Whitespace programming language - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_language) <comment><USER2> This reminds me of something I wrote a long time ago. I bring you the lovechild of Whitespace and Brainfuck: Spacefuck. [https://github.com/jdiez17/spacefuck](https://github.com/jdiez17/spacefuck)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wrote a whitespace interpreter for a PL class in college. For kicks, the project writeup was converted to a whitespace program that would print the writeup when run. That program, composed entirely of whitespace, was submitted in place of the writeup. Fun times.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's a collection of Whitespace interpreters - [https://github.com/hostilefork/whitespacers](https://github.com/hostilefork/whitespacers)

</comment><comment><USER5> See it here in action: [http://samy.pl/](http://samy.pl/)</comment>


Coming to Node.js v0.12: Debug clustered apps with node-inspector, here's how... - <AUTHOR> http://strongloop.com/strongblog/whats-new-nodejs-v0-12-debugging-clusters/

<comment><USER2> This is awesome. Has always been a pain in v0.10...never knew what was going on under the hood with clustered processes. Thanks for the work around. Waiting for 0.12 eagerly. In future, can Node-Inspector be integrated into the StrongOps console and use on multiple browsers ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Node v0.12 will bring other debugger-related improvements too, e.g. ability to break on uncaught exceptions.

[https://github.com/joyent/node/pull/5713](https://github.com/joyent/node/pull/5713)</comment>


Antoine's, the oldest US restaurant owned by a single family - <AUTHOR> http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2016/08/the-most-famous-restaurant-in-us-history.html <comment><USER2> Love to old school charm. Dinner jackets are required but if you forget your they have some for you to wear! I went once and they burned my steak, but it was quickly replaced with one that was perfectly cooked and two free glasses of high end champagne. Love that place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Never been there but as soon as I read the title of the post I knew (and confirmed reading the story):

Bugs Bunny: Of course, if you really want to make something good, nothing beats a good old Louisiana Back-bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise, a la Antoine.

Francois: A la Antoine? ZE Antoine of New Orleans?

Bugs Bunny: I don't mean Antoine of Flatbush.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just my 2 cents but I've eaten there. It was bad. Maybe it was decent in the 1870s or 1920s. Service feels like a catered banquet where they are short handed, and not tipped. The food between inedible and mediocre. I'd skip it

</comment><comment><USER5> Have only been once, but loved it. Highly recommend if you find yourself in New Orleans!

<comment><USER6> I admittedly lived in New Orleans before the modern generation of "celebrity chef" restaurants really got going. K-Paul's had just opened. So most of the best restaurants were all cut from a somewhat similar high creole cloth. But Antoine's was always right near the top of my favorites--though I haven't been there for years.

The way things worked back then was they tended to stick the tourists in the front room but if you knew one or more of the waiters by name they'd give you one of their tables in the back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1840 was a long time ago...is there _any_ restaurant, regardless of ownership, that is older? I suppose there may be older restaurants that have passed from one family to another over the centuries?

<comment><USER8> Spot the american! (I mean that in a good-natured way). There are a few 1700s restaurants in london, plenty of 1800s, and of course if you look at pubs in the UK then 1840 is practically modern. One pf my local pubs dates to 1381. The food is probably better now than it was then.

<comment><USER9> 1381?! Speaking as an American like the first poster: I should move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool. I wonder if they have anything from year one still in use.

</comment><comment><USER11> 3.5 stars at Yelp, 3.6 at Google reviews

<comment><USER12> Looking up the place's menu on their website and watching pictures of their dishes on Yelp, I have the feeling this place wouldn't be doing very well if it didn't have its illustrious history.

<comment><USER13> Well, it is what it is -- _haute_ Creole cuisine, its lineage derived from traditional, heavily-sauced French cooking. It's definitely not tailored to modern palates (I certainly don't disagree with you!), but they execute extremely well, unlike many of the illustrious places with poor kitchens that grace the French Quarter.</comment></comment></comment>


Intro to X86 Assembly with FASM – Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brakmic.com/intro-to-x86-assembly-with-fasm-part-2/ <comment><USER2> Part 1: [http://blog.brakmic.com/intro-to-x86-assembly-with- fasm/](http://blog.brakmic.com/intro-to-x86-assembly-with-fasm/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Writing a program for Win32 in assembly is easy, instructive, and fun. It is easy because most of the heavy lifting is done using the API, instructive - because it removes the shroud of mystery from the way your code actually interacts with the OS. And it is simply a lot of fun. Highly recommended!</comment>


SEO Ranking Factors 2015 Summary (from SearchMetrics Report) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@visiblehq/seo-ranking-factors-2015-cheat-sheet-759ff9380ae3

<comment><AUTHOR> The SearchMetrics report is fantastic, using hard research to produce SEO insights. I've taken the very long report and broke it down into easily consumed pieces (but I still recommend reading through the original report sometime).</comment>


Your startup is probably not very important. Do you act like it is? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-grind/your-startup-is-probably-not-very-important-do-you-act-like-it-is-2cc31a48e49a#.8m84dzb7x <comment><USER2> Thank you for being sane.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try my best. Sometimes it is harder than it should be!</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Can you share pitch decks of closed YC companaies - <AUTHOR>

PG, I think it would be a great educational tool for some of us who just now started steps towards market research. Would it be possible to share pitch decks, market research details of some YC companies which have been closed down or have been acqui-hired.
For others here, request you to post some links to show how market research should be done for web-startups. The mint slide deck floating on slideshare is a very good resource.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> You're better off asking the founders themselves. It would be inappropriate for YC to release the info without the founders consent in any case.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011](http://www.seed- db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011)</comment>


Microsoft Hyper-V Support for Android Emulator - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2018/05/08/hyper-v-android-emulator-support/ <comment><USER2> I've a prehistoric 9 years old processor, which doesn't have instructions needed by android emulator. So Genymotion or hyper-v is the only option. But android version on Hyper-V was 4.4. Wondering if never versions are supported now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. At the same time we get Android Studio on Chromebooks</comment>


Hardware debug exception documentation may result in unexpected behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/631579 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.triplefault.io/2018/05/spurious-db-exceptions- wi...](https://www.triplefault.io/2018/05/spurious-db-exceptions-with-pop- ss.html)

[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/multiple- os-v...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/multiple-os-vendors- release-security-patches-after-misinterpreting-intel-docs/)</comment>


In-N-Out Billionaire Lynsi Snyder Opens Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2018/10/10/exclusive-in-n-out-billionaire-lynsi-snyder-opens-up-about-her-troubled-past-and-the-burger-chains-future/#1aae3d934b9c <comment><USER2> _It has just one location within the city limits of Los Angeles_

Not true...there are at least 9 locations in Los Angeles city proper. It is understandable to miss the San Fernando Valley locations, since they use colloquial neighborhood names as the city (e.g. Sherman Oaks, or Woodland Hills) despite actually being in Los Angeles, but there are 3 that have Los Angeles listed as the city (Westwood, Venice, and LAX)

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/In-N- email@example.com...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/In-N- email@example.com,-118.4668606,11.19z/data=!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sin+n+out+los+angeles!3m4!1s0x0:0xbac08fbd9691e562!8m2!3d34.2150316!4d-118.4483242)</comment>


Theranos' Letter to Shareholders Shows the Company Is on Its Deathbed - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-desperate-letter-shareholders <comment><USER2> Investors are warned that there are all sorts of ways that Theranos could be run as a zombie company, for the benefit of insiders, once no further investment appears. New investment would add to that zombie concern, not fund a going concern. The company has had enormous funds at its disposal to invent a blood analyzer using very small blood samples, and has failed. This technical failure is primary; Holmes et al's misdeeds and Rasputinizations form a superimposed soap opera for authorities to sort through. What's next is the auction.

<comment><USER3> The superimposed soap opera probably contributed to the failure of the scientists to invent anything. Without the institutional craziness, all of that money and all of that brainpower would have ended up in _something._

<comment><USER4> After the first set of lies about hit-milestones/sales, it bacame impossible to not invent droplet blood tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Asking as someone less involved in reading about the funding side of starts than probably many of you, can someone explain this quote?

>The most viable option that we have identified to forestall a near-term sale or a potential default under our credit agreement is further investment by one or more of you.

Surely, the company can't in earnest expect any more VC or angel funding after their most recent round of layoffs, right?

Is it common for startups to ask for funding when it's very clear that the company is in such bad shape, with very little chance of recovery?

<comment><USER6> Prompted by this comment I looked up Theranos' investors. Turns out Rupert Murdoch was in Series A. What irony!

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/theranos/investors/i...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/theranos/investors/investors_list#section- investors)

<comment><USER7> Why is that ironic?

<comment><USER8> Rupert Murdoch owns the WSJ, which ran the major investigation that caused Theranos to first unravel:

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/29/rupert- murdoch...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/29/rupert-murdoch- theranos-investment-wall-street-journal)

Nearly as ironic: the first public big splash article about Theranos was a puff piece in the WSJ by a Pulitzer Prize winner (the investigative story was from a 2-time Pulitzer winner, John Carreyrou)

[http://archive.is/8dfJ7](http://archive.is/8dfJ7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > This letter and its contents are confidential. We request that you not share > or discuss this letter with others, except your attorneys, accountants and > other advisors bound by confidentiality obligations. The unauthorized > disclosure of this letter could violate the terms of agreements between you > and the company, and could additionally depress the amount realizable upon a > sale of our assets.

