How do you solve the problem of sitting in a chair 8-16 hours per day? - <AUTHOR> Most of are at our computers, and in a chair, 8 to 16 hours a day. Be it at the office, home or coffee shops. It' supposedly not that good for you. How do you deal with it? Here's some of what I do:
- Change chairs every few weeks, just to switch it up. I've used everything from office chairs, to wooden "kitchen" chairs, to stools. Now I have a HM chair.
- Getting up and stretching, although this is hard to do especially once I'm in the "zone" and don't want to be interrupted.
- Pills. Pain killers stop the small aches and pains.
I'd like to have the option of standing when I'm doing something that's trivial, like email/facebooking, but haven't figured out a way to do that in an easy way, either at the office or home.
Please add what you do. <comment><USER3> My girlfriend (and myself, but only at home) use a gym ball as chair. Of course I can't recommend it to everyone, and long stretches sitting on it can be really tiresome. I wrote a blog post at my blog, you can check it at [http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/08/gym-ball-as-office- chair-...](http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/08/gym-ball-as-office-chair- review.html)

It has worked wonders for small back pains in the lower parts, and also for some head aches related to spine problems, for me.

Give it a try, a gym ball is inexpensive.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pills relieve the symptom, but a standup desk avoids the injury altogether. Get a motorized desk and split your time between sitting & standing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Any time you've got something that can be done with a notepad and a pen, grab 'em both and walk around while you think and write. If nothing else, having a different environment for thinking while you jot down ideas can have a measurable effect on what comes to mind and how you think about it.

</comment><comment><USER6> You say you have a HM chair but if you didn't try the embody then you might be missing out. Reduced fatigue when sitting in the chair for 12+ hours means more productivity -- this chair has already paid for itself.

<http://www.hermanmiller.com/Products/Embody-Chairs>

Also, depending on the source of your pain, you may want to consult a chiropractor. Not sure what the views of this profession are on HN but it works wonders for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Get a treadmill desk.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPjN07JyVjo>

[http://lifehacker.com/5596963/ikea-jerker-do+it+yourself- tre...](http://lifehacker.com/5596963/ikea-jerker-do+it+yourself-treadmill- desk)

<http://searchyc.com/%2522treadmill+desk%2522>

</comment><comment><USER8> Barcalounger or Laz-e-boy are good options.

I would also consider getting an iPad and using Instapaper to save all your reading for one big chunk of reading time. When reading time comes around get out of the office and go sit on a park bench or in a coffee shop. You can also deal with emails once a day the same way.

</comment><comment><USER9> At work, I rotate between a swopper chair, regular chair, and exercise ball. I try to get up and go for a walk around the block every couple of hours.

At home I have a tall workbench instead of a desk. In the near future I am going to buy a motorized desk and do my work in a home office / workshop.

</comment><comment><USER10> I commute on a bike, go to the gym every day and try and get up every time i'm NOT in "the zone."

</comment><comment><USER11> i´d try to avoid pills. if you have pain, your body tries to tells you something - so don´t ignore it.

i got exactly the some problem as you - and no solution that i stick with.

some months ago i read a lot about this topic. one of the things i learned was that one thing is bad for our body: being in one position for long times. so getting up for something to drink or a short talk is super. small exercises would be even better, but try that at your office,...

i also read that the solution with the exercise balls is not too good because your spine has to hold the complete weight of the body the whole day, which is too much for it. so something with armrests is better.

anybody got THE solution? is there a solution?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a huge fan of the motorized standing desk. I probably only actually stand up about 25% of the time, but it's an important 25%.

</comment><comment><USER13> Save the money you spend on pills and buy a motorized standing desk.

<comment><AUTHOR> that would take a long time, advil and aleve are pretty cheap. but long term, I think it's inevitable to buy such a desk.

<comment><USER14> It exists?

I've seen standing desks but not motorized standing desks.

<comment><USER9> www.geekdesk.com, <http://www.thehumansolution.com/wosiadhecode.html>, etc

If you are in europe, I think IKEA still sells their motorized desk.

<comment><USER14> Oh... That is not what I had imagined as "motorized". I was dreaming of a desk that follows you around.

