So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-a-bar/ <comment><USER3> I am late in joining this thread and will add only a few observations to supplement the many good comments already here:

1\. Competitor collusion and express agreements to restrict the freedom of each to compete (i.e., horizontal contractual dealings) do indeed expose the colluding parties to potentially serious liabilities under the Sherman and FTC Acts. If that is what is going on here, then Mr. Arrington has fired a major warning shot to those involved asking, in effect, "are you insane to let yourselves get caught up in this sort of activity?"

2\. The irony here is that competitors are completely free to have contacts with one another, to discuss industry problems, and even to work on solutions for how best to handle such problems, _provided_ that such contacts aren't made for an anti-competitive purpose. This is how trade associations work, among other things, and angel investors can and do meet all the time to discuss common issues and problems. Such benign meetings and contacts are very different from colluding to restrict their ability to compete freely in the marketplace through agreements to suppress valuations, etc.

3\. Parallel action by competitors is in itself normally quite harmless and does not subject them to liabilities (for example, the fact that angel investors tend to use common sets of investment documents, tend as a group to dislike convertible notes, etc.). Companies having nothing to complain about legally from the fact that a particular angel investor happens to engage in practices in common with others in the industry that founders happen not to like. All this changes, though, if the competitors (i.e., the angel investors) have engaged in suspicious activities such as secret meetings among themselves to discuss overt ways to limit competition, etc.

4\. Nothing under the law stops any one of these angel investors from deciding as a business matter to form a new fund along with others of such investors and to engage through that fund as a competitor in the venture financing industry. In such case, the investors are no longer competitors and have simply combined forces to compete as a different entity in the industry. If, however, the parties effectively remain competitors and simply form a jointly controlled venture whose aim is to serve as a vehicle by which they might collude in suppressing competition, that vehicle would be unlawful.

Putting all this together, the normal give and take among the myriad angel investors in the Valley and elsewhere is lawful and beyond reproach, even when they do meet to discuss problems. Meetings in a smoke-filled room as part of concerted efforts to restrict normal competitive activities by the participants, on the other hand, are almost blatantly illegal on the face of it and especially so when the participants are among the most prominent players in the industry.

It may well be that some or most of these participants hadn't really realized that they were moving from the benign to the illegal in participating in such meetings over time, and this is where it seems that Mr. Arrington is doing a good turn for them by calling them out before they do something that is irretrievably wrong. Just speculating on this last point but that is how the tone of the piece strikes me.

<comment><USER4> "3. Parallel action by competitors is in itself normally quite harmless and does not subject them to liabilities."

Not sure what your sources are, but courts have ruled that parallel action can be sufficient evidence of conspiracy under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. See e.g. American Tobacco v. United States (1946), available here:

[http://supreme.vlex.com/vid/american-tobacco-v-united- states...](http://supreme.vlex.com/vid/american-tobacco-v-united- states-20015656)

The Supreme Court wrote:

"[The conspiracy's] existence was established, not through the presentation of a formal written agreement, but through the evidence of widespread and effective conduct on the part of petitioners in relation to their existing or potential competitors."

If I remember correctly from my anti-trust class last year, the American Tobacco precedent still stands. You don't need written or audio evidence to get a conviction; anti-competitive behavior in the marketplace is sufficient.

<comment><USER5> I find this somewhat dubious; I wasn't there, but if I was one of those guys, I'm not sure I'd continue the "evil meeting" after Michael stumbled in uninvited. If he came after the meeting ended, why weren't they all "just about to leave."

Having said that, I'm sorry if my confusion gives a way my ignorance of the subject, but are these angels selling anything to a marketplace? I thought angels invested their money. If that's the case, aren't they colluding to the terms of their buying, as a group? Or at least to loosely manage the terms of buying? If that is illegal, why does it apply to angel investing but not, say, Groupon? What I don't understand is what is their "price" that they are colluding to "fix"? I thought antitrust was for the collusion for the price asked, not price willing to pay.

<comment><USER6> Interesting questions... IANAL, but I imagine they're colluding to bring down the valuations of startups, therefore essentially fixing the "price" of their money, to be paid for in startup equity.

If I, and others, say your company is worth a million dollars, then I'm fixing the price of my $500,000 at 50% of your company.

<comment><USER5> IANAL(E), but this scenario would seem to be more of a concern if startups in Silicon valley got together over dinner to deny deals that didn't offer similar terms and prices in dollars for securities of all startups represented at said dinner simultaneously.

As for angels fixing the "price of their money" I don't understand how antitrust applies to this anymore than it would to, say, how LIBOR is determined.

If antitrust applies to colluding on the dollar amount to be paid OUT instead of price asked for money coming in, then if I start a boycott of something (colluding to pay $0) am I guilty of violating antitrust laws?

As I understand it (not much, I admit), antitrust applies to goods and services, not cost of money. If antitrust applied to cost of money, the Federal Reserve would not exist since it's basically an extension of the member banks that make up its institutional board of directors (not board of governers). All they do is get together and fix the price of money to be printed and lent out to member banks.

Also, this whole "I stumbled in on a secret meeting of powerful men conspiring to start a revolution" thing is somewhat suspect; throughout history this gambit, if it actually happened that way, is usually either desperate grab at 15 minutes of fame (which seems unlikely given Michael's popularity), an attempt to gain instant credibility on some esoteric but useful new subject ("I was the only outsider privvy to what happened there, so you can trust me") or, unfortunately, a cynical move feigned by the men in the room to inspire hasty and possibly faulty reactionary stances by the supposed target of their "envy".

I could be wrong though. I just can't believe guys who are careful enough to get to such a position in life would all simultaneously get so careless. On the same day. In the same place.

<comment><USER7> I don't know if care has a lot to do with it. A lot of these folks got successful by taking risks without deep consideration of the consequences (for better or worse). That's why they pay lawyers to tell them when they're pushing the boundaries too much, but in this case the lawyers obviously weren't in on the proceedings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations to PG & company. When I first met Paul years ago, he was musing about spam filters and the finer points of a well-designed lisp. Now he apparently has the top 10 angels in Silicon Valley running scared of him.

<comment><USER9> The interesting thing is unlike that group of Angels apparently in the bar PG's interests are less about helping himself, and more about helping entrepreneurs. From an essay by PG entitled "Why YC":

 _The real reason we started Y Combinator is one probably only a hacker would understand. We did it because it seems such a great hack. There are thousands of smart people who could start companies and don't, and with a relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place, we can spring on the world a stream of new startups that might otherwise not have existed.

In a way this is virtuous, because I think startups are a good thing. But really what motivates us is the completely amoral desire that would motivate any hacker who looked at some complex device and realized that with a tiny tweak he could make it run more efficiently. In this case, the device is the world's economy, which fortunately happens to be open source._

<http://paulgraham.com/whyyc.html>

<comment><USER10> YC's greatest hack is identifying founder material based on technical rather than social proof (the YC app asks for an example of the coolest thing you've ever built, not an example of a cool person that thinks you are cool). This hack is possible thanks to a judges panel full of real nerds. How many super angels or VC's can claim to have the same?

<comment><USER11> I agree that YC are able to identify great hackers and great founders more easily because they are these things themselves. What's little recognized is how big a difference this is between YC and the other YC-like funds.

<comment><USER10> Yes. I had a colleague apply for TechStars and her takeaway from the interview was "he was really focused on where the business was." Doesn't seem in line with what I've heard about YC's primary interest (it's not the business model).

<comment><USER11> It seems kind of obvious that most successful startups don't succeed via the business model they started with. And that great founders can change business models more easily than great business models can change founders. These things are so obvious that they're cliches, in fact, but that doesn't mean that they're common practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it fascinating how the very qualities that lead people to call Michael Arrington an asshole are dramatically in evidence here. It takes a staggering immunity to social mores to walk in on a meeting of rich and powerful friends, friends who are connected to his own business in many ways (read: friends with leverage) and behave the way MA says he did, let alone go home and write that article. Very few people could do it. I'm not sure I could, to put it mildly. I particularly doubt if many (any) of Arrington's competitors ever would. It may take a character disorder to be able to act this way.

In an age when journalists grade themselves by which power-brokers deign to have lunch with them (anybody see David Brooks prattling about this on Charlie Rose the other night? lunch _and_ dinner, he said) it's impressive to see anyone act like this. Especially if what he's saying is true and this really is a matter of right and wrong.

<comment><USER12> I have always felt MA had a certain...brashness, abrasiveness, assholish tone, whatever you want to call it... about him. You could feel it in his articles.

I now feel it is not only helpful but entirely necessary for him to develop that quality in his career path.

Kudos for pushing the boundaries Mr. Arrington. The evidence speaks for itself - you don't see this type of journalism in any industry anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So a blogger gets a tip from a source, knows the people involved, acts on it and smells a rat. He sticks around and talks to a few people he knows, makes a few calls and gets a breaking story.

Sounds to me like bloggers are the new journalists and that traditional media is in big big trouble.

<comment><USER14> a breaking story would name names...him not naming names just means he can use this as a hammer to get better terms for Techcrunch(either I get exclusive to every deal you guys do...or your names will be posted)

<comment><USER15> I would argue it's more ethical to discourage and prevent crime from ever happening in the first place. Seeking satisfaction from "catching the bad guy" (naming names) is to setup a market dependent on the need for new crimes.

Arrington did the right thing. It's not about whether he caught a criminal, it's about whether he prevented someone from becoming one.

