Every neuron potentially has a different genome than those it's connected to - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-surprised-to-find-no-two-neurons-are-genetically-alike/ <comment><USER2> Coming from a bioinformatics background this is really, really surprising to me. I knew there was always a chance of individual cells diverging from the shared genome but we always considered that a hallmark of cancerous, abnormal growth.

Thinking that you could have a trillion unique variations of the genome significantly ups the computational complexity of simulating an organism by a frightful order of magnitude. We are so much further from understanding biological systems than we ever thought.

That's been the main lesson from the modern era of sequencing, genomics, and bioinformatics - we haven't learned nearly as much as we have unlearned.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. That's like orders of magnitude orders of magnitude.

Definitely surprising, although in one of those hindsight realizations -- c.elegans has a specific consistent function for each cell and each cell under normal development.

If 300+ cells of a worm can be that well orchestrated, of course slightly more complex creatures could. Evolution is a series of slight successes.

What if the cells of the brain have their own genome because each one of the billions of cells has a near specific specialized function.

Could cellular function be that precise? Each micron of tissue the result of specific evolutionary pressures?

<comment><USER4> I suspect that it's much like the immune system. For example, antibody diversity is "generated by DNA rearrangements during B-cell development".[0] And:[1]

> In another parallel with the immune system, cadherin-related neuronal > receptors (CNRs) are diversified synaptic proteins. The CNR genes belong to > protocadherin (Pcdh) gene clusters. Genomic organizations of CNR/Pcdh genes > are similar to that of the Ig and TCR genes. Somatic mutations in and > combinatorial gene regulation of CNR/Pcdh transcripts during neurogenesis > have been reported.

So as with evolution, more-or-less random variation generates diversity in the developing nervous system. And then there's selection.

0) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27140/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27140/)

1) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12558794](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12558794)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No two cells are ever genetically identical. Within a common hyper-mutable region, tandem repeats, the mutation rate is 10^-3 to 10^-5. There are over 10^5 tandem repeats in the genome, and therefore at least one mutation is expected for every cell division. Many other types of hyper-mutable regions exist in the human genome.

In this research they only examine one form of genetic variation, SNPs. These findings only reflect a small proportion of the somatic variation present in the body.

There is no real surprise in these results, but the data may nevertheless be useful!

<comment><USER6> (while most here understands CPU RAM RAII DRY etc., you might want to mentions that SNP means "single nucleotide polymorphism", which are mutations where just a single base pair differs.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A primary cause of somatic mutations has to do with errors during the DNA replication that occurs when cells divide—neural progenitor cells undergo tens of billions of cell divisions during brain development, proliferating rapidly to produce the 80 billion neurons in a mature brain."

Certainly there must be tens of billions of cell divisions to create all the neurons, but each neural progenitor cell would only divide 30-40 times, right?

I'm not surprised that there are mutations, but the number of mutations is remarkable to me, and seems like yet another evolutionary check on brain size that I hadn't considered (energy use, difficulty of birth, and difficulty of childhood being the more obvious ones).

<comment><USER8> >"Certainly there must be tens of billions of cell divisions to create all the neurons, but each neural progenitor cell would only divide 30-40 times, right?"

Surprisingly to most, this is not a mainstream opinion: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25459141](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25459141)

I would guess the main reason is that it leads to major problems with the current model of cancer.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the link. Very interesting stuff.

Also worth noting that there's a difference between mutation and cancer, although of course they're related. Just as mice and people get cancer at similar rates, so do elephants, which have many more cell divisions, but have more elaborate anticancer mechanisms (presumably because elephants lacking them died of cancer).

<comment><USER8> If you give humans 2^53 divisions (as in that paper) and elephants have ~100x the mass of humans, as a rough estimate they would require 2^60 divisions. So about 7 more divisions per stem cell to live as long as the usual human (they usually don't live that long).

<comment><USER8> Instead of "per stem cell" that should be 7 more divisions from the zygote.

<comment><USER7> For some of the cells, like neurons, that to a first approximation don't divide in adulthood, this seems true. But for things like blood cells that are constantly getting turned over, it seems like there would be a lot more opportunities for bad mutations in a larger creature (although as your link suggests, there seems to be some fairly strong defense against this).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, DNA is kind of Big Data. And everyone who worked with Big Data knows that there will always be all kinds of inconsistencies and errors.

Personally, I was always skeptical that all non-sex human cells share the same DNA, it's just statistically unbelievable that billions of cells each having billions of DNA pairs would have then equal. I expected something like 1% of cells to have mutations.

Now they say that it's 100% for neurons. Exact 100% number is also pretty sketchy from statistical standpoint.

<comment><USER10> Nobody ever said that all cells share 100% of DNA in the sense you're implying. It's obvious that DNA undergoes dynamic processes, some of which will result in lasting differences. The accumulation of errors is the basic mechanism for cancer, which has been recognised for decades.

But it was previously thought that such differences were detrimental to function (and health). There were some mechanisms for modifying cells' DNA, collectively known as "epigenetics", but these were reversible, at least in principle.

This adds another dimension of complexity, which biology already had plenty of. My favourite is the double- or triple-coding DNA: because DNA is read in triplets, there are three possible reading frames. Some organisms have evolved DNA that produces entirely different, but independently useful proteins on two or even all three reading frames of the same DNA. Talk about efficiency...

<comment><USER11> Do you have any links for the last paragraph? I know that there can be two gene encoded in reverse in bacteria but have no knowledge of any frame-shifted translations?

About the second paragraph: well, it was not really thought that differences are always detrimental to health, and there is quite a number of variant prioritization tools out there that try to find those variants that are causal compared to all the silent/no-effect mutations (mostly for comparing humans but also somatic).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes I wonder how so much complexity and co-dependency has evolved on earth in such little time. Most estimates I've read say that we're likely within an order of magnitude of 100 trillion generations deep from the universal common ancestor at this point. That sounds like a lot, but not really. If you took 30 four sided die, you'd have to roll them a million trillion times to have a good shot at getting any specific permutation.

How many 'die rolls' does it take to get a selective feature to emerge in an organism? If you do a google image search for 'camouflage bugs', you'll find some brain-bending examples. There's clearly a selective advantage for some of those 'configurations', but how many generations would it take for each genetic mutation required to make a lichen katydid or an orchid mantis to converge?

<comment><USER13> > There's clearly a selective advantage for some of those 'configurations', > but how many generations would it take for each genetic mutation required to > make a lichen katydid or an orchid mantis to converge?

If you pose the question like that with the posteriori knowledge in mind, then yes, these configurations are highly improbable. I think another question that could be asked is: How many generations would it take for some mutations to produce some camouflage effect in some of the millions of existing species? Surely some mutations that produce camouflage effects will happen.

<comment><USER14> Some changes can happen really quickly too. If you look at breeders of fancy pigeons or fish, they can do incredible things in a relatively small number of generations. Of course, breeders are generally much more selective than nature, but it gives you a lower bound on what is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wait, the headline says no two alike, while the body text seems to go no further than that every cell is potentially different. What is it? If the somatic mutation rate is >1/neuron, that's a real surprise to me, but if it's "there's plenty of mosaicism and it makes a real difference", then not.

<comment><USER16> Good catch. We've changed the title above to a representative phrase from (I think) the paragraph you're referring to.

<comment><USER15> OTOH Real_S comments that the rate is indeed >1\. So huh, I learned something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12484](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12484)

the more closely you look, the more obvious it becomes that this is the rule rather than the exception. I would be somewhat surprised if children have functional mutations rampant between neurons, and I suspect that some fraction of this is artifactual. But I have no doubt (does anyone?) that some degree of somatic mosaicism is the rule. About the only cells that tend to hang around much longer than neurons are blood stem cells, and as soon as you look closely at those, it's all but unavoidable.

<comment><USER17> God damn it, that Science paper is piss weak even for a Science paper. It's yet another consortium advertisement. Meanwhile mapping of somatic mutations in blood progenitors has been happening for a decade.