<comment><AUTHOR> now that would be a nightmare

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I stand. I have a standing desk at work that nobody used - I knew exactly what to do with it. Several people have asked why I stand and do not sit with the rest of the team. I tell them about the health issues of sitting all day - <USER2> to be honest the standing desk area has become quite crowded now. ;-) Funny, I was seriously just talking with my wife about this.</comment>


Show HN: Find and Play Podcasts in Your Browser - <AUTHOR> http://player.fm/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the creator of Player FM. It's a Rails + HTML5 app and I'd be happy to answer any questions about it here.

<comment><USER2> Hi Mike, is there any way to sync the podcasts to my iTouch?

<comment><AUTHOR> The simplest way is to click on the iTunes icon just under the title on your channel page. It will add your channel to iTunes as a single "mix feed" containing all series you've subscribed to on Player FM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Absolute love the idea. It's something I've been thinking about doing for a while now, but with a slightly different twist. (though I lack the skills myself to code it).

1\. I assume you're going to be adding new stuff to it daily ?For example a quick glance in the videogames section and a few 'popular' podcasts I listen to are missing.

2\. Would be great if you could "bookmark" a point in a podcast. Here's my thinking. typically I would use this app at work where I can't install itunes. So if I'm in the middle of a podcast and the day is done, I can bookmark and resume tomorrow. (just one simple use case example)

3\. Are you planning to add a rating system to it? One of the major problems I have with itunes is it's hard to find stuff because there's just SO MUCH. (doesn't make sense I know..)

All in all great app and I'm sure I'll be on it pretty regular.

p.s. cool domain name, can't believe it wasn't taken!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Believe me, I couldn't believe the domain was available either :). Always thought about doing this on podca.st (which I own), but decided to look for something else based on feedback.

1\. Yes, curating the featured channels is an ongoing process and ultimately users will be able to curate channels too, beyond their main channel containing their subscriptions. (The mechanism is already in place behind the scenes as all the featured channels are owned by a single "featured" user.) If you have any specific suggestions, please list them here or mail email@example.com, thanks.

2\. Agree - similar to YouTube's time-based URLs. For sharing a point in the podcast as well as resuming. I think it would be nice to bookmark a time range as well, for sharing/commentary purposes.

3\. Definitely want to add ratings. This would be cool for a given podcast series as in iTunes, but an extra benefit here is you'd be able to see how a user rated things in their own channel too.

<comment><USER3> Sounds good. This will definitely be a service I keep my eye on as it grows.

One more thing, do you have a playlist feature planned?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have any plans at present as I think the channel concept covers at least some of the use cases, as long as people can create multiple channels. You'll notice Player FM keeps playing through the channel once it finishes an episode, so it's a kind of playlist.

What kind of playlist did you have in mind?

<comment><USER3> for instance, If i wanted to listen to a particular gaming podcast, then a particular science podcast, then back to a gaming...

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. You'll definitely be able to do that with a custom channel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not picking out this app particularly, because lots do it, but I won't be signing up because of the permissions it requests (from twitter):

        Read Tweets from your timeline.
        See who you follow, and follow new people.
        Update your profile.
        Post Tweets for you.

Post new tweets, maybe. Read my tweets - o...k... (I wouldn't want this if my account was locked, but mine is public). Update my profile, make me follow new people? Definitely not. But for what it's offering, I don't see why it needs to do any of this, and its asking for a lot of trust upfront.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very much understand this. To be clear, Player FM won't auto-tweet or follow new people unless you ask it to (right now, there's no features like that anyway). I wish Twitter would let the developer include a message about how they'll use the feature on their permission page, as the only alternative right now is to explain it beside the button, which clutters up the user- interface.

