US Supreme Court declines to hear appeal by patent troll - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/supreme-court-deals-blow-to-troll.html <comment><USER2> A few thoughts:

1\. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Soverain from an adverse ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that had determined the Soverain "shopping cart" patent to be invalid on grounds of obviousness.

2\. The Federal Circuit's holding by a 3-judge panel _had_ been remarkable and had shocked patent lawyers generally in that the parties before the court _had not even raised_ the issue on appeal as a ground for invalidating the jury's verdict below. The court raised the issue on its own, concluded that the patent was obvious and invalid, and gave judgment for Newegg in spite of the fact that the jury at the trial court level had found that Newegg infringed.

3\. This particular patent had been _the_ original shopping cart patent, dating back to 1994 (well before Amazon began) and it had had a formidable history by which its holder had gotten massive licensing fees from major players over many years for the privilege of using online shopping carts on the web.

4\. It is easy to say today that everyone knows what the concept of a shopping cart is and that anyone could have come up with the idea of applying that concept to online shopping. That is all well and good but consider this: not only had this patent passed muster as being non-obvious with the USPTO on its original filing but it had also been found to have been non-obvious on two separate patent re-examinations before that same body and by a string of U.S. district court judges before whom the issue had arisen. In other words, Newegg faced a _huge_ challenge on this issue (the legal standard required that it be able to prove that it was obvious by "clear and convincing" evidence, which is often a tough standard to meet) and this is why Amazon and virtually all other major other online retailers had long since caved and agreed to pay royalties for use of the patent. In the patent community, the Soverain patent was seen as rock solid and one whose shopping cart idea was deemed far from obvious. The top judges and lawyers in the nation, not to mention the USPTO, had all so concluded. The chances of upending it seemed slim to none. And, as noted, even the parties themselves had not raised the issue on the key appeal as a ground for potential reversal. Thus, everyone was _stunned_ when the Federal Circuit reversed the judgment against Newegg on that ground, invalidated the patent, and threw the case out.

5\. All that said, when Soverain petitioned the Supreme Court for review of the Federal Circuit's decision, it was trying to undo what it perceived as an injustice done to it as a private litigant ("this is so unfair to us and to our valuable patent"). However, from the Supreme Court's point of view, the kind of petition filed by Soverain is to be granted, and a case heard, only when it has significance far beyond whatever impact it might have on any private litigant. The Court's role in hearing such discretionary appeals is to step in and decide important questions of federal law or to determine who is right when the various lower federal appellate courts may have reached conflicting decisions on such points of law in way that cries out of definitive resolution by the highest court. The Court will not hear cases merely because they might have been wrongly decided unless some such extraordinary factor exists. Thus, in denying Soverain's petition, the Court did nothing more than say that this particular petition did not present important issues of the kind that warranted its attention. It did not validate the Federal Circuit's reasoning or analysis. It did not weigh in against patent trolls. It did not add its authority to the fight against frivolous patents. It simply did what it does on over 99% of such discretionary petitions: it used its discretion to deny it. The legal significance of its decision goes no farther than that.

6\. Is Soverain a patent troll that deserved this outcome? Well, its CEO had been a law partner at a major law firm (Latham & Watkins) and the company's business was clearly driven by a legal licensing scheme that had little or nothing to do with active business operations or innovation. It had simply acquired the original company that had come up with the patent back in the day. So, it is a troll if you want to call it that or it is not if you want to use some different definition. But this distinction does underscore how difficult it becomes to analyze patent issues simply by placing labels on the parties. The problem with modern software patents is that too many are too easily granted over trivial "innovations" and this has given vast incentives to those who would package them into shakedown licensing ventures and thereby gum things up for true innovators. It is a situation that calls for action by Congress to rein this in. Otherwise, every party trying to defend itself will find itself, as Newegg did, having to go to extraordinary efforts at massive expense to avoid claims of infringement. Very few litigants can do that and, indeed, Newegg is to be commended for fighting this all the way against tough odds. Let us only hope that systemic fixes can help correct the problem so that this is not the only way available for dealing with such patents. Whatever else this system does, it hardly promotes true innovation.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Soverain is the quintessential patent troll. It did not acquire the original company that came up with the shopping cart idea. That thing had been sold at least four times before Soverain came along.

No, shopping cart is not and never was a non-obvious technology. It's a clever metaphor for the very common pre-computer business method of maintaining order line records for unconfirmed orders.

<comment><USER4> grellas is describing what lawyers and courtrooms would think of the patent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess this is why HN mods edit titles on submissions (although the original title is just as terrible). The Supreme Court did not side with anyone; they denied a petition to the court, which is the case _for the vast majority_ of petitions.

If they did accept this particular petition, this would not mean that the Supreme Court sides with the patent troll and the world is doomed; it simply means that the case deals with a contested issue where clarification by the Supreme Court is widely sought.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cut-and-pasted the original title, which now appears to have changed.

<comment><USER6> I thought cut-and-pasting the title was the only sanctioned approach to titles on HN and anything else was "editorializing". I've seen any number of more useful titles changed to match the linked article supposedly for this reason.

<comment><USER7> The policy is this:

1\. If you used the original title, that was wrong and it needs to be changed to something more informative or less link-bait-y.

2\. If you provided a more informative title, that was wrong and it needs to be changed to the original title.

I hope that clears it up for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "While the Court will likely hear the remaining cases, which deal with finer points of patent law, its dismissal of Soverain speaks to the potential frivolousness of its claims."

I don't think this is accurate. The standard that the Supreme Court uses to decide whether to take cases is not "is this frivolous." Soverain v. Newegg would have to meet a pretty high standard in order to be granted appeal.

I think the author of this piece is reading into this denial way too much. The norm is for appeals to be denied. To be more precise, less than 5% of appeals were granted over a recent one year period. [http://dailywrit.com/2013/01/likelihood-of-a-petition- being-...](http://dailywrit.com/2013/01/likelihood-of-a-petition-being- granted/)

<comment><USER9> What are the standards that SCOTUS uses except the obvious circuit split (having opposite laws in different parts of the country is obviously bad) for picking up a case?

<comment><USER10> When the federal government appeals, the Supreme Court will more likely than not hear the case. Blatant conflict with prior Supreme Court precedent tends to increase the chances of the Supreme Court hearing a case. Decisions striking down acts of Congress are more likely to get heard. The Supreme Court also appears to try and "tidy up" areas of law by hearing a number of cases in a particular area in successive terms. For example, in 2004-2008, the Court heard Hamdi, Rasul, Hamdan, and Boumediene, all Guantanamo prisoner cases, in an effort to outline the rights of detainees.

This article has a very thorough description of the cert process: [http://www.mayerbrown.com/Certiorari-Practice-The-Supreme- Co...](http://www.mayerbrown.com/Certiorari-Practice-The-Supreme-Courts- Shrinking-Docket-06-12-1995/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good news, but the last sentence of the article made me curious:

> _The total median awards to trolls is now nearly twice as high as those to > legitimate patent holders, whose median reward fell about 30 percent to $4 > billion, according to a 2013 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers._

I was wondering how they estimated this, so I checked out the report:

> _We collect information about patent holder success rates, time-to-trial > statistics, and practicing versus nonpracticing entity (NPE) statistics from > 1995 through 2012._

> _Damages awards for NPEs averaged more than double those for practicing > entities over the last decade._

Note: PWC does not use the word "patent troll" \- that is entirely the interpretation of the article.

So, just to play the devil's advocate: are NPEs by definition patent trolls? I can't think of a counterargument, but maybe someone else can?

EDIT: Thanks for the enlightening examples so far!

<comment><USER12> I think the canonical example of a NPE is ARM. They don't fabricate their own chips, but they license out their designs.

<comment><USER13> By that definition even Qualcomm (top 5 semiconductor company) is an NPE as TSMC fabricates their chips. ARM licenses both RTL (code) and GDSII files (the files that a foundry such as TSMC uses to freate masks for fabrication) just as you would license software. They can hardly be called a NPE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm encouraged that patent trolls are getting knocked. But my fear is that patent law will hit such a state that only large corporations can wield them. If I'm a small patent holder, and I'm liable for court costs if I lose a suit, then it becomes far too risky to defend my patent against a corporation that violates it.

<comment><USER14> Just like currently it's far too risky to fight a troll in court even for a corporation, since treble damages means that if the jury (because 12 random people from the streets clearly know enough about technology, or can understand it well enough when it's explained to them, to pass a fair judgement) decides you're guilty, you're paying through the nose. The comparatively small amount demanded by the patent troll to go away, from large AND small businesses, is calculated to be the maximum amount possible where it still seems a better choice than that risk. We need to either remove that risk, or make it equally risky if they go to court.

Or, you know, stop pretending software is patentable.

<comment><USER15> The result is that only big companies can be patent trolls. It's still an improvement, but I'm quite sure it's not the intented one.

By the way, small companies were never able to defend their patents anyway. That does not change.

<comment><USER10> I don't know how you define "small" but ARM certainly manages to defend its patents against companies that are many times larger (Samsung is a couple of hundred times bigger both in revenues and number of employees).

Patent litigation is expensive, but it's not that expensive for even relatively small corporations. Apple spent about $60 million in legal fees in its battle with Samsung in California (which resulted in the $1 billion verdict): [http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/12/apple- demands-15-million-...](http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/12/apple- demands-15-million-in-legal-fees.html). That case ran for two and a half years, involved a trial, an appeal, and a retrial.