<comment><USER11> This exactly. Somatic variants are one of the most common things around.

I always wonder why HN will almost never upvote a general informatics research article instead of a good review and with other fields of research it is the other way around where a review would be much better suited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this old news? The reason is vaguely similar to the DNA modification that happens in the immune system: recognition of self. In this case, the goal is to avoid loopback connections. Nerve cells that touch themselves are bad. By DNA modification, the cells get different surface protein and are thus able to avoid connecting to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if this is involved in storing information in the brain.

<comment><USER6> Neurons practically never die, so the DNA itself will not directly reflect what a decades old braincell stores, though some mutations might influence how or if at all a certain neuron stores something. But since these mutations are random they are closer to defects (the article draws a connection to psychiatric diseases) than features.

But DNA can also be _methylated_ , which is something that also happens in neurons and might be involved with actual memory.

And if you ever want to digitize a brain, then you might have to grab the DNA of 100 billion neurons as well, and there straightforward mutations are easier than just a somewhat transient methyl group here and there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Main paper:

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6336/eaal1641/tab-...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6336/eaal1641/tab- pdf)

Unfortunately, looks like you have to register ("free"?) and sign-in to download the full text.

Other papers linked in article:

[http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(16)00097-0](http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273\(16\)00097-0)

[http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(12)00273-5](http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273\(12\)00273-5)

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6256/94/tab- pdf](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6256/94/tab-pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> Every single microprocessor in every computer is unique in its own way (small errors in production). It doesn't mean we can't compute with them, nor that the variation is useful or relevant.

<comment><USER22> This is an incredibly reductive analogy. The whole point of the article is that the neuronal variation _does_ seem to be relevant.

<comment><USER21> It seems to exist. Not clear there is a lot of evidence it's relevant. If you sequence a tissue that has cancer or some other disease that causes increased cell division, you will see more somatic variation. Not sure why this is particularly surprising or interesting. It's been known for a while now. If somatic variation was important for brain development or function (like it is in the adaptive immune system), that indeed would be super surprising, but that's not what I'm seeing here.

<comment><USER4> A key aspect of CNS development is massive overproduction of neurons, and then selection for useful ones. The idea that somatic variation plays a role there is not novel.

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=development+somatic+var...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=development+somatic+variation+neuron)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No meaningful parts (which encodes proteins and gene regulation) are different, however. Nature does not work that way.

Comparison of two genomes as two billions-bases-long strings is meaningless and yields nonsense due to waste and introns. Genome isn't a uniform string in the first place.

Nothing to see here, except hipster's self-praise and want for attention.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was told in science classes that all of a person's cells shared the same DNA. Now I learn, nobody ever actually tested to see if that was true. This is why people don't trust you, science.

<comment><USER25> i always wondered how differentiated cells can have _completely_ identical DNA and still know which proteins to fold based on their specialized function. different types of cells even look very different!

<comment><USER26> I think that a one-word answer would be "epigenetics". Sections of genes are turned on and off by various chemical processes, so that the genes that are actively transcribed into proteins can change without the underlying DNA changing.

There was a brief mention of it at the bottom of the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you prefer in-line comments for documenting code? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious. I like comments that are on the same line as the code and wondered if others felt the same. <comment><USER2> I like vertical white space in code, and so I usually use blocked comments right above the relevant code. I think the side-by-side style has gotten less and less practical as languages have become more expressive and lines have become longer (also due to much more screen space). Just a working theory though :).

</comment><comment><USER3> I realized in a discussion thread on Literate Programming styles that majority of my comments nowadays have moved into the source control commits. Then you somewhat get the best of inline comments in your source control annotated view of the code, including that the comments truly only stay attached for as long as they stay relevant (walking backwards in time as necessary to see the history of that line).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll generally docblock methods, and use full line comments if something in the method needs a little more explanation on why it's doing what it does. I don't often use mid-line comments; mostly those are if I'm temporarily omitting something, and then that gets deleted before being committed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Only sometimes, specifically when you can do a "complex" transform in one line and breaking it into multiple lines doesn't really make it much easier to understand. Recent example: `.map(x->x%2==0?-x:x) //negate all even numbers`. Otherwise, no.

</comment><comment><USER6> I rarely put comments on the same line as my code, usually that makes the line too long (I try to stay in the 80 char margin). If I want to specifically annotate that one line, I'll insert a comment line right above it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I prefer for comments to be given their own line/block above whatever they're referencing. No real reason behind this preference, it's just what I like :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I like them for notes to myself for like toy projects, but I hate reading them for other people. Being able to scan down the page and see comments is helpful.

</comment><comment><USER9> The last few places I've worked have had rules against code and comments on the same line. I think it's a good rule.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Askr here. I brought it up because, well, it makes it easier to move the comment with the code.</comment>


Show HN: My First Web App - A Pizza Coupon Search Tool - <AUTHOR>

A little background: I'd been throwing this idea around in my head for a while, and finally had some free time between two quarters of school, and decided to make the site. I spent several days over the break laying out the backend for the site, and starting coding, and then the next few weekends finishing it up (and I've been making small changes since then).
Where I got the idea: I originally got the idea when trying to look up coupons for some pizza places, and having a lot of trouble finding any that worked at my store since they were all regional, or weekly codes, so I just manually tried codes until one worked.
The site is a bit limited at this point in time, as it only contains one site, but I made the backend flexible enough that adding more sites shouldn't be too difficult.
How it works: I have a python script running on my server that watches a database, looking for new coupons that need to be added, and updates codes every day. It stores which codes work at which stores in a database that is used by the site to display working codes for each store.
I know that this site may not be the most interesting thing ever to everyone here, but I learned a ton about php, mysql, and web crawling with Python in the process of making it, and would love to hear your thoughts on the site.
Link: http://abiteofpizza.com <comment><USER2> I love pizzas and your site is cool. One thing though. You search box says "Ener Store id". I do not know store Ids but I entered a zip code anyway and it worked. Why not reword to "Store Id OR zip code" if both work? I will definitely use this whenever I crave pizzas :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch! That is left from the original system that required entering a store id to search, but since then I have added the ability to search by address or zip code. I'll fix this when I get in front of a computer later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sad it is just PapaJohns :(

Otherwise I love the idea. It reminds me of <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/retailmenot/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I am working on adding more sites. I was trying to get the base system setup to work automatically, and iron out any bugs before adding more sites, which I am getting pretty close to.

It was partially inspired by retailmenot, but I always had trouble trying to search for pizza codes there since they are regional, so you can only really find national codes (since people downvote anything that doesn't work at their local store).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using that site for the past few months... thanks for building it. I like how clean and easy it is to use. The only problem I have is that it's only for papa johns.

BTW: how are you making any $ off this site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear you find it useful! I used Twitter bootstrap, which helped out a lot for making the site since I am not all that great at making a site look 'good'.

I have plans to add some other pizza sites to it, and started working on adding Dominoes to the site yesterday.

I put some adsense ads on the site that cover hosting, and a little bit on top of that, but I'm definitely not getting rich off the site. I wish there were affiliate links for pizza places, but I haven't found any yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had the hardest time finding a Domino's coupon to use a few nights ago, ended up just grabbing a sub-par Little Caesar's Hot-N-Ready. Look forward to watch this service progress (:

<comment><USER6> Don't you dare call Little Caesar's SUBPAR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love how "simple" and useful it is. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER8> what happens when the html structure/schema of the site you're scraping changes?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll have to make some changes to the crawler, but everything is decently modular, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> no love for the non-US?</comment>


Rupert Murdoch plans charge for all news websites by next summer - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/06/rupert-murdoch-website-charges <comment><USER2> What made me laugh about this article was them mentioning The Sun and "Quality Journalisim" in the same sentence. What, quality journalisim such as Ruth's impression of MS Bing? ([http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2570027/Micros...](http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2570027/Microsofts- Bing-takes-on-Google.html))

All he'll be able to charge for on that is access to half-naked women</comment>


Novell Offers Commercial Support for Mono 2.4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.mono-project.com/news/archive/2009/Apr-16.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder how many people really use Mono. I've always thought it was a failed attempt.