In any event, you can hit "traditional signup" if you want to just use your email/password. Or use the Google login.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have to correct this, as Twitter does actually support a message on the permission page. I've updated that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excellent! This is exactly what I was looking for. Some comments: a) Search for podcast (I didn't see a search window) b) Iam currently using it on my Iphone. The site has more of a desktop browser feel. Can you make it more mobile friendly? With HTML5, CSS3 and some JS framework, lot more could be accomplished on the mobile side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad it's useful.

a) Search is coming. I tried integrating Swiftype (the experiment's running at /docs/search), but perhaps because of their publicity yesterday, it doesn't seem to have been indexed yet. b) Agree it could be better on mobile devices. It's using Twitter Bootstrap for a responsive layout and I've certainly found it usable on the iPod Touch, but the interface, especially the nav bar, could do with some work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really great. Now make an iPhone app that syncs with my subscriptions and notifies me of new episodes, stat!

Also, please add my podcast: <http://www.ottawaskeptics.org/the-reality-check>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. No mobile app yet, but for now you can certainly use it on iPhone browser (HTML5 audio integrates surprisingly well with the native playback controls) and you can subscribe to your channel in iTunes using the iTunes icon.

I've stuck a couple of skeptic podcasts in Science channel, but don't want to flood it, so I'll look at adding a separate Skepticism channel as there seems to be enough content for it. And there's already a Spirituality channel to balance it out :).</comment></comment>


Wakoopa now has Linux support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wakoopa.com/2009/05/13/wakoopa-now-has-linux-support/

<comment><USER2> How does this compare with RescueTime?

(RescueTime, for one, tracks URLs in Firefox. The Wakoopa FAQ says a FF extension is too complicated. Right.)</comment>


Show HN: TapTapClap – Remote Clapping for Remote Meetings - <AUTHOR> https://taptapclap.herokuapp.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I missed clapping reactions during our remote all hands meetings at my company, so I built this.

I ended up having fun doing so!

Code is [https://github.com/netgusto/taptapclap](https://github.com/netgusto/taptapclap)

</comment><comment><USER2> how does it work? :-D</comment>


Reasons I Won't Fund You - <AUTHOR> https://www.saastr.com/22-reasons-i-wont-fund-you/ <comment><USER2> Looks like he won't fund you if billionaires find your company before he does, and he can't get the cheap equity he'd like. Makes sense for him, but you're also better off not raising from him in that particular scenario. He calls this 'cap table is messed up', whereas he's just late and out-priced by the bigger boys. Your cap table is just fine.

<comment><USER3> The funding market, like that for employment and marriage, clears at different prices for different individuals.

I'd say the number of founders who can truly aspire to get funded by the "Big Boys" (and have the choice you talk about) is relatively small - for example my lack of connections in the US precludes me from raising from them because I can't get a proper warm intro. You need to align a lot of stars.

That being said, I think he was referring to the complexity of multi-note cap tables (and time and mental effort required to deal with their preferred stock classes etc. vs 5 equivalent other deals using a vanilla structure) rather than the billionaires outbidding him. He talks more about it in another post [1].

Having been on a desk that traded exotics I very much agree that (unnecessary) complication in financial products is not a good thing, and is usually associated with people hoping you'll slip up.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator-What-are-the-pros-and- con...](https://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator-What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-YCs- SAFE-securities-versus-convertible-notes/answer/Jason-M.-Lemkin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I want to hear that you are building a unicorn — or at least, trying.

Is this the mentality of the whole startup/venture capital universe? (Excuse me for being disconnected, this is a completely separate world from mine). Are there no venture capitalists, or young startup kids who want to build companies that just grow slowly and organically, and that are profitable throughout, rather than trying to build some service at breakneck speed while pumping up a valuation and hoping for an "exit"? Is there no venture capital invested with a horizon of a decade or three?

Is venture capital in software just basically buying lottery tickets in 100 startups, hoping to find one unicorn (success) instead of zero unicorns (failure)?

<comment><USER5> VC firms invest other people's money and those people have money in a specific fund entity. Each fund has a specific structure that has various rules on stuff like minimum investment sizes, ownership and time to return the investors' money.

Also, as 9 out of 10 investments, on average, will fail, the 1 that wins has to be big enough to balance out the losses, plus make a profit for the investors that's much greater than putting their money into public stocks, bonds, banks, etc. That's why each investment has to have the potential to be a billion-dollar-plus company, or it doesn't make sense to make the investment in the first place.