<comment><USER16> Someone (maybe everyone) in that group knew what they were doing to be wrong.

I doubt that they will abandon their ethical choice; they'll find smarter ways to do what they'd intended all along.

One thing that might work is if someone in the group has damning correspondence, everyone will panic and promise to "never talk about that summer again," genuinely preventing future problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I do hope he's wrong, or that this a mistake of some sort. The rise of Angel investors has seen a lot of ideas and entrepreneurs get needed money when they might not have under the traditional VC model.

Something like this, if true, will cause the government to step in, and probably regulate and change things for the worse for a great many people. It won't just hurt these few super angels. It will take everyone with it.

<comment><USER18> To be fair, this _is_ Michael Arrington. He's not above sensationalism to get a few extra clicks.

<comment><USER19> This goes well beyond sensationalism. I'm inclined to believe him for three reasons:

1\. Mike's not known for boldly lying. He might publish rumors that Facebook is building a phone too liberally, but I've not heard of him saying "I saw x happen" and it wasn't true. Assuming the account of what he himself saw was accurate it's hard to imagine collusion wouldn't be the purpose.

2\. This sounds like something that would happen. VCs do this crap all the time, why not angels?

3\. Publishing this might be bad for him, and if it were untrue, it would definitely be really bad for him.

<comment><USER20> Add to that that there is no convincing reasons why this group of angels would manufacture this story to lead him on. Unlike with some other TC stories which turned out to be manufactured to discredit TC, in this one, the sources themselves would risk a lot by leaking this - true or false.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, at least one investor seems to have accidentally included himself in the mess (from TC's comments)

<http://twitter.com/speechu/status/25083299594>

<comment><USER22> I just put "forming a cartel" on my list of things not to tweet.

<comment><USER19> Unless you're in Mexico. Then Tweeting is probably a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In what sense do antitrust laws apply to investors? Why is it unlawful for investors to band together to get better terms for themselves?

Wouldn't it be perfectly legal for these people to sit around a table an agree to merge and start a fund? If that's the case, how could it be unlawful for them to work on a joint venture? Just because I don't like the JV doesn't make it unlawful!

<comment><USER22> It sounds like price fixing, even though they are buying and not selling. Check out Wikipedia for a good write-up:

"Price fixing is an agreement between participants on the same side in a market to _buy_ or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand. The group of market makers involved in price fixing is sometimes referred to as a cartel.

The intent of price fixing may be to push the price of a product as high as possible, leading to profits for all sellers, _but it may also have the goal to fix, peg, discount, or stabilize prices_. The defining characteristic of price fixing is any agreement regarding price, whether expressed or implied.

...

Colluding on price amongst competitors is viewed as a per se violation of the Sherman Act regardless of the market impact."

<comment><USER23> Would it still be price fixing if all of them got up from the table and announced the formation of Super Angel Capital Partners? I can't see how; there's tons of VC firms already. If that's not unlawful, how is a joint venture among them unlawful?

Are we just stuck on the fact that they're "angel investors"? The law doesn't recognize any such sector of the venture capital business.

<comment><USER24> If they create a single super angel corporation then they could run afoul of anti-monopoly laws.

<comment><USER23> What? No they don't. There's no such thing as a "monopoly of angel investors". There are as many angel investors as there are people with extra money to invest. In a lot of cases already, groups of powerful people with extra money to invest have already formed very famous companies to do exactly what we're talking about!

Shouldn't the DoJ be going after Kleiner and Sequoia first?

Don't hundreds of doctors and dentists already do stuff like this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As a former competition regulator, I have to say this blog post is a beauty, in content. Making such a serious accusation, albeit one that is very difficult to prove, especially when the accusation is towards your friends is a gutsy/crazy move. This pretty supports PG's prediction that the power is shifting towards founders and startups when raising capital from VCs. Hopefully, this diffuses any further action on the part of the investors. It may be time for a career change...

</comment><comment><USER26> Props to Arrington for the post. He definitely has integrity, and knows how to write an interesting post.

<comment><USER27> he also leaves just enough to the imagination. sure, everyone is assuming the top 3-4 usual suspects, but it was a room full of people -- wondering who were 8,9,10

<comment><USER28> Mike tends to push posts out as he develops the story (eg. the Scamville saga) so expect this to be the first of many posts.

When he picks up a story like this, watch out - Scamville didn't end until Offerpal lost their CEO, Zynga apologized and Facebook changed their policies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's only half the story here because Arrington isn't naming names.

It was a meeting of a group of people in a semi-public place, I don't see why he hasn't named who was there:

"So, I went into the restaurant to find Dave, Ron, Jeff, Mike, Josh, Chris, ..." _(I'm just naming, um, random first names here folks for the purpose of illustration!)_

He's clearly running a power play around the identities...

<comment><USER30> Because Dave, Ron, Jeff, Mike, Josh and Chris would have a defamation suit filed by end-of-day. Clearly MA reached out to the attendees.. I wonder what the other 8 or 9 had to say. That's the other half of the story.

<comment><USER29> If Arrington lists a bunch of people were at a gathering, and they were, then there is nothing to sue over there.

If he says _"they were talking about pricing deals and how to club together to avoid convertable notes"_ , and they were, then there is nothing to sue over even if he has named the people there.

I don't actually get your comment. If we DON'T believe this group were talking about what Arrington is claiming then there is a bigger issue here regardless of whether people were named or not.

<comment><USER28> You go from lawsuit to settlement in a punctuation mark where in reality it is months/years and millions of dollars.

Never give a person wealthier than you a reason to sue you - regardless of if you are wrong or right.

<comment><USER29> I spent the earlier part of my career working for independent and free media and campaigning for free press.

Of course you should never publish anything libelous or incorrect but it saddens me to no end to think that people wouldn't publish something that they could stand by as true, right and accurate simply because they were scared they might get sued.

And certainly someone as the proprietor of a publication of record like TechCrunch (which while perhaps not the most whitest-of-white media outlet, still has something to stand for) owes it to his readership to do what's right.

I guess it all comes down to why you are publishing in the first place - <USER2> communicate truth and facts or for power and ego _(which sure, is hard to tell with TechCrunch at times)_

<comment><USER28> It is a process of journalism. He is using the story as leverage to fill in the remainder of the story. See how the Scamville story evolved.

I think Arrington has shown time and again that he places the story and public interest above all else. To even suggest or insinuate that Arrington is only publishing this story to fuel his own ego is completely wrong. He likely burnt a lot of bridges with todays story and lost a lot of sources in order to give the public a very rare view of what takes place behind closed doors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This thread officially needs a 'grellas bat-signal.

<comment><USER31> Signal answered. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714863>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is major. I worked with Michael Arrington years ago. He wouldn't say this without being sure and there is no stopping him now. He went to Stanford Law School and worked at one of the Valley's top law firms (wsgr.com). Mike, get ready for the witness stand!

</comment><comment><USER33> Arrington has got a lot of balls to call out so many big players at once. I definitely want to see how this plays out.

<comment><USER34> Did he actually call anyone out? I thought this was post was extremely light on substance, actually.

<comment><USER26> He said "it included just about every major angel investor in Silicon Valley" - which people can make easy assumptions about who it is.

<comment><USER35> I'm guessing the top 10 super angels would include Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Ron Conway and the PayPal guys Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Max Levchin, Keith Rabois

Who else?

<comment><USER36> The Quora list is very different from yours. And I think we should all be really careful about guessing, considering how much damage you could do to someone's reputation by guessing wrongly. There's at least one person on your list above who I'd be surprised to see part of this.

Vide the cognitive psychology experiments which show that once you mention a person's name, it gets connected in memory regardless of how doubtful the source ought to be, etcetera.

<comment><USER37> Thiel seems like a clear thinker, but almost anybody can gradually drift in the wrong direction--especially if, as grellas says above, it probably wasn't quite illegal.

<comment><USER36> Well, he ain't on the Quora list and no one there has even suggested him yet, so let's all be a little careful with our public guessing, shall we?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There's a quote I can't quite remember. Goes something like: "When merchants meet to discuss business, the public is rarely the beneficiary".

<comment><USER39> Was it the Adam Smith quote "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public."

Why do I know that off the top of my head? Civ IV... who says games can't be educational?

<comment><USER38> That's the one, thanks. Good old Civ :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There's a comment on Techcrunch that I found particularly interesting: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into- a-b...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-a- bar/#comment-79846761)

"This group does not have a monopoly position in early stage deals. So getting together to discuss how they as individuals/small firms can better compete against much larger VCs and incubators is not price fixing or collusion."

It continues on to expand nicely on the point.

<comment><USER41> Is a monopoly even needed? In most fields I thought it was illegal even if only a few businesses in a market get together, e.g. if a dozen gas station owners in my area got together to discuss coordinating price strategy, that'd be illegal, even though those 12 hardly own the whole market. Though there are legal ways to do it if you aren't _actually_ discussing setting prices, e.g. all the local bakers' shops can get together to discuss difficulties in the current market for baked goods, how to better promote the sector, etc., so long as they aren't working out how to collude in negotiating with their suppliers, or agreeing to minimum prices for bread, or things of that sort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> From the comments:

> No self-respecting conspiracy uses a wiki (or even email).

I laughed.

<comment><USER43> Were you in the room?

<comment><USER44> I don't think that Joshua Schacter is a "super angel" as the TC post uses the term.

<comment><USER42> I'm not even a medium angel.

<comment><USER28> Here is something to consider. You have said yourself that as an angel you prefer to follow deals, rather than set the terms. A lot of angel investors are like that. The problem is that the guys who lead the rounds and set the terms are fixing the market.