Is anyone here actually using Mono for web or service development? Or even for desktop apps?

<comment><USER3> There are quite a few Linux apps that run on Mono: Banshee, Tomboy, F-Spot, Beagle, Gnome Do. Moonlight (built on Mono) provides the Linux version of MS's Silverlight plugin.

Second Life uses Mono for scripting. Quite a few games (including iPhone and Wii games) are written using Unity, which runs on Mono. Mindtouch Deki is a web wiki/CMS that runs on Mono.

Not overwhelming, but not far from being a failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could anyone tell me what "Commercial Support" even means? Does it mean you pay them so you can call them up when you have problems?</comment>


How "nice" should an MVP look? - <AUTHOR> When you build a MVP, how nice does it need to look?
I'm building my own MVP for web and iOS.  For web, I'm just using bootstrap to make it look decent enough because I know bootstrap pretty well. For the iOS side, I'm sticking to almost all out of the box ios components.
The web app is responsive and has most of the MVP functionality wired up.  It also allows almost all of the mobile app features, except for some things like geolocation tracking.  Couple people I've demoed it to think that the workflows are easy to figure out, but that it looks too minimalist. <comment><USER2> This depend a lot on the app. If you're selling an oil and gas company on something that will better forecast their well production over the next decade, no one cares.

The big things to consider about your product are

Will you get another chance to pitch these people? If your potential customer are accountants you can pitch with a more minimum mvp. And if they don't like it just make it nicer. If you are leveraging your connections to sell to a fortune 500 company than you need make sure it's more polished.

Are the people who are going to be buying your product also going to be using it? For instance if VP's will be buying it for their operators they will care less about look for screens they won't use.

Are your selling to organizations/business or consumers? Organizations will care less about look and feel.

How many competitors do you have? If you have a bunch of competitors than you need to distinguish yourself more with a great look and feel. If you don't have any it's not as big of a deal.

How much value are you adding to your end users If you're adding a lot of value then look and feel is less important.

How are you distinguishing yourself from the competition based on look&feel, capabilities, or price? If it's capabilities or price it's not as important.(They do x, and we do x but for $50/month versus

In the end it's all about what's your sales pitch and branding to the end user.

Why are they using your product versus using a competitor or not using your product at all? How much will look and feel influence are part of this decision?

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you post a link to the web app? Might help people here judge if it's too minimalistic or not.

Either way, it depends on your audience to be honest. If your audience is tech savvy, or designers/marketers, or otherwise expect a nice looking product or service, their expectations will be higher than if they're say, in the market for CraigsList or the Drudge Report.

</comment><comment><USER4> The purpose of a MVP is to gauge the market potential of a product. For that reason I would prioritize functionality over glossy looks. Unlike a piece of jewellery or art, a smartphone app needs to deliver some specific value, i.e. people will pay for it.

As @CMD30 notes, CraigsList did very well. That is because it delivered new and useful functionality. You can always polish the appearance once you gain traction.

</comment><comment><USER5> You might find this useful: [https://basecamp.com/gettingreal/05.1-half-not- half-assed](https://basecamp.com/gettingreal/05.1-half-not-half-assed)</comment>


Hey Amazon Employees, Stop Talking To Us - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/24/loose-lips-sink-kindles/ <comment><USER2> well, they don't talk to the marketplace sellers (which make up a good percentage of their profits), so I'm not surprised.

Amazon is probably one of worst companies I've ever dealt with. They 1) banned my account 2) told me they couldn't let me know why, because it was "proprietary to their business" and 3) also let me know that they would no longer talk to me and I could get my $5000 in 90 days when they felt they could release it to me.

There is nobody to talk to on the Amazons side, even though they were making thousands of dollars/month from my business.

In addition to this, they pretty much allow their customers to get away with murder. I lost money because customers complained and refused to send back the product (and amazon refunded them).

If I bought an ipad from Amazon and decided to return it, they would make me send it back before I got a refund. The case isn't the same for 3rd party sellers. It's ridiculous.</comment>


HRW report decries lack of paid parental leave in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/02/human_rights_watch_report_decr.html

<comment><USER2> How many of you planning startups would knowingly hire a pregnant woman as one of the first 5 employees?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2011/02/23/failing-its- familie...](http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2011/02/23/failing-its-families-0) (the report)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave></comment>


Ask HN: How did you get from A - B? - <AUTHOR>

As I seriously consider a change in career I find myself wondering, how windy is everyone else's path?  I know I'm not alone here, I started off (in college) striving to be a starving writer, moved on to CS when I realized I liked eating, then (after a semester of machine language) came Mech. Engineering. Now, after graduating I find myself heavily involved in the financial sector, and I've begun planning on working my way into a start-up/younger company in the Bay.
How many hats has everyone worn?  What were they? When changing roles what have people done to gain traction? (both in finding work as well as developing the needed skill set if it was absent before)
Just curious for curiosity sake.
edit : cleaned up a sentence that was bothering me <comment><USER2> I started off my CS education after high school, dropped out because I failed an end of year exam.

Opened a PC repair shop with my co-founder best buddy. Shut up shop after a year due to friction between us and also with the bank.

Went back and forth between property rentals then customer services for a few years.

Went to University to get a Motorsport Design Engineering degree. While doing that I took up an interest in app development.

Now I can graduate in June 2013 or 2014 (haven't decided yet) and I'm running a start-up which is bootstrapped with freelancing income. Enjoying it immensely. I'm doing an enterprise staff timekeeping app with my start-up firstly and I'm hopefully going to involve my engineering education at some point.

That's my story!</comment>


Uber Eats Start Free Delivery from Black-Owned Restaurants - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestreet.com/investing/uber-eats-app-enables-free-delivery-from-black-owned-restaurants <comment><USER2> I see where they're coming from, but wow this is tone deaf. I guess hispanic businesses are immune from COVID, and white businesses are privileged enough to run at a loss indefinitely?

Maybe they should just treat their drivers better. They're essentially all economically vulnerable.

Imagine if they offered health and legal insurance to their "contractors" instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does that work, legally?

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like a competing business that didn't get the discount could sue Uber for racial discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER4> This will just create more animosity.</comment>


US government demands details on all visitors to anti-Trump protest website - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/14/donald-trump-inauguration-protest-website-search-warrant-dreamhost <comment><USER2> Discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011636)

</comment><comment><USER3> The search warrant seems pretty broad, and includes "http and error logs". It looks like they're more interested in who set up and maintained the site rather than who visited it[0]

Seems like dubious legal ground to demand to visitors to the site. I hope dreamhost resists that part of the warrant as unconstitutional. I would like to see the legal justification tested in court.

0\. [https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/DH...](https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/DH-Search-Warrant.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> >The warrant was made public Monday, when DreamHost announced[0] its plans to challenge the government in court. The DoJ declined to comment. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.

Good luck Dreamhost; fight this tyranny!