Very different from angels who are a) happy to wait b) happy to get 3-4x on their money.

<comment><USER6> > as 9 out of 10 investments, on average, will fail, the 1 that wins has to be > big enough

This is misleading. It is _only_ because they pursue high risk ventures that 9/10 fail and they are only picking high risk ventures because they dream of x1000 returns. They could use a different investment thesis to choose lower risk, lower payoff companies and have a portfolio where only 1/10 fails.

The VC reasoning is that the 1/10 success is not just x20 for an overall x2 return but actually x100 or x1000. I think VC performance over the years has proven this false, especially if you exclude the top VC as outliers, but its glamorous to be a high-rolling gambler so the myth that "VC as unicorn hunter" is the optimal strategy continues.

<comment><USER7> _> It is only because they pursue high risk ventures that 9/10 fail and they are only picking high risk ventures because they dream of x1000 returns._

But your explanation for their motives is also misleading. A huge constraint on VC's investment strategy is the _smaller amount of money_ they are given. VC's are _not_ giant multi-billion dollar private equity funds like Blackstone/Apollo/Carlyle. (E.g. Blackstone $18 billion fund.[1])

A VC fund may be small like $50 million. Or a more well-known prestige VC can raise $500 million. The recent news of a VC like a16z raising $1.5 billion is a new anomaly.[2] However, the $1.5b is still a fraction of what the private equity guys raise.

With a small $50 million fund, that's not enough money to buy management control of the more stable mid-cap and large-cap companies. Therefore, using a portion of a small $50m fund to write a $500k check to a (riskier) YC company is more meaningful than buying $500k worth of Exxon or Apple stock.

VCs are shooting for 25%+ returns and it's very difficult to do that with large-cap companies. Even Warren Buffett hasn't been able to do it over a given 10-year period.

 _> They could use a different investment thesis to choose lower risk, lower payoff companies and have a portfolio where only 1/10 fails._

If someone can figure out a _consistent_ way to take $50-$100m and return 25%+ by having only 1/10 failures, that would be an amazing investment thesis. I'm unaware of any industry expert who has that track record.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=latest+blackstone+fund](https://www.google.com/search?q=latest+blackstone+fund)

[2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=andreessen+horowitz+latest+f...](https://www.google.com/search?q=andreessen+horowitz+latest+fund+billion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Even (sorry) when you're with your family. I want you obsessing about your > company.

Looks like it only takes 1 reason why I will avoid you as a person (and not just as an investor). This is not a healthy mentality, this is not a good "reason", this is not something we should celebrate in our line of work.

This is something that should be struck down, called out, and shamed.

<comment><USER9> He mentioned he knows it isn't healthy.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the start up world these days, due to a lot of clashing ego's. But I can respect Jason for telling it straight.

I don't think anything should be "shamed", just because it's not something you agree with. Allow people to operate however they want, it's a free country after all.

<comment><USER10> Yes, which would be fine if _other_ people weren't involved and didn't have to suffer the consequences, especially children that have absolutely zero control over their situation. But, it's pretty dangerous territory to actually advocate in favor of neglecting one's children/spouse. You don't get do-overs with your children/spouse, and they can be harmed in ways that may not manifest themselves until later.

Having said that: if you don't have a spouse/children, then go for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I don't want you in the office 100 hours a week. Actually, I don't even want > you in the office 40 hours a week — I want you out with customers But when > you're home. When you're out to dinner. When you're relaxing at the beach. > Even (sorry) when you're with your family. I want you obsessing about your > company.

My last startup we met with an angel investor who was like this. The money isn't worth it, we turned him down, and ended up going with someone more reasonable. Reasonable people attract connections and connections are great for your startup.

And we all did pretty well in the end... without all the unhealthy hyped-up stress caused by working for someone like this. Investors are your boss, make sure you like them. If you have a good idea, hell if you have just an OK idea and can execute... people will line up to give you money.