While there may be hundreds of angel investors out there, the reason why only 10 of them can rig the market in this way is because most of them, like yourself, are followers.

How about the 90% of the other angels step out and actually lead some deals and price them, so that we have a real investment market at the seed stage.

<comment><USER42> The trend lately is toward convertible notes issued by the startup itself. This means that nobody is leading and nobody is pricing the deal.

There are plenty of other people (VCs, basically) that do lead, when there is a leader. It's just much rarer right now. And the stronger deals, not the weaker ones, tend to be lead; those are the deals where the entrepreneur has the most leverage, not the weakest.

I don't get the impression that anyone is fixing the market, for what it's worth.

But thanks for the outrage and accusations.

<comment><USER28> I didn't mean to come across as outraged or to make accusations - it was a genuine observation.

When I raised a note I set the price, but it was through talking to the investors. That was a while ago though.

I think the core of what Arrington is saying is that they attempted to fix the market. ie. got fed up with how things are atm and tried to fix it in their own way. I know that some of these guys have been against notes for a while, but end up doing them anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Game theory. 10 players make for a highly unstable equilibrium, especially given the potential for absurdly high profits for deviating to fund one hot company. One of them is even "highly uncomfortable." The key is to shop around and negotiate intelligently.

<comment><USER46> There's also the game theory going on within the 10. The one uncomfortable person could have gathered data and evidence on the scam while dragging their feet in participating, then informed to the FBI, gotten their main competitors shipped off to prison, and been the only Superangel left in the game with the pick of the litter and their choice of valuations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> _But the conversation has evolved to the point where these super angels are actually colluding (and I don't use that word lightly) to solve a number of problems, say multiple sources who are part of the group and were at the dinner._

Given Arrington's allegations, why would someone in the group or at the dinner admit to the collusion? These are smart guys talking to a prolific, ballsy blogger--what do they expect will happen? What's in it for them?

 _At least two people attending were extremely uneasy about the meetings, and have said that they are only there to gather information, not participate._

It also strikes me as odd how specific he is when mentioning figures. Why not simply say, "Several people who attended the meeting..."? By specifically saying that there were two, he will have everybody who was there guessing who those two are. Also, if there was just one person, it would make sense for him to specify that there were two to throw off the rest of the group, no?

<comment><USER48> > why would someone in the group or at the dinner admit to the collusion?

He mentioned that they were uneasy with the direction the talks had taken. I could definitely understand a couple of them seeing this admission as a good way to get out of a compromising situation while not leaving themselves at the disadvantage of being an outsider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> There is a Quora thread for tracking who was there: <http://qr.ae/EC7>

<comment><USER50> [http://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-Super-Angels-that- Michael-A...](http://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-Super-Angels-that-Michael- Arrington-is-talking-about-in-his-9-21-10-Techcrunch-post-So-a-Blogger-Walks- into-a-Bar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Screwing over entrepreneurs on the seed stage is just evil. Gordon-Gekko-evil.

<comment><USER52> Impeccable timing, Wallstreet 2 comes out in 2 days

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Can an admin re-title this link? "Arrington Alleges SF Angel Collusion" or some such?

</comment><comment><USER54> I wouldn't be surprised if that's the last we hear of this story; very unlikely Arrington will name drop in the future. However, if this story is true, hopefully it scares off these Angels from forming an investment 'mafia.'

<comment><USER55> I disagree -- I can't imagine that Arrington will hold those names back. He's a journalist first, and increasingly, what seems to be a sort old school one -- he's there for the story.

Right now, there's no need to drive traffic with names -- he's got today's scoop. Give him time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I don't understand how people like this (if the points I'm referring to are truthful, of course) can not maintain some composure.

Guilty silence and a "oh no no" from somebody considered as a friend is a bit ridiculous. I'm searching for the right words right now, but it's sort of ridiculous that Angels like this who have undoubtedly relied on their networking end up handling a situation like this.

A bit amateurish, no?

<comment><USER57> _A bit amateurish, no?_

That scene could be straight from the script of a rather poor B-Movie...

I find it hard to imagine a group of grown up investors behave like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> View from one entrepreneur's seat:

1\. Super Angels networking is expected, allegedly sharing deal terms (convertible notes, etc.) and allegedly working together to try and lower valuations is definitely not representative of a healthy 'free' market.

2\. Singling out a successful model and trying to replicate it and improve upon it isn't horrible, but allegedly singling out one entity (YC) trying to limit something inherently doing good by entrepreneurs is horrible.

3\. Good or bad / legal or illegal, if this episode results in any increase of government regulation/oversight in any way for funding at this level then both sides lose.

4\. This entire episode, for me, reinforces the need for start ups to go bootstrap, achieve revenue and profitability and _then_ , if funding is proved to be needed down the road, go in with a stronger hand when you sit across the table from any funding source.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why do Angels hate convertible notes so much?

<comment><USER60> Convertible notes allow founders to close angel deals one at a time with varying valuations. It makes it much easier for small angels to compete with big angels. The old practice of stock issuance required a big angel to make the whole deal happen, and they could dictate terms. Now, big angels are losing their advantage over small angels.

I understand why they're unhappy, but I encourage them to compete fairly on their merits rather than anything anti-competitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Major players in the industry are reshaping it.

One says "I'm uncomfortable."

Another says "I subscribe to Playboy for the articles."

So Arrington doesn't name names.

Fortunately, everyone is now shamed to ethical conduct.

</comment><comment><USER62> Not saying that he's wrong, but does it seem odd to anyone else that a group of people who are clearly very smart and successful would create a wiki to document their illegal scheme of collusion and price fixing?

</comment><comment><USER63> Issues of price fixing by a group of investors tease at the difference between "mainstream conservative" and "libertarian". A "mainstream conservative" will probably want to have laws in place against price-fixing schemes which can hurt the small business owner/entrepreneur type person because small business is integral to economic stability/growth for the mainstream conservative (like a Jack Kemp, etc.). A hard-core libertarian (Ayn Rand, for instance) would be opposed to any regulations even those against practices which could hurt the entrepreneur. Because whereas in a "conservative ecosystem" the majority of hiring, etc. comes from small business/"main street" or whatever, in a "libertarian/John Galt ecosystem" most of the hiring is done by, you guessed it, John Galt. My point is, a mainstream conservative (a more moderate type) has an interest in preventing price-fixing and helping the small-time businessman whereas the libertarian does not. Therefore, "pro-business" means different things to different people. Pro-small-business (mainstream or moderate conservatism) is different or not always the same at any rate from being pro-big-business (libertarian/Objectivist). Thus, for example Gov. Romney would probably want to keep a lid on price-fixing which hurts mainstreet, while say Rand Paul would not. This is a great topic to tease out the nuances between various so-called "pro-business" or "conservative" viewpoints. Who's right? Who knows, but it is certainly instructive.

</comment><comment><USER64> Someone please explain the finer nuances of the law; I can't see how this is different from professional athletes forming their own association/union and stipulating a "minimum fee" e.g. NBA.

<comment><USER28> the NBA and other sporting leagues are exempt from anti-trust laws in the USA. They get a free pass from the gov:

[http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/role-antitrust- laws-p...](http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/role-antitrust-laws- professional-sports-industry-financial-perspective)

<comment><USER65> That makes it different as law is concercened, but one is as legit as the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> It's too early to write this blog post.

Arrington tried to manufacture a happy medium between not saying anything and outing every person at the meeting. Not outing everyone implies you're not entirely sure. Not being entirely sure, yet talking about it anyway is a cheap way to get a story.

Waiting until things are more clear cut would have earned him points in my book- I suppose it's not worth it when the alternative is having everyone follow the story on TC from now until its conclusion.

<comment><USER21> I'm assuming he's trying to both get a good scoop AND stop the damage these angels can do to startups - the longer he waits, the more damage might be done.

I think he's struck a pretty good balance here by saying what needs to be said and no more, while still keeping it interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is so disappointing. Firstly, I am glad Mike called them out. Took a lot of cajones to do it, and say what you will about TC and Mike...stumbling across something like this and not shutting up takes major balls.

Secondly, here I was rooting for these 'Super Angels' to finally revolutionize the VC industry and send the 'old guard' packing by better understanding the founders (not just talking a good game). Turns out that they are all the same.

I would not be surprised if this further turns founders off of taking angel money altogether and deciding to just get to profitability as quickly as possible - further shifting the funding tide in the founders direction...which weeds out a good amount of these 'Super Angels'.

Either way, I suspect there is a shake-out coming.

Thanks Mike.

</comment><comment><USER68> Michael Arrington is impressively gung-ho, and I admire him for it, but is this big news? See point #16 here: <http://www.paulgraham.com/guidetoinvestors.html>

</comment><comment><USER30> On the flip side, are valuations becoming over-inflated? I also think it's entirely appropriate for this group to be discussing strategies to increase their competitiveness versus YC, newcomers, and VCs. The real sinister claim is that they were talking about "more mundane things, like agreeing as a group not to accept convertible notes in deals." I wonder how that will pan out now.

<comment><USER69> The way to combat over-inflation is to simply not buy. You don't need a secret meeting for that. When investors aren't buying, that's a collective signal to founders selling that their valuations are too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> The real scare for these angels is if entrepreneurs lose trust in them, because then they will start losing out on the hottest deals.

</comment><comment><USER71> if true, this is huge...hugely bad.