So much for that clause

<comment><USER10> My guess is the letter was purposefully leaked to increase exposure to potential financiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone explain the 3 million minimum liquidity threshold? Is it supposed to be a kind of bankruptcy precaution for the lender?

"Were going to lend you X million, but its really only (X-3) million because you must hold on to the other 3 million at all times"

<comment><USER12> It's a loan covenant. They're very common in a variety of commercial transactions; that particular requirement (you must maintain a minimum level of cash on hand) is relatively common.

It's really $X million, not $X minus 3 million, because you should have $3 million from any source other than them (e.g. revenue) and failure to have it represents mismanagement.

This particular covenant does not provide material downside protection to the lender; it's more designed to prevent an aggressive company from riding things too close to the knife's edge. There would often exist parallel covenants about borrowing money, assigning assets, increasing management salaries, paying dividends, etc.

(Father worked in commercial real estate; lenders have to get increasingly creative when a borrower's situation is closer to the brink, which is where I learned about these.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it's true that they own about 1k patents it may look like a sweet deal for some big pharma corporation to buy the whole company and shut it down. Thats the only small light on the horizon imho...

<comment><USER14> The optics of that deal might not look that good for the buyer though. Essentially you'd be buying a fraud.

<comment><USER15> I don't get how Holmes is still CEO. I _really_ don't get that.

<comment><USER16> Probably because the Board can't find anyone better to take over this sinking, toxic ship. Sometimes it's just that simple.

<comment><USER17> > Probably because the Board can't find anyone better to take over this > sinking, toxic ship.

Well, not without paying them cash money that they don't have. I can't imagine anyone taking an equity-heavy compensation package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This whole article is about a fantasy where someone would loan $10M+ more to Theranos or make another investment. Is there any chance of that happening at all?

<comment><USER19> Is it any more a ridiculous fantasy than Theranos raising a billion dollars in the first place?

<comment><USER20> Underrated posts of the century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I continue to be amazed that in spite of everything that has happened there is still a company that is operating...

</comment><comment><USER22> This is like the last few rounds of a game of Monopoly where the losing opponent tries just about anything (including begging for money) to stay in the game as long as possible.

<comment> vhost- Or Magic: The Gathering. Let me just look at my hand just a few more times. Surely there's a response to this!

<comment><USER20> Found the FNM player.

<comment> vhost- More like commander at the dive bar.

<comment><USER20> Hah! You know I really sat for a minute staring at my response thinking about changing it to "new commander player" but decided not to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> TLDR: 'We've thrown so much of our investors money into a bottomless pit that now our only option is to ask for some more.'

</comment><comment><USER24> I still don't see how this woman is not in federal prison.

<comment><USER25> Stay tuned. The investigation is still ongoing. The bar for a criminal conviction is a lot higher, so it takes a while longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> On a completely different topic , would you know of other high profile young women entrepreneurs in tech and biotech who can serve as role model for girls/high-school kids ?

<comment><USER27> Anne Wojcicki

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We get it. Theranos is finally suffering through fate it deserved in the first place. Justice is happening. Serious question, is this news or tabloid at this point?</comment>


Show HN: Learn iPhone and iPad development in less than ten minutes - <AUTHOR>

http://www.google.com <comment><USER2> Not sure how that link helps, this one might: [http://jamesladdcode.com/2011/10/14/playup-tips-for-ios- deve...](http://jamesladdcode.com/2011/10/14/playup-tips-for-ios-development/)</comment>


Programmers Stack Exchange now out of beta and with a fresh redesign - <AUTHOR> http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/687/new-design-launched

<comment><USER2> I'm really not a big fan of the direction that they are taking stackexchange. Looking over a list of the avaiable sites you have:

Linux and Unix, System Administration, Power Users, Ubuntu, Programming, Software Engineering/Development, IT Security, and Webmasters

There is so much overlap here that is is ridiculous. From my point of view it feels like they are fragmenting the answers, questions, and participants to the point where individual sites can't survive long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get the impression they are taking the same approach as Reddit, in which there are many smaller sub-communities. That gives an individual site a cozier feeling than just one massive all-in webpage. (That said, each of the major SO tags is like a community unto itself.)

<comment><USER3> It doesn't work for this kind of site. Why? It's an answer-based website. You want more exposure for your answer, so you want to put it in a populated area. Reddit is a link submission site, so it doesn't really matter who looks at the links that are being submitted. It's a terrible idea, and one of the reasons I really dislike Stack Exchange.

"I have a question but I see it could fit equally within 3 different sub- communities. Which one do I pick? Obviously the one with more people in it." - Me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the main difference between this Stack Exchange and the main Stack Overflow which is self described as a "collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers"?

<comment><USER5> The way I saw it put was that SO was more about low level technical programming details, and the new Programmers SE site was for subjective discussions about programming in general. Somebody said something like "SO is for when you're in front of the keyboard, and Programmers SE is for when you're in front of the whiteboard." Something like that...

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, SO is for code while programmers.SE is for everything else. Another way to look at it is the tags.

Stack Overflow -- all about programming:

<http://stackoverflow.com/tags>

Programmers Stack Exchange -- career development and project management:

<http://programmers.stackexchange.com/tags>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's what the announcement is actually about (I didn't see an obvious link to it): <http://programmers.stackexchange.com/></comment>


Show HN: Hand-bound Custom Journals - <AUTHOR> http://thepaperpiper.com/?s=hackernews

<comment><USER2> I like the idea, but how about a ballpark idea on what it'd cost? Your site says nothing about price.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're totally right! I'm working on it. Need to make the purchase page flow well with the site design.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The PC Gamers Club - <AUTHOR> http://thepcgamersclub.com <comment><USER2> I am really skeptical about this being worth $5 a month. I suppose you could look at it like you're "buying" 12 free games for $5, since you do the discovery and vetting for me.

But ... the spectrum of quality in free games is HUGE and the percentage of games at the top of the spectrum is relatively tiny. I imagine this subscription would start with the heavy hitters but quickly devolve. And who's the target audience for this? Aren't most gamers relatively "in the know" in the free/f2p space? Can't someone who knows nothing about free games just Google "best free games?"

Even the quantity feels off to me -- 3 per week is too much. In the best case scenario, where you inform me of three games I didn't know about but I want to play, I can't get through them before you deliver another.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just not identifying the target audience for this; maybe they exist, but I can't imagine dropping any amount of money for this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like the dude is on a mac...

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you have some code to try it out?</comment>


Microsoft registered fuckbing.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.fuckbing.com

<comment><USER2> Seems like the least we can do is use it. I propose we use this by default for links to bing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Registrant: Domain Administrator Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond WA 98052 US Email Masking email@example.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329

        Domain Name: fuckbing.com

            Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
            Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
            Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com

        Administrative Contact:
            Domain Administrator
            Microsoft Corporation
            One Microsoft Way
             Redmond WA 98052
            US
            Email Masking email@example.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329
        Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
            MSN Hostmaster
            Microsoft Corporation
            One Microsoft Way
             Redmond WA 98052
            US
            Email Masking firstname.lastname@example.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329

        Created on..............: 2008-11-07.
        Expires on..............: 2010-11-07.
        Record last updated on..: 2010-05-15.

        Domain servers in listed order:

        ns2.msft.net
        ns5.msft.net
        ns4.msft.net
        ns3.msft.net
        ns1.msft.net

<comment><USER3> Hmm it expires soon. Keep an eye on that ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google owns googlesucks.com and several others, they're just protecting their brand.

</comment><comment><USER5> They'd be dumb not to. They also own bingsucks.com, and probably a couple hundred other variations.

<comment><USER6> Standard operating procedure for a lot of companies, corporations should own all of the obvious typos of their name and the obvious hate sites too. It costs little if you get them early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're using MarkMonitor; it's basically MarkMonitor's value proposition to do stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> What's the benefit of registering a hate domain?

Someone goes to Bing.com to search, doesn't like it, and then goes to Fuckbing.com to read up on all the Bing hate?</comment>


Why are pages slow? - <AUTHOR> http://themvcblog.typepad.com/programming/2012/12/why-are-pages-slow.html

<comment><USER2> I'm interested to see what's said for "poor cache-ability". It's an area where the assumption of "more caching is better" can be wrong. I've seen real-world A/B test results that indicate _client-side_ caching can often be _slower_ than re-fetching a resource from the network. Typically, this is true for small resources being loaded from the disk cache (i.e. your home page on a new browser session). It's counter intuitive, but many network connections to hot CDNs are faster than fetching from a local physical (spinning) disk.

<comment><USER3> Until some guy from New Zealand that doesn't have an edge in his country comes along. Don't actually apply this optimisation just because it's faster for you. It's probably slower for a lot of the rest of the world.

<comment><USER2> The "real world A/B test" I mentioned was part of ongoing performance test for a global top 20 site. I'm talking about millions of hits across all browser variants, OSes, markets, networks, etc. I can't cite the data directly because it's not public. You're right though that there will be plenty of cases where optimizations like this will be not work for some users. The most important thing, obviously, is to gather data from your own users and make the right choices based on them. Things change fast: new browser features; new user groups; new networks routes or proxies in your way. Results that were conclusive previously need to be retested regularly, including the following.