$60 million over 2-3 years is expensive, but it's not intractably expensive for a moderately sized company, especially if the patents are critical to the business and adequate litigation financing is available. And $60 million is for a blockbuster, "we're taking it personally" grudge match like the one Apple waged. A more typical patent lawsuit might cost $5-10 million. And if the plaintiff's case is strong, it might cost nothing for a firm to take it on contingency.

Every year in the U.S. about 150-250 companies hit $100 million in revenues per year, about 20 of which are technology companies: [http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2013/06/number-of-us- compan...](http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2013/06/number-of-us-companies- that-reach-100million-in-annual-revenues-remarkably-stable-over-past-20-years- according-to-kauffman-paper). These all have the resources to defend their patents against even a fairly large company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I worked on shopping cart software for the web in 1996, and the company I worked at, Evergreen Internet, had been around a while before that. I wonder if anything we did constitutes prior art.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had to use a secret browsing window to read this without signing up, so here it is for anyone else who has trouble loading the page:

\</comment><comment>--

Chalk one up for the enemies of patent trolls: The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a request for trial from alleged patent troll Soverain Software.

The case, called Soverain Software LLC. v. Newegg Inc., is one of three such cases the Supreme Court is expected to consider this year. While the Court will likely hear the remaining cases, which deal with finer points of patent law, its dismissal of Soverain speaks to the potential frivolousness of its claims.

Soverain acquired the rights to numerous pieces of code tied to the online shopping cart, developed in the 1990s. In recent years, Soverain has gone on a litigious tear, suing more than two dozen companies including Amazon, Nordstrom, Macy's and Newegg, an online retailer, which all use shopping carts for internet sales.

Soverain had some success suing on the state level, where a Texas jury awarded the Chicago-based company $2.5 million in damages against Newegg. However, Soverain lost on appeal last year in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, which ruled the shopping cart patents owned by Soverain were too general.

Patent trolls typically acquire rights to fallow or soon-to-expire patents with no intention of using the patent. Often patent trolls set up shell companies whose only assets are the patents, which means they have no real revenues or assets. Their sole purpose is to harass small businesses, which usually settle rather than pay for extended and costly litigation.

Patent law was originally written to protect the patent holder, making it easier for the patent holder to prevail in court. For the patent infringer to win, rather, the defendant must prove exceptional circumstances--namely that the patentee acted in bad faith and made baseless claims. This is hard to do. While the patent holder can be awarded "treble damages," or three times the damage claimed, the most the infringer can ever collect is attorney fees.

The remaining cases before the Supreme Court will deal with these finer points.

Congress is examining legislation that would fight patent trolls and their frivolous lawsuits by making them liable for court costs, should they lose their cases.

Small businesses mounted 3,400 legal defenses in 2011 for patent cases, a 32 percent increase over the prior year, according to a research paper from 2012 by Boston University law professors James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer. That cost to small companies was about $11 billion in 2011, also a 32 percent increase over the prior year.

The total median awards to trolls is now nearly twice as high as those to legitimate patent holders, whose median reward fell about 30 percent to $4 billion, according to a 2013 report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

<comment><USER18> So you'd thought you'd break the law and steal their content?

<comment><USER19> I've just checked and the content is still there, so he clearly hasn't stolen it.

<comment><USER20> We all know that he means copyright infringement: the content was reproduced without permission. Using the literal definitions of the words "stealing,""theft," and "piracy" mistakes pedantry as rebuttal, and helps no one when discussing copyrights.

<comment><USER21> I'm all for using the actual meaning of words. If that means it is harder to make emotional arguments, then so be it.

<comment><USER22> Words do not have an "actual" meaning. They have definitions assigned on a more or less arbitrary basis, and there may be multiple conflicting definitions for any one word†. The Greeks used to believe that foreigners were stupid because they spoke something that was not proper Greek. Nowadays we laugh at their naïveté, but then turn around and talk about the "actual meaning of words." It's just silly.

† _Just within English we have words like "cleave," that are widely accepted as meaning both "hold on tightly" and "separate." And in Spanish, we have "dame" which means "give," while in Japanese they use the same word to mean "don't do that." Can we declare the Spanish or the Japanese to be_ wrong _about what that word means?_

<comment><USER23> > _Words do not have an "actual" meaning._

When they are terms of art, they frequently _do_.

<comment><USER22> No, they have an accepted meaning among practicioners of that art. That meaning is not more "real" than other meanings, though is more likely to be contextually appropriate. The fact that "reduce" is a term of art in programming for "debug" does not make somebody who uses it in cooking instructions _wrong_.

Basically, what I'm saying is, the fact that you and your friends use a word a certain way doesn't automatically invalidate other people's usages. It is true that mattmanser's use of "steal" was not legally precise, but neither are many colloquial uses of the word ("It was such a steal at $5!", "He's stealing third", "Great artists steal", "His identity got stolen", etc.). You would be right to object if he had been raising a legal argument based around the concept of theft, but he wasn't, so it seems overly pedantic to me.

<comment><USER23> > _No, they have an accepted meaning among practicioners of that art._

You are getting close to the point here.

 _Why_ does a term of art have a specific meaning to a practitioner of that art? Answer that, and you will have determined why words have meanings in any context.

<comment><USER24> It makes it easier for the practitioners to discuss their art. Jargon is useful if all parties understand the concepts and the forms (words assigned to the concept) used to represent them. Otherwise you have to expand the jargon into larger units.

Borrowing words across fields (because of similarity) can cause confusion. One person may assign a meaning from a different field than the other interlocutors are using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What did it cost Newegg to litigate that?

Does the troll have to pay legal fees?

Hope Newegg can remain price competitive.

<comment><USER3> And I hope the many companies that caved to this patent troll and paid it millions for claiming it owned the shopping cart now go after it to get all those millions back. With interest.

<comment><USER26> My understanding is that revenues get siphoned very quickly out of the shell company to avoid precisely that.

<comment><USER27> I think that one of the fundamental problems with the current patent system is that NPEs are able to use shell companies to shield themselves from the financial consequences of their bad acts. I hope one of the "finer points of patent law" that the Supreme Court will be looking at is just this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "It's a really tough time to be a patent owner."

This is coming from someone who took a common noun, stuck the words "on the internet" at the end, and then extorted billions of dollars from companies that actually make something.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think the best way out of these things is make software patents invalid after a short period- like 10 years.

<comment><USER30> 10 years is still way too long for software, and even for most other things

<comment><USER29> Maybe, but just enough time to not blatantly rip off another product and not face any repercussions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I hope TQP troll will be busted as well. When will the Supreme Court process that case?</comment>


LoadJS – A tiny async loader for modern browsers (710 bytes) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/muicss/loadjs?a=1 <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/walmartlabs/little- loader](https://github.com/walmartlabs/little-loader) is smaller (519 bytes min+gzipped), supports IE8, and fires either on script load or on error synchronoulsy (so that globals won't be overwritten by code that runs between script loading and the callback firing). The thing is tested on SauceLabs down to IE8.

The drawback is a lower level API, and it is JS only. AFAIK loading CSS consistently cross browser is also a mine field if you want consistent error handling.

        window._lload("http://example.com/foo.js", function (err) {
            // `err` is script load error.
            // otherwise, foo.js is loaded!
          }/*, [optional context (`this`) variable here] */);

<comment><AUTHOR> The original bare-bones version of LoadJS was down to 455 bytes and grew to 710 as we added some useful features (e.g. CSS loading, async false support, load retries).

Initially I was hesitant to add CSS support because handling load errors across browsers is very tricky but I think we came up with a good solution [1] that is tested down to IE9 [2].

[1] [https://github.com/muicss/loadjs/blob/master/src/loadjs.js#L...](https://github.com/muicss/loadjs/blob/master/src/loadjs.js#L109-L119)

[2] [https://github.com/muicss/loadjs/blob/master/test/tests.js#L...](https://github.com/muicss/loadjs/blob/master/test/tests.js#L188-L301)

<comment><USER2> Good job on detecting CSS loading failures.

The little-loader also has a section to detect JS loading and errors in IE8/9 (with a dedicated sub-section for the former), I didn't see anything like this in LoadJS... Did you find a terser workaround?

[https://github.com/walmartlabs/little- loader/blob/42d233f360...](https://github.com/walmartlabs/little- loader/blob/42d233f360162bb01fce5a9664b6ef54751bd96e/lib/little- loader.js#L101-L207)

I'm somewhat familiar with little-loader because I've worked at making it smaller, but I'm not competent to judge whether its approach is necessarily the best...

<comment><AUTHOR> We use the `onerror` handler to detect load errors on IE9: [https://github.com/muicss/loadjs/blob/master/src/loadjs.js#L...](https://github.com/muicss/loadjs/blob/master/src/loadjs.js#L106-L134)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks like the perfect case for using Promises...

        loadjs('foobar').then(() => {
          // foobar.js loaded
        });

And then with the newer spec:

        await loadjs('foobar');
        // foobar.js loaded

Such a pity that instead it uses a proprietary format.

Edit: you could still add all other nice things without compromising the main thing, for example to add a "before":

        loadjs.before(fnA).before(fnB).load('foobar').then(() => {});

<comment><USER4> Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure await has to be within an async function [0].

[0] [https://github.com/tc39/ecmascript- asyncawait/issues/36](https://github.com/tc39/ecmascript-asyncawait/issues/36)

<comment><USER5> Yeah but we can use the same "trick" we've been using for years, an IIFE:

        (async () => {
          // Code...
        })()

<comment><USER6> This will wait within the function, but won't block the caller.