<comment><USER12> I dislike the majority of his post but most of the people I've known to achieve ''success'' at the highest levels spent years in this zone where they obsessed near 24/7 about their work. It sucks to write that family comes second to work. But if you want to build (and run) a billion dollar company, or become a neurosurgeon, or be a SEAL team commander - then, for awhile at least, it's probably true, and I'm not sure we do anyone any favors by pretending otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think when a startup is bootstrapped and gaining traction it's almost always the opposite nowadays,i.e. 22 reasons why I don't need your money.

Even for my teeny tiny startup (2008) I had several VCs calling us everyday wanting to invest. I really think if you're in a position where your on the VC's mercy for funding, it means your startup needs more work on the product.

<comment><USER14> What was/is your startup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every clickbait title is different. But. 22 Reasons THIS one will blow your mind.

<comment><USER16> give the guy his credit, though. he has been pretty active and blunt on funding related questions/topics, and to his credit, he started companies and successfully sold them. His sentences, and so on, are sometimes broken, but what he's trying to tell i think is somewhat solid.

See what he's trying to say, not how he's trying to say.

[edit: grammar]

<comment><USER17> This goes against his own recommendations. He wouldn't have the patience to hear himself out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Frankly, all this article did is remind me all the reasons why I hate the startup and particularly VC world.

</comment><comment><USER19> > If you don't take an amazing VP intro I give you. I'm out.

Um, _MY_ personnel get to choose who comes into the company that they work at. Thanks.

This _alone_ throws huge red flags about this investor.

I may have a million good reasons for rejecting your "stable boy". Number 1 is: he's a "stable boy". I have _NEVER_ seen a "stable boy" cause anything but problems.

A _truly_ amazing VP is probably already employed somewhere else and I have to crack him loose rather than worry about rejecting him.

<comment><USER20> I read this that he meant that you didn't at least meet the intro, not that you had to employ them.

<comment><USER21> What will that intro lead to? Someone getting a job or someone not getting a job and pissing off the investor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I got a really strange vibe from this article. Sounded like the author is in the business of selling VPs/CxO. At least it felt a bit odd that this was explicitly mentioned a couple of times (the bit about not taking a VP intor was really irky). I've heard that the management team is more important for SaaS businesses (as are old school sales people) but I dunno...was a bit odd.

</comment><comment><USER23> Several of his points boil down to "Tell me how special it would be to have me as an investor, so that I can tell you you need to accept a low valuation from me."

At least, I think they do. He might also just have a great desire to be flattered.

</comment><comment><USER24> One thing I find a bit weird is the investor focus on SaaS. The desire for Hardware/science based startups seem to get talk about a lot, but almost every one of these "how to pitch"/"what I'm looking for as an investor" articles is focused on SaaS.

I know this particular investor is exclusively SaaS, but isn't there a wider desire for hardware/science based startups? Or is it all just talk?

<comment><USER25> A SaaS allows them to track growth easily. You have n susbcribers who pay x a month. It costs y to bring them in and they use the product for z months. It a matter of then looking at the numbers and knowing how much ghr company will be worth in a given time period.

Other types of tech products are not as straightforward. Becomes more of a coin toss. Not that a SaaS is a safe investment.

<comment><USER24> Right... which comes down to: "it's easy for them to measure and understand".

And ultimately investors say they want hardware/science. But they don't really...?

<comment><USER14> A very prominent investor told me that hardware founders need some sort of celebrity attached to their name to raise money. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are rare. Investors know hardware is hard and the lead times are longer, so they see that as added risk which makes them less likely to invest.

Many investors, as a rule, won't even consider hardware and there are very few that specialize in hardware. It's a bit of a catch-22 with investors that say they want you to be different, because most of them really want you to be like everybody else. The majority are trying to ride the next wave, only a very small number are actually trying to find it independent of "signalling."

Every investor is different, every company is different, but if you're doing something unconventional you're probably going to have a very hard time. And now that Pebble has essentially failed, that's going to make investors a lot more wary about investing in consumer electronics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The irony here is that a lot VCs break these rules with either LPs or entrepreneurs: #1 can't see the future (herd behaviour), running VC as a lifestyle business rather than building a platform like a16z, NEA, YC, 500; #5 lack of understanding of the competition (or where they sit in the pecking order); #6 I wouldn't want to work for you (arrogant, or just not that sharp); #7 too slow/too late (slow or non responsive); #9 party round (I don't lead); #10 you pay your 1% on AUM with your 2% management fee; #14 on a fishing expedition with entrepreneurs without being upfront about it; #20 not being aggressive enough -- sitting around waiting for your network to drop deals in your lap #22 VC as a lifestyle business, living fat off your 2% management fee (>$100m funds).