</comment><comment><USER72> I bet it's people leaking fake conspiratorial meetings just to screw with Arrington.

We need more information though. Were there any, ahem, cons there? How about any balding acebookfay employees? Were there fewer, greater than, or exactly 500 hats in attendance? Was there anybody there using saccharin? Did your spy camera catch theone?

</comment><comment><USER73> It's important not to get too caught up in the legal technicalities. A strong startup (ideas/execution) still has tons of market power, no matter what a secret group of super-angels agree to do behind closed doors.

And, most importantly, bootstrapping is more feasible than ever and (as noted) YC is coming on strong.

</comment><comment><USER71> @icey: can u change the title to something that explains the nature of the post? Something like "Super-Angels Colluding to Keep Valuations Down."

I know u just kept the original headline, but it's confusing for people who haven't read the post.

Just a request. 'Tis a VERY important thing for all to read in the community.

<comment><USER74> Just a request. Can you spell your words out if you're over the age of 13?

<comment><USER75> Tell him or her to spell words out. No need for the snark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Obviously, this came out an hour ago because Arrington (despite being a trained lawyer himself) spent the day and maybe last night also (knowing him) checking with lawyers about what to write, how to write it, when to release it, etc. Good luck on the witness stand Michael!

</comment><comment><USER76> I could have guessed that <http://paulgraham.com/future.html> would have scared quite a few traditional VCs. I'm surprised that it scares the big angels so much.

</comment><comment><USER77> See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1715840> for Dave McClure's (one of those present) response to these allegations.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is Y-Combinator not considered a super-angel? Arrington says the superangels at the meeting comprise almost 100% of early stage startup funding, but PG wasn't there. What's YC then?

<comment><USER11> The difference is that YC get in before these guys do.

Edit: I think there's another difference too: YC is significantly more founder-friendly. Just like angels have traditionally been more founder- friendly than VCs.

<comment><USER46> Thanks, from reading alot of the comments it sounds like Incubators like YC take startups from nothing to working product/proof of concept, then Angels step in and get them to the VC phase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> There are times where the actions of Michael Arrington make me hate him. And times where I forget all that and appreciate his integrity.

Posts like this keep TechCrunch afloat. Good job.

</comment><comment><USER79> Anyone know if anything similar is happening in London/UK?

Collusion is to be expected in all industries, but something of this scale — if true — just blows the mind.

</comment><comment><USER80> It's moments like these that I deeply, humbly and profoundly love and appreciate the internet and everything and everyone that makes it work.

</comment><comment><USER81> Mike Arrington is selling newspapers. <http://goo.gl/fb/PpyhK>

</comment><comment><USER82> This is a terrible monopoly, because all "ten or so" angel investors are involved.

</comment><comment><USER83> ruh roh

</comment><comment><USER84> Who cares?

TL;DR; Some investors meet up and discuss things.

</comment><comment><USER85> I'm not surprised by the accusation, but I have about as much trust in TechCrunch as I do in a general soothsayer

</comment><comment><USER86> Lets file a class action lawsuit naming the top ten (virtually 100% eh?) super angels then call Michael as a witness. The case is simple: price fixing led to lower sized deals and higher valuations.

I almost never advocate lawsuits, but in this case it is totally justifiable. Just for the record, I'm actually not against collusion and price fixing as an idea (I believe that eventually market forces will correct it), but I'm against it if it is illegal because the market should be able to trust that laws are enforced.

Sue the bastards for billions worth of equity.</comment>


Ask HN: How long does it take for the "More" link to return "expired link"? - <AUTHOR>

At the bottom of HN pages is a "More" link to go to the next page of links.  Often times this return "link expired" or something of the sorts.  How long does it take for you to be sitting on a page before this kicks in? <comment><USER2> Not long enough, it feels like it's 5 - 10 minutes.

What's the benefit of doing it like that rather than a page=x or offset=x?

<comment><USER3> You get to see the second page as it was when you opened the front page, i.e. no duplicate/missing stories.

<comment><USER2> Ah that makes sense. In that context it's an interesting question on how to handle 'expiring'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> HN is written in arc, and many links point to thunks/closures ("if the user clicks on this link, run the following function on the current data"). IIRC, such thunks are valid until the memory is needed for something else.

So it depends on server load; maybe it's time for another memory upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's usually around 15 - 20 minutes. Makes me feel like a bomb defuser, having to make sure to get to the next page before time runs out whilst working on other tabs.

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends on server load, but 30 minutes will usually do it.</comment>


Lack of cdnjs activity - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cdnjs/cdnjs/issues/13524 <comment><USER2> Hey everyone,

My name is Thomas, one of the original founders of cdnjs along with Ryan (linked below by another commenter).

We originally posted cdnjs on Hacker News in 2011 -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828516)

The project was originally created on AWS Cloudfront, Ryan and I thought we could handle the bills. In retrospect that was incredibly naive so we were fortunate to partner with Cloudflare.

At the time, cdnjs was a baby, Cloudflare had just started entering the market.

In short, Cloudflare always owned the domain, cdnjs.cloudflare.com, meaning, we were constrained to work under the DNS level.

We have both put considerable amounts of work into the project, but nothing compared to the community and the "core" contributors. I put "core" into quotes because for the last 5 years, cdnjs has largely been run by a highly dedicated man named Peter.

[https://github.com/PeterDaveHello](https://github.com/PeterDaveHello)

Peter built enormous amounts of infrastructure to support cdnjs. He is extremely diligent, intelligent and determined.

The project was Ryan's and I "baby" but we were happy to relinquish control, sorry for all the "buts", but we were not in a position to control due to the technical and commercial reasons.

Ryan and I have never personally profited off the project, we've only paid bills and late night ssh sessions.

Conversations are underway to move forward, it is likely that the project will move to an unpkg setup (assets are just mirrored to npm).

A lot to say, but I'm at a lack of words.

Happy to answer any and all questions.

<comment><USER3> Do you guys have any plans for short term relief to clear out the pending PRs and keep the show running?.

<comment><USER4> Nothing that I've heard so far - though I'm happy to be corrected by Thomas or Ryan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a former maintainer / librarian on cdnJS. I helped out some years ago when I wanted to learn how version control and git worked. This was in the pre-automation era (2013 to 2014 in my case), and I went through the existing libraries to find outdated instances, located new versions of the same, raised the PR to update it. All good.

Back then, and I don't know how much has changed, the libraries were maintained on GitHub and CloudFlare did the hosting. I wasn't aware of any problems with either organisation doing what they were doing, the system worked just fine. The founders (see [https://cdnjs.com/about](https://cdnjs.com/about) for confirmation) Thomas and Ryan were around, but not super active. Thomas was involved in building out some of the automation infrastructure, but the day-to-day of updating the repo was largely undertaken by the maintainers, and that was fine. I never 'met' either founder, but we had occasional email back and forth and they were grateful for my maintainer-ing.

I used the GitHub Mac app because I was finding my way. Whenever I changed any library, the action of the app checking a HUGE repo for any changes pegged my laptop for a few minutes every time. Not ideal, but the process of doing this librarian-ing helped me learn about a heap of stuff.

According to [1] I stopped on cdnJS mid-2014. Things got a bit twitchy for me when a library (edit: jPlayer) was pulled from the file structure because it was compromised (edit: XSS) or found malicious at release. I had a couple of user complaints directed at me because I was the one that added it in good faith originally (it passed the malware checks I ran on it). The founders stepped up to explain it wasn't me that was to blame, and one person didn't take that too well -- basically they found me on other software forums, posted threats to me and explained how the library that I had added, and someone else had removed, was crucial to their business and they'd lost such-and-such dollars in revenue with that library 404-ing without notice and that they were coming to find me and extract the money from me by force. It all died down a few weeks later.

[1] [https://github.com/petecooper?tab=overview&from=2014-12-01&t...](https://github.com/petecooper?tab=overview&from=2014-12-01&to=2014-12-31)

Edits: clarity.

<comment><USER6> > they found me on other software forums, posted threats to me and explained > how the library that I had added, and someone else had removed, was crucial > to their business and they'd lost such-and-such dollars in revenue with that > library 404-ing without notice and that they were coming to find me and > extract the money from me by force

Wow, that really takes "open source maintainer abuse" to a whole other level.

<comment><USER7> If cdnjs was an enterprise offering it would be reasonable to expect either a notification of removal and a generous transition period, or just cdnjs disinfecting the package behind the scenes (and then boasting about it).

But expecting the same from a free service is unreasonable. Stalking people and asking for damages because they didn't meet an unreasonable expectation is beyond unreasonable.

<comment><USER8> > it would be reasonable to expect either a notification of removal and a > generous transition period

For security issues like XSS in live and deployed libraries?

I mean, I don't agree that the library should ever be removed, but if you are of the opinion that vulnerable libraries should be pulled, they should be pulled quickly no?

<comment><USER7> What's worse: uninterrupted service with a time window where you are vulnerable to a known XSS attack, or your service suddenly going offline, customers calling your support but all you can tell them is that you will be back in a few days, but at least they are not vulnerable to XSS in the meantime?

Of course for a small startup a few days notice before removal is enough, but for a large company a few days may be barely better than no heads up at all. Not everyone can move with the same agility.

If you don't pull it at all you risk people staying on the library forever because they don't want to touch a working system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a lesson here for anyone who dreams of getting famous maintaining something in the open source world - if it grows huge and you're not willing to share control (and fame, and maybe money) you can't take really a break from it. You will always have to be there or risk losing it very quickly.