<comment><USER5> which is what it should do

If you want the caller to "block", then it needs to await or .then() what it's calling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I made a similar thing that is supposed to be vaguely require.js compatible in 541-588 bytes, depending on enabled features [1]. Not production ready :).

[1] [https://github.com/gliptic/hypjs/blob/master/src/amd.ts](https://github.com/gliptic/hypjs/blob/master/src/amd.ts)

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://github.com/QubitProducts/micro- amd](https://github.com/QubitProducts/micro-amd) is another project with similar goals. Its pretty small, amd compliant and battle tested

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems handy for the callbacks, but will this be as useful once http2 is the default?

<comment><USER10> Yes. I'm thinking about using it for conditionally rendered stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> back in the day you just did script src... none of this bullshit

<comment><USER12> It's not 1999 anymore

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow. This makes Labjs, which has been my preferred loader, seem heavy.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's cool. Would this help with my page speed score that almost is always like a D- for stuff related to async/css/js and 'deferred' loading?

<comment><USER14> Maybe, but you can make it better even without any fancy loaders, async and defer are regular attributes of the script tag – [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/HTML/Element/scrip...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/HTML/Element/script#Attributes)

<comment><USER15> `defer` has problems: [http://stackoverflow.com/a/40535440/247696](http://stackoverflow.com/a/40535440/247696)

There is no obvious easy way to wait for an `async` script to finish loading and executing before running code that depends on it. For instance, how would I load the jQuery library asynchronously before running code that depends on jQuery?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems to lack the handling of timeouts, which is necessary in these async days.</comment>


Ask HN: Will you pay for a self-hosted blogging solution - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking about offering a blogging service targeted toward tech-savvy people. Basically, Svbtle[1] but self-hosted in your DigitalOcean account. You pay a single one time fee and there is an optional subscription for updates, and technical support.
There will be a minimalistic publishing interface. A single theme. No advertising, tracking or any other stuff. The catch is that once you have it installed, you are free to do whatever you want.
Will you pay for a service like this?
[1]: https://svbtle.com <comment><USER2> The tech-savvy market is served well by free static site generators like Hugo and Jekyll.</comment>


Stop Using Toilet Paper - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/toilet-paper-hoarding-bidets.html <comment><USER2> In many countries they have toilets with integrated bidets which deals with the space issue of separate bidets, a concern in expensive real estate markets like Manhattan. But I think people will forget this toilet paper scare just like the one in 1973:

[https://priceonomics.com/the-great-toilet-paper-scare- of-197...](https://priceonomics.com/the-great-toilet-paper-scare-of-1973/)</comment>


Ask HN: How can I make money? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not greedy, and very diligent and have good business acumen, yet I'm struggling to find a good business I can run online and actually make money from!<p>Any good suggestions? <comment><USER2> Solve a problem preventing people who have money from making more of it.

Solve a problem preventing people who have money from spending time with their children.

Solve a problem preventing people who have money from getting the recognition they think they deserve.

Solve a problem preventing people who have money from... you get the general idea.

<comment><USER3> Great points. I wrote a blog rant on similar lines: How To Build Something People Want? - [http://www.nilkanth.com/2010/05/28/how-to-build-something- pe...](http://www.nilkanth.com/2010/05/28/how-to-build-something-people-want/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see the problem. If you are struggling, then you are probably doing it right. If there were no struggle involved, then everyone would be doing it.

One idea, go to Flippa and look at all the websites people are offering. Maybe you can get an idea from the listings there. One advantage of looking through Flippa over general browsing of random sites on the internet is that people post information such as how much money their sites are making. Perhaps you could even buy a site and improve it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I suggest that you play to your strengths, whatever they are.

Surely your life, up to this point, has given you the opportunity to get to know the needs of some niches, some groups of people, better than the average person.

Take what you've learned so far, and figure out how to apply it in a novel way.

You say you have "good business acumen"-- how did you achieve that? In what businesses? Are there any unfilled needs that your former customers may have, that might be filled online?</comment>


Things You Should Know About Building Web Application in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.dhtmlx.com/blog/building-web-application-in-2016/ <comment><USER2> A non-responsive site that I can't read from my cheap smart-phone, ironically.</comment>


The Viral Me: Inside Y Combinator  - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201012/viral-me-silicon-valley-social-networking-devin-friedman <comment><USER2> I'm impressed. It's not just a fluff piece about how amazing it is having dropouts save the world.

Devin keeps trying to figure out why omnipresent ego inflation is a good thing. He hits all the major points: it's about mindshare, addiction, and manipulating people to get a higher CPM.

      Is that all social media is doing?  Playing psychological video games in ways
      that form habits and drive revenue for Internet companies?

He takes interviewee's quips (reduce friction! share yourself!), actually thinks (instead of sitting dumbfounded when someone young talks about technology and business), then figures out why the fads of today are shallow substitutes for sincere social interaction.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Single page print version: [http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big- issues/201012/viral-me-s...](http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big- issues/201012/viral-me-silicon-valley-social-networking-devin- friedman?printable=true)

</comment><comment><USER3> On page 3,

 _One of the founders of a YC company called 1000Memories.com (it's FB for dead people, only more interesting) says he heard FB can already tell when you're about to break up with someone: certain communication patterns emerge._

Yes, I know that the amount of data people share on Facebook is staggering, but, you've _got_ to be kidding me!

<comment><USER4> Nah, I'm pretty sure that's just a Chinese Whisper that originated from David McCandless work in data mining breakups on Facebook. It can tell you what the most popular day to breakup is, but it can't predict when a couple is going to breakup.

However that said it probably is possible to predict breakups with communication data. You could probably even do it with an iphone app, breakups tend to follow certain events (like drop in respect, distancing, etc.) that can detected in vocal patterns.

<comment><USER3> There is a (YC?) company that analyzes your GMail and tells you which of your friends you haven't been in touch with, in recent times. I'm forgetting the name right now. But we all know that Facebook has an edge over GMail in terms of personal data, and they can certainly do it.

Hmm. I can see an app waiting to be built there. :-)

<comment><USER5> You're thinking of Etacts.

<comment><USER3> Ah yes. Etacts it is. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found his observations eloquent and for the most part very insightful. If nothing else, he does an excellent job of glamorizing why this market is so exciting:

"These people are optimistic not only because theirs is the last ascendant American industry but because implied in all those products is the idea that the human problem can be solved."

</comment><comment><USER7> I still wonder if passing on Rahul's startup was a mistake.

<comment><USER4> What made you decide to pass on it ?

<comment><USER7> I am already in another gmail-plugin company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, to sum up: To get into YC and be successful in Silicon Valley, I have to have gone to Stanford, worked at Google and be building a social app?

pg, say it ain't so! Are people like me who went to state school, never had a real job and are building tools for businesses doomed?

<comment><USER9> It ain't so. In fact I wrote a whole essay about what a bad predictor people's colleges turn out to be.

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

Edit: I just took a look at a random sample of startups in the batch we just accepted. Out of 21 founders, 2 went to Stanford, and 2 went to Ivy League colleges.

<comment><USER10> Just 21 founders?

<comment><USER11> It was a random sample of the batch.

<comment><USER10> Whoops

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favourite quote from the article: "a guy named Rahul, a slender 27-year-old Englishman of Indian extraction who's 50 percent hair and 50 percent brain." Which is a hilarious description of YC/HN's own <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rahulvohra></comment>


Riot Games Messaging Service - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.riotgames.com/news/riot-messaging-service <comment><USER2> That's am impressive bit of technology, and nice to see it's making extensive use of Erlang (we're using Elixir).

I'd be interested to know if the service works across multiple regions though. Some of the biggest challenges we've faced when engineering our realtime platform has been in having no single point of congestion and effectively peer-to-peer routing within the cluster. This is not that important if all your servers can be in a single region, however if you want your users in Australia for example to have a similar latency profile to those in USA, then clients in Oz need to connect to servers in Oz and all routing for customers in Oz does not need to traverse continents for other customers in Oz, but does for customers in US. I'd be interested to know if that was tackled in the design. Michal you following this thread?

Matt Ably realtime - [https://www.ably.io](https://www.ably.io)

<comment><USER3> Riot accounts are tied to different geographical regions, so I would expect the service doesn't have to span across them, [http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Servers](http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Servers)

<comment><USER4> Correct, a "North American" account would not be able to message or otherwise interact with a "Oceania" account (the region which contains Australia). That being said, an Australian could register an NA account, but shouldn't expect bearable ping/latency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I realize the article isn't actually about a chat service, but I continue to be confused because there exists Riot[1], the messaging client of the Matrix network.

[1] [https://riot.im/](https://riot.im/)

<comment><USER6> Off-topic: do you guys at matrix/riot have a bot that automatically creates a ticket when it finds keywords such as {IRC|messaging|chat} in any hn thread without any mention of {riot.im|matrix.org} URL being also in the comments? Honest question.

Isn't there a publicly hosted database of hn comments so someone could make stats on this topic? I'm sure you are close to 100% match.

<comment><USER7> The only folks who work on matrix/riot who comment on HN are basically me (project lead) and sometimes jkire (synapse maintainer). And we don't plug the project, but respond to stuff like this & questions when they come up.

Anyone else commenting about Matrix are doing so completely independently and without any input or knowledge from the actual dev team. For instance, I have absolutely no idea who sanqui is (although I share their concern that Riot Games moving into the messaging space is awkward).