<comment><USER27> The truth to the "irony" is that those are the actual deals that investors want to invest in. This post is for the rest.

If you are the hottest company on the market, none of this post applies to you. But 99.9% of the startups out there are not.

I see a lot of people on this thread saying this guy is arrogant, etc., but I think that's taking it the wrong way. He's just providing his point of view, and it's not just his. Any investor would feel that way and this guy is just verbalizing it so the founders can get a better sense of how to interact with investors.

But like I said, if you're hot, then you're the one who says "22 reasons why I won't raise money from you".

<comment><USER26> That goes both ways. The best VCs I've met are also the ones working the hardest and are the most professional. They're also the least likely to be following the herd and the ones you most want on your captable. As an LP they are also the hardest funds to get into. Still those funds represent 5-10% of the funds out there, so the other 90% are falling into the mediocre or worse category. Still most entrepreneurs will take their money because most entrepreurs don't have the track record or traction to be choosey. It's still a buyers market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am not sure if my perception is distorted because of HN but is there a class of investors that do not obsess with unicorns and regularly invest with the target of 10x-100x profit?

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't that be anyone that only does series B or later? I think your risks go down along with rewards the later you jump on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Number 12 surprised me given the number of billionaires that would've failed it. Most are hyperfocused and opinionated early on to the point they don't care who they piss off or destroy to dominate the market they're creating. He'll either get the ones that are consistently good on P.C./P.R. at the beginning or filter out the unicorns he might have gotten.

That would be my guess based on what I've seen. How many unicorns or higher have his venture firm created in practice?

<comment><USER31> > How many unicorns or higher have his venture firm created in practice?

I've never heard of any of them. [https://angel.co/esignature](https://angel.co/esignature)

The one exit was to another company held by the same firm.

<comment><USER30> Best part of your link was:

"Babycenter (a Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies)"

Exact kind of line item you expect on the resume of unicorn-creating investors in Silicon Valley. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > I want to hear that you are > building a unicorn

And there we have the problem with the scene today.

<comment><USER33> I agree to a certain respect, but that's VC. You want to bootstrap a company and make a good living? I'm with you 100% of the way, but VC is not going to be a good fit, I think. If you're not giving them 20:1 ROI, they aren't even breaking even (because most things fail). In reality, they want significantly more. Let's say they put in $1 million for even 20%. They need an exit with a valuation of $100 million to get their 20:1. And if they aim for that, they'll go out of business because it's such a risky business. You have to aim for an exit with a valuation of at least a billion. I don't blame him for saying it the way it is.

My personal opinion is that if you are interested in building a solid business rather than striking gold in them thar hills, you are better off with other sources of funding. Hell, if you are doing SaaS, you can probably self fund it...

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I guess I shouldn't post before coffee. Its so depressing coming here in the morning to see, every day, 10 different versions of the same 2 posts fetishizing 'disruption' and 'unicorn worship'.

I think we would all be a little happier with some hubris, and fewer delusions of grandeur.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ignoring time considerations and otherwise oversimplifying,

[Expected return] = [Probability of a non-zero return] * [Expected return | Return > 0]

VCs tend to think that the first factor will always be low, so they want the second one to be high.

So far, so good. But now let's complicate things a bit more.

1\. Actually, the set of all possible outcomes is partitioned into at least three sets:

{Zero or very low payouts} {Decent but not great payouts} {Huge payouts}

Especially in the middle case, VCs' interests may not be aligned with founder/employees', because of the preferred/common stock distinction and some onerous terms that VCs impose on deals.

Also, VCs' benefits aren't just cash, but also reputational, which is another reason why their interests aren't perfectly aligned with companies' ...

... yet past the earliest stages, VCs tend to control the board, and run things for their benefit.