The particular scenario where we saw network-loading of resources consistently being faster was on first load of a frequently viewed page. In this scenario we found that loading certain scripts and images from cache (which we inferred to be physical disk because it was 'home page' activity) was slower for a significant portion of the experiment group than loading from the network. In this context loading from 'network' meant either a hot HTTP request to a CDN or inlining small images and scripts directly in the HTML on every single request.

As I mention above, it's worth regularly re-evaluating assumptions. I'd bet that the big CDN players have a _huge_ presence in New Zealand and Australia, given the latency, cost of ingress and density of the actual population centres.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've spent a fair amount of time (over) optimizing <https://starthq.com> and would say that network latency needs to be at the top of the list of things to look at.

The solution has been to serve static HTML, i.e. the index page of the single page app part, with a one hour cache expiration and links to other static resources (JavaScript, CSS, images etc.) decorated with their E-Tag and loaded from a CDN. For non static pages the set up is the same, but the caching time is lower. The static resources have far off (one year or so) expiration headers so are cached permanently.

By using a CDN for all your assets you can reduce a 200ms roundtrip to 8ms for all users worldwide, bringing the page loading time to way below 200ms with an empty cache and well below 100ms with a primed cache since you still need to do an XHR to check the login status.

Small time saving tip: if you go with CloudFront, go all out and use all edge locations - it's cheap. I tried using Europe only at first only to eventually find out that I was still being given an edge location in the US despite being in Finland.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most single page javascript apps that don't prerender are the biggest sinners in a multitude of ways. 1) with the amd loading system you spawn multitude http requests, where 2) none of the code went through a tree shaking to remove dead code (ala the closure compiler in advanced mode - or something which cross compiles) you download a whole steaming heap you don't need thus extra bytes 3) no pre-rendering, so now you are blocking the users experience till your whole steaming pile has managed to trickle down onto a mobile device, the joy

</comment><comment><USER6> Install the YSlow plug-in and see the bottlenecks right the way.

</comment><comment><USER7> Says the page that take 3.43s to (down)load in my browser, loading 8 CSS files and a lot of JS files.

On a serious note: I think Opera Dragonfly is also a great tool for this providing even more information.</comment>


He Contained Multitudes - <AUTHOR> https://theamericanscholar.org/he-contained-multitudes/#.XYbc7uRlCaO <comment><USER2> I swear this keeps appearing on the front page every other day, is every poster just missing every other poster?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it is somewhat strange. But the previous 2 posts (3 days ago and 7 days ago) don't have any comments.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21004053)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20963807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20963807)</comment></comment>


Machine learning is helping auto lenders make better decisions - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-05/algorithms-are-determining-your-creditworthiness <comment><USER2> The title has been changed from the article, and I think slightly misses the point.

Plus ML can be more biased than humans (or more biased than we will admit to) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45809919](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45809919)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the main study cited in the article: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3301009](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3301009)

"We find that the same minority applicants who faced lower approval rates on auto loans do not face lower approval rates on credit cards, even during the same year. This finding suggests that the human element of auto lending, rather than differences in hard information, leads to the lower approval rates for minorities."

<comment><USER4> This insinuates that car lenders are racist.

I am truly curious of what the business model of denying minorities a car loan is?

I mean, long ago, I guess I can at least process the ugly mindset of "we don't want 'them' as our neighbor", but I can not come up with any logical or illogical reasonable reason why a business person would intentionally lower their income just to be racist.

Literally no one would know that you made a loan to a minority, so that can't be it.

Is the insinuation that the loan officer might "get a feeling" that a person might not repay a loan based on the race?

If that were the case, at least in the financial sector, it would seem that another financing institution would have noticed this inefficiency long before 2019 and gobbled up all of that free money on the table.

I also wonder if the higher interest rates of credit cards accounts for higher approval rates.

<comment> crooked-v > I am truly curious of what the business model of denying minorities a car > loan is?

Why does it have to be a business model? Humans are not rational actors. The segregation era almost certainly lost tremendous amounts of money for retail businesses as a whole, but their management still went along with it. The remaining implicit bias in many businesses still loses tremendous amounts of money for retail businesses as a whole (see the various "wealthy black celebrity treated like a shoplifter" news stories, for example), but people still do it.

<comment><USER4> > Why does it have to be a business model? Humans are not rational actors.

True! I guess my real point was why no arbitrageurs eating the free money up?

> The segregation era almost certainly lost tremendous amounts of money for > retail businesses as a whole, but their management still went along with it.

I don't think I agree with that. If the larger society was racist and would not go to a business that was segregated, then the business owner made a "rational" business decision to keep the wealthier customers ... at least that could be true.

> The remaining implicit bias in many businesses still loses tremendous > amounts of money for retail businesses as a whole (see the various "wealthy > black celebrity treated like a shoplifter" news stories, for example), but > people still do it.

I have seen some of those anecdotal stories, but it remains that there certainly are (and have been) other businesses very happy to take money from "wealthy black celebrity" customers.

I get your angle, but it still seems like something is missing, especially now in non-segregated times.

<comment><USER5> If you'd been neglected and abused for your whole childhood, then finally managed to run away and escape, you'd be out of your bad situation right? How long do you think it would take for you to catch up to the adults who weren't raised that way? Evidence suggests that you never would, unless you were so gifted that you could compensate for your past. Most people won't be that gifted, and won't thrive.

What I'm saying is that the missing ingredient is context. The market is a competition in many ways, and black people only got the chance to compete on a nominally fair playing field over the last few decades. Remember the Tuskeegee syphilis experiment only ended in 1972. Rodney king was nearly beaten to death in 1991. Families that were impoverished, segregated, and denied an education and voting rights take time to recover. A history of aggressive policing of the "war on drugs" hasn't helped either.

So at what point does it occur to you that the missing ingredient is history that only people like you and me get to forget?

<comment><USER4> I get all of that, but it in no way explains the question that I asked.

How do the terrible atrocities of the past cause auto lenders of today to deny minorities loans based on racism alone and not business sense?

That is my question and that is what this post is about.

TFA has evidence that people are going out of their way now to deny car loans to people that would otherwise be eligible for those loans except for their race.

I am not doubting that this is happening, I am trying to determine why it would be and how no start-up has recognized the "market inefficiency" and opened a "we specialize in loans to black and hispanic people" and made billions and billions of free dollars currently being neglected.

<comment><USER6> > I am trying to determine why it would be and how no start-up has recognized > the "market inefficiency" and opened a "we specialize in loans to black and > hispanic people" and made billions and billions of free dollars currently > being neglected.

Because money service licenses are expensive and require capital from the same group that would balk at this business plan

Secondly auto loan commissions are GREAT, the pie from people who arent getting denied is still large enough to make enough free dollars

Third, minorities that are denied still have a variety of institution to go to that will more likely lend, such as credit unions who will lend on more favorable terms anyway (so your startup MAY exist?). We dont have data on the whole lifecycle of peoples user experience.

Sorry that people were so distracted by your question that you couldnt get an answer.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, those are reasonable theories.

I think the third one seems most likely to answer my question ... minorities are actually getting the loans that they are qualified for, but have to apply more times than an equally qualified white person due to racism.

It is still baffling to me that a bank officer, or car dealership salesperson would purposely decrease their own income, forgo their own bonuses, and risk the ire of their supervisors and investors to purposely not give a loan to a black or hispanic person ... all with no "rational" reason, even a warped rational reason, they just would do it because ... well no reason! This would have to show up to the management during analytics.

I know plenty of racist people in the south, but none of them would risk their livelihoods or income just to be racist, they would just shut the hell up, "take it", then bitch about it back at home or around their friends while getting drunk.

And then I think of large corporations that are literally willing to fuck over babies, children, women, hell the whole planet, for money, and to think that they would be willing to lose money to be racist is hard to square.

I guess I have an impression that greed is a bigger driver in people's lives than racism ... but perhaps not, we do have this data (which I haven't seen the raw data, but don't doubt it) that seems to indicate otherwise.

The irony of it all is that if these people really do hate minorities, there is no legal way to have more power over them, or to fuck them over, I guess, then to keep them in debt!

<comment><USER6> > minorities are actually getting the loans that they are qualified for, but > have to apply more times than an equally qualified white person due to > racism.

We dont actually know that either. We know of some institutions that create this user experience, and we know that this is therefore a possible ux that minorities should be aware of

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Iwan-Zotow "make better decisions" as making themselves richer and consumers poorer?

<comment> dan-robertson If you make bad decisions by offering loans at too low a rate, you will lose money on average and eventually go bankrupt.

If you make bad decisions by offering loans at too high a rate because you have high overheads or you're cautious or your actuaries are wrong or you're racist then people won't take out your loans because they get a better deal elsewhere or the loan is too expensive so you lose money by not profiting from making the loan.

Now there's a balance here: you want to be competitively priced so people will take out your loans but you also want higher margins so you can make more money for investors or expand or make less money in other places to attract customers.