[0][https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the- users/](https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/we-fight-for-the-users/)

<comment><USER5> How does this hearing get scheduled so soon while other cases have to wait years?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like we're at a tipping point. It does seem like there needs to be more "Peaceable" in the "Right to Peaceably Assemble". But if you're investigating someone who bludgeoned a police officer for example, and the site is your only lead, it may be justified. Would it also be wrong if it could find the identity of the unknown driver of a car that mowed down BLM protestors (I realize we know the drivers identity, but its a hypothetical)? What if there was a shooter in the crowd? Generally you can't expect privacy when you show up to a giant public event, especially when crimes are committed.</comment>


EazeMD: Online medical marijuana evaluations - <AUTHOR> http://www.eaze.md <comment><AUTHOR> Connect with a doctor online to receive a medical marijuana evaluation in order to obtain a recommendation.</comment>


Ask HN: Convincing my cofounder not to drop brand name from title tag - <AUTHOR>

I've got a non-tech cofounder who thinks SEO is the best way to grow your brand. Currently about 50% of our traffic is from search engines. But he thinks we can do better so asked me to drop our brand from the end of the title on all of our pages. It's like a store with no sign or a letterhead with no company name.
His explanation when asked why was that Google's formula is keywords/length of text, which is just not true. He thinks no one knows our brand, so it's better to focus on keywords.
How do I convince him this is a bad idea, and to not only focus on keyword SEO? We have no blog entries, just listings and some descriptions. We have a few customers, some money is flowing, but there's not a lot of traction. SEO doesn't seem like a sustainable growth strategy now. <comment><USER2> The following article from seomoz speaks to this:

<http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag>

Highlights:

\- "70 characters is the maximum amount of characters that will display in the search results"

\- "Place Important Keywords Close to the Front of the Title Tag"

\- "Leverage Branding. Many SEO firms recommend using the brand name at the end of a title tag instead, and there are times when this can be a better approach. The differentiating factor is the strength and awareness of the brand in the target market. If it is a well known brand, and it can make a difference in click-through rates in search results, the brand name should be first. If this is not the case, the keyword should be first."

Based on this you should keep the branding at the end and work on the up front content of the title tag. That content should be based on keyword formulations that are relevant to the page and targeted towards formulations that you have a chance of doing well with.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like a very subjective issue to me. What makes you think your opinion is more right?

Maybe dropping brand name from title tag is not a bad idea (even though your co-founder wants to do it for the wrong reason).

I think titles should be short and simple, and ideally not contain things like site name and whatnot. Except for the homepage, which should be only the brand name, and nothing else. e.g. just "Hacker News", as opposed to "Hacker News, your best source of interesting tech articles on the web!!!"

Considering tabs in most browsers are small, the user almost never ends up reading the title.

Titles are used as the default bookmark name in most browsers, so long titles with extra pointless words end up polluting bookmarks (most people don't bother renaming bookmarks).

I do agree though that SEO in general is not a good approach to building your brand (it borders on being spam in some sense). IMO the best way to build a brand is 1) making good products 2) having a good blog, like 37signals.

</comment><comment><USER4> A pretty common solution is to put the keyword phrase first, followed by the brand name. Using a pipe between them garners a higher CTR in some cases for unknown (to me) reasons. That's how they do it here on HN except they put the brand name first. Either way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't spend time on trivial stuff like this. There are likely 100 more important things you could discuss with your cofounder, or things you could do to improve traction. Decide either way, then move on. Even if it's with a coin-flip.</comment>


Show HN: A Canaletto painting in Van Gogh's style using deep learning-DeepArt.io - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/Szu0i <comment><USER2> This looks seriously impressive, some of them look way to good to be generated procedurally.

Shame about having to wait 1+ day to test one. Would love to see a stand-alone desktop implementation.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is impressive. But at the same time, it's a bit eerie... While beautiful, the fact that it's an algorithmic reprocessing causes me to question my normal artistic associations.

I mean, what is the relationship between this sort of work and "traditional" art?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The service was built by my friends of friends, the mix is by me. Comments more than welcome. I'm not associated with DeepArt.io, but I'll forward the thread to them.</comment>


Supreme Court blocks redrawing of Pennsylvania congressional maps - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-refuses-to-stop-new-congressional-maps-in-pennsylvania/2018/03/19/128d9656-215e-11e8-badd-7c9f29a55815_story.html <comment><USER2> Tittle is misleading, the Supreme Court rejected attempts to prevent redrawn congressional maps from going into effect.</comment>


Don't quit your day job (Forbes piece on successful side businesses) - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/forbes/2008/0721/060.html?feed=rss_entrepreneurs

<comment><USER2> Umm, I just quit my day job. Literally 3 days ago. So I beg to disagree.

<comment><USER2> Wow, downmodded for that comment? I just think we shouldnt discourage people, especially entrepreneurs in this community, from taking the leap of faith. I think its a great experience, success or failure. People may disagree, but not sure about the downmodding!

<comment><USER3> karma is overrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I officially notified my employer of my side business this year. No problems yet.

But I'd say if you can quit your day job, do.</comment>


Code Duplication to Enable Compiler Optimizations [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://ssw.jku.at/General/Staff/Leopoldseder/DBDS_CGO18_Preprint.pdf <comment><USER2> I don't get the name. I do the very same in my compiler but I call it clone and specialization. clone is needed for function inlining and loop unrolling, specialization is speculativly prepare type optimized variants for methods. Something the SBCL python compiler is known for since the 80ies. Or smalltalk. I never heard the term code duplication.

<comment><USER3> Does it really matter which synonym is used? They cite a 1992 PLDI paper that uses the term "replication". The term "tail duplication" is pretty well established from the VLIW compiler literate that tries to form longer traces of code for scheduling purposes. They probably already had a pass in HotSpot that used similar terminology for that reason.

<comment><USER4> Where are there good forums/groups for compilers& optimizations ?

<comment><USER3> The best way to discuss compilers with people is probably to pick an active open source project in the specific area of your interest and have discussions with other contributors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > CGO'18, February 24–28, 2018, Vienna, Austria

Is this a pre-publish?</comment>


Why is Google risking it all for Project Dragonfly? - <AUTHOR> https://hub.packtpub.com/inside-googles-project-dragonfly-china-ambitions/ <comment><USER2> But Google isn't "risking it all" for China. It's merely attempting a business expansion that it's employees cannot seem to rationalize

</comment><comment><USER3> "China is a huge social experiment at scale, with wide-scale surveillance and monitoring – in other words, data."

So the population control that a communist dictatorship utilizes is really all just an experiment in data collection?

So these are all benign? President Xi abolishing term limits, Uyghr detention, Chinese social credit system, massive surveillance, disappearance of chinese citizens (famous or not), quick summary executions of "corrupt" party members, huge arms build up, artificial island building, aggression against Taiwan, rampant IP theft.

The US and the west in general have some big problems, but the fawning praise of China by the tech industry is absurd. And another thing, HN has too many Chinese nationalists who act as apologists for egregious actions by the Chinese government.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, very well put. Data was never the end goal of the Chinese experiment. But for tech companies, data, a side-effect of China's policies, is a valuable resource that other parts of the world are becoming less open to share.

The social experiment is far from benign - it's a systemic propaganda that plays on human vulnerabilities. In addition to suppressing dissension, it also fuels China's ambitions to become The one true superpower. Taming AI is crucial to tame the world. This is a super interesting technical problem for the tech industry where they can simply push the limits to what tech can achieve without worrying about its real-world consequences. They could always go back and it's not us, it was the Chinese government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Profit.</comment>


Better lithium ion batteries, how do they work? Magnets - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/better-lithium-ion-batteries-how-do-they-work-magnets/ <comment><AUTHOR> Explanation of claim: Magnetization of graphite makes lithium diffusion easier in anode

Effect: Half-cell data shows energy capacity of anode increase up to 3X

What time means to real people: The anode is roughly 20% of the LiB, thus a 3X increase in capacity would equate to 3x20% = 60% improvement in capacity of a real battery.

My take: HORSESHIT

Why???? #1: Half-cell demonstrations, like this one, do not translate well as the cathode used in pure-lithium metal, essentially providing an infinite source of lithium. In a full-cell test you use a metal oxide with lithium-ions pre-intercalated, essentially providing a limited source of lithium. Unfortunately lithium gets eaten up in side reactions by the electrolyte and the active material (SEI, solid-electrolyte-interphase). Thus infinite lithium sources via half-cell testing are not good final test. They are only used for screening.

Why??? #2: Tortuosity has NOTHING to do, albiet directly, with how much lithium can intercalate with carbon in graphite. What it effects is the path that lithium has to diffuse through the electrode - it effects charge/discharge rates. Essentially, magnetization should charge/discharge easier (i.e. at lower voltages) because the lithium can navigate easier through the electrode. Why no reporting on C rate?