2\. It's possible to have other kinds of interest than the classical VCs'. For example:

A. If you lend against genuinely good collateral, you have a good chance of getting your money back, and can be more restrained in what piece you take of the upside.

B. Seed investors who offer notes with unclear conversion prices often are doing something similar, but with worse odds. Often, they're hoping for a chance to invest in the next round of the best companies, which makes sense only if they assume such an investment will be very beneficial to them.

3\. Dave McClure at 500 Startups trumpets the idea of factoring "singles and doubles" into his return calculations.

</comment><comment><USER34> I could write 22 reasons why I don't want your money.

<comment><USER35> Many of them are already written by the man himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Only reason I will fund you. You're going to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER37> My initial impression: 23. You write in complete sentences.

</comment><comment><USER38> The first thing I got from this page was a pop-up asking "Want more saastr?"

Given all I've seen of saastr is a pop-up, no, I do not want more pop-ups.

</comment><comment><USER39> Why can't an SAAS startup have 100% gross (not net) profit? Because they're paying $17 per year for their domain?

<comment><USER40> It's my impression that gross profit includes marginal costs, but not overhead.

I can't speak for the author, but every SaaS company I have been involved with had marginal costs such as customer support. When you are a tiny company and these tasks are performed by founders you could perhaps roll these costs into overhead and claim 100% gross profit. But as a growing company it would become clear that you need to hire someone for every X customers.

<comment><USER39> But selling you a nail for $1 also has some potential support costs - so is it wrong to say that if I buy a nail for $0.25 and sell it to you for $1.00 that has gross profit of $0.75?

But the average customer's support costs might be more than $0.75 -- so would you say that by buying for $0.25 and selling for $1.00 to you, it's actually a loss leader? (I'm really trying to get you to buy more expensive products from me)?

Overall I would like confirmation if this is really what is meant. It doesn't seem to me that support costs would be taken out of _gross_ profit - that is what I think would be taken out of _net_ profits. . .

But I'm sure accountants have well-defined rules on this so I would like to heir their take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Almost everyone has competition. I get worried if you have no respect for > your competition, but sometimes, I can get past that. But not understanding > your competition? That's a No.

What does such investor expects to hear in if you are Twitter or similar company entering a blue ocean (creating your own market)?

<comment><USER41> Twitter had plenty of competition. All existing social media was competition for Twitter. Email was competition for Twitter.

Competition isn't about some other founder doing the same thing you're doing. It's about all the ways people can already do the things you're trying to sell them.

<comment><USER28> That is my point - nobody was doing microblogging before Twitter, they literally invented new mode of communication. Yes, it could have failed but not because email or social media would steel their users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't know why he is apologizing so much. It's his money.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can someone explain the comment around SAFEs?

<comment><USER29> Isn't the idea of a SAFE to avoid having to place a valuation on a startup with no revenue for a seed round? And if you are taking 2 million round at a 10 million valuation, you are a bit beyond that...

(Not a VC just thinking out loud)</comment></comment>


Software That Learns by Demonstration - <AUTHOR> https://www.cresta.ai/blog/software-that-learns <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see how reinforcement learning is used to assist humans. This is a great combination of HCI and AI. Emma Brunskill at Stanford - [https://cs.stanford.edu/people/ebrun](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/ebrun) \- has a series of work using an RL framework to teach humans faster. For example, in this work they developed a POMDP to choose pedagogical activities that will maximize student learning, based on the student's current knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> Andrej Karpathy has a nice blog post on this: [https://medium.com/@karpathy/software-2-0-a64152b37c35](https://medium.com/@karpathy/software-2-0-a64152b37c35)

The idea is that more and more software development will be "deleting" code, and re-writing that with neural networks.</comment>


Show HN: Nimiq: A Frictionless Payment Protocol Native to the Web - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/nimiq-network/nimiq-a-peer-to-peer-payment-protocol-native-to-the-web-ffd324bb084 <comment><USER2> Very interesting! Would love to hear more from the team behind this. Just to be clear, we are talking about a new cryptocurrency, blockchain, peer net mining system as well as transaction protocol all built on WebRTC and WebSockets?