I think in this case "make better decisions" means either morally better (ie less racist), or better in the sense of "make better deals to win more customers to make more money"

<comment> Iwan-Zotow What kind of function ML is optimizing? Who specified that function? Lenders made their decision from the dawn of time, so we have some data to compare. Now (say, last year) they made decisions with help of ML - what changed? Who got a better deal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Makes sense. Just don't use race, gender, or ethnicity as a feature in the model and those factors _per_se_ won't be a consideration. Their correlates might still be a consideration, however, so it's not an entirely "fair" system, in the social-justice sense. Bias generated in meatspace will still affect it indirectly.

<comment><USER8> wouldnt a system that is "blind" in the sense that it has no prejudice be free to use those (anything) as features? isnt the whole point of the NN to get loans repaid?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but then you end up in a morally fraught territory where someone can claim that you ended up rejecting the loan because someone is a woman or gay or whatever. If those factors _directly_ aren't a consideration, your position is a lot more defensible.

Story time: Google ad serving system used to think (and probably still does) that if someone is interested in engineering topics per their browsing patterns, they're a male, much to the consternation of female Google engineers.

If gender wasn't a feature in the system at all (an unrealistic proposition in an ad targeting system), this problem would not arise as there would be no way for a system to determine if someone is male or female due to the absence of the corresponding feature, and therefore descriptive vocabulary. More defensible, at least, if not "fair".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

" 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,' " Paul quoted.

"Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible," she said. "But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: 'Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.'

<comment><USER10> The Dune trilogy / quadrilogy whatever yes?

<comment><USER9> It's actually a hexalogy, but, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess it's, like, the author's style to use the ..., like, ... construction, but that makes it no less annoying.

<comment><USER12> After a quick scan, I only saw this used once. Does it really bother you that much?

That said, the ellipsis construction is used in an attempt to make text feel more like casual conversation — in this case, something like drawing out the preceding word in a questioning manner or a maybe a pregnant pause. This is a very standard device used in the register that Matt Levine uses for his column, and I imagine that most people find that these casual devices he uses makes his column more accessible for a wider audience.

<comment><USER11> Three times. There's nothing wrong with writing informally for a wide audience, but in this context it just comes across as "How do you do, fellow kids" rather than making the content any more accessible.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure you know who Matt Levine is. He's very much not a kid. He is a Harvard grad, a former lawyer, a former investment banker at Goldman, and a current writer with Bloomberg who is often described as one of the best writers at explaining complex aspects of finance in an accurate, understandable, and entertaining way. He has many fans on HN.

I encourage you to subscribe to his Money Stuff article/newsletter. It's free... and good.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US Simplified Spelling Board (1906) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board <comment><USER2> These projects suck, because they try to renovate existing system, which is a total failure in o so many ways. Best approach is just to adopt the standard German/Swedish/Italian phonetic spelling just in one shock move. "Dis is ön eksample öf renoveited Inglish spelling foor joor vjuving plesöre".</comment>


Cure53: Browser Security Whitepaper (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cure53.de/browser-security-whitepaper.pdf <comment><USER2> If you're wondering why Firefox and Safari aren't studied in this report, it's because Cure53 was paid by Google to generate it as part of Google's effort to push back on Internet Explorer Edge.

<comment><USER3> And just in case folks aren't super familiar with Cure53, they know their stuff. The report largely speaks for itself in conveying their level savvy on browser security. Google didn't hire some corporate consulting firm that would give them a glowing recommendation based on a review by folks not knowledgeable enough to really be able to differentiate between browser security architectures.

P.S. We (GitHub) have engaged Cure53 several times, including an assessment dedicated to Content Security Policy bypasses across various browser implementations. Mario (and team) are incredible to collaborate with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sadly no Firefox there:

> The original intention expressed by the authors was to move past the > browsers as such, instead splitting the field by engine. In that sense, we > sought to shed light on the security properties of Trident represented by > MSIE, Edge represented by the corresponding browser with the same name, > Gecko represented by Firefox or Firefox ESR13, Blink represented by Chrome, > and Webkit represented by Safari. After a series of meetings with the > sponsors, the expected scope was clearly delineated to entail research on > MSIE, Edge, and Chrome only.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you enjoy reading this, you should also check out the browser security paper from X41: [https://browser-security.x41-dsec.de/X41-Browser-Security- Wh...](https://browser-security.x41-dsec.de/X41-Browser-Security-White- Paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> (Actually is a book with 94 useful tables and 61 full-colour figures)

</comment><comment><USER7> (2017)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, added.</comment></comment>


Google employees walk-out in protest of sexual misconduct handling - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/google-employees-walk-out-in-protest-of-sexual-misconduct-handling.html <comment><USER2> Primary discussion here- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352275)</comment>


Ask HN: Startup failing due to lack of business acumen, what can I salvage? - <AUTHOR>

Hey folks,
I cofounded a startup that makes a point of sale app a few years back, and we've made nearly  every mistake in the book. Hiring friends for key positions, never took any investment money or sought any out consistently, had cofounder drama, second system syndrome.
I'm the tech lead, and our product's fundamentals are strong. We're a solid alternative in our marketplace, even with two years development spent on a second system that was thrown away.
This time around, we've taken one punch too many. My current business partner pitched another company on providing us capital for referrals we can offer them, and drew up what looked like a realistic plan. That plan looks like it has quickly fallen apart, due to him not accounting for any debt service in our expense projections, as well as overestimating our ability to hire and train replacements as our sales department churned. Sales through last month were consistently 25-30 licenses of enterprise software, priced in the $1000s, and now we have approximately 2 in the first half of April, two weeks into replacing our sales staff that had us between 25-30 sales for 5 months. The other company's initial payment that was intended to fund operations as we pivoted from a high license fee model to a monthly fee model, was instead spent on emergency debt service.
I'm at a loss because I'm at the end of my rope psychologically. I don't have the energy to spend yet another year keeping the company's head above water. At this point, I'd rather move on. Ideally, I'd find a buyer who will take on the company and give it the  love it deserves: I found out late last year that our cost per acquisition from Facebook ads was roughly $100 for a software license worth around $1000, so there's a great business here. There just needs to be someone who can take charge of it, and fund it. How in the world would I even find that? <comment><USER2> You want to leave the company. That's understandable, and it sounds like you should leave it.

But why does that mean the company needs new ownership? Is there not enough cashflow for you to hire someone to manage the tech side of things?

You say your fundamentals are strong and you want to sell your equity in the company. Maybe now is the time to see if you can get a private equity firm involved.

I don't know what a deal might look like, but if your partner wants to stay and you want to leave, he might be able to retain his stake while you sell yours to the PE firm.

> _never took any investment money or sought any out consistently_

This is not a mistake in and of itself. The most success that is possible for a startup is never taking money at all. However, it sounds like you went into debt instead. That's certainly a higher-risk/higher-reward alternative to taking investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cash flow is _exactly_ the problem. We don't have enough in the bank to not be staying up at night it if there's two bad weeks of sales. and there's not enough infrastructure to disassemble to save money, especially with the burn- out we've accumulated over the last year.

<comment><USER3> Is there anything more you can share in relation to the numbers to comment on?

Feel free to send me an email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > two weeks into replacing our sales staff that had us between 25-30 sales for > 5 months

Are you able to make sales without staff contact? Or at least limit leads to only the warmest and reduce personal contact? You might miss out on total sales reached but if possible to automate this function you would remove a big cost line and reduce a timesink?

Best of luck whatever you decide.

</comment><comment><USER5> This has some good advice: [http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-197-h...](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-197-how- to-sell-a-web-application-with-guest-thomas-smale)

Also, I got a chuckle out of "confounded" startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll give it a listen.

Heh, whoops! Ninja-edited it, though it's correct, I'm much more confounded these days. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How big is the market potential?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a hard question to answer because it's hard to quantify, point of sale is a very large market. Along those lines, the central fact that drives me nuts is in stable times, $3,000 in advertising is worth about $30,000 in revenue.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much would you charge to mentor an aspiring entrepreneur? - <AUTHOR> If you've seen success in your entrepreneurial endeavors, would you be willing to spend some spare time mentoring an aspiring entrepreneur? By "mentoring" I mostly mean having email conversations when you have time to respond to any questions asked. For example, imagine a young web developer who's attempting to start another business, but wants to avoid mistakes he may not even know he could make.
What factors would influence your decision?
How much would you charge for your time? What would be expected of the "apprentice"? What would make it worth it to you? <comment><USER2> I do this. It's called being an advisor to your business.

I charge US$325/hour or take a % in equity (mostly standard vesting terms with a cliff).

I work with 3-5 startups at a time. What I do depends entirely on the startup. For some I just end up being a sort of confessor or therapist. For others I participate in strategy meetings, give feedback on products or services.

And while I charge, I don't do it particularly for the money. I found that if I didn't charge something, if there wasn't some cost, then my time got treated as an unlimited resource, which it isn't

And no, I'm not looking for additional mentees at this time.

</comment><comment><USER3> You need to do some research! Apprentices don't pay. You pay them! You teach and offload boring work to them. That's how it has worked for hundereds of years. Stop being a selfish greedy mortal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your response. It was fairly entertaining to read. I wanted to note a few things, which I've done in a convenient and aesthetically pleasing, numbered list, below.

1\. I do need to do a LOT of research

2\. I thought I would specify that payment could be offloading boring work.

3\. I am willing to go against tradition if it's necessary to succeed.

4\. I'm not as selfish as you may think!

<comment><USER3> Ahh, so eliminate poor people with amazing skills and focus on mediocre apprentices who can pay? How is that not selfish?