Software development at scale is about much more than code. It's about maintaining relationships with people, being willing to trust other people can do good work without your input, and sharing responsibility for what you started. All the really awesome open source projects have people who are good at those things at their core.

<comment><USER10> Yes. Please CDNjs, give us enterprise level support because all of us pay you the gigantic salary of...

Nothing.

Wait. Okay, no, You can't take a break because we give you huge donations that make it so the 5 maintainers can afford spend time working on it. You can easily feed 5 people or families on the annual donations of...

$52.65 [1]

Okay. In all seriousness. No one doing open source owns _anyone_ _anything_. Software at scale is a job. Jobs have salaries. Microsoft depends on it? How about Microsoft spends 10% of an engineering salary supporting it?

[1] [https://opencollective.com/cdnjs#section- budget](https://opencollective.com/cdnjs#section-budget) They also have patreon, which is bringing in $0 per month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess the lesson to learn here is that you shouldn't rely on externally hosted assets. Just host it yourself, its not that hard. If you're concerned about the bandwidth cost, you should probably charge more for the service your providing.

<comment><USER12> There is a downside though: a copy has to be downloaded for each website, so each first website load is slowed down.

What's missing is a way to tell the browser to use a certain resource (identified by its hash) and a url to download it.

That way the browser could cache the object across websites and download from a source that the requesting website controls.

It could look like this

        hash://sha256/71dc8dd15ea156387fa9efaf380e7f8d39187a549649bec62a39aee3cf4fdc55//https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cdnjs/cdnjs/2c95eae0dc3569f0cb15c8a5f9173220b49156bc/README.md

I also vaguely remember that magnet links were similar.

<comment><USER13> _> a copy has to be downloaded for each website, so each first website load is slowed down._

The major browsers (FF, Chrome, Safari) all fragment cache by the domain in the URL bar now, for privacy reasons, so this doesn't apply anymore.

 _> the browser could cache the object across websites and download from a source that the requesting website controls_

You can't do this without reintroducing the same privacy issues that cache fragmentation was introduced to prevent.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, checking, FF and Chrome don't do it yet, but they will soon: [https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5730772021411840](https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5730772021411840) , [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536058](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1536058)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the cache partition description. This will make projects like cdnjs less beneficial. The proposed hash:// scheme at least would leave it to the attacked site which resources to expose to such an attack.

Performance vs security trade offs seem to be popping up everywhere recently.

<comment><USER13> A "share cache if hashes match" approach was considered with [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/Subres...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/Subresource_Integrity) but not included in the initial version. There's been talk ([https://hillbrad.github.io/sri-addressable- caching/sri-addre...](https://hillbrad.github.io/sri-addressable-caching/sri- addressable-caching.html) , [https://github.com/w3c/webappsec-subresource- integrity/issue...](https://github.com/w3c/webappsec-subresource- integrity/issues/22)) about allowing sites to opt in, but then you're opening up a new way of tracking users across sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hello from Cloudflare! We're involved with CDNJS as we host the CDN-part of the project. We will support CDNJS and the sites which rely on it, period. If your site uses CDNJS you can trust it will continue to be fast and functional.

We have engineers currently working with the CDNJS team to get updates happening again. Once that is done we will start to think about the best way to keep CDNJS updating without requiring as much human intervention in the future. Thanks for your patience and feel free to ask any questions here.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for everything <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is why I recommend jsDelivr instead: [https://www.jsdelivr.com/](https://www.jsdelivr.com/)

It's a free CDN that automatically pulls from NPM or Github based on repo URL without any submission/approval bottlenecks. It's also more robust with multiple CDN and DNS providers.

<comment><USER16> [https://unpkg.com/](https://unpkg.com/) as well

cdnjs doesn't work well with es6 modules or at least requires more manual labor. unpkg and jsdelivr work because they keep the structure defined in the package.json

<comment><USER17> I would definitely avoid unpkg.com

[https://twitter.com/centrisimo/status/1190213354213838855](https://twitter.com/centrisimo/status/1190213354213838855)

[https://twitter.com/vdanielpop/status/1190234073987518465](https://twitter.com/vdanielpop/status/1190234073987518465)

[https://twitter.com/BaggaleyGeorge/status/119026004939189043...](https://twitter.com/BaggaleyGeorge/status/1190260049391890434)

[https://github.com/mjackson/unpkg/issues/176](https://github.com/mjackson/unpkg/issues/176)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like the "founder" is [https://github.com/ryankirkman](https://github.com/ryankirkman). Doesn't look like he's MIA but rather distracted / doing something else.

<comment><USER19> No activity since Oct 3. I wouldn't draw any strong conclusion from this in either direction.

<comment><USER20> Looks like he made contributions to a private repository on Oct 25.

<comment><USER19> You are right, I missed that. One can clearly see it in the punch card chart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 410 GONE is a potential problem in any important open source project with a low bus factor.

<comment><USER22> The problem is that if you spread the privileges between many people, especially in a voluntarily project, it usually ends up with no-one doing any work. I have experienced it over and over again. Meanwhile if there is only one person in charge he/she will often end up doing a tremendous amount of work. It's like, if the the whole organization depends on you, you feel more responsibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, I've read the whole linked Issue and only then understood that it's not in fact CJDNS[1]. The latest commit there is Aug, 6, which is very frustrating. I'd love to see HN crowd paying more attention to such projects.

[1] [https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/](https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/)

<comment><USER24> Is there a specific bug or missing feature that has you frustrated in that project?

And also, note that yeah they last pushed to master in August, but they've been doing work since then on at least one other branch. [https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/tree/crashey](https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/tree/crashey)

Software _should_ mature and when it does, development _should_ slow down. I don't use cjdns myself, but from what I've heard it seems to be a solid piece of software.

If you had personally submitted a PR to the project and it was sitting there unacknowledged, or you were seeing lots of PRs by others sitting unresponded to then I could see a reason for being frustrated. But there are only two open PRs at the moment, and only one of them is without any comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's one think to make and release open source software. It's entirely another to maintain a free service.

</comment><comment><USER26> The entire cdnjs is one dude plus some "core" maintainers with no access? Amazing.

<comment><USER27> Wait until you hear about OpenSSL.

<comment><USER28> Can someone tl;dr for me?

<comment><USER29> Heartbleed was a direct result of lack of resources. Billions of dollars have been shifted through OpenSSL but nobody thought to contribute back to this critical infra.

<comment><USER30> NTP was being maintained by 1 guy in 2016: [https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/time-is-running- ou...](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/time-is-running-out-for- ntp.html)

And then some committee came along and thought everything was crap and they'd do it better. Featuring ESR: [https://lwn.net/Articles/713901/](https://lwn.net/Articles/713901/)

An Internet without a reliable way of figuring out the true time would be... messy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Really sad to see this, I remember relying on cdnjs at a few old jobs over the years. Hope they get this sorted.

If anyone is looking for alternatives, I created Pika CDN as a modern alternative for cdnjs/jsdelivr/unpkg. It runs off of npm (so no approval bottlenecks) and is 100% modern ESM (so you can `import` every package directly in the browser without a bundler). [https://www.pika.dev/cdn](https://www.pika.dev/cdn)

</comment><comment><USER32> At the risk of seeming trollish...

What are we doing? Deploy the donations!

</comment><comment><USER33> Hypothetical question - what if a "founder" of a widely adopted service like cdnjs becomes incapacitated or dead, is everyone supposed to just follow a fork or is there some kind of provision to hand over control to someone? How can the successor be chosen in such cases?

<comment><USER8> Just this happened in the Clojure community when Raynes (Anthony Grimes) died. He made a lot of utils and projects for the community available open source and since his passing in 2016, community forks have been available in other organizations or willing users who fork and continue maintenance.

See for example [https://github.com/Raynes/tentacles](https://github.com/Raynes/tentacles) which now "moved" to clj-commons [https://github.com/clj- commons/tentacles](https://github.com/clj-commons/tentacles)

Edit: just learned after looking up more about it that Raynes also seems to have been behind the creation of Elixir's Mix toolkit (Mix is Bundler, RubyGems, and Rake combined) so he touched on a lot of peoples life outside of Clojure as well.

<comment><USER33> Wow that's very sad to hear, I use mix all the time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How many rely on these CDNs as core (yet free) infrastructure?

<comment><USER35> CDN JS isn't the CDN. The gives you links and shortcuts to use other CDNs, like Cloudflare, MaxCDN, Stack-something and others. Don't think any of the libraries are served from CDNJS properties itself - how would they pay the bills?

<comment><USER36> are you sure ?

[https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/16.10.2/cjs/rea...](https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/16.10.2/cjs/react.development.js)

[https://cdnjs.com/libraries/react](https://cdnjs.com/libraries/react)

<comment><USER35> Yeah the fuse is the actual hosting and the second is the index page. So you could fork the repo, reach out to Cloudflare and start on newcdnjs.com for the index and newcdnjs.cloudflare.com for hosting.

<comment><USER4> Whilst that's do-able, this means you'd be starting a new CDN on a new domain from scratch. Bringing the existing CDNJS traffic over to something new would be a very difficult challenge.

<comment><USER37> Why is that? If CloudFlare is on-board, they can help adding redirects where needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Okay, this is what the fork button is for.

<comment><USER39> Forking is not as trivial as you make it sound. You need to setup CI/CD with the new fork, then persuade the community to get on board the new fork. The bigger problem is to get the infrastructure and money to host a live CDN that serves the users.