We are categorically not spamming or sockpuppeting HN: I'm afraid that folks who bring Matrix up must be doing so because they're interested or enthusiastic about the project and consider it relevant (which unfortunately it is on this thread, albeit for the wrong reasons :|)

<comment><USER8> like Always_Good said before you, it's just an in-trend for readers to mistake headlines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Edit: Upon more careful reading, it appears that a response is sent from the server to the client via WebSocket which contains the resource and method that the client can request using HTTP if it wishes to update.

Original question: Can someone explain to me why the JSON message sent to the REST interface seems to contain URL and Type as data?

Is it because they are transmitted using web sockets but the concepts of "resource" (ie: clubs/v1/clubs/665632A9-EF44-41CB-BF03-01F2BA533FE7) and "method" (ie: GET) still just make sense and happens to be very similar to HTTP?

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice to see yet another game studio making use of Erlang.

<comment><USER11> I thought the post might shed more light on their use of Erlang for this service, but it focuses more on high level topology, AWS infrastructure, and load balancing. It's interesting to get a sense of the level of high level deployment tooling they used, because in a way Erlang marketing gives the impression that the language and VM are all you need.

<comment><USER10> There are some presentations from Wooga about their use of Erlang.

[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016648/Why- Erlang](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016648/Why-Erlang)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article reminds me of a previous HN post. The program discussed was called pushpin or pinpush.

These solutions are the glue between stateless and stateful services. I guess they will become increasingly important as some services specialize towards responsiveness. The use websockets or http2 without giving up the simplification provided by restful architecture.

<comment><USER13> Pushpin: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005724)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> wondering why they have the edge nodes and not just a load balancer. looking at their responsibilities it looks like a lot of the overlap with the responsibilities of a load balancer.

<comment><USER15> Looks like a load issue, a single server can only take care of so many conn, auth, etc... So having several solves the problem and can scale horizontally easily, but each edge maintains conn information, so a given user needs to be routed to that same server every time. On the other hand, all LBs share a single address and all should be replaceable by each other, they exist purely to route the user to the right edge server (existing conn or least busy).

Question to OP: do you run your edge servers in pairs or some kind of cluster?

<comment><USER16> Not the OP, but I work on the same team.

The edge servers are not clustered and share no state. We require at least 2 servers as minimum for fault tolerance.

<comment><USER14> Did the need for edge server arise from the fact the a service like [https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/applicationloadb...](https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/applicationloadbalancer/) didn't exist back then ?

<comment><USER16> Well we need edge servers to handle the persistent websocket connections which last through the life the player session.

<comment><USER14> yeah the ALB provides that feature as well. I just checked. it was released in Aug 2016. So clearly before that time your setup makes a lot of sense.

I am wondering if the ALB would be the preferred method now, if you were to redo it ?

<comment><USER17> Right, ALB were introduced after we built RMS. We would have to re-evaluate the ALB stability/cost/scalability - but definitely something to consider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Their JSON have an key called payload which saves a String rather than an Object, is there any benefits to doing this? since they also escape the " in the String

<comment><USER19> Probably that services aren't required to use JSON (since they use many different service languages, it's not unlikely that they use many different serialisation methods - JSON, protobuf, etc.)

<comment><USER17> Exactly this - each publisher can encode their own payload, including protobufs, JSON, plain text or base64'd binaries. RMS itself is completely oblivious to the format of payload used in the message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to see more info on their customized Erlang/OTP mnesia . michalptaszek mentioned it in the comment: [http://disq.us/p/1gltwfs](http://disq.us/p/1gltwfs)

<comment><USER17> Sure, few words on customizations we've built into mnesia: \- we integrated it with our eureka-based service discovery mechanism, so that it can automatically cluster with other servers that are spun up in a process of cluster bootstrap/resizing. Also relaxed constraints when merging 2 identical schemas of separate clusters (when table cookies don't match, but everything else matches we still want to merge and take a union of already existing data) \- we've added a bunch of auto-merge code (heavily inspired by Ulf's wonderful [https://github.com/uwiger/unsplit](https://github.com/uwiger/unsplit) library) in case of network partitions \- we've also added support for maintaining pools of processes for each table for dirty updates (as opposed of going through mnesia_tm for every single operation, including transactions as well as dirty_asyncs)

I'm 100% aware that these changes are RMS/Riot specific and won't work in many other situations (e.g. they violate certain transaction isolation properties).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do people use zeromq for this kind of work? It seems the various socket types are tailored to building such load balancing and routing architectures, but I'm not aware if zeromq is in use at this scale.

<comment><USER21> Yup, we use ZeroMQ for internal routing for this kind of thing. Each instance of our edge server (Pushpin) binds on a SUB socket to receive messages destined for external clients. This makes it possible for internal publishers (using PUB) to route among edge servers using a brokerless mesh.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any "buy me a dream" fundraising websites? - <AUTHOR> Are there any specific websites for fundraising "personal dreams"?
What I mean is fundraising of things like buying a house, a Ferrari, a boat, the perfect gaming PC etc. An online place where to get funds to make your dreams come true.
Wouldn't that be an interesting startup idea and social experiment?
What do you think? <comment><USER2> no offense horrible idea. A local facebook group for reptiles in my city had a member do a gofundme to start her dream job of breeding reptiles and wanted like $10k to get all the startup and supplies.

myself and literally 5 other people in the group said "get a job" because it's not your peers job to fund your dreams. This idea is not the "American Dream" so I don't see how such an idea would ever pan out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not see either but you never know... stupid ideas like this sometimes have unexpected results

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love for someone to buy me a Lamborghini but it's gonna feel much better when I've earned enough and can afford to buy it myself.

If you've ever bought a house without someone else's help - it'll be a similar feeling accomplishment / self respect. No one "given" anything truly respects it or appreciates the path it took to get there.

But - anything is worth a try.

<comment><USER3> I still remember the day we drove by our house - saw the sold sign on the front lawn and the wife and I jumped out of the car to go take a selfie with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.gofundme.com](https://www.gofundme.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I already know it. I was asking about a platform very specific for that, with no volunteering, charity, medical, startup fundraising etc. kind of things

<comment><USER4> That is not significant differentiation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting startup idea? Nope, crowdfunding companies are old news.

Interesting social experiment? Can't imagine how. "Entitled people want things they can't afford. Story at 11."

</comment><comment><USER6> maybe you could set it up so everyone contributes $10 a month and everyone submits ideas like buy me a house or buy a piece of property. Then everyone votes on the best idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting variation</comment></comment>


Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator - <AUTHOR> https://investmentcalculator.io/ <comment><USER2> Be careful with this: The projections are gross (ie not inflation-adjusted) and the advice buried in the explanatory text below does not sufficiently discuss this issue. It says you can do a "simple" calculation by applying one year's worth of inflation versus a compounded rate of return. Assuming historical inflation rates, the value of the savings it projects will be significantly eroded compared to what it shows.

Edit: And as others have pointed out below, the returns assumed are unrealistically optimistic. Be warned about basing your retirement planning on this.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's also using a 9% rate of return for the "conservative" scenario and 12% for aggressive. Due to the exponential nature of compound interest, just a single point of overoptimism in your real growth number leads to a massive overestimation of your results. 1.07 ^ 30 = 7.6, 1.09 ^ 30 = 13.3, and 1.12 ^ 30 = 30.0

It's baseline assumptions are way off.

<comment><USER4> Yowzers! Please tell me what this magical investment is where I can expect an average rate of return of 9% (let alone 12%). That is off the charts optimistic.

<comment><USER5> Assuming dividend reinvestment, the S&P 500 has returned an annual average of 10% nominally (7% real), over the last 100 years or so.

<comment><USER6> The S&P 500 is the best reference index for US equities, but I'd be wary about using its history as a base case for retirement planning. The 60 years that its existed in its present form have seen the US economy grow consistently in a way that's almost unrivaled in human history. There are lots of good arguments for why the US will not grow as fast over the next 60 years, but for me the best one is just regression to the mean. Probably the US economy will grow at a rate closer to the lower rates common in our countries throughout human history, and over a long time frame the S&P 500 cannot grow much faster than the really economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> compiler-guy Those seeking a much more sophisticated retirement calculator, where you can set nearly every parameter, such as rate of return, amount saved, and nearly everything else, should checkout firecalc.

You can select different withdrawl rate strategies, different investment strategies, deferred compensation strategies, different investment mixes, and many, many other things.

The interface isn't as pretty, but it is unbelievably sophisticated.

[https://www.firecalc.com/](https://www.firecalc.com/)

<comment><USER7> I opened, there is too much info for my small brain to grasp and closed it. :-(

<comment><USER3> It's worth noting that this is targeted at FIRE folks - people who want financial independence (don't need to work to live) and want to retire early. To be able to retire 10+ years before the average american, you want to have a much higher degree of confidence that your financial plan can sustain you for 30/40/50 years. That requires much more complicated financial planning.

Or you can just max our your 401k, IRA, HSA, save enough of what's left over to make sure you can have a comfortable retirement at 60ish. The math for everybody else actually isn't as tricky as it seems for mid-to-high income folks. It's generally more about reigning in spending than fancy spreadsheets.

<comment><USER8> It's applicable math and a good check for anyone who wants to retire.

You are correct that reduced earnings period and a longer withdrawal period does increase risk for early retirees, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "In order to get a good understanding of the purchasing power of your future retirement savings for today, you can do a "simple" calculation: Take your total retirement savings and multiply it by 3%. For example, if you have $1.25m (retirement savings), multiplied by 0.03% (inflation), you get $45,000 in inflation. Then you subtract that number from your total savings: $1.25m - $45k = $880k. This will give you a baseline to understand your financial situation."