<comment><AUTHOR> Who said I could pay? I didn't say I could pay at this time. I would figure out if it would be worth it and how I could potentially pay for it after we agreed on something.

This is me, by the way. [https://blog.usejournal.com/my-story-as-a-homeless- developer...](https://blog.usejournal.com/my-story-as-a-homeless- developer-5874731c42ed)

<comment><USER3> First off, you shouldn't change subjects. We were talking about how your request for an apprentice is unfair. However, I'll allow it since it's another bad point. YOU are the entrepreneur! If you can't pay then you shouldn't be paid to teach. Also, if you can't pay for work then don't ask for workers. You are trying to get paying labor (people who work for you and pay for the work) which is horrible and greedy. Who you are doesn't change you're greedy and selfish.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think you understand. I am the aspiring entrepreneur looking for a mentor.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! It took me so long to realize what was going on in this conversation. I apologize for not being more clear. I ended up just posting a more blunt Ask HN here if you'd like to follow along. I appreciate your time and response!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20340953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20340953)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> None? Usually if someone asks you to pay them to mentor you that's a complete scam. I think anyone willing to pay for that from some self proclaimed expert has already failed. Advisory shares tied to specific deliverables are different- if a world renowned researcher is willing to help you out and connect you to industry leaders and all then a few advisory aharea to bring them on as a board member makes sense, but that's tied to helping the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a scam, I guess I'm just desperate. I asked this simply out of curiosity and was hoping something would come from it. I am overwhelmed with information that I think is useless and a lack of direction. Sure, I don't need a mentor! I just am in the early stages of finding one. Because that is what I think could really help me to stop running in circles.

<comment><USER4> Are you running a company? If so your mentor is your customer. Ask them what they want and build it for them. Otherwise, I went through startup school, that was pretty good. A good investor can be a great advisor as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both of these responses are great and I appreciate the time you're taking to help me. Perhaps the reason I'm offering to pay is that I know the type of mentor I need is someone who wouldn't ask me to, and those people are more likely to respond if I am able to convey the type of person I am. That's a big IF, on top of biggers IFs. But it's worth a shot, even in the dark.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How is the trailer of new advance wikipedia? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbE222udSPM

<comment><USER2> Riddled with spelling mistakes, and falling into the same trap that all "OMG I redesigned Wikipedia!!" things do: Show gorgeous, huge imagery, when that is probably the least important and sought-after part of Wikipedia. Let's see the Founch page on that 142857 number currently on the HN frontpage:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/142857_%28number%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/142857_%28number%29)</comment>


Ask: Updates and rebooting - <AUTHOR>

Why is it on my PC running windows or Linux, I have to sometimes reboot but not on my Android phone? <comment><USER2> Your Linux desktop gets kernel updates, your Android phone (depending on the manufacturer) doesn't, or doesn't very often at all.

Windows ~~doesn't~~ have to reboot when adding drivers/kernel modules since Vista, but most legacy installers will still force you too. And best practice dictates you should.</comment>


Web-Apps on Flask: How to Deal with Cyclic Imports - <AUTHOR> https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/5265893/Web-Apps-on-Flask-How-to-Deal-With-Cyclic-Imports <comment><USER2> I have been using Flask for a while now (to code rest apis). The circular import issue can be a pain. I blame most tutorials and examples out there for this. As the article mentions, putting code in init.py can lead to issues because the file is read when importing modules in the directory it is declared. Better to keep it empty. Also tutorials rarely mention how to use the factory pattern effectively which prevents most of the issue. This is how flask extensions are implemented by the way, with init_app function doing the initialization. Often instead, you see app = Flask() declared at the top of the init.py Not to mention using the app.url_rule decorator on views (which leads to importing the global object) instead of using blueprints to register views and registering blueprints in the app factory</comment>


Amazon Prime Will Falter During Coronavirus Crisis, Experts Say - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epgk8w/amazon-prime-will-falter-during-coronavirus-panic-experts-say <comment><USER2> What they don't talk about is the internal projects happening to try to remove humans, mostly pickers, as fast as possible.

Those in this space know it is only going to get worse and are pushing tons of R&D into automation.

Disclaimer: Don't have source or we'd all be talking about it</comment>


Swiss ISP init7 launches unlimited symmetrical gbit FTTH for $73/month - <AUTHOR> https://www.fiber7.ch/

<comment><USER2> The city of Zürich voted on having fiber to every home/building. The fiber is independently operated from the service providers (EWZ (City of Zürich electricity) and Swisscom manage the fiber). You can pick from as many as 15 different providers in the area of internet/television and phone [1]

[1] [https://www.stadt- zuerich.ch/ewz/de/index/telecom/ewz_zuerin...](https://www.stadt- zuerich.ch/ewz/de/index/telecom/ewz_zuerinet/ServiceProvider.html)

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't it be for the EWZ we would still be waiting for fiber.

I remember clearly how the telecoms, most notably Swisscom, argued that it was overkill and not necessary.

The telecoms also invested into massive lobbying efforts and an intense advertising blitz in order to kill the necessary referendums. (At least the first, I think when it came to the second referendum covering the rest of the city they where pretty mute. But then Swisscom was already in the boat).

The referendums where necessary, since the voting public needed to decide if the city owned utility is allowed to invest the money. Both referendums sailed pretty much through in a landslide.

Basically all public utilities in Zurich are city owned and operated. And while it may appear weird in other parts of the world, people here actually love their public utilities.

This probably has to do with really high service quality being quite reasonably priced. But I digress.

<comment><USER4> > Basically all public utilities in Zurich are city owned and operated. And > while it may appear weird in other parts of the world, people here actually > love their public utilities. This probably has to do with really high > service quality being quite reasonably priced. But I digress.

Here in the states, our public utilities are more often than not of poor quality for the price. For example, I lived in Atlanta, GA for many years. Much of its sewer system dates to the rebuilding of the city after the Civil War. It's in violation of federal environmental laws, and when it rains too much it overflows and dumps untreated sewage into the local river.

I'm not sure why municipal services are so bad in the states versus in parts of Europe. After all, there's no private water/sewer company lobbying to blame for the water/sewer system in Atlanta (or Chicago or D.C. or the numerous U.S. cities with similar problems). I suspect it has to do with the locus of power vis-a-vis urban and suburban voters in the U.S. versus Europe. That is to say, most U.S. metro areas take the form of poorer central cities supported by wealthier suburbs, at least to a greater degree than I think is true in Europe.[1] Thus, there is less concentrated political will, as well as less money, to spent on infrastructure within cities.

Regardless of the reasons, I think many people in the U.S. are justifiably skeptical of public utilities. I personally would very much trust the city of Zurich to build my internet infrastructure. I wouldn't so much trust Atlanta, or Wilmington, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore . . . maybe Chicago or New York City. I say this as someone who has lived or worked in these cities, and relied on the municipal infrastructure more than the vast majority of Americans (because I take public transit and don't like to drive).

[1] For example: Atlanta has a core city only a little bit larger than Zurich proper (though only 1/3 as dense), but has a metro area 3x as large as the Zurich metro area. The vast majority of the wealthy voters in Atlanta live in the surrounding suburbs. Thus, funding for road construction to get these folks to and from work in the city takes priority over funding for services used by people who reside in the city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tangentially related: Init7 is one of the few providers here in Switzerland that offer native IPv6 connectivity to end-users (they might be the only one offering it to end-users).

This makes this already amazing offering doubly interesting because it would finally allow me to play with native IPv6

<comment><USER6> Init7 is the ISP that we (rsync.net) have been using in Zurich since 2007, and we highly recommend them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm very glad to see it happening. Finally we might catch up with Baltic countries...

Switzerland has the money and a population that isn't particularly hard to cover thoroughly compared to some nearby countries. Yet we wasted nearly 15 years in some cantons arguing about roles and responsibilities, while it was pretty clear that local utility companies need to be in charge of horizontal fiber deployment, and the ISPs of the rest, preferably without bitching about the costs of vertical deployment. Sadly our politicians are apparently more interested in letting UPC have nearly full control over the cable network, as long as the duopoly situation allows for ridiculous profits and dividends from Swisscom.

<comment><USER8> Living in the canton of Zurich and having my office in Dübendorf this makes me happy! :) We are currently paying about 250$ for 10Mbit/s symmectrical fiber.

<comment><USER9> I'm living in Rüti (which is about 30 km from Dübendorf but still in the canton of Zürich). If I do the availability-check on the fiber7-page it returns something like "that's a black-hole for us" \- I'm not surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The provider Tweak here in the Netherlands is also launching symmetrical 1Gb/s FTTH in select cities:

[http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht_odf.htm...](http://www.tweak.nl/consument/fiber/productoverzicht_odf.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Damn, I'm paying $80/month here in Australia for 3 mbit/s. The local exchange has been maxxed out for the last 10 years. Its possible we have the worst Internet of all developed countries.

<comment><USER12> I'm paying a bit more ($89/month) for unlimited 100/40mbit on the NBN. Consider moving! (That's Turnbull's advice>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-bestellen/](https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-bestellen/) [https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-verfugbarkeit/](https://www.fiber7.ch/fiber7-verfugbarkeit/)

Django with DEBUG = True in production.