My take: I suspect what is happening is that the same charge/discharge rate can be attained at a lower voltage because magnetization of graphite with iron oxide additives make it easier for lithium to navigate in the electrode. Because it is a lower voltage, less lithium is eaten up by electrolytes breaking down in SEI. However, I'd bet you my mother's rusty ball-sack this amounts to tiddlywinks when the lithium is limited in a full-cell battery.

Nice try but nothing matters with out full-cell testing, energy density reporting AND cyclability reporting.</comment>


Ask HN: What has happened to YC's residential development research project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> They are still their slowly plugging away at projects: [https://harc.ycr.org/](https://harc.ycr.org/).

Edit: You haven't heard from them because they are aiming very high so it will take years before any of their work hits the general public.

Edit 2: From my understanding, they are still working on their Universal Basic Income Research as well and have chosen Oakland as the testbed: [http://basicincome.org/news/2017/04/httpswww-youtube- comwatc...](http://basicincome.org/news/2017/04/httpswww-youtube- comwatchvttnrz26u9sifeatureyoutu-be/).

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any contact with them?

<comment><USER2> Nope. I just follow Bret Victor, who is in Y Combinator Research, very closely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, here is a cheap shot of a dream. Future cities like mega malls with a thousand shops facing inside and a thousand homes facing outside, one to one. Roads would be marbled floors and cars would be electric scooters with a basket enough to buy groceries around.

For those who like the outdoors, just get your off road vehicle and face the indomitable and untouched nature. No paved roads, no concrete, nothing outside these habitable malls interconnected by hyperloops. Of course there will be supply roads for trucks but they will be just like highways interconnecting mega farms to mega malls.

Nah, scratch that, there is nothing like a house in the suburbs with a huge yard and a barbecue.

<comment><USER4> I could hardly imagine a worse dystopia.. If I somehow ended up as a dictator, my only decree would be to ban malls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sam Altman spoke about it recently: [https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/sam- altman-on-yc-univer...](https://medium.com/the-naked-founder/sam-altman-on-yc- universal-basic-income-trump-new-cities-1da15a18129d)

AFAIK, Ben Huh is still in charge of the project.

<comment><USER6> We're letting the cheezburgers dude redesign the future of cities?

<comment><USER5> I know what you are saying... However, I met Ben Huh and I think he's a capable individual. When he joined, he took the "job" for six months. Not sure if he will continue to work on it. No updates from the YC folks on that matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two weeks ago, Jonathan Edwards [1] announced on Twitter that he left/leaves HARC [2] but didn't elaborate on the reasons.

[1] [http://www.subtext-lang.org/AboutMe.htm](http://www.subtext- lang.org/AboutMe.htm) [2] [https://twitter.com/jonathoda/status/871784998113882118](https://twitter.com/jonathoda/status/871784998113882118)

</comment><comment><USER8> I dream of cities without cars!

longer distance travel via electric cars is fine, just give me a city without the cacophony, polution and general obnoxiousness of traffic.

</comment><comment><USER9> Did you mean the New Cities Project?

</comment><comment><USER10> What do you expect from it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious to see findings. I'm very enthusiastic to see the issue getting more coverage.

I used to have a lot of interest in architecture and design. When I first came to North America, I was surprised by disfunctional urban planning, and even more so by the fact that very few Americans were giving any concern to that.

<comment><USER11> Car culture is so big in the US that outside of the few cities with really bad traffic problems, nobody cares about sprawl.

The vast majority of everyone's experience of public transportation is shitty, slow busses and commuter trains with limited schedules and stops that you drive to. So cities that force you to use public transit sound really unappealing to people that haven't experienced something like Tokyo.

These two factors are why Americans don't have much concern about urban planning.</comment></comment></comment>


Jack Dorsey Has No Clue What He Wants - <AUTHOR> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jack-dorsey-twitter-interview_us_5c3e2601e4b01c93e00e2a00 <comment><USER2> Can we blacklist Huffington Post here? The large majority of their articles are low effort garbage. Also, is this website load terrible on mobile for anyone else?

<comment><USER3> This is a Q&A with Dorsey. It's as relevant as one of his tweet storms, which have appeared on HN many times.

Also, this particular article is not low-effort.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any jr developers wanting to get Code Reviews on your learning projects? - <AUTHOR> I am starting a project to provide Code Reviews to people learning to code. If you are starting on the path of software development and is building something as a way to learn, you are the kind of person that I want to help.
My idea is that Code Review is a great learning tool that wanna-be developers do not have access to. I want to start something that offers that.
I wrote a blog post about the idea: https://rodrigohgpontes.github.io/#educational-code-reviews
(but no need to read it all, as it is mostly about the concept of CR as a learning tool and less about this project)
So, if you want to receive code reviews on your learning project, let me know. Email in my HN profile or fill the form in the blog post. <comment><USER2> I like code reviews in general. What languages are you able to go over? Are you looking to see if it is idiomatic for that specific language? I'm a professional C# developer but am learning Elixir and it would be great to have people to look over the code to see if it is idiomatic Elixir.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's also the Code Review site on StackExchange, [https://codereview.stackexchange.com](https://codereview.stackexchange.com)

It can be pretty good so long as the code meets the guidelines...which is basically that the code works.

<comment><USER4> Guidelines....that is what put people off..

<comment><USER3> There's StackOverflow for code that doesn't work. The idea is that looking at code that doesn't work is essentially programming not reviewing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great offer. I am self-taught (to some extent). I would like to get involved in your code review n</comment>


Ask HN: I think I've been scammed - what now? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I posted on HN back in August last year asking about meeting potential technical cofounders. After recently moving to San Francisco, I wanted to make a few of the ideas I was thinking about happen. I got a number of emails, including help from HN'er 'mahmud' and eventually partnered with someone. We created a first site www.crushtease.com, which I paid a reasonable sum for 50% equity.
Our product didn't initially go viral, and I mentioned another idea to my cofounder, who thought it was interesting as well. We ended up working on this second project (wikizu.com), while shelving the first project for the time being, identifying a few errors to the concept and presentation. I paid for that, plus some sort of marketing campaign that I knew far too little about.
This was back in November, right before Thanksgiving. From then until now, I have been asking him about the status of Wikizu and he has given me a variety of excuses. I believed them until a few friends started questioning the situation. Today I confronted him about it and he dodged every question I posed.
I suggested he send back the advertising money (which I sent back in November, thinking we were launching very shortly) to prove my friends wrong. He concluded I was being "annoying", said he had work to do, and mentioned contacting a lawyer a few times. I can upload the chat conversation somewhere if anyone wants to read it, but this is pretty much what happened.
I understand that I was horribly naive, and blindly trusted what I was told without really understanding what was going on. I sent money to someone I didn't know simply because we had long IM conversations and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He even made the sites functional with facebook, which I thought meant for sure there was no reason to question him.
I don't know what to do at this point. I'm out a good chunk of change, but I'm also frustrated that I've spent six months waiting around instead of implementing some of my ideas. I even posted on here earlier today asking about doing another project with someone, since I was tired of waiting around.
The alleged scammer posts on HN, and to my knowledge has a minimum of two accounts, one that he has posted as recently as this week on. A google search including his name and "scammer" brings up results, as does one with a pseudonym he uses for various sites. I'm not sure if I should out this information at this time. Any help would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> You met someone on the internet. You sent them money. Presumably, you have no contract (at least you didn't mention it). The person who has your money isn't doing what you want. You've realized doing this was amazingly stupid.

Consider the money you've spent and the time you've wasted extra credit for your "how to do business" degree. Seriously, you should know better. If you want to start and build a company stop looking for people to implement your ideas and go find a true collaborator. Find someone you can sit down with over coffee and look in the eye. Find someone that shares your vision and complements your skills. Don't just be the "guy with an idea and money" because those guys get taken by slime balls like this. Be the guy that recruits a team, manages the business, forms the company, drives the team, finds early customers, gets the logo designed for nothing by hustling hard-- the guy that does everything else. This guy is useful to coders. IMO, your money and your ideas are worthless to people with good intentions. You have to bring more to the table than that. The good news is "all the other stuff" requires only that you have a brain and work really hard to make things happen.