<comment><USER40> To clarify: it looks like CloudFlare is the actual CDN behind CDNJS. And getting on board the new fork would mean updates to every single reference to CDNJS URLs (in codebases), on top of the community of contributors moving. Yikes.

<comment><USER41> Seems to me like Cloudflare would be in a position where they could effectively decide on a new official fork and make sure it is one that is more sustainably maintained, then.

<comment><USER15> Cloudflare is already part of the jsDelivr network, if they're going to redirect then they should just redirect to that completely.

<comment><USER8> Seems there is a vital difference in their operating procedures though as jsDelivr is owned and operated by the for-profit company Prospect One and on their whims, compared to cdnjs which is community driven (even if the core community is really, really small).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > No direct financial sponsorship (or any funding) for core maintainers to > work on cdnjs

Unpopular opinion ahead: I find that demanding money after "voluntarily" contributing to an open-source almost offensive to the spirit of OSS. Money changes the incentives around a community project in an irreversible way. Note that the issue here has nothing to do with financial support.

EDIT: This is regarding the "core maintainers" comment in the linked thread, and not a judgement of anyone's ability. I gave away years of my own time to open source projects earlier in my career. It was very rewarding in many ways, even financially - what I learned made me a lot better at my job.

Am I not allowed to be ok with that, and believe that a paid contribution model is not ideal for OSS?

<comment><USER43> So if someone asks "why don't you do more voluntary work" and the answer is "besides some organizational issues there no financial support" you find that offensive?

<comment><USER42> That was not the question, and the problem at hand has nothing to do with lack of funding. That actually makes the pledge even worse.

When there are not enough interested persons to keep a project alive, let it die. As shown in other comments, the same infra can be achieved in an automated fashion without the need for lots of human intervention.</comment></comment></comment>


Perl Regular Expression Matching Is NP-Hard - <AUTHOR> http://perl.plover.com/NPC/ <comment><USER2> This result was (as far as I know) first published in 1990 by Aho. [1]

In 2001 I posted online a reduction from SUBSET-SUM to regular expression matching with back-references (which I worked out on paper while on holiday, in the days before the internet was readily accessible from Greek islands). [2]

1\. A. Aho. Algorithms for finding patterns in strings. In J. van Leeuwen, editor, Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, volume A, chapter 5, pages 255–300. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1990.

2\. [http://bumppo.net/lists/fun-with- perl/2001/06/msg00008.html](http://bumppo.net/lists/fun-with- perl/2001/06/msg00008.html)

<comment><USER3> For those that don't know, Alfred Aho is the "a" in awk (Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure the date of the linked page, but this is why RE2[0] was created. Russ Cox has some examples where PCRE falls over flat[1].

EDIT: Looks like the original linked page was first published in 2001[2].

[0] [https://github.com/google/re2](https://github.com/google/re2)

[1] [https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html](https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html)

[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://perl.plover.com/NPC/](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://perl.plover.com/NPC/)

<comment><AUTHOR> From the Cox article:

 _As far as the theoretical term is concerned, regular expressions with backreferences are not regular expressions. The power that backreferences add comes at great cost: in the worst case, the best known implementations require exponential search algorithms, like the one Perl uses. Perl (and the other languages) could not now remove backreference support, of course._

Cox then proposes a hybrid engine that can be quicker when capture groups aren't needed. TCL has this sort of hybrid implementation, [http://wiki.tcl.tk/396](http://wiki.tcl.tk/396). It's worst case performance won't be big-O better than Perl's for pathological cases that require backtracking.

If P no more or less equals NP today than in 2001, the article's conclusion has not lost correctness.

<comment><USER5> > Cox then proposes a hybrid engine that can be quicker when capture groups > aren't needed.

Capture groups aren't the same thing as backreferences. You can do capturing groups fine in linear time (or at least, something close to linear time).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the clarification. This page was helpful: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/thwdfzxy(v=vs.110)....](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/thwdfzxy\(v=vs.110\).aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This result has always been a bit of a head-scratcher for me, in that it seems to require that we increase the pattern size (specifically, the number of back-references). While the result is correct, it seems to run counter to common usage of regular expressions, where the regular expression is fixed and the interest is generally in how fast a given regular expression runs over N bytes of input data.

It feels a bit like informing people that comparing two integers is O(N) because maybe the integers are bignums with N bits each; true, but counter to common usage.

<comment><USER7> For a given piece of text, pattern-matching is (if P!=NP) exponential in the number of back-references (one measure of "size of the pattern"), in the general non-lucky cases of patterns.

<comment><USER6> This seems plausible, but is the inverse of the traditional expectation of what grows and what stays the same. I refer only to a pragmatic experience of regex implementation (as opposed to a theoretical refutation of the point) - the size of the pattern is typically a constant and the metric of interest is usually the difficulty of scanning a _fixed_ pattern over an arbitrary and increasing-sized input buffer with worst case input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe relevant: Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS)

</comment><comment><USER9> Almost every knows that supporting backrefs makes it slow, i.e. exponential. I'm tired of these excuses which come up all the time.

What is perl5's solution to this problem? Saying that is unsolvable (like here), and supporting external matchers. Nobody uses them because it's a joke.

What it should of course do is to check for abnormal backrefs and use a fast matcher without backrefs. 90% of the regexes have no backrefs.

There would be a tiny performance problem if perl5 would use a normal dynamic one-pass compilation, something a modern matcher does. But it uses old-style two-pass compilation, so it's trivial to check if there's a backref, and use a proper Thompson NFA if not. Or a faster jitted variant. Instead p5p still holds on to their awful Spencer DFA with longjmp's all over the place to fix the broken architecture, and engages heavily in badmouthing better algorithms and implementations.

The few changes that were done there made it even slower. Davem's conversion from recursion to iteration caused a significant performance bump. Davem's support for proper /e (eval rhs expressions) caused another significant performance bump. You are not allowed to critize that. The p5p zealots will come all over you. Ross Cox ran away very fast.

</comment><comment><USER10> If it's NP-hard, it's not really a "regular expression". It's more like a SNOBOL pattern, but with worse syntax. In SNOBOL, backing up was referred to as "pulling the needle back" as it backed out of a failed subpattern to try a different one.

<comment><USER11> The title says "Perl regular expression". It is well known that they have important extensions compared to the things known as regular expressions in theory.</comment></comment>


Why do so few university graduates start their own businesses? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/14/why-do-so-few-university-graduates-start-their-own-businesses <comment><USER2> My guess is it has something to with trade schools. The article and underlying study it cites don't say what types of businesses were started, but non- graduates are probably much more likely to learn a specific trade. And between the person that graduates with a degree in finance or instead went to school to be an electrician, the electrician is more likely to start their own business and be self-employed.</comment>


The Q# Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/quantum/quantum-qr-intro?view=qsharp-preview <comment><USER2> Anyone else notice how the <title> of this page is "Intent and product brand in a unique string of 43-59 chars including spaces | Microsoft Docs"?

Which is obviously a placeholder, so I wonder how much Microsoft really cared about this release.

<comment><USER3> _I wonder how much Microsoft really cared about this release._

Or someone could have made a mistake.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for pointing out this mistake. I'll let the right person know to get this updated.

Some context: Every article on docs.microsoft.com is written in markdown. However there is some additional metadata front matter that is easy to overlook (and new authors may not always be familiar with it). I certainly have done that before myself.

Disclaimer: I'm a Developer Advocate for Azure. My parent group also owns the docs.microsoft.com infrastructure.

<comment><USER5> I laughed at this:

<meta name="keywords" content="Don't add or edit keywords without consulting your SEO champ.">

<comment><USER6> Some of this accidentally made it into production :) We're working on fixing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe some HN reader who is more familiar with quantum computing can help me answer this question: how broadly applicable is quantum computing? I know that it breaks some forms of cryptography and reduces the security of others, but aside from that I haven't heard of many practical uses for it. Is it destined to remain a niche area of computing or is it more broadly applicable than I've been led to believe?

<comment><USER8> I think "broadly applicable" is not yet something we can state definitively, because the technology itself is not broadly available. I think it would be like trying to guess if the first computer made by Alan Turing would be broadly applicable at the time it was invented - he surely thought so, yet its invention was only realized in response to code breaking during WWII.

However, the applications are numerous far beyond cryptography. Quantum computing is an entirely different fundamental type of computing that accepts uncertainty at its core, which is actually quite a powerful concept in and of itself. I mean, imagine Boolean logic.. true, false... and now you have "maybe" (due to the nature of qubits)... I think that for stochastic/random processes and modeling the real world, the uncertainty can be a very powerful tool. Of course, that's just one small part of quantum computing.

Here's some more info from DWave's website about applications: [https://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading- series...](https://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading- series/quantum-computing-primer)

I am curious if there is a link between Google Deepmind and DWave, but not sure there is one.

<comment><USER8> Not sure of the down vote here. I think that existing concepts such as ternary logic[1] prove the applicability of alternative (alternative to binary I mean), multi-state computing models already.

So, quantum processing is a different computing model and programming model, which up until recently has been too complicated to be in reach of the public, much like the Turing machine once was. I suspect with advances in cloud computing and programming tools like this Q# language, it will bring these advanced capabilities to a wider mass and then the techology's full potential can be more fully realized.

I understand the parent's question, but perhaps an actual quantum computing scientist could answer here instead of me.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- valued_logic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Germans will probably call it Quiz :D

(Haltone increases (#) bring the suffix 'is' (like F# == Fis) and 'Q-is' sounds pretty much like 'Quiz')

<comment><USER10> I haven't talked to German programmers lately. Is C# pronounced "Cis"?