<comment><USER14> Wow, thats a lot of debug info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have much capacity do they have to offload that traffic, I imagine they have largest ports on peering exchanges locally, with some other local private peering, and perhaps they got some backhaul to AMS-IX, LINX and others, but you can read the issues peering exchanges are facing with capacity and the cost of highest 100G ports (where available). How much transit do they have to carry the rest? I jut cant see this being feasible unless its p2p on their own network. Last mile is only a small part of the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> init7, the company behind fiber7, has already a pretty good peering and international pops: [http://www.init7.net/en/backbone/](http://www.init7.net/en/backbone/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seoul, South Korea. Gigabit internet is available for ~$18/month.

<comment><USER17> Same price (~$18) for gigabit internet in Romania, but it's not symmetrical.

<comment><USER18> I saw a Steam (Valve) graph for Dota 2 download speeds. Roughly 8 million players, spread across the world, quite evenly.

The "fastest" countries were South Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands and Romania.

We might be lacking quite a few things, but Internet speed is not one of them :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hmm, Swisscom have been waving FTTH here (Winti..) for the past few months, and I've seen lots of workers actually laying cable, but nothing to the actual apartment yet..

Fortunately I work for a Swisscom owned co. so there are some benefits that hopefully will eventually trickle down, otherwise I think I'd be very tempted by init7's offer (we also use them at work, and they're a good bunch).

<comment><USER20> Swisscom FTTH is available in my building (Biel/Bienne), but at the moment the price is too steep plus you need to have the Vivo XL package to be eligible [1]. That brings the whole TV + Phone + 1Gbps/100Mbps internet at 169 + 80 = 249 CHF / month. I like fast Internet but not THAT much !

[1] [http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/packages/options/1giga...](http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/packages/options/1gigabit.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Love it, hopefully they'll add coverage for the French part of Switzerland too, or else I'll have to consider moving cantons :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Well that shits on my 12Mbit/1Mbit here in London that costs nearly that much...

<comment><USER23> Where in London are you and which provider are you with? Pretty much all cabinets in London now support FTTC so it should be pretty easy to get 80/20 and plenty of ISPs are offering unlimited FTTC for around £20/month. You might want to consider switching.

<comment><USER22> South West near Kingston. Andrews and Arnold. Unfortunately for some reason we can't get FTTC. I think its an issue with the cabinet near me which looks like it has been run over by a bus. The local exchange is also an ancient branch exchange so it may not have the capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a nice "gigabit community" being built in Sout Carolina near Charleston: [http://www.nextonsc.com/gigafi/](http://www.nextonsc.com/gigafi/)

<comment><USER25> Interesting. This looks like the same concept as the community in which I reside: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_(community)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_\(community\))

Every home has fiber, but the bandwidth is throttled to about 12/4mbit by Century Link, which is the contracted provider. This contract expires soon, so hopefully we'll be able to negotiate better speeds.

<comment><USER24> Yes, FTTH itself is common for greenfield developments built in the last several years. Unfortunately, as you have found, they are often operated in a way that does not capture their bandwidth potential. I suspect that in the case of Centurylink, they feel constrained by feeling like they can't sell 100 Mbps service to a FTTH customer for the same price as 10 Mbps service to xDSL customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> xDSL-prices are still quite high here, at least in Gèneve.

I'm not 100% sure if Swisscom has a monopoly as I have only lived here since January but here are Swisscom's price list for xDSL (rough calculation from CHF to EUR):

5/0,5 Mbit: 30 euro

10/1 Mbit: 40 euro

20/2 Mbit: 55 euro

For these connections you also have to pay for a fixed telephone line (hello Swisscom, this is the 21-century, not the 19:th!) which costs 20 euro per month.

(Source: [http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet- at-h...](http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet-at- home.html))

Back in Finland I got a 50/10Mbit connection for 40 euros which included IPTV.

<comment><USER21> DSL is expensive everywhere in .ch , switch to cable if its available in your area:

[http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet- at-h...](http://www.swisscom.ch/en/residential/internet/internet-at- home/fibre-optics.html)

Not sure about Geneve, but in Vaud and Neuchatel it's available.

<comment><USER26> It still seems to cost a lot, e.g. Vivo Casa __package which has 8Mbit download speed is 74CHF, I have the same connection but with a VDSL-model. The interesting part is that my connection really is 27Mbit so that the IPTV gets enough bandwith, then Swisscom adds this "artifical" speed reducer so that the Internet traffic only reaches a maximum of 8Mbit. :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So what I pay for 15/1 at $60 a month from TWC. Oh wait... I live in a third world internet country.

</comment><comment><USER28> Meanwhile, Comcast is patting themselves on the back because they just upgraded me to 50MB! I feel like I'm being served $25 boxed wine by an idiot waiter while across the street a guy is getting a $16,000 Richebourg for the same price.

</comment><comment><USER29> Fuck it I'm moving to Switzerland.

Honestly if I could find symmetrical adsl2 I'd be happy. Download speed is nice but I'm a gamer upstream is everything.

<comment><USER30> Symmetrical ADSL is an oxymoron, the word you search for is SDSL.

<comment><USER31> I don't think anyone uses SDSL anymore, VDSL2 is where the action is at (in DSL tech).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In Lithuanian FTTH 500 mbit connection is only 23 euro or $31

</comment><comment><USER33> I hope one of Tom Wheeler's minions prints out this thread for him on the dot matrix printer they use over at the FCC.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's giving me an "UncompressableFileError at /"</comment>


Chelsea Manning: government anti-leak program a 'blank check for surveillance' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/18/chelsea-manning-insider-threat-surveillance-government-employees <comment><USER2> Nobody cares what Bradley Manning thinks or says. He's a convicted, treasonous lowlife. Too bad he wasn't serving in the Russian military when he committed treason. They would have showed him what traitors get.

This guy lives a better life than some people in America, and that's a real shame. No matter what you think of Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, or anyone like them, they are traitors. Full stop. The government may not always do the right thing, but to violate the law to prove a point or a set of points does not make you right, even if the government is doing the wrong thing in your opinion.

<comment><USER3> True. Lets hope America always has brave 'traitors' like Snowden who open our eyes to the terrifying rabbit hole our government is racing down. Else we might lose all our precious freedom. For instance the freedom to speak out openly, and act with an expectation of privacy, and criticize our government without having to flee it. Else we all might end up 'traitors' at the whim of some government functionary.</comment></comment>


Build a Linux Media Center PC - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2367455,00.asp

<comment><USER2> I've been using Linux for 15 years and *NIX for longer, and I really wanted MythTV to work, but the Wife Acceptance Factor was too low. Windows Media Center won out, due to:

1.) CableCARD support. Expanded analog has left in my area, and ClearQAM doesn't cover enough channels for our use. HD-PVR is a very unfortunate kludge that I wasn't interested in undertaking.

2.) Netflix streaming support. We had it on the PS3 already, but wanted it everywhere. Most of our TV watching is done in the office.

3.) Ease of use, east of setup (even with Mythbuntu and a Logitech Harmony).

</comment><comment><USER3> They really glossed over the sound, which is one of the more painful aspects of a Linux HTPC in my opinion. If you're planning on usual digital audio instead of stereo sound, be prepared for a rather nasty battle.

<comment><USER4> It really depends on the sound chip. My emu10k1-based SBLive 5.1 used to be really awesome for digital out (with a small hack to reset the chip every time I switched from DD/DTS back to PCM), but it has gotten worse over the past 8 years. I eventually switched to 5.1 analog output, sacrificing Pro Logic decoding for stereo sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who used an Ubuntu box for a media player for 6 months, I have to say that Linux is _almost_ good enough. My major problems included:

(1) Because there was no cooperation between the decoders and video cards, playing HD 1080p content at 60 FPS would skip a lot. Perhaps a beefier CPU would help, but the same machine running Windows had no trouble.

(2) Samba, or at least Ubuntu's version of it, is very flaky. Some days it would see my networked drives, other days it wouldn't.

(3) Moonlight does not handle DRM content from Netflix. If my TV or XBOX did not already handle Netflix, then this would have been a show stopper.

All that said, I did run it that way for 6 months, so I guess it was "good enough".

<comment><USER6> _(2) Samba, or at least Ubuntu's version of it, is very flaky. Some days it would see my networked drives, other days it wouldn't._

The SMB client on your Ubuntu media player would have trouble seeing network drives?

Make sure everything is in the same broadcast subnet and ethernet segment, and make sure that you aren't running NetBIOS ("Windows File Sharing") over anything other than TCP/IP, not NetBeui -- this shouldn't be a problem with more recent Windows versions, but every so often it pops up.

Also, you might have luck if you _disable_ nmbd in your samba clients and let a Windows machine be the master browser, especially if your media player linux machine isn't always on.

But I guess this is all moot if you've moved onto some other solution. Maybe this will help someone else.

<comment><USER5> It's very helpful thanks. Honestly, I am disliking the WIndows experience more than I disliked the Ubuntu experience, so I will probably give it another go.

To be thoroughly honest, I don't know if it was Samba acting up on me or if it was the Ubuntu file browser (Nautilus?). Every couple days or so, I would have to click the refresh repeatedly for about 30s in order to get it to see the network shares. Was that Samba's fault or GNOMEs? I don't have the knowledge to say either way.

Thank you for the information.