Don't waste another moment worrying about this. Drop it. Move on. Spend your time and energy on creating something positive and always remember why this happened.

Assholes are everywhere. Starting a business is risky and hard. The ONLY risk you can conceivably reduce (never eliminate) is the interpersonal risk between you and the people you choose to spend your countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears with.

<comment><USER3> He should probably post his identity, though. If for no reason then to make others from making the same mistake.

<comment><USER2> See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158590>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi there, you mention my name, even though I just gave you free help, but you withhold the name of the person who scammed you? Not cool man.

If you know this person is a known scammer and has minimum of two accounts, as you said, PLEASE OUT HIM. Sheesh.

<comment><USER5> at least make it plain this guy had nothing to do with scamming

<comment><USER6> Agreed, I read the original post too quickly and until I saw this comment, I had the impression that mahmud was the scammer. A clarifying edit would be good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about this. It looks like I can't edit it anymore. Mahmud helped me in the early stages, but was not the person I partnered with and has nothing to do with the issues. At this time I don't know how much information my alleged partner has about me so I am going to refrain from outing any information on him. It looks like my best bet is to just walk away at this point.

<comment><USER2> jiganti, as I mentioned it is your perogative to not out this user. However, I have done some poking around and posted my findings here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158590>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> At the risk of adding to the intrigue here, I think it's best if this community knows that there might be someone unsaviory amongst us. It is jiganti's perogative whether or not to out the person responsible for this. However, nothing stops a bit of detective work.

Whois on both wikizu.com and crushtease.com reveal:

        Registrant:
            Sink Float
            P.O. Box 820
            Beijing, Beijing 100837
            China

        Administrative Contact:
            Float, Sink  firstname.lastname@example.com
            P.O. Box 820
            Beijing, Beijing 100837
            China
            +20.13352074153      Fax --

A few tests of user profile pages shows us there is a user here named 'sinkfloat'. Strange, but not conclusive by any means. Another search using searchyc.com using 'sink float' reveals another user, 'pinksoda' making some outrageous claims about sites he/she has built [1] [2]. Also, a link to a new business they started, www.sinkfloat.com [3]. Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Whois on sinkfloat.com reveals the same contact information as wikizu.com and crushtease.com.

Knowing that jiganti mentioned this user has at least two handles here, a lot of evidence points that pinksoda and sinkfloat are one in the same and likely the person jiganti partnered with on this venture.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299723>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299094>

[3]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269276>

Conclusive? Maybe not. Certainly enough, IMO, to make anyone thinking of doing business with pinksoda or sinkfloat think twice. Unsavory business practices, scammers, etc are not welcome here, as far as I'm concerned. I welcome pinksoda and/or sinkfloat to chime in here if this analysis is wrong. If so, I apologize.

<comment><USER7> If you examine the DNS records for wikizu.com, you'll find:

        wikizu.com		SOA
        server:	ns1.linode.com
        email:	email@example.com
        serial:	2010102781
        refresh:	14400
        retry:	14400
        expire:	1209600
        minimum ttl:	86400
            86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns4.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns1.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns2.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns5.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns3.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		MX
            preference:	10
            exchange:	mail.wikizu.com
            86400s
        wikizu.com		A	220.127.116.11	86400s

So, that gives you an email address (maybe). Then, if you lookup which domains are hosted on the same IP as the mail server there (the MX record), you'll find:

      * crushtease.com
      * earcavity.com
      * seoette.com
      * sinkfloat.com
      * wikizu.com

Two of those we haven't seen yet. I'm not going to post anyone's personal info here...but if you're the kind of person that likes to do whois searches (and who isn't!), you'd find some relevant contact info. You might also then search DDG for the site name and look at a few of the top results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me a little about about what happened with Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins. Communication was cut off for a while and many excuses were made. However, if it makes you feel better, the twins now have a $150 million stake in Facebook. [1]

Anyways, I'm not sure if I have much advice. First thing should definitely be hiring a lawyer, though. You should probably refrain from posting anymore information here on HN as well. I've seen you've already removed some, which is good. We only need to hear the gist of the situation (for future reference).

Hope everything turns out well!

      -

[Added in edit]

I traced back to when you were first starting this project. One of the people commented and wrote:

       I see these types of posts and it astonishes me that people will look for
       cofounders "on the street."

       I can't imagine that [ increases the odds of being successful -- but maybe I'm
       wrong. Employee number 5 can be an unknown quantity,
       but employee number 2? That would terrify me. [2]

This should be a warning to everybody else.

[1] - [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/businessinsider-the-winklevoss-twins-stake- in-facebook-is-now-worth-150-million-2011-1.DTL)

[2] - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1625890>

<comment><USER9> > first thing should definitely be hiring a lawyer, though

I guess this depends on how much money you lost, if you are willing to throw good money after bad, if you had any sort of agreement that you can show your lawyer and if this bloke has any assets.

You may spend a lot more time and money than you lost pursuing this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think I follow the whole story. What exactly did you pay for? Did you pay him for his time, because when you say "I paid for that, plus some sort of marketing campaign..." I wonder what _that_ is. If you paid for advertising, who got the contract? Is there no invoice?

Are you sure the terms were clear? If the other party kept the money in exchange for his efforts--and that seems likely--then I don't think there's a lot too this.

If the money was for an advertising campaign, I'm not sure why you feel that you're owed the money. What you're doing comes with risk of failure.

Perhaps I missed something in there. I think it's awfully aggressive to make public accusations of wrongdoing without explaining the arrangements that were made.

\----

I re-read your account, just to make sure I didn't miss the point, and I pretty sure I did not. This really sounds like you offered money for a stake in something that didn't take off, and you admit that you were not diligent in entering into this deal. That's the game. I suppose it's up to how your contract is written.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It appears like I was unclear. Mahmud had nothing to do with this, and in fact was the one who gave me unconditional help in the early stages. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

</comment><comment><USER11> _A google search including his name and "scammer" brings up results, as does one with a pseudonym he uses for various sites._

This is pretty weak evidence. Google searches for "Colin Percival" +scammer and cperciva +scammer find a few dozen results too.

<comment><USER12> Well, it's only weak evidence if you're not also a scammer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What to do now? Send a stern email explaining the situation: you think he's ripping you off, if he can't produce evidence of a product being worked on _or_ provide an explanation of where the money is, request the money back, if he can't provide that then I'd suggest contacting a lawyer (got any contracts?). If he can't explain where the money is, show a product _or_ return the money, in that situation I'd suggest lawyering up.

It's possible he got sidetracked, or it was more work than expected, but money given as "marketing budget" for a product that he can't show exists should not have gone anywhere. If it was wages, or a fee for the work then sure he could explain it away, but marketing money? Having been in this situation on the other side, in my case I got extremely busy with work that was paying me directly and didn't have time for the side-project work, but I didn't take any money intended for post-launch and spend it in the interim... that crosses the line from slow/lazy to wilfully ripping someone off.

If he had spent the money to keep himself afloat while he worked with money coming in from other means later on that he intended to pay you back with (or sneak back into the marketing money without you knowing) that could explain it, but if there is no product to show that can't be the reason.

tl:dr; if he took money, can't account for the spending and refuses to show a product (eg: it doesn't exist) lawyer up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I basically told him that I don't understand anything about computers, and that I'd like some proof to appease my concerns. An easy way would be for him to send the money back, and since initially he had claimed to be very well- off, he certainly had the money to spend. He could have lied about being so well-off, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this a genuine request for advice, or a passive-aggressive communication with your alleged scammer?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose I didn't consider why I wrote this post; but just knew I wanted to. Realizing 6 months of my life were based on a lie made me instinctively ask HN for help. As I think about it now, it probably was first and foremost what you described. But thinking about it now, I also respect the HN community and think they will be able to point me in the right direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I end up on Google's page when I try to open either wikizu.com or crushtease.com . Some sort of redirect happening?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like he took the sites down.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps you could use this for yourself positively, as an example of why agreements in writing are necessary. One co-founder should not be able to decide to take a site down (not technically, but legally).