<comment><USER11> The musical note C# is pronounced Cis, the programming language is pronounced C-sharp. Same for F#

<comment><USER12> If only there were a convenient way to enter rare characters on ordinary keyboards. There would be no more confusion between the musical note C𝄰 and the programming language C#. Or maybe the language would be called C𝄱 instead, confusing everyone to no end. (Those are three different symbols.)

EDIT: It appears that HN eats the "music sharp sign" character, but not "musical sharp up" or "musical sharp down".

<comment><USER13> For the record I only see the programming language #, neither of the other two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there any open source developments in quantum computing? MS seems to be doing a lot in this area but I'd hate to be limited to what they offer.

<comment><USER15> Microsoft's Language Integrated Quantum Operations Simulator is available on Github [http://stationq.github.io/Liquid/](http://stationq.github.io/Liquid/)

<comment><USER16> That is not open source. Note that the meat of it is in the form of compiled binaries in the /bin directory: [https://github.com/StationQ/Liquid/tree/master/bin](https://github.com/StationQ/Liquid/tree/master/bin)

In this case, GitHub isn't being used so much as an open source collaboration tool, but rather a file host.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if resharper supports q#?

</comment><comment><USER18> Still waiting for C99 to happen. If they dedicated just a fraction of the effort put into C#, VB.Net, and PowerShell we could have had a proper, modern C frontend written from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER19> Jeez. First curl and now q?

Well, if Microsoft isn't going to give a fuck about implied trademarks, and just aim to be as confusing as possible, I think we can introduce the "windows programming language"...

<comment><USER20> I'm an ignorant pleb, is this the Q you're thinking of?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(programming_language_from_K...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_\(programming_language_from_Kx_Systems\))

If so, honestly seems kind of esoteric and I'm not really offended by Microsoft using that letter.

<comment><USER19> > honestly seems kind of esoteric

Q# is more esoteric than Q is.

Has far fewer users, and in every way less of a claim to the name.

... just like "curl".

> I'm not really offended by Microsoft using that letter

Okay, but I am. Now what?

<comment><USER21> Sincere question: Does C# offend you?

<comment><USER19> > Sincere question: Does C# offend you?

No. C# has some relationship with C and C++ and it's clear that Microsoft wants us to think about the C-ness of C# when we see the "C" in C#; C's implied trademark is being respected here.

Now my turn for a sincere question:

If someone gets the name "curl" and everyone in a market understands that name means something, and someone comes around and uses the name for something else[1], why do you think that's okay?

[1]: [http://web.archive.org/web/20160819042745/https://github.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160819042745/https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/pull/1901) (archive.org link since github is taking a long time to load)

<comment><USER21> >If someone gets the name "curl" and everyone in a market understands that name means something, and someone comes around and uses the name for something else[1], why do you think that's okay?

I never said it was ok. I actually didn't know about this until this thread and didn't know the details until I read the link you posted. I think that is shady and wrong. On top of that, curl is so popular that it is hard to believe those who implemented that command in Powershell did not know about that already.

That said, when it comes to a language it is entirely possible for people to not know that a language Q already exists. Also, it is going to be hard to confuse the two languages when searching for resources, since majority of people looking for Q# resources are going to actually be typing in "Q#" and not "Q". On top of that, Q being the first letter in quantum and it being a language designed for quantum computing makes sense. Plus they add their signature # at the end which they seem to like to do for new languages (J#, C#, F#). Unlike curl, I see very little malice in the naming of the Q# language

EDIT: I have another sincere question for you: What are your thoughts on the J[0] and J#[1] programming language names? Microsoft created J# as a bridge between Java and Visual J++ to transition to .NET. This was in 2002, 12 years after the J programming language first appeared.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_\(programming_language\))

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

<comment><USER19> > when it comes to a language it is entirely possible for people to not know > that a language Q already exists.

I don't buy it.

[https://www.bing.com/search?q=q+programming+language](https://www.bing.com/search?q=q+programming+language)

> it is going to be hard to confuse the two languages when searching for > resources, since majority of people looking for Q# resources are going to > actually be typing in "Q#" and not "Q".

Again, I don't buy it.

[https://www.bing.com/search?q=q%23+programming+language](https://www.bing.com/search?q=q%23+programming+language)

Try harder.

> they add their signature # at the end which they seem to like to do for new > languages (J#, C#, F#).

which follow Java, C, and System F.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a Battery Cut Microsoft Datacenter Costs by a Quarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.theplatform.net/2015/03/13/how-this-battery-cut-microsoft-datacenter-costs-by-a-quarter/ <comment><USER2> here are the batteries they're using:

[http://www.amazon.com/NCR18650B-3400mAh-Rechargeable- Battery...](http://www.amazon.com/NCR18650B-3400mAh-Rechargeable-Battery- Panasonic/dp/B00DHXY72O)</comment>


Working around the EC2 outage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dotcloud.com/working-around-the-ec2-outage

<comment><USER2> Having read that (and assuming it's accurate) I really wonder how anyone in their right mind can see EC2 as a viable hosting solution.

<comment><USER3> EC2 is built for scalability and distributed systems. The article seems to give a negative spin on something which is the authors own fault.

In most traditional hosting environments you have e.g. one web server. If this one server goes down your website stops working. A solution would be to have two web servers behind a load balancer. If one web server goes down, the other takes over and your site continues to work.

A lot of people who are hosting on EC2 place all their application components in the Virginia data-centers (because its the cheapest data center for reasons the article points out). If the Virginia data center is down nothing works any more. However, EC2 gives you the option to distribute your website over multiple data centers in case of an event like this.

If you choose not to take advantage of this architecture you're no different than running your website on a single web server. E.g. a single point of failure. With EC2 you have to ability to set up a website that never goes down.

Of course, distributing your web site over multiple data centers can be costly. But I guess it's pick and choose, not bitch and moan.

<comment><USER2> Well ok that's understood. But still - instances randomly crashing is not acceptable under any circumstances in my view.

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear. DotCloud is in fact designed to withstand instances randomly crashing.

So far however, it has not been designed for instances randomly crashing _across multiple datacenters_. I will add that neither is the canonical high- availability designed _recommended by Amazon_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quick answer: have presence in both the VA and CA locations.

<comment><USER4> The corollary is: ignore the AZ feature entirely. You may be right, but that's a big hit to the attractiveness of AWS.</comment></comment>


What is the karma threshold for downvoting? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Last adjustment I saw was to 500.

Why do you ask? Is it just idle curiosity, or is there something you think should be downvoted?

It's worth saying again that only comments can be downvoted, never submissions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answer! It was really just idle curiosity.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone care to speculate as to why only comments can be downvoted?

<comment><USER3> "Good"/useful submissions will (hopefully) get upvoted anyways, so there isn't really a need to downvote the "bad" ones. It could also be considered a deterrent for new users who are still learning what is "good" to submit, or it could be used for an automatic downvote bot or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't the same thing be said about good/useful comments?</comment></comment></comment>


Optimization and the Standard Deal - <AUTHOR> http://antipatter.com/2011/08/optimization-the-standard-deal/

<comment><USER2>
      1) Institutions optimize to capture value for themselves.
      2) Therefore, any "standard deal" offered by such an
         institution has been optimized towards their benefit,
         and away from yours.

I think there are some good insights in this article, but I don't think that 2 follows from 1. Yes, the institution prefers its own needs, but it's not necessarily true that these needs are opposite of one's own. A business benefits from having satisfied workers, the workers benefit if the business continues to operate, etc.

I like the restatement at the bottom even worse: _The problem with the Standard Deal is that it's optimized to take value away from you._

There is a difference between optimizing for one thing and optimizing against another. It doesn't have to be a zero sum game between the owners and the workers. Optimizing for the institution does not imply trying to minimize benefit for the employee. There are win-win situations, especially if one is willing to count the consumer and the environment as external.</comment>


But It Worked in the Computer Simulation - <AUTHOR> http://math-blog.com/2011/06/06/but-it-worked-in-the-computer-simulation/ <comment><USER2> This is a good article on why research into new devices or physics should keep a healthy dose of experimentation in addition to any computer simulations. I've done a fair amount of simulation work and agree strongly with the notion that people severely underestimate the number of failures their simulations contain.

<comment><USER3> I worked as a research assistant in physics 20 years ago and the opinions then was treating simulation, experiment, theory as 3 pillars for physical science. Each one has its own advantage and disadvantage in dealing with real world problem. But most of time, experiment is the only way to disapprove theoretical model/computer simulation.

Human beings tend to become overconfident in thoughts. And I think scientific methods tries to make sure that overconfidence won't mislead our judgement.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Linkify, auto-linking keywords for easier search on mobile apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkify.mobi

<comment><USER2> It seems good. Smart phone screen is small and switch between app is painful. How do you solve this problem? After clicking on a link, a new window will be opened? or a model windows will be opened?

<comment><AUTHOR> When clicking on the link, Linkify displays a small widget that contains links to typical search sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Twitter, etc.</comment></comment>


ICE Is Paying Millions to Surveillance Company to Spy on People's Communications - <AUTHOR> https://privacyintyqcroe.onion/news-analysis/2995/ice-paying-millions-surveillance-company-spy-peoples-communications <comment><USER2> I'm not a big fan of ICE but this article is ridiculous fear mongering. What ICE is paying for is implementations of lawful wiretaps after obtaining a warrant from a court just as every other US local, state and federal law enforcement agency does.