<comment><USER6> _I don't know if it was Samba acting up on me or if it was the Ubuntu file browser (Nautilus?). Every couple days or so, I would have to click the refresh repeatedly for about 30s in order to get it to see the network shares. Was that Samba's fault or GNOMEs? I don't have the knowledge to say either way._

Whenever it's visibility of machines with Windows file sharing, 90% of the time it is what I've described above -- it's neither Samba nor Gnome's fault. The best thing you can do for the browsablity of your network (once you've ensured that NetBuei isn't in use), if you have an always on non-Windows machine (anything that will run Samba), is run Samba on it with nmbd enabled, even if you don't share anything from that samba instance itself. By default, Samba will always win network elections to become the master browser. Since it always wins, the list of hosts that are sharing is more consistent. Obviously, if you want to access shares on a machine that isn't always on, it takes a while (about 30s or so) after that machine boots to show up in the browse list reliably.

Another thing, if you have a bridged network, with both wireless and wired segments (which might be the case with a media player PC), run samba/nmbd on the wired segment. If a wireless machine that is the master browrser loses connectivity, a network election might need to take place and different machines might become the master browser, and they don't always have the full list of machines all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm trying to set up MythTV now, and am getting near the point of giving up and trying to use Freevo instead.

They don't say how much power it draws. Anything that's on 24-7 needs to at least try to reduce power use.

<comment><USER4> MythTV supposedly supports wake on lan, but I've got a file server that runs 24/7 to double as a MythTV box so I haven't tried it. Unfortunately, there's less and less on OTA HD that I'm interested in recording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We've had a MythTV box running in some form or other the last 6 years, so my kids have always had access to instant recordings and movies on demand.

It took quite a while for them to realize that not all TVs work like this, it wasn't just daddy being an ass when they wanted to watch Dora on their grandparents TV.

<comment><USER9> Heh. I've often wondered how my son (now 2 years old) is going to view media and electronics as he grows up. "What do you _mean_ you can't watch LoTR on your phone?" or "You have do put in a different disc for _every_ movie?"

Man. I need to get out of this rocking chair and chase those kids off my lawn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only thing that sucks about linux media centers, is that you can't get Netflix streaming.

</comment><comment><USER11> My solution is to run a linux media server that broadcasts over UPnP to a PS3 using MediaTomb. Streaming is top notch, it even transcodes filetypes that the PS3 can't handle natively.

Anyway, it's way less complicated than a MythTV setup.</comment>


Groupon Buys LivingSocial, a Rival Once Valued at $6B - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-26/groupon-buys-livingsocial-deal-site-once-valued-at-6-billion <comment><USER2> Back in 2010 I worked at a startup that ended up pivoting to a regional Groupon clone. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the company ended up going under a year later.

What I remember most vividly was trying to come up with a good name. LivingSocial was starting to get traction and we wanted to differentiate ourselves from them. The conversation went like:

        Boss: What's the opposite of LivingSocial?
        Me: I dunno, DyingAlone?

<comment><USER3> I'm curious how you could possibly lose money in a business like this. Sure there is a sales cost, but there are alternatives to having a full-time sales force. I'd have tracked every company that has used Groupon/LivingSocial and figured out a way to electronically contact or advertise to as many of them as possible for very little cost (LinkedIn/Facebook enable advertising to employees at specific companies, for example).

<comment><USER4> Problem is these companies have two sided acquisition costs -- the vendors and the customers themselves. Even if the vendor acquisition cost was zero using your technique, you still need to acquire users (along with the 50 other Groupon clones.)

<comment><USER5> It's not just the two-sided acquisition costs, it's also that on the vendor side of the equation, daily deal sites have absolutely horrible retention.[0] No small to medium sized business would repeat, because the massive discounted price of the Groupon deal was never recouped by repeat customers. Instead they just attracted deal seekers.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/groupon-survey- results-2011-7](http://www.businessinsider.com/groupon-survey-results-2011-7)

<comment><USER6> it's a great product for a bowling ally. Fixed space/costs So, each extra person you bring in has value. Horrible for food service where marginal costs are ~65%, so you lose 40% every time someone comes in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked at Groupon from 2010-2012. I realized that a lot of the problem with the daily deal industry was that a) there was only going to be one winner, because of network effects, and b) no one knew how big the prize would be for being the winner, so it was not clear how much $$ to raise or spend to make it worth it. It doesn't matter how much you spend on a war if you lose.

<comment><USER8> I think the big problem is that it was a bad deal for most vendors except for very high margin ones. When places like restaurants realized that it wasn't getting them repeat business and the deals were dominated by stuff like Day spas it kind of collapsed.

<comment><USER9> I agree, it's probably a terrible deal for almost every retailer, especially small businesses.

As I recall, the standard deal with Groupon etc is 50% off retail price, then Groupon (or whoever) takes 50% of what's left.

So consider a product or service you usually sell for $100, which costs you $40 to deliver. When doing one of these deals, you're now selling it for $50. You get $25 of that, and the platform operator keeps the other $25. So your cost of sales was $40 and your revenues were $25.

Fine if you're happy to operate a loss-leader to attract quality clients who will return to you at full price later.

Unfortunately it seems that these daily-deal services often attract low- quality leads to your business. The kind of customer who exhibits no loyalty, and simply surfs from company to company taking advantage of these loss-leader deals, then never returning.

<comment><USER10> You've just described the main dynamics involved, with one key part left out.

The vendor would realize the revenue up front, when all the "coupons" would be sold. Then they would fulfill the orders over a period of weeks or months, with some sort of breakage rate involved. Needless to say that put the incentives of the buyers and sellers in tension.

But overall the main model was not really just a simple loss-leader approach, it had a lot in common with loan sharking.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure this is true.

"Groupon keeps itself in cash by collecting money immediately when it sells its daily coupons to consumers while extending payments to the merchants over 60 days."

-[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702043580045770279...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204358004577027992169046500)

<comment><USER12> That article is paywalled.

Certainly in the past we were "offered" the opportunity to do a 75% off deal. Then IIRC it was 60-40 in their favour. They got all the breakage (payees that didn't turn up) and we had ty wait until the end of the deal period to apply for the money.

It was as close to a con as you could get. Like selling pensioners ludicrously expensive fascia boards and guttering when what they needed was their gutters cleaning.

Groupon knew the business it was good for but seemingly marketed to those with little financial nous. They promised winning repeat custom on the one side and cheap one-off deals to the end-customer on the other.

IMO some version of this could have been good for businesses in my sector but it would require the company not to be greedy. Investors don't go for those companies.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. My memory of the subject is pretty out of date by now, as I don't follow Groupon much, but I'm certain that's how it worked during its hypergrowth period.

Indeed, it appears that we're both correct, assuming you're not in the US. Interesting article from 2012 sheds some light:

 _Some context about how the company operates: Groupon has had two very different payment structures. In what I call the American model, merchants receive cash upfront for a deal. Once the deal is closed, Groupon tallies up how much it owes the merchant and sends them the money in installments, with the vast majority of the money delivered within 60 days. If a Groupon isn't redeemed, the merchant gets to keep the money. (Known in the industry as "breakage.")

Outside the U.S. and Canada, Groupon has used a different scheme. For simplicity, I will call that the European model. In this scheme, Groupon only pays merchants when a Groupon is redeemed; merchants do not get cash up front. If a Groupon isn't redeemed, Groupon gets to keep the money. Breakage is considered to be 20-25% of Groupon purchases, so this amount is significant.

There are exceptions to the above. I know of one popular merchant in Europe that negotiated to get the American model. But this is largely how it works._

[http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/15/the-giant-red-flag-that- an...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/15/the-giant-red-flag-that-analysts-and- media-missed-in-groupons-earnings/)

<comment><USER12> Yes, UK here and I didn't follow the later progress as after being propositioned (early in the Groupon era) as a mark by them I pretty soon decided it was far from being good for the business I was in at the time.

Good follow up, thanks.

I wonder why they took those differing approaches - regulatory pressure?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a former LS employee, I don't know what stings more: the immaterial amount of the transaction, or the 11% after hours plummet.

</comment><comment><USER14> Daily Deals are great for one type of business -- Dental offices! I used them a few times for to get discounts on cleaning. The incentive to bring new customers by offering steep discounts is definitely worth it for those type of vendors.

<comment><USER15> > _I used them a few times_

> _The incentive to bring new customers by offering steep discounts is > definitely worth it for those type of vendors._

But, it sounds like you either a.) Kept getting steep discounts with multiple Groupons for the same dentist or b.) Kept hopping to whichever dentist was offering a steeply discounted Groupon.

Neither of these is good for the dentists.

Or did I miss the sarcasm?

<comment><USER16> Dentists can compensate for the loss by getting customers who need higher valued services like cavity filling or crowns. If your dentist tells you that you need fillings during the exam you are unlikely to refuse and shop around for other dentists.

<comment><USER15> > _you are unlikely to refuse and shop around for other dentists._

Sure I am, if money is an issue. From [0]:

> _...many uninsured individuals rely on health-related deals from > Groupon...to lower their healthcare costs. This may mean they'll visit a > different doctor or dentist each time as they find new coupons. This doesn't > provide much of an ROI on the initial discount offered, and it also lowers > the quality of care..._

Sounds more like the OP's described use.