Documentation is a pain, but it is like backups. You hope to never need it, but it is absolutely necessary if you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, how much money did you invest in this?

<comment><USER17> I also want to know, because the sites look so unprofessional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _He even made the sites functional with facebook, which I thought meant for sure there was no reason to question him._

Why does adding a FBConnect button make him more trustworthy? I see several things wrong with this sentence.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a technical background; to someone like me this appears somewhat reputable. It appears I've paid for my ignorance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm sorry about the situation you are in, but it is largely your fault.

Did you do any reference checks on previous work before you partnered with him? Did you meet up in person to validate his personality? Did you google him after speaking to him the first time?

The internet is rife with _scammers_ , but in this case you DID actually receive two sites - albeit not extremely well built ones. Scammers would have generally taken your money and produced nothing at all.

just my 2cents...

<comment><USER20> Nonsense. Based on the story, it was the intent of the other party to separate the OP from their money, and the other party apparently acted deliberately in ways intended to gain the OP's trust. Misplaced trust does not make someone responsible for the damage another person does to them, and naivety is what a grifter preys upon.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems accurate. Looking back, he was adept at making unverifiable yet somewhat credible claims. I never asked for some substance, which is what I should have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Scary..This is why I make sites alone without partnering anyone..But that takes too much off time..

</comment><comment><USER22> If you truly believe the idea has some merit then you should launch it. Looking at wikizu, it does not seem as if he is very far in development.

Unless you are out lots of money, you should let it be because lawyers cost money and time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no programming experience. All I bring to the table is the idea, and some money.

<comment><USER8> If you still have the money, forget about this programmer and go find a new one. Make sure you meet with the new programmer and find if he/she will be committed to the project. Get to know them, then hire them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> <http://www.crushtease.com/> <\- you paid money for this? oO

</comment><comment><USER24> Chalk it up to experience and move on.</comment>


AI Startup Neokami Raises $1.1M for more developer APIs and packaged AI products - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/09/neokami/

<comment><USER2> Most amazing team I have ever seen! Incredible CEO and magic CTO!!</comment>


Anatomy of a (un)fundable startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/anatomy-of-a-unfundable-startup?ref=http://venturehacks.com/articles/unfundable-startup <comment><USER2> I think a video of the talk would add better context to the slides. But good all the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://venturehacks.com/articles/unfundable-startup></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happened to CO2Stats? - <AUTHOR>

I seem to remember there was a green certification link at the bottom of the page, but it seems to have disappeared.<p>What happened? <comment><USER2> It's become that "Green Certified Site" logo instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I see it now. Not sure why I couldn't before. (Really, there were only two icons!)</comment></comment>


HN giveaway: 4 domains, just email me. - <AUTHOR>

http://pursuitsofhousing.com/
http://buyrequests.com/
http://bizdept.com/
http://tradesalerts.com/
It is registered with GoDaddy, just email me ( iworkforthem AT gmail DOT com ) your Customer # & email address on GoDaddy. <comment><USER3> We would be glad to have them. We give domains to Open groups for Free - <USER2> are "Open Source for Domains". We have given the domains Oscon.Com, Drupal.Com, Fosdem.org, OpenAjax.Org and many others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Email me ( iworkforthem AT gmail DOT com ) your Customer # & email address on GoDaddy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a good idea. I'm currently hoarding a couple of domains that I bought on a impulse and I would love to see them be put to good use.

<comment><USER5> I own 16, but most of them are custom ones for myself - e.g., lishin.org or my mom's name - and some are just jokes, like cannedgoat.com that I don't really expect anyone to want.</comment></comment>


The StartUp failed but here is what I learnt - <AUTHOR> http://arfahthestartupkid.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/the-startup-failed-but-here-is-what-i-learnt/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was posted by my friend and I thought it was a brilliant lesson for all budding entrepreneurs (myself included).</comment>


Lloyd's Braced for $50mn Carrie Fisher Star Wars Claim - <AUTHOR> http://www.insuranceinsider.com/lloyd-s-braced-for-50mn-carrie-fisher-star-wars-claim <comment><USER2> Maybe it's too soon, but I wonder what Disney will do about ep9. I'm thinking she may have been extremely central to the storyline, perhaps some sort of mother/son/prodigal son forgiveness story like Luke and Vader in RotJ, but sadly that can't happen now, and I think it'd be disrespectful --especially while her family is still in mourning, to pull some crazy CGI stunts and bring her back to life.

<comment><USER3> I suspect the best path forward is simply to cast another actress. They needed CGI for Tarkin and Leia in Rogue One because those movies dovetailed right into A New Hope and the appearances of the actors were a core part of the identity of the characters, but honestly, while it was great to have Carrie Fisher reprise her role as 53-year-old Leia in Episode VII, it would have been perfectly acceptable for them to have cast another actress from the start.

This brings to mind the Harry Potter series. The first two movies had Richard Harris playing Dumbledore, but then he died, so they simply recast the role and gave it to someone else, without any in-universe explanation for the change in appearance. And personally, I think Michael Gambon was a much better Dumbledore than Richard Harris.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would be interested to know what the premium was.

<comment><USER5> You could probably get an order of magnitude estimate by looking up the price of a $1 million term life insurance policy for someone her age and multiplying.

I assume they would get some kind of "bulk" discount, but it'll at least give you an idea.

<comment><USER6> I think the OP was referring how she was _not_ a typical woman of her age, and had the long history of drug use -- hence why they had to use Lloyd's rather than Liberty Mutual.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Infrastructure for provisioning, billing & supporting webapps? Buy or build? - <AUTHOR>

Hypothethical situation: I have a webapp that I want to deploy on a paid subscriptions basis. I would like the sign-up, billing, and provisioning process to be as simple as possible for the user (ie. just a few clicks).
A complicating factor is that the app requires each user to have their own instance of the app. It's not a simple case of 1 user == 1 account, more like 1 user == 1 deployment. You could argue that's not a web app, but for the purposes of this thread, please let's pretend it is :)
I would like opinions on setting up the infrastructure to do this, particularly billing & invoice management, and automated provisioning. Support tickets would be desirable, but not essential.
I know I can always build this myself, but if there is something out there I can use (ie. open source) or buy, then it would be faster to get to market.
Any thoughts on build vs buy?
If buy, any thoughts on what to consider to buy?
I've looked at things like ModernBill and WHMCS, but these are more for web hosting. I don't want stuff like DNS management, email configuration, blah blah. Is there something analoguous for web apps?
Or perhaps a middle of the road approach like buy WHMCS and then write some plugins to do what I want?
Or can someone point me to any past HN posts which are relevant?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Having written two billing systems in the past year, I'll never build one again.

There are certainly advantages to writing your own, we generate custom PDF receipts at GitHub that customers really seem to like, but the amount of time wasted building and maintaining the system was/is fairly substantial.

If I were to do it again, I'd use a hosted service that you can skin to look like your site and let them manage everything.

<comment><USER3> ... such as ... ?

<comment><USER4> <http://www.foxycart.com/>

I have not tried it, anyone has any experience with it?

Unsuitable name for me, but they say you can run in on your own domain, and skin it to match your site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're okay with US-only billing, you can use Amazon FPS in conjunction with EC2's product codes. The product codes allow you to build a machine image which you can authorize each of your customers to use and you can configure how much to charge per instance hour. Amazon keeps track of which customers are running instances and takes care of the billing details (you can do this with other aspects of Amazon Web Services too).

If you require non-US billing, find a billing a system that gives you an API for post-processing hooks (this isn't my area of expertise but it looks like others are offering suggestions here). You can use the API hook to launch an instance at the provider of your choice (EC2, slicehost, etc...) and also send your customer the access info.