<comment><USER3> While I agree, that doesn't mean that their usage of lawful wiretaps is ethical, which is the bigger issue.

<comment><USER4> I agree, but I think it is somewhat unfair to always make it about ICE, when really it's about Congress and the President.

A public employee that does the right thing at great personal cost is a hero, but our elected officials should never put them in that position in the first place. That's where the bulk of the anger belongs--at a legislature that has abdicated way too much of its responsibility and at an elected executive that has taken that delegated authority and used it for things we find unethical. Sure we can save some disappointment and anger for the foot-soldiers but not at the cost of losing site of where most of the blame belongs.

We have protests about companies providing software to ICE, why don't we have any protests about companies providing software to the White House and Congress?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This should have the URL changed to [https://privacyinternational.org/news- analysis/2995/ice-payi...](https://privacyinternational.org/news- analysis/2995/ice-paying-millions-surveillance-company-spy-peoples- communications) (but also, as already pointed out by another comment, this is an incredibly misleading title)

</comment><comment><USER6> For those who want to read the information without having to load TBB, you can use the clearnet URL: [https://privacyinternational.org/news- analysis/2995/ice-payi...](https://privacyinternational.org/news- analysis/2995/ice-paying-millions-surveillance-company-spy-peoples- communications)

<comment><USER7> What is TBB?

<comment><USER8> I think Tor Browser Bundle. This looks to be a dark-web page, since the TLD is .onion.

<comment><USER9> Can we at least not call it "dark-web" on HN? I get that media morons are trying to come up with a way to make tor sound more scary, but that's a meaningless term that IMO we should not use here.

<comment><USER8> I actually wasn't sure what a better term was. Tor site? Onion site? Is "dark web" ambiguous; can it refer to other technologies?

<comment><USER9> "onion site" or "onion service" is probably preferred, "a site on the tor network" would also probably work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On mobile. What do you recommend I should use to read this on iOS?

<comment><USER11> I believe that Onion Browser is the recommended app: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onion- browser/id519296448](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onion-browser/id519296448)

Some discussion and notes from the Tor Project blog: [https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-onion-browser-and- more...](https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-onion-browser-and-more-ios-tor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A law enforcement agency is procuring products and services with money from their budget, to carry out their work.

What is the practical difference between this and their own "open source intelligence" efforts?

<comment><USER13> > A law enforcement agency is procuring products and services with money from > their budget, to carry out their work.

You can stop right there and it's already objectionable to many of us.

I don't want the federal government involved in "law enforcement," full stop. It's not their job.

I especially don't want a domestic security agency spending $50 million dollars on "phone records, consumer and credit bureau data, healthcare provider content, utilities data, DMV records, World-Check listings, business data, data from social networks and chatrooms, and 'live access to more than 7 billion license plate detections'."

So it doesn't matter that there is or isn't a practical different between a the use of a contractor and 'their own "open source intelligence" efforts"' \- I don't want them doing either one.

<comment><USER14> > I don't want the federal government involved in "law enforcement," full > stop. It's not their job.

That is a broad cut if you just don't agree with ICE. There are tons of federal LEOs that do the jobs states and local governments can't.

The US Marshall Service - Witness protection and relocation to other states. Rounding up fugitives from the federal judicial system.

US Secret Service - which state should protect the US currency and our elected officials?

BLM / National Ranger Service - who protects and enforces laws on lands specifically owned by the federal government?

State Department, Diplomatic Security Service - what about visiting foreign dignitaries?

United States Capitol Police - DC is a sovereign district. Should it be policed by a neighboring state?

USPS Postal Police - investigates crimes committed using the mail service, which often crosses state borders.

DoE/NRE Protective Units - Who should have ultimate control over nuclear warheads in transit? Texas? California?</comment></comment></comment>


Fearing legal action, emulation hub EmuParadise is removing all of its ROMs - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcgamer.com/fearing-legal-action-emulation-hub-emuparadise-is-removing-all-its-roms/ <comment><USER2> If anyone from EmuParadise reads this, I'm interested in facilitating an archive of ROMs to go into cold storage at the Internet Archive.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's interesting is that generally nobody cared about these ROMs for a decade or two, and now that there has been a resurgence of retro gaming consoles and apps, suddenly the IP enforcers have started to arrive. I'd bet that many of these ROMs would have been completely lost if not for the emulation scene. I have no evidence for this, but I would make a conjecture that the copyright holders are probably using at least a few ROM dumps that they found online for their own "new" products...

<comment><USER4> Try Nintendo themselves on their own product.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR1uEwjx7VI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR1uEwjx7VI)

 _The media-wizards, who are nothing if not postmodernists, have even begun to feed on the vitality of "Trash," like vultures regurgitating & reconsuming the same carrion, in an obscene ecstasy of self-referentiality. Which way to the Egress?_

-Hakim Bey

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> EMU Paradise Lost...

</comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone surprised?</comment>


Make your own Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kanaka/mal/ <comment><USER2> If someone's looking for a more hand-holded approach for building a Lisp in C, I'd recommend: [http://www.buildyourownlisp.com/](http://www.buildyourownlisp.com/)

<comment><USER3> I have this page on my "TODO" list. What is your opinion about it? I see already that you are recommending it but maybe you can give some more details. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER4> It starts you from scratch and I'd say it's well done, maybe even be overdone for Lisp. But you get a good introduction to the essentials of language implementation for more complicated languages.

Shameless self-promotion: I wrote a Lisp interpreter in a single assembly file for Raspberry Pi. It also starts from scratch at an even lower level, to the point of ignoring standard libraries.

[https://github.com/marcpaq/arpilisp](https://github.com/marcpaq/arpilisp)

I was inspired by jonesforth, which, if you haven't read it, is a beautiful piece of work.

<comment><USER5> Great work on this! I've not touched ASM in nearly 20 years (I first learnt C and then a bit of ASM to crack software using Softice!)

This really makes me want to blow the dust off the RaspberryPi (we all bought one and never used it: admit it) and get this up and running, just to see it working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I immediately thought of Shen which is also ported to a large number of languages. Shen relies on a "micro-Lisp" substrate called K-Lambda which consists of just 43 easily ported instructions.

[http://www.shenlanguage.org/](http://www.shenlanguage.org/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I had to see if their own language (mal) implemented itself (ie self hosted) and I was pleased to see it does.

<comment><USER8> Yep, I was looking for that too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> IIRC I got bogged down early with the regular expression for parsing, but I definitely want to try again. Really enjoyed the MAL talk at Midwest.io: [https://youtu.be/lgyOAiRtZGw](https://youtu.be/lgyOAiRtZGw)

</comment><comment><USER10> Funny there is no prolog port!

<comment><USER11> I saw the same thing. I also found [https://www.metalevel.at/lisprolog](https://www.metalevel.at/lisprolog) and maybe in some free time, like, the summer, try to do the mal.

<comment><USER11> There is also this [https://github.com/kanaka/mal/pull/187](https://github.com/kanaka/mal/pull/187)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This repos should be on developer code to read. I used it as a way to see how people implement a LISP. Having a reference for all languages allow me to know strong/weak point of each of them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wanna know which language port has the fewer lines of code.

<comment><USER14> Used my python package dwc([https://github.com/hvnsweeting/dwc](https://github.com/hvnsweeting/dwc))

      dwc */ | sort -n | head
        494: examples/
        846: docs/
       1268: mal/
       1464: perl6/
       1483: coffee/
       1509: io/
       1534: racket/
       1571: ocaml/
       1579: es6/
       1621: factor/

_Edit1: for better command_

 _Edit2: for formatting_

<comment><USER15> The problem with that command is that it also counts the Makefile, Dockerfile and other supporting files. It also counts every implementation step (so lots of repeats in the LOC). However, each implementation does have a "stats" rule. So the following command at the top-level can be used to a get a nice summary:

        for i in $(make print-IMPLS); do \
          s=$(make stats^$i | grep total); \
          printf "%-9s %s\n" "$i" "$s"; \
        done | sort -n -k2

I made a gist with the current results: [https://gist.github.com/kanaka/fdef20f5d0c2e04b97d9106b2f2f2...](https://gist.github.com/kanaka/fdef20f5d0c2e04b97d9106b2f2f23d0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Brainfuck port, anyone?

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

<comment><USER17> A madman has already done it:

[https://github.com/shinh/bflisp](https://github.com/shinh/bflisp)

<comment><USER18> He actually did it the absolute madman

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I know this is a demonstration project, but in general I wish people would stop building new Lisps and just use one of the existing ones.

Common Lisp, Racket, Clojure, Scheme, etc. are all great choices with decent compilers, interpreters, library ecosystems, editor support, etc.

Seems there's a new pet project Lisp released once a month or so, and none of them add anything interesting over the existing options.

<comment><USER20> I think that the point of building a Lisp is the process of building Lisp, not to produce a better Lisp (or even one that is just as good).

<comment><USER19> I was talking specifically about the projects that get posted on HN acting as if they're the next big thing in the Lisp world. They inevitably go nowhere and make little impact.

Building a Lisp is a great exercise, but I don't need to know every time somebody does it. We might as well have posts about everybody's fizzbuzz...

<comment><USER21> wwww.everybodysfizzbuzz.com?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hackers' Attack Cracked 10 Financial Institutions in Major Assault - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/hackers-attack-cracked-10-banks-in-major-assault/ <comment><USER2> These institutions always start with a lie, then the truth comes out.</comment>