USER8> Who would you have decide which rights are "basic human rights"? I'm guessing it's people like you, i.e., progressives. If that's not partisan, I don't know what is.

I also fear you've misunderstood ESR. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158468> for a clarification.

<comment><USER24> Its "partisan" to think things like forced hormone therapy (and in some countries, not excluding our own: corrective rape and systematic abuse) is a bad thing, and dare we say, a violation of basic human rights? I'm sorry, I don't care who you are or what your politics are, thats messed up.

Giving other people rights doesn't take them away from the people who already have them.

<comment><USER8> Nothing you have written contradicts what I wrote. "Partisan" doesn't mean "wrong". It simply means that those who insist on certain "basic human rights" mostly fall into the same party (metaphorically, if not literally—"tribe" might be more accurate). Replace "forced hormone therapy" with "abortion on demand" to make the party lines crystal clear. (For what it's worth, my own views mostly coincide with progressive orthodoxy on the subjects of homosexuality and abortion. But there are many other aspects of the orthodoxy I reject, so the party lines are easy to see.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Selling 80% equity - <AUTHOR> So we met this middle man from china, who say there's investor interested in investing in us for 80% of our shares. In return he will give us 400k. We have another option, which is 150k for 30% of our company shares. We now own 100% of the shares completely, so we are deciding on which one to take. Our country is not based in US, but rather a small country, which has a small customer base. Due to NDA, I can't disclose on what the app is doing. My partners are leaning towards giving the 80% equity, which left us 20% I don't wish to give up that much because I'm afraid it will get burn out too quickly and therefore we can't raise another round of fund due to our small equity percentage left. Moreover, I didn't get enough background check of that investor (in fact, we havne't met him yet but he's quite interested in our app). My partner is ambitious, he wants to expand quickly into other regions (especially mainland china which has very large users base). However, I suggest to him that we should start small and make sure our product succeeds here first before expanding in other regions. Of course, the downside is that China is able to replicate our product very quickly. In fact, they can replicate a lot of apps now very quickly (and probably efficiently). So I can't really argue against this. So what's your take on this guys? <comment><USER2> Selling 80% equity is effectively an exit. Just think if you are willing to sell a company for that much, and if so, go for it. Having no control over what remains will make you effectively hired managers working for 10% of profit each, so after that, what kind of salary they are willing to pay you will be your biggest concern. Making something which is easy to replicate doesn't put you in a good negotiation position for sure, so maybe just take this cash, then walk away, and use the money to fund yourselves for a couple more years to build something that isn't that easy to copy.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will be locked in if we were to take the 80%. So even if there's full exit, we are still required to work inside or can't proceed a startup straight after that.

<comment><USER2> Are they going to pay you for staying in, i.e. salary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most likely yes. It would seems unfair for us not to get paid for working

<comment><USER2> If i was you it would be the main point of discussion. Now it looks more like a job offer with a hefty sign-up bonus. If the salary is good, why not?

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, it's not attractive enough. I gain more by working in corporate world

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think 80% at an early stage is ever justified as it not only hurts future investors from considering you in future rounds, but it hurts founders.

I like PG's equity equation to calculate the value of investors. I don't think any investment can increase your odds of success by 400%.

[0]:[http://paulgraham.com/equity.html](http://paulgraham.com/equity.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I want to add on that my partner is right in the sense that having 20% but able to expand to overseas might be much more than having 70% locally. However I still feel that we should start our steps small then proceed forward.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you want to give up control of your company and product this early and this cheap, you way as well sell 100% of it now. Also, are your prices in Euros, US Dollars or Yuan?

Anyway, keep saying NO while there's any uncertainty.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's sgd btw for the currency.</comment></comment>