Yeah, so $1.25m - $45K is NOT 880K.

Also, the effect of inflation compounds every year. So maybe you want to divide the nominal answers you are giving out by (1.03)^num-years-from-today to get the real value (in today's dollars) .

Please do better math.

<comment><USER10> also $1.25MM x 3% = $37.5k

Not $45k

It is difficult to trust the calculator when arithmetic errors exist in the prose.

<comment><USER9> good lord. I didnt even check that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the FAQ:

 _What is my retirements purchasing power today?

Inflation is inevitable. If that word is new to you, it simply determines how much purchasing power your dollar has. Historically, inflation has always increased with time.

In order to get a good understanding of the purchasing power of your future retirement savings for today, you can do a "simple" calculation: Take your total retirement savings and multiply it by 3%. For example, if you have $1.25m (retirement savings), multiplied by 0.03% (inflation), you get $45,000 in inflation. Then you subtract that number from your total savings: $1.25m - $45k = $880k. This will give you a baseline to understand your financial situation._

I don't even.... What !? There are so many things wrong with that calculation.

<comment><USER12> Its just not bad math, it's also bad history.

It actually says that the rate of inflation always increases with time, which is... not true! Even if it's trying to say, clumsily, that there has been inflation every year historically... that's also not true. There has been periods of deflation, historically

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a really good interface but the assumptions backing the results seem weak. The growth rate on conservative and aggressive portfolios are high. The recommended amounts of saving should be as % of income. Recommending someone that makes 100k save 100 dollars a month is not great. It's also sad that the maximum amount saved per month is 1k where even just maximizing 401k is 1.5k a month.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the return rate, even for conservative is WAY too high.

<comment><USER15> The return isn't adjusted for inflation, so it's not that far off. That's probably misleading though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love the simplicity and the look of the UI. Unfortunately I think the simplicity means that very important parameters are being left out. Ideally, you should be able to specify estimated return rate and estimated inflation rate. Also, specifying the draw down rate would be nice... I've poured through a lot of these calculators recently as I've begun to get interested in FIRE... I think the most simple (but good) one is the AARP calc if you want a simple example.

Finally, and I think this is where it really falls short - this calculator is WAY TOO OPTIMISTIC out of the gate. I just cross checked it w/ my own calculations - it doesn't add up. Its "conservative" estimate is way higher than my "optimistic" plan (10% return / 3% inflation based on a passive index investing strategy)

</comment><comment><USER16> >>> Take your total retirement savings and multiply it by 3%. For example, if you have $1.25m (retirement savings), multiplied by 0.03% (inflation), you get $45,000 in inflation. Then you subtract that number from your total savings: $1.25m - $45k = $880k. This will give you a baseline to understand your financial situation.

I don't fully understand... 1.25M - 45k is most definitely not 880k. Did you do something else that you forgot to list?

<comment><USER8> Maybe they meant 3% inflation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> These things are always a bit depressing and make me want to invest in a bottle of bourbon.

<comment><USER18> There is etf for whisky $WSKY

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> All this does is scare me. I honestly hope I die before I have to retire, because there's no way I'm going to have saved enough money to live off of, even modestly, and no way I'm going to remain sharp enough to continue earning through and beyond my 60s.

<comment><USER20> > there's no way I'm going to have saved enough money to live off of

It is possible. It will take work and change on your part. The first step is to track your spending. The easiest way to do this is get an account with mint, ynab (you need a budget), or personal capital. You can link all of your accounts with the site and app. You can then categorized your spending. After you do this you can start seeing where you can reduce your spending. The major areas you can save on are housing, transportation, food, and miscellaneous. The reverse order is probably the easiest to reduce costs.

The Millionaire Next Door is a great book that talks about the difference in mindset between people who are able to build wealth well and those who are not able to. It is really eye opening if you are always broke.

<comment><USER4> There is no straightforward risk-less formula, unfortunately. You can follow all the textbook advice, have a budget, max your 401k, pay down your debt, buy a house, blah blah blah, and after 20 years still only have 1x or 1.5x your salary in total savings [ask me how I know] due to bad luck, unfortunate market timing, lack of skill in investing, emergencies, etc. I hate all this simplified, incomplete advice. If successfully saving for retirement was so straightforward and deterministic, there wouldn't be an entire industry, with consultants and books, built up around trying to help people hopelessly navigate it.

<comment><USER20> If you start at 25, saving 10% of your salary into a 401k and never get divorced, spend <30% of your gross income on housing, and don't borrow to spend more than you make 90% of the time you will come out alright.

> If successfully saving for retirement was so straightforward and > deterministic, there wouldn't be an entire industry, with consultants and > books, built up around trying to help people hopelessly navigate it.

There is a full industry. Saving money (for people with incomes above the median), like losing weight is simple. Yet there are still fat people and broke people.

<comment><USER21> >saving 10% of your salary

impossible for most people

>spend <30% of your gross income on housing

impossible for many (most?) places with jobs

>don't borrow to spend more than you make 90% of the time

this factor is indeed entirely up to individuals and a perpetual point of failure... but refusing to borrow and cutting minor expenses is not a road to any kind of wealth for most people. it's a road to retiring poor. most people are on that road.

<comment><USER20> > >saving 10% of your salary

>impossible for most people

Part of me is tempted to look up statistics to make the point but if you are making more than 150% of the poverty line in the US, you can save 10% of your income, it is a choice not to.

> >spend <30% of your gross income on housing

>impossible for many (most?) places with jobs

It all depends on where you are willing to live. Also, if you move to somewhere to get a job, before you accept the offer you should check to see if it is possible to move there and follow this guideline. If you, you shouldn't move there because you will become worse off.

> refusing to borrow and cutting minor expenses is not a road to any kind of > wealth for most people. it's a road to retiring poor. most people are on > that road.

Depends on what you count as minor expenses. If I cut out $100 a month of expenses starting at age 25, and put that in an index fund that grows at 8% until I retire at 67 it will be worth $412,077.88. If I want to retire a millionaire I need to save just under $250/month, which is 10% of a 30k a year job. At $30k I am a little sympathetic if you cannot save $250/month. If you are making $50k, it is a matter of choice.

<comment><USER21> >if you move to somewhere to get a job

you're out of touch. this is not even the same type of job that the majority of people have access to. people's standard of living is far beneath what you suspect.

>If you are making $50k, it is a matter of choice.

try having a mortgage or high rent, a medical problem, kids, parents who need care, a car, student loans, clothing that aren't tatters, an emergency fund.... and all that comes before even baseline (necessary) entertainment / low-luxuries like internet access and padded chairs.

it isn't a matter of choice for most people. nevermind that 412k isn't enough to retire on if you have any of those burdens above. sure, they could spend $20 a week less on beer. but why would they?

<comment><USER20> >mortgage or high rent

Find a cheaper place to live.

>a medical problem

This is the one I have the most sympathy for, US healthcare is broken, people shouldn't have to go bankrupt to pay for life saving care.

>kids

1) Wait until you can support them until you have them. 2) Just because you spend a lot of money does not mean you will raise better children. Americans as a whole seem to think otherwise.

> parents who need care

Again, I am sympathetic but this doesn't apply to everyone, or even the majority of people.

> a car

You can find a reliable used car for ~10k often times much less than that. Getting a ~20k or worse a ~40k car every 3 years is a waste.

> student loans

On one hand, people were given really bad advice on college. On the other hand, people took really bad advice. High school need to be better informed about the long term cost of college.

> clothing that aren't tatters

Goodwill, Ross, discount stores all great places to get non-tattered clothing.

> an emergency fund

If you are disciplined enough to build an emergency fund, after it is funded, keep being disciplined and start saving for retirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://firecalc.com](http://firecalc.com) has better math and less distracting gunk like the nonsense ways to "Save more"

</comment><comment><USER23> It should be possible to click on or hover over "aggressive" and "conservative" and see what the assumptions are. And the simulations must be account for volatility to be useful. Otherwise, everyone should just invest aggressively and put all their money in stocks, since they have higher average returns than bonds.

</comment><comment><USER24> > The average tax refund in the US is $3,050 per year.

> Avoid spending tax refunds to get to your retirement faster.

The advice should instead tell the user to plan the tax payments to avoid giving the government an interest free loan by overpaying taxes and getting it back as a refund much later. Of course, a particular sum should be invested regularly.

</comment><comment><USER25> Great interface, but I would find it more useful I could pick an estimate rate of return for my investments and choose the rate of inflation. It's also be useful for there to be a "max out 401k" button for how much I want to contribute.

</comment><comment><USER26> For those interested in learning the fundamentals behind that calculator, I wrote a book that can be read in an hour, and received praise from Derek Sivers, David Heinemeier Hansson, and many others.

You can read it for free online, or download the PDF (also free).

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

If you like it, I just ask that you help spread the word. Starting investing when your young is so, so important. And unfortunately the core essentials are often diluted with unnecessary complexities in most of the mainstream books. That's why I wrote this one.

<comment><USER21> >Starting investing when your young is so, so important

this is why student loans have made perpetual paupers out of the better part of an entire generation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nice to see your income rise so much just before you die and a lawyer gives it all away. Alas "the old have the means but no mobility, and the young have the mobility but no means"

<comment><USER28> What are you even talking about? When you retire you stop accumulating savings and start spending it. At first it continues to grow but if you plan correctly you will have made good use of it by end of life. Then it will be depleted.