<comment><AUTHOR> About the Team: [https://nimiq.com/team/](https://nimiq.com/team/)

 _we are talking about a new cryptocurrency, blockchain, peer net mining system as well as transaction protocol all built on WebRTC and WebSockets?_

exactly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On one hand it's a good sign that it's simple and non-innovative but OTOH it doesn't add much value compared to Bitcoin implementations like CoPay or bcoin that can already run in the browser AFAIK.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your feedback! Doesn't any Bitcoin-based application require either a third-party or installation, because from a Browser you can't establish connections into the Bitcoin network without an intermediary?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, they require intermediary nodes but those aren't that different from your backbone nodes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are those intermediaries also accessible for anyone and decentralized? Is there an open infrastructure upon which anybody can build web applications with nothing but static hosting?

<comment><USER3> That stuff either already exists or creating it would be much less work than creating a whole new currency.

(Although I just did some googling and WebRTC support was removed from CoPay; I wonder what the story is there.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SSH port knocking script - <AUTHOR> http://jdlawrie.co.uk/scripts/PortKnocker.txt

<comment><USER2> I wrote knockknock because I couldn't find a non-insane port knocker that employed the use of cryptography over a simple knock sequence: <http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/knockknock/>

</comment><comment><USER3> now we need a client bash script generator to ease the pain of connecting to the remote server. Does this mean i would have to ssh N times before i could use scp to download some files? probably not a good example...

<comment><USER4> if you put something like

      host *
           ControlMaster auto
           ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p

in your .ssh/config, any additional ssh sessions to a host reuse the original connection, so a new link doesn't have to be renegotiated.</comment></comment>


Ancient Whale Skull Helps Place Humanity's First Steps - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/17-million-year-old-whale-skull-helps-place-humanitys-first-steps-150317.htm

<comment><USER2> What is the point of spamming pictures of humpback whales on an article that has not a single thing to do with that species?

Otherwise, nice story.</comment>


'Flash Boys' Programmer in Goldman Case Prevails Second Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-06/-flash-boys-programmer-in-goldman-theft-has-charges-tossed-out-ibrz5tyj <comment><USER2> The most interesting part of the story about him is that the laws were changed inspired by his former acquittal:

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

"On April 11, 2012, Dennis Jacobs, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, published a unanimous decision in a written opinion[11] stating:

On appeal, Aleynikov argues, inter alia, that his conduct did not constitute an offense under either statute. He argues that: [1] the source code was not a "stolen" "good" within the meaning of the NSPA, and [2] the source code was not "related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce" within the meaning of the EEA. We agree, and reverse the judgment of the district court.[10]

In the course of these events, Aleynikov has spent 11 months in prison. Aleynikov has divorced, lost his savings,[12] and, according to his lawyer, "[his] life has been all but ruined".[13]

The government did not seek reconsideration of the Second Circuit's ruling, thus ending federal action against Aleynikov.[14]

Later, on December 18, 2012, the law was changed by Congress, in order to punish acts like the ones Aleynikov committed in future rulings, in a law referred to as the "Theft of trade secrets clarification act of 2012".[15]"

<comment><USER3> No. The most interesting part is that this is an example of a vindictive employer ruining someone's life.

I used to work at Goldman's and can tell you that they are paranoid about this kind of thing. They are trying to make an example out of Sergey. We used to get daily updates (on the corporate intranet) about the progress of the case. There is no telling how much money Goldman's has spent going after this guy. Both directly and indirectly through lobbying. You have to ask why, after a year in jail with no conviction, the government still trying to prosecute him? Could it be because Goldman has a very powerful lobbying arm which is particularly strong in New York?

If you are leaving your employer, don't upload any code. Sure. ...but that was over 6 years ago and the guy has already done time. Try getting a job with a prison record. I can tell you that in the banking industry it will not happen.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they keep coming after him. Poor guy.

One last point. There is no market for stolen code. If I stole Google's search algorithm, who would I sell it to? Microsoft wouldn't be interested and it is not like you can take out an ad on ebay. Who would have the brains to figure it out? If you had those brains, wouldn't it be easier to just write it yourself? What is