> _Groupon seems to work best for large, one-time procedures on new patients > and not counting on them returning to your practice in order to make up the > initial loss._

Sounds unlike the OP's described use.

[0] [https://www.patientpop.com/blog/marketing/groupons-really- at...](https://www.patientpop.com/blog/marketing/groupons-really-attract-new- patients/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _The amount of the purchase isn't material, and the transaction should close > next month, Groupon said Wednesday in a statement. Amazon.com Inc.-backed > LivingSocial had cut more than half its workforce in March, part of a > downward spiral from the headier days of 2011, when it was valued at $6 > billion in a funding round._

For a company of Groupon's size ($3B annual revenue), that doesn't necessarily mean that it was free, right?

<comment><USER18> No, it explicitly means that it won't change the guidance the company has given regarding future performance (it won't get materially more revenue, it won't incur materially more costs). There is a much better explanation of what it means on Wikipedia ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materiality_(auditing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materiality_\(auditing\)))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know what the threshold for an "immaterial" transaction is in the case of Groupon? I'm trying to at least get a sense of the price.

<comment><USER19> There is no absolute threshold it is more a matter of whether or not you could argue that your decisions would have been different had you known about it.

That leaves a lot of legal wiggle room.

<comment><USER3> Well but I think the rule that most companies generally use is if it's under 5% of assets. That's why I was asking.

<comment><USER19> That really depends on the situation. For instance, even a small amount might make the difference between 'profitable' or 'not profitable' and that could easily trigger sell orders and send the stock down, which would make that small amount material.

So what is material depends on the eye of the beholder.

Also, if it's good news then there will be a higher threshold for what is material than when it is bad news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Groupon still exists? I am surprised.

<comment><USER21> The money they raised in their IPO gave them a very long runway. As of a year ago or so they had just over a $1B cash on hand.

<comment><USER22> People forget that companies like Groupon and Zynga are still real businesses. Both are still $1B+ market caps.

As someone who went to both IPO lunches, it was a wild time. Throw Renren, and several other companies from that time period into the mix. 2012 was almost 5 years ago. Unbelievable. Well, at least tech companies actually did go public.

<comment><USER23> To add another one, Linden Lab (Second Life) is still around too. Though it's not in that range--brings in about $60M/year [1] Certainly not the revolutionary thing it was going to be once but the shocking part is that it exists at all.

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/second-life-lessons-what- linden...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/second-life-lessons-what-linden-lab- is-doing-differently-with-its-new-vr-platform/)

<comment><USER24> Is that 60 million in Linden or US currency?

Seriously, though, they could have a renaissance with the next AR/VR round.

<comment><USER25> Everything about their engine and viewer was still do bad last time I checked that I would be shocked if they could possibly pull proper VR off. I never understood why the controls completely reinvented the wheel instead of being more like what we are used to from video games.

<comment><USER26> The nature of Second Life makes optimization a challenge. The geometry is fully dynamic so you can't pre-compute line of sight or use a lot of other performance saving tricks. The people making things are not skilled with efficient 3D design, so even if there was a way to do things like remove hidden triangles from models most people would not use it. Textures get uploaded in ridiculous sizes for things that should be using low res sheeted textures.

And even if you manage to build yourself a nice efficient well designed island other people will show up with avatars wearing massively over-detailed jeweler with 4k textures on every surface and with a few buggy CPU-killing addons that fight each other to try and fix a few of Second Life's design problems, and suddenly your server is on it's knees begging for more CPU cycles while your grapics card is busy choking every time their avatar is near.

The short version is when people can build anything you'll get some amazing works but you'll also get a lot of poor quality, performance killing crap. I don't see VR changing that, but there is a place for a Second-Life life competitor that limits what people can do to hit a nice balance of performance vs. freedom.

<comment><USER24> So, Second Life is MySpace, and we are waiting on the Facebook version of SL?

Interesting.

I kind of see how Snapchat is positioning itself against Facebook in this arena.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very interesting. The fact that Groupon buys a rival for pennies on the dollar sends the value of Groupon down 14%. Assuming people see this low purchase price as some sort of validation that the model doesn't work? Typically you would see this type of transaction as Groupon gaining more pricing power in the industry. Groupon might have been better off just letting Living Social ride off into the sunset.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was really hopeful for what a LivingSocial IPO would do for the DC tech scene. That many dev, design, and product people looking to start their own thing with the DC talent pool to draw from... Maybe next time.

</comment><comment><USER29> Whoah Groupon is still around?

</comment><comment><USER30> While Groupon is not exactly known for their financial filings accuracy. This acquisition is weirder than usual. There seems to be no official press announcement instead Groupon added basically just this one line in their 20-page long 3rd quarter earnings press release:

"On October 24, 2016, Groupon entered into an agreement to acquire all of the outstanding shares of LivingSocial, Inc. The acquisition is expected to close by early November 2016, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. The acquisition consideration is not material."

For those comments questioning the _" not material"_ part. I agree this looks like a potential legit issue: The price paid is probably somewhere in the 8 figures. But regardless of price, Groupon is a small company that doesn't make any money (they just announced they lost $36 million last quarter alone), so even a small purchase price, not to mention LivingSocial's future expenses, can be very material.

But more important than a debate over acquisition details and what is "material": Groupon management have been accused in multiple different lawsuits in recent years for _making untrue statements or omissions of material facts_. And they lose/settle for millions of dollars.

Innocent until proven guilty but if one reads further down to management's "Outlook" section of the press release it is very odd to see LivingSocial mentioned here:

"Outlook: Groupon's outlook for 2016 reflects current foreign exchange rates, as well as expected marketing investments, stabilizing trends in Shopping, _the acquisition of LivingSocial_ , potential disruption related to country exits...Groupon is raising its revenue guidance range...and narrowing its expected 2016 Adjusted EBITDA range to between $150mm and $165mm"

If something is not material then how or why is it one of 6 things listed as reflected in the company's outlook??? Why even bring it up again?

Things that have an effect or get reflected in a company's outlook and guidance is material. Even in the most generous definition of material this is material.

I am not saying Groupon needed to disclose price paid or give a full biz synergy plan. But what is LivingSocial? Is it a going concern? Is this accretive or dilutive? Asset or liability?

This acquisition deserves more information than was provided and should not have been labeled as "not material". The stock's AH 10% drop feels very material to investors.

Groupon's 3Q2016 Press Release: [http://investor.groupon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=9956...](http://investor.groupon.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=995675)</comment>


Book Review: Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin - <AUTHOR> http://www.64notes.com/free-prize-inside-seth-godin <comment><USER2> That wasn't a review.</comment>


Almonds are out. Dairy is a disaster. So what milk should we drink? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/28/what-plant-milk-should-i-drink-almond-killing-bees-aoe <comment><USER2> Adults do not need to drink any milk at all. There. If you care that much about environmental impact then stop drinking any 'milk' altogether instead of moving from fad to fad.</comment>


Is Larkin Good for You? - <AUTHOR> https://www.drb.ie/essays/is-larkin-good-for-you- <comment><USER2> "I Remember, I Remember" by Larkin should resonate with anyone who has moved from a small town they hated, and in adult life relocated again, or for some other reason came to the conclusion that you can't move away from your problems.

The whole poem is available here: [http://www.rswheeldon.com/wierd/nothing.html](http://www.rswheeldon.com/wierd/nothing.html)

My favorite parts:

> "'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?'

> No, only where my childhood was unspent,"

and the finale:

> 'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,'

> My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well,

> I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.

> 'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'

That last line has been almost life-altering for me, because it's such an obvious, fundamental truth that passes many (myself included) by. You really have very many options to improve, or ruin, your life, regardless of where you wish to spend it.

I'd probably make a mistake not to mention for those unaware that Larkin is also the author of the relatively famous and excellent "they fuck you up, your mom and dad"-poem ("This Be The Verse"): [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the- ver...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse)

<comment><USER3> Steady! _mum_ and dad :)

I can't help wondering if the Yorkshire librarian scowling at modernity would have come out in hives at the Americanism.

Great call though, it's short enough and easy enough for somebody new to Larkin to hook into. I'd paste it all here but not sure on the legality.

Pithily miserablist; Morrissey for the page...

<comment><USER2> I guess my excuse is that English isn't my first language, so I blame my occasional slip-up between BE and AE on the ever present American English in my life through 99,9 % of all the text and media I consume. I actually hadn't thought about "mum" being a British variant, but now that you mention it it's suddenly glaringly obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The critic Clive James that is mentioned was enormously funny and productive. He died very recently.

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

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

<comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21686782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21686782)

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/aubade-56d229a6...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/aubade-56d229a6e2f07)

 _I work all day, and get half-drunk at night._

 _Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare._

 _:_

 _:_

 _Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring_

 _:_

I've always loved that description of old style dial phones.

Pretty much every line is quotable though - a wonderful, if melancholy-at- times plain-speaking poet.

</comment><comment><USER5> No mention of 'The Whitsun Weddings' in the article. An astonishingly good poem. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eTF6QNsxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eTF6QNsxA)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thank you for this unexpected gem on a Wednesday morning.</comment>


Show HN: Deep Terror, a puzzle game for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deep-terror/id1075638442 <comment><USER2> I'd love to hear more about weaving H.P. Lovecraft's work into the game.</comment>