With regards to provisioning, I suggest creating your own base machine image and scripting the minor customer or instance specific stuff. This gives you a balance between launch speed (you don't have to install the same stuff every time) and flexibility. If the scripting is simple, you can get away with hacking something on your own. If it's more detailed, I'd suggest Fabric (<http://www.nongnu.org/fab/>) if you're into Python or Rudy (<http://github.com/solutious/rudy/>) for Ruby.

Note: I developed Rudy so I'm biased :]

<comment><USER6> It appears that Amazon FPS will also handle non-US credit cards based on the following note from the pricing section:

 _This fee schedule is for payments by US customers only. For an additional charge of 1% of the transaction amount, non-US customers can make payments using credit cards (but not using Amazon Payments balance transfers or bank accounts at this time)._

<comment><USER5> Excellent! Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A couple services that come to mind:

<http://spreedly.com/> <http://zuora.com/>

Zuora is mucho $$$ though, and Spreedly has a ways to go before it's a full- featured solution. Their current focus I believe is on being solid with regards to ordinary subscriptions first and expanding from there.

Unfortunately, for most of the projects I've done, there are too many types of transactions, extra costs, etc. so I've had to roll my own. I've built a somewhat reusable app for this now, so it's a time saver now, but it was a huge time waster earlier on.

<comment><USER8> Hey, Spreedly guy here - we're _definitely_ a full-featured solution, and we're already servicing dozens of businesses (we've sold 30 Kickstarts [<http://spreedly.com/info/kickstart>] in less than two weeks, so we must be doing something right!). Sorry if we've ever given off a different impression. What you may be referring to is that we're primarily focused on time-based subscriptions for now, vs. usage based subscriptions - that much is true. That said, very soon you'll be able to pile usage charges on top of any time-based subscription, which covers what a lot of businesses need in terms of usage fees.

Still not clear? Probably my fault! Hit me up at firstname.lastname@example.com anytime and I'll gladly clarify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm biased, but I'd strongly recommend taking a look at Spreedly (<http://spreedly.com>). We can't help with the provisioning, but we can make the billing drop-dead simple so you can focus on getting your infrastructure right. The best part is: you can grab an account and give it a spin with no obligation, as test sites are completely free.

FYI, in less than two weeks we've sold 30 of our "Kickstart" plans (<http://spreedly.com/info/kickstart>) - a lot of businesses are hopping on the Spreedly platform, and we're cranking away to build the best billing platform around. Come on in, the water's fine!

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a relevant HN post that came to the top of Google results when I searched for 'spreedly vs amazon fps': <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526517>

</comment><comment><USER10> Funny, in the same exact situation. Building a deployment app and deciding on a billing system. Was thinking about just writing a custom one or maybe writing something for Ubercart since it's drupal-based.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have not use them, but isn't Amazon FPS what you are looking for? <http://aws.amazon.com/fps/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking into Amazon FPS now. Never heard of it before this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would certainly recommend amazon FPS... or do you need more than that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking into Amazon FPS now. Looks like it's mostly billing only, but I'd certainly keep in mind as a component of a possible solution.

<comment><USER13> if you can deploy your app to Amazon, then it seems to be ideal for what you are asking for. Amazon EC2 for the "deployment" piece, Amazon FPS for the billing, and you tack on your charges...</comment></comment></comment>


Implementing a bignum calculator – Rob Pike [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXoG0WX0r_E <comment><USER2> Rob mentions a video demonstrating the development of an APL version of Conway's Game Of Life. Pretty sure it's this one if anyone is interested: [http://youtu.be/a9xAKttWgP4](http://youtu.be/a9xAKttWgP4)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anybody have suggestions for sources of software / computing / codecasting related videos similar to this? Something to put on in the background while working?

TOPLAP ([http://toplap.org/](http://toplap.org/)) is a decent example of this but they are focused on audio/visual entertainment only.

Basically I'm looking for Twitch for programmers.

<comment><USER4> A couple links I have stashed: [http://coderstv.com/](http://coderstv.com/) [http://confreaks.com/](http://confreaks.com/) [http://www.dotconferences.eu/](http://www.dotconferences.eu/) [http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2014/05/must-see-tech-talks- for...](http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2014/05/must-see-tech-talks-for-every- programmer.html)

<comment><USER3> These are some great resources! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Github repo:

[https://github.com/robpike/ivy](https://github.com/robpike/ivy)

</comment><comment><USER6> This snippet from the implementation sheds some light on the origins of Go for me, the mindset from which it's born and why it isn't a language for me.

        interactive := false
        if name == "-" {
            interactive = true
            fd = os.Stdin
        } else {
            interactive = false
            fd, err = os.Open(name)
        }

Or do you think I am reading into it too much?

<comment><USER7> Could you explain why that snippet makes you decide that way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> He wants to compute some bignums, so he writes an APL interpreter in Go...

Now he is scratching his itch and making nice slides to boot.

However, it would have been simpler for him to have typed "python" at the commandline... Python ints are arb precision :)

<comment><USER9> or GNU CLISP which not only has big ints, big ratios, big complex (like all Common Lisp implementations), but also big floats.

Big ratios:

        [2]> (/ 5723475972349572938475982734985723984759823749587 7239457928374598723984759237459723497598234)
        5723475972349572938475982734985723984759823749587/7239457928374598723984759237459723497598234

Big complex numbers:

        [4]> (* 572934759237495723482374957239475982374957239847523485 (sqrt -1))
        #C(0 572934759237495723482374957239475982374957239847523485)

Big float numbers:

        [8]> (SETF (EXT:LONG-FLOAT-DIGITS) 1000)
        1000
        [9]> (sqrt 2.0l0)
        1.4142135623730950488016887242096980785696718753769480731766797379907324784621070388503875343276415727350138462309122970249248360558507372126441214970999358314132226659275055927557999505011527820605714701095599716059702745345968620147285174186408891986095523292304843087143214508397626036279952514079896872534L0

<comment><USER10> Ah yes, but a _small_ userbase!

<comment><USER11> If you're talking about userbase, I presume, Go should have less of a userbase than lisp.

<comment><USER12> People use lisp for something other than a programming discussion talking point?

<comment><USER13> The message board that you posted this to. Written in Arc which is a dialect of lisp.

<comment><USER12> So you mean they use it to create an application that allows them to... talk about lisp.

<comment><USER10> So, the correct answer here would've been that Viaweb--Graham's company that later became Yahoo! Store--was done in Common Lisp. I'm not really aware of any other example of Common Lisp in a real commercial setting other than Mirai (which I think is dead nowadays anyway).

Graham later made Arc, the language in which HN is written. To the best of my knowledge Arc's only major project is in fact Hacker News.

So, essentially, yes, you're correct.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.ptc.com/product/creo/elements](http://www.ptc.com/product/creo/elements)

largely written in a few million lines of Lisp...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get ready for an internship? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a programming internship this summer. I think HN is the right place to ask questions about the process, since many of you work at places I would love to work at.
I'm a freshman at UW Madison, but college is not my first exposure to programming; I'm self taught and have been programming for years on my own.
I currently work as a web developer (PHP/Rails/JavaScript) for the library at my college's hospital.
I'm curious about a few things…
1. Does a college freshman have a shot at an internship with Google, Amazon, or another selective company? It's discouraging to not even have a transcript to send them yet, or any previous experience besides my current job.
2. How should I prepare for an internship at one of those companies? I don't feel like my programming classes are challenging right now. If I want to intern at Google, should I spend more time with C, C++, and Python instead of doing personal projects in Clojure?
3. I've read that if you're looking for a job, a good way to distinguish yourself is to work on open source projects. Is that true for internships too? Does it matter what the project is?
4. What are some other good companies to intern at?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> IMO, I would look for opportunities at smaller companies where you would get more of a chance to see larger parts of the operation.

I'm not familiar with the programs at Google, et al, but you would want to make sure you were not stuck in too much of narrow silo.</comment>