<comment><USER29> By the time you retire you have more capital accruing interest, and generally more to invest in the attendant better investment opportunities available. That's what they meant.

<comment><USER4> My guess would be that there are very few people out there, at any stage in their career besides retirement, for whom interest and capital gains are more than a tiny fraction of their income. For most workers, things like salary, bonus, and (for a lucky few) stock grants make up 90% or even 99% of our income until we retire.

<comment><USER22> Parent is saying that _in retirement_ your income is interest on your invested savings

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> $4700/mo is considered a 'frugal' lifestyle income? That feels...I don't know...out of touch?

<comment><USER31> It probably will be by the time you retire, assuming your not close to it already.

<comment><USER30> Sure, that's a reasonable point to consider, but this website is clearly not factoring in inflation's effect on income value. It says the same thing whether you want to retire this year or in 30 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Impressive. I imagine lots effort has been put into making the user interface as clean as possible. It's a pleasure to fiddle with the parameters and see the impact on the curves.

The only downside (for me at least) is that I live in UK. And my pension plan is not in $$$.

<comment><USER33> I have the same issue, if we could change the percentages we could ignore the dollar signs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Nice! I have used [http://calculator.moneyforsomething.com](http://calculator.moneyforsomething.com) for years, I may have to try yours out the next few "spreadsheet days" I have at home. :)

<comment><USER35> I like how this calculator includes fees. Fees are so often overlooked when calculating retirement.

"Lots of people are unknowingly paying 2%, and more, in annual fees. At a low- cost brokerage you can get away with 0.5%. See what a difference that does to your final balance."

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The UI implies they recommend that I have more money saved now than I actually do. I agree!

</comment><comment><USER37> x: How much do you need to live for a year?

y: How much do you need to retire forever?

        y = 25x

<comment><USER38> Why do you assume no returns in those 25 years of retirement?

<comment><USER39> He does. He says "forever" not 25 years.

(Research has shown that 4% drawdown of your wealth every year combined with an investment into stocks (assets with 3.5-4% post-inflation return) will generally preserve your capital stock - and even in the worst cases won't completely erode it.

100%/4% = 25

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For comparison, this is a calculator that was built by actuaries[1] for the Australian market:

[https://supercalcs.com.au/ris9/mst](https://supercalcs.com.au/ris9/mst)

Some really important things that are built into it are:

\- Everything is given in "today's dollars" and that's done by reference to a salary index, NOT a price index, to reflect increases in community living standards.

\- It shows some indication of the income level you can expect during retirement given your lump-sum retirement benefit.

[1] I was one of the actuarial staff that contributed to it

</comment><comment><USER35> Pretty cool! I use the "Retirement Planner" from Personal Capital (like Mint but for investments) Some of the notable features are:

\- Adding future income events (social security, pension, etc)

\- Inflation adjusted.

\- Set future spending goals (buying a house, wedding, health care)

\- You can also save different simulations and get a percentage chance of hitting that goal. I have one for if Social Security doesn't exist when I retire, another one for early retirement, etc.

It's free to sign up. [https://personalcapital.com/](https://personalcapital.com/)

</comment><comment><USER41> You can save money by decreasing your savings every month instead of contributing a fixed amount. I've never seen an investment calculator or vehicle that allows for such a plan.

<comment><USER42> Do you mean "frontloading" the year? As in 1000 jan, 900 feb, etc? Or was it a typo and you meant decreasing your spending?

<comment><USER41> Smoothly decreasing every month for the entire savings period. Maybe it isn't popular because income tends to increase over the course of a career?

<comment><USER43> It doesn't make much sense to do logically because you can front-load a lot less at the beginning of your career. It's far better to design a sustainable lifestyle you like when starting out and aggressively fight scaling it up with your income. If you do that the numbers will work themselves out.

<comment><USER41> On the other hand, rising disposable income is supposed to be a good thing (annuities for lottery winners etc). Cost of living tends to rise with age, too (kids, healthcare...).

<comment><USER43> > rising disposable income is supposed to be a good thing

That's the lifestyle inflation I'm alluding to. If one can be happy spending X/year 5 years ago, why can't one be happy spending inflation-adjusted X/year today?

Agree about kids and healthcare but those aren't "lifestyle" costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's not clear that the slider represents your current age and the age you plan to retire. Numbers seem very high compared to other calculators I've done.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'd like to know what aggressive/conservative means, and also be able change it, aggressive in the US might be different than in other countries.

<comment><USER16> >>> "What do Aggressive and Conservative mean? The Investment Calculator uses two investment strategies that typically produce two different retirement scenarios. Aggressive investing indicates a higher financial risk with a higher potential reward, while conservative investing offers a lower financial risk with a more moderate potential reward. Aggressive investing typically means that you will invest in more stocks than in bonds. This type of investment strategy is smart when you have a longer amount of time before your retirement. A longer amount of time can also, in theory, withstand all the volatility of the stock market. The other good news is that more time passing will compound your interest, resulting in significantly larger retirement savings. Conservative investing is a more balanced strategy in which you invest in stocks as well as bonds. The return, or the amount that your money grows, is not as large as it can be when aggressively investing but the risk is lower. Conservative investing is best when your retirement date is nearby. Vanguard published a great article about these types of scenarios, showing the historic risks and rewards in quantitative form. These table graphs will show the different strategies in terms of being "growth" or "balanced" oriented and displays the assumptions behind each retirement strategy."

<comment><USER33> I meant to know what percentages he used, conservative/aggressive is relative.

In the US the FED Interest Rate was about ~.25-.55 a couple years ago where the Brazilian was ~14%

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Related: Here was a weekend project I did about a year ago:

[http://retirement-calculator.net/](http://retirement-calculator.net/)

I use it for my own financial projections. I wanted something simple that didn't base post-retirement income on a percentage of pre-retirement income. I just wanted to input a dollar amount for post-retiremt income and have that adjusted for inflation.

</comment><comment><USER46> The tool fails to explain what specific investments it's modelling this on. I'm assuming ETFs, but those returns seem suspiciously high.

</comment><comment><USER47> As others have noted the assumptions in this calculator are dangerously optimistic. The only simple retirement calculator you need is here: [https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/c...](https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/VGApp/pe/pubeducation/calculators/RetirementNestEggCalc.jsf)

</comment><comment><USER48> These tools ever adjust for taxes paid when you trigger a cap gain. It usually assume you never sell and buy a different stock

</comment><comment><USER49> One nuance that is sorely needed is to change your risk profile as you age. Aggressive investment when you are 30 makes sense. Not when you are 60. The decision of when to start moving to more conservative portfolios is a personal choice... but you certainly don't stay in one bucket throughout your entire life.

</comment><comment><USER50> what's pisses me off about these calculators is they completely ignore deduction limits[-1] and considering the audience here, there's plenty of people who do not benefit at all from contributing to an ira, or even a 401(k) if you plan on retiring earlier than 65

in fact, it's detrimental, compared to the fund flexibility of a standard brokerage

i wish people would talk about this more; perhaps there's something i'm missing, but after a certain income threshold, iras and 401(k)s seem like foolish investment decisions

[-1] [https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant- employ...](https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant- employee/2018-ira-contribution-and-deduction-limits-effect-of-modified-agi-on- deductible-contributions-if-you-are-covered-by-a-retirement-plan-at-work)

<comment><USER12> Use can use the Roth conversion ladder to access retirement funds early.

[https://www.moneyunder30.com/roth-ira-conversion- ladder](https://www.moneyunder30.com/roth-ira-conversion-ladder)

You can use a Backdoor Roth to get around income limits.

[https://www.rothira.com/what-is-a-backdoor-roth- ira](https://www.rothira.com/what-is-a-backdoor-roth-ira)

Anyways, this "caluculator" didn't mention anything about taxable accounts vs tax advantage accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Would be really nice if you could add funds & portfolios. Also how are you calculating growth rate? which funds?

</comment><comment><USER52> where on earth do you get 9% returns on 'safe' investments? According to historical records, the average annual return for the S&P 500 ('aggresive') since its inception in 1928 through 2014 is approximately 10%, but you may have to partially cash out at a low point.

</comment><comment><USER53> Here's a calculator I built to visualize retirement income from recurring purchases of deferred income annuities:

[https://www.blueprintincome.com/plans/43301d6bf3c335bb07f6](https://www.blueprintincome.com/plans/43301d6bf3c335bb07f6)

</comment><comment><USER54> "How much do you currently have saved?"

What does this mean? Cash? Illiquid assets? Retirement funds?

<comment><USER55> Since this is a retirement calculator I assume it's asking about your retirement fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> The design of this site has a lot of parallels with Wealthfront ([https://www.wealthfront.com/](https://www.wealthfront.com/)) made me think it's a Wealthfront project.

</comment><comment><USER57> I very much enjoyed the design of the website. It is very similar to that of Stripe.

</comment><comment><USER58> Very cool. This reminds me of the retirement tool I've seen in Betterment. The things you can do to earn more money or cut out of your daily spendings is super nice way to visualize some common ways to make or spend money.

</comment><comment><USER59> Found a small bug-- if you accidentally hit '-', then the "amount saved" ends up negative. Couldn't undo it short of reloading the page. Mathematical hilarity ensues...

</comment><comment><USER60> Someone should make a debt calculator that shows when debt will be paid off.

<comment><USER61> [https://unbury.me](https://unbury.me)

I believe I first saw this as a _Show HN_ a few years ago. Enter in each of your debts (balance, minimum payment, interest rate) and select your method of repayment and the extra you can put into it (if any).

<comment><USER62> Thanks for the link, this is awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Unfortunately "How much do you currently have saved" does not take negative values, and so this is no use to me.

Decent UI for a monthly + interest style calculator. I like it.

<comment><USER19> I think it's asking how much you've saved for retirement, not what your net worth is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Math error: $1.25m - $45k is not $880k. It's 1.205M.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm not sure how this calculates the investment savings but I hope it is right!

Says starting with 300k and saving 500/mo I'll have $2.4mil in 20 years...

<comment><USER28> That's the power of compounding interest. Just make sure to avoid fees. They compound, too.

<comment><USER66> Inflation also compounds

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Recommended Savings for 19yo ist 10k? After College it is more like 30k debt!

It is a nice idea but not realistic with the recommendations imho.

</comment><comment><USER68> You desperately need to grab someone from the street and see if he knows what he's looking at. The UI is not very intuitive, or you have specific target audience.

\- Age range input. It took me a minute to understand what this is for. I assume the lower bound is my current age and the upper bound is the retirement age

\- How much do you currently have saved? ex $1,000. I actually tried to type a dollar symbol and nothing happened.

\- Aggressive vs conservative. Huh? What are you talking about? What is aggressive/conservative?

The list goes on...

</comment><comment><USER69> Great design... Only nitpick with the UI is the slider control: it feels scroll-jacky and doesn't offer a manual number input.

</comment><comment><USER70> Looks really nice and polished, thanks for sharing!

Sorry for asking, but what exactly does the icon of the bag with money in the diagram indicate?

<comment><USER71> It appears to represent the point at which your net worth would surpass $1MM for a given projection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> How come I can't say how many major expenditures I'm planning? I got to put 2 kids through college and buy a house.

<comment><USER73> Why does a retirement calculator need that functionality? Its for retirement savings, not savings in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Wow, there's a huge difference if you have 10k in savings already vs starting from scratch. Eye opening!

</comment><comment><USER75> I think `$1.25m - $45k = $880k` should be `$1.25m - $45k = $1.205m`. $45k is $45,000 and not $450,000.

</comment><comment><USER76> Does this assume that I'll live forever, or that I'll die some day?

<comment><USER76> Ah, it does not assume that you'll die:

 _The retirement calculator takes the Total retirement savings and calculates how much monthly income a 4% annuity would generate without drawing from the principal. This indicates the type of lifestyle you can expect without running out of money._

Or, to put it another way: it assumes that you want to be worth roughly the same at death as you were at retirement.

That's fine, but it bears mentioning - since it assumes you want to pass on potentially millions of dollars at the time of your death.

If you aim to break even at death, that changes the calculations.

<comment><USER77> > If you aim to break even at death, that changes the calculations.

do many people do this? seems unwise given the uncertainty in our lifetimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Nice! I am partial to this retirement calculator: [https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement](https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement)

But then I'm biased because I created it.

</comment><comment><USER79> >If coffee is too hard to give up, try soft drinks. Right. You could get by with saving less because you will also die earlier! :P

</comment><comment><USER80> This is really nice. Just want to say thanks for the work. This will help myself and a ton of people

</comment><comment><USER81> That is a beautiful website! Congrats on the launch and good luck with your project!</comment>


Eedie and Eddie on the Wire (1985) - <AUTHOR> http://www.langston.com/SVM.html <comment><USER2> And this is how musical text to speech sounds 35 years later: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxC0kD- GuBQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxC0kD-GuBQ)</comment>


Return of wolves to Germany pits farmers against environmentalists - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/germany-wolves-farmers-environmentalists <comment><USER2> "they carried out 472 attacks, an increase of 66% over the previous year. The number of killed, injured or missing livestock – mostly sheep and goats – rose 55%, to 1,667"

That really isn't that many lost animals. Why can't farmers who lose livestock to wolves just be re-reimbursed? It could be from public funds or an environmental group could step up.

[https://www.ams.usda.gov/market-news/sheep-auction- reports](https://www.ams.usda.gov/market-news/sheep-auction-reports) Order of magnitude-wise: <$1000 /sheep (maybe more if its a fancy wool sheep? then maybe ~$10k ? So an overestimate would be maybe $2 million-ish per year? Maybe as high as $20 million if they are all capable of photosynthesis. Small potatoes, especially in Germany.

<comment><USER3> French TV channel Arte aired an interesting documentary in 2017 that looked at the cohabitation between wolfes returned from Italy and sheep farmers from south of France. The farmers presented in the documentary have small farms of 100s of sheep maximum, such that it is common that a farmer "know" most sheeps from its farm. These sheeps are outside except in winter or to sleep during the night.

In this documentary they say that the problems are that:

\- sheeps that are attacked but not killed will run away and empty themselves of their blood and the farmer will have to finish them after seeing a lot of suffering

\- farmers want to avoid this suffering and this is very stressful

\- herds that have been attacked will remain terrified for days

\- wolves are very smart and will wait for the right instant to attack

\- wolves are "mean": they will kill more sheeps than they could eat

The documentary seems to suggest that the best solution is not drones nor more people around herds nor new ways to raise the sheeps nor locking herds inside buildings all day but to shot at any wolf that would get too close from the herd, because wolves are very intelligent and would soon realize that it is not in their interest to attack sheeps (they should be able to find food in the forest by hunting wild animals such as deers which would help control their population).

I could not find a link to the documentary (in French) but I watched it online recently.

So at least for small farms in south France, if I understood the documentary correctly, it is more a problem of legislation that ties the hand of farmers than it is a problem of money.</comment></comment>


T-Mobile Breaks Free of the Cellphone Carrier Conspiracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/technology/personaltech/t-mobile-breaks-free-of-cellphone-contracts-and-penalties.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

<comment><USER2> David Pogue writes, _When you buy a cellphone — an iPhone or Android phone, let's say — you pay $200. Now, the real price for that sophisticated piece of electronics is around $600._

Because of the subsidies, we actually don't know what the _real_ price of that piece of electronics is. There's a very good chance the subsidies themselves are there to increase the price out the door of that piece of electronics.

In a no subsidy free market, who knows, while MSRP of a cellphone might be $600, the _real_ price might turn out to be $450 or so.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's important to realize that if AT&T had been able to buy up T-Mobile, this never would have happened.

Useful disruptions are less likely when we have too few companies in a given market.

Note: OfficeMax and Office Depot are trying to merge.

</comment><comment><USER4> metropcs has been doing this for ages.</comment>


The Pentagon's doctored ledgers conceal epic waste - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/18/us-usa-pentagon-waste-specialreport-idUSBRE9AH0LQ20131118 Pentagon loves to spend money more than anyone. <comment><USER2> I think there should be a way to submit the article of The Verge ([http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/18/5117816/pentagon- guilty-o...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/18/5117816/pentagon-guilty-of- billion-dollar-accounting-fraud-reveals-reuters)) because for some unknown reason the original article has been removed form the website of Reuters. First Bloomberg/China, now Reuters/Pentagon.

tl;dl: Missing In Action: $8 trillion of the Pentagon budget disappeared into a mess of corrupted data, erroneous reports, and unauditable ledgers.</comment>


Show HN: GuiLite – Tiny UI framework, runs on MCU without OS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/idea4good/GuiLite <comment><USER2> The examples of GuiLite and those of Littlevgi (posted in this thread) all look a little outdated and messy.

And I can understand this. Most programmers aren't designers.

But if you know why it looks outdated and messy it can help to create better looking products.

The reasons are: lack of alignment and padding / font sizes all over the place.

To make your product look good there are simple tricks you can use:

      * Only use one size of padding (and multiplications of it).
      * Align your items horizontal and vertical.
      * Try to use one font family and maybe only 3 font sizes.

The above is why frameworks like Bootstrap work. They are all about alignment and consistent use of space.

<comment><USER3> One more sin I would add here would be using too little paddings in general. If you have enough space, try to double (or 1.5x) all of them and you will probably see an improvement.

<comment><USER2> True. A good minimum might be 0.5 * normal font size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like to see projects like this pop up because it's so easy to fall into a trap of accepting input latency that other more bloated UI frameworks bring.

As we all know, Electron is really bad in this department but it's not limited to Electron.

I recently installed native Linux and the problem exists there too. Gnome terminal has a MASSIVE amount of input latency compared to xterm. Even worse than the difference between Electron and any non-Electron app in Windows.

I wish more people embraced and went all-in with UI frameworks that were optimized for reduced latency. IMO reduced / low latency input is the most important feature for a terminal or code editor.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, I definitely believe you after reading Dan Luu's posts a year or so ago on keyboard and terminal latency.

However I use mate terminal every day and it feels like it responds instantaneously, even over a USB keyboard connected to a dock connected to a laptop.

Maybe as long as the latency is below a certain threshold it is no longer noticeable.

<comment><USER4> It's a tricky thing to perceive because there's a lot of variables at play.

A lot of LCD monitors have 50-75ms of input lag. That means you don't even see what you type until 75ms afterwards so you might not even have a chance to see how a low latency application behaves. Then on top of that, there's the human factor. Some people are just more sensitive to this sort of thing.

The monitor I use happens to have about 13ms of input lag (verified with camera tests) which is pretty much as good as you can ask for with an IPS panel. I wrote all about picking monitors for programming at [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor- fo...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-for-software- development).

The difference is night and day when typing in an application that's not efficient vs one that is. Even typing in this comment box on HN feels like I'm typing in mud because Chrome's input lag is horrendous compared to xterm, WSL Ubuntu terminal or any other application that doesn't have a million layers of UI framework abstractions piled on.

If you're curious, one of the developers from the WSL Ubuntu terminal went into great detail on why their terminal is so fast. It's at [https://github.com/Microsoft/console/issues/327](https://github.com/Microsoft/console/issues/327).

The sad thing is, I've opened high input latency issues to a number of other terminals and the author of those terminals often come back saying "nah, your computer must be broken, otherwise everyone would be complaining" even after I supply them video proof. I guess that's what happens when you live in a world where everyone has low end monitors and are used to using Electron apps all day.

<comment><USER6> The best way to measure end-to-end latency is an Arduino with a light sensor, with the Arduino programatically injecting USB events. I made an Amazon shopping list[1] a year ago. I hope to rework my code and post a blog soon.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/ideas/amzn1.account.AGSZP5AWBGH7772O3...](https://www.amazon.com/ideas/amzn1.account.AGSZP5AWBGH7772O35NTI7RN3JLQ/2LZEHRCO3YHSZ)

<comment><USER4> If you're into this sort of thing I recommend reading this article: [http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/input_lag.htm](http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/input_lag.htm)

It goes into a lot of depth on input lag and how to measure it accurately. The site also happens to have recorded input lag numbers for hundreds of monitors.

In the article it mentions using photo sensors and oscilloscopes as the best way to get a reading but they settle on using a special type of stopwatch test that gets results that are nearly the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So this is a framework to X? Framebuffer? Wayland? Everything? How does this software fit into all other software out there?

<comment><USER8> It is for embedded development - e.g. your car radio or washing machine. You wouldn't use this for desktop.

BTW, it is written right there in the title "runs on MCU ..." (MCU = microcontroller)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> anybody else find the JS on the site they host their demo video on weird? uMatrix shows stuff being loaded from 127.0.0.1. Not a web person, so I'm confused...

</comment><comment><USER10> The multi language example for Thai looks like it is rendering wrongly.

Proper rendering: ความสูง

<comment><USER6> This is actually a super-interesting problem. The complex scripts require "shaping", which increasingly is done by HarfBuzz. Companies used to maintain their own proprietary implementations, but that's increasingly not a good idea. A problem is that HarfBuzz is a large, complex piece of software, entirely because OpenType is complex and not well specified (there are a ton of edge cases).

I did some research a few years ago on defining shaping by composing several simple finite state machines together, and am confident it could be made to work. The problem is, it doesn't work with existing fonts, the rules for shaping would have to be redone. But for fonts shipping in an embedded device, this would be entirely practical, and would be a lot faster and a lot less code than a solution based on HarfBuzz.

I'd need some incentive to complete this research. If someone wants to pay for it, please get in touch.

<comment><USER11> What about compiling existing OpenType fonts to state machines in combination with the shaping rules? That's something we're thinking about for our Rust implementation :)

<comment><USER6> It's not as easy as it looks, but probably can be done. The research I was doing was very much pure transducers, but with a couple of twists (the one I'm proudest of is alternating between forward and backward passes, which makes certain things like matra reordering much easier). There is some work in this space by Monotype as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks quite nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment> hk-mars bad design

<comment><USER13> Please refrain from unconstructive comments! How would you make the design better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you are looking for something that will run on even smaller embedded devices I highly recommend LittlevGL. I have used it to throw a UI on a few projects, and found it to be surprisingly easy to get going, and fairly responsive long as you can run it in buffered mode.

[https://littlevgl.com](https://littlevgl.com)

<comment><USER15> Thanks, this one also supports the Esp32, which is great.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The demo has a Chinese name: 天女散花(means: fairy scatter blossoms)

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems very interesting; nice work for sure. Any chance of a browser port?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we have. You can build & run GuiLiteSamples\HostMonitor\BuildWinCmd\WinCmd.sln

You will find the UI be displayed in your browser.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does HN rank the comments section? - <AUTHOR>

I found a place in the FAQ where it describes that its the votes divided by the time, but was wondering if I could see the more specific answer?<p>Wheres the true code to see how they are ranked? <comment><USER2> it's

        (* (/ (- (realscore s) 1)
              (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity*))

where

        (= gravity* 1.5 timebase* 120)

and item-age returns age in minutes

</comment><comment><USER3> Code is available here: <http://arclanguage.org/install>

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess now one knows this code well enough to sort through it...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Found it in the news.arc page. About 1/4 the way down. Do a search for ranking.</comment>


Ask HN: what disputes can arise between co-founders? - <AUTHOR>

I am wondering about disputes that can arise between co-founders.
Founders can begin as friends but end-up sacrificing this in the process of starting-up.
Specifically, I'm thinking about conflicts that can arise between remote cofounders.
But generally, what are the serious or common disputes to think about that can be avoided or resolved?
Ideally, would only one founder with hired staff that have equity bonuses for retention be best? <comment><USER2> That's kind of like asking, "What disputes can arise in a long-distance relationship?" It's naturally a pretty open question.

In general, I don't think doing the whole remote-founders thing is a good idea for the same reason that it's probably not a good idea in a long term relationship. There are just too many points that you need to be able to sync up on.

When you get into a startup, just like a relationship, you enter with a picture of a person that hasn't been through the full-on trial-by-fire. When you turn up the pressure and leave it that way for an extended period of time, cracks in that picture always start to emerge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, echoes with this thread:

"..The number one thing that caused the unsuccessful companies to fail was fights between the co-founders. And the successful ones-- were ones where the co-founders were very harmonious, because they had worked together for years before founding the company (multiple instances of this.) Of course, there were also instances where co-founders had worked before and they still fought all the time.."

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77246> (94 points)

thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would say they always come in two varieties: a) disagreements on some future action, methodology, goals, etc., and b) disagreements on past action (e.g. is the other person pulling their weight, being effective, etc). And of course, the latter usually leads to the former, because once you're convinced the other person isn't pulling their weight, you have to figure out what to do about it.

Beyond that, it's hard to say exactly what you'll find to disagree on. But don't worry, you'll definitely find something to disagree on. In fact, if you never disagree on anything, then you're probably missing out on all of the advantages of having a cofounder as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> The most common one is about whether or not the other parties are pulling their weight (because you can't see when / if they are working), and decisions regarding the direction to take.</comment>


Plex's new Kodi plugin - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/01/plex-for-kodi/ <comment><USER2> There is an unofficial plex pluging for Kodi (PlexBMC) that I've run for years. I've found that it actually works far better than the official Android Plex client, which is somewhat ironic.

<comment><USER3> There is a ton of overlap in the functionality of Plex and Kodi - what are the benefits (or the primary use case) of running both this way?

<comment><USER2> TL;DR: Server side transcoding of OTA HD recordings for playback over wifi. And "channels"

I have the plex server on my main media server, which also records OTA TV via an antenna. I often want to watch recordings on a tablet (older kindle fire) which is _just_ on the edge of being able to playback 1080i (16Mb/s) content if everything is just exactly right with wifi. In my old house, with plaster walls, that was seldom the case. So I used the plex server-side software to transcode the video down to 3Mb/s and was able to reliably watch my recordings on my tablet from the other side of the house. These days, in a newer house with drywall, I'm finding less need to use PlexBMC, as the Kodi NFS access of the files works reasonably well.

The other thing that the plex server gives you is access to Channels (1) which don't exactly line up with Kodi's plugins. Even if they both support the same thing (say PBS or NFL Gamepass), there will be times when the Plex channel works, but the Kodi plugin does not. So it is good to have both. And, oddly, this is where the Plex Android client really falls down here. I've often had times when the Plex client simply refused to play channel content, but the PlexBMC Kodi plugin worked flawlessly.

(1) Channels are what the Plex folks call 3rd party plugins to provide access to on-line content, like PBS, NFL Gamepass, etc.

<comment><USER4> There's also a Plex client for Roku and AFAIK not one for Kodi. If you have a Roku device you'll want to be running the Plex server instead of Kodi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Plex's blog post: [https://www.plex.tv/blog/plex-media-player-now- ambidextrous-...](https://www.plex.tv/blog/plex-media-player-now-ambidextrous- free-kodi-said/)

</comment><comment><USER6> > Both started life as offshoots of the famed XBMC software

Kodi is not an offshoot/fork, it's XBMC's new name.

</comment><comment><USER7> How is better than streaming over DLNA w/ Plex+Kodi? Nicer interface?

</comment><comment><USER8> Plex is proprietary, right? No thanks, will stick with Kodi.

<comment><USER9> Check out emby, it is opensource.

[https://github.com/MediaBrowser](https://github.com/MediaBrowser) [https://emby.media/](https://emby.media/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks. Do you know if it supports Chromecast on the server side? I would like to be able to start a stream without using the Android app.</comment></comment></comment>


Are Aliens Trying to Contact Earth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4061990/Are-aliens-trying-contact-Earth-Six-new-mysterious-blasts-radio-energy-detected-deep-space.html <comment><USER2> The Alien part is a ... totally unsupported speculation. Can we change the title? A good candidate is: "Six new mysterious blasts of radio energy are detected from deep space"

From the article:

> _Instead, they [the researchers] say that flares from a young neutron star – > the dense core left behind where a star explodes – are a promising > candidate._

</comment><comment><USER3> Jesus, why do people even bother reading the dailymail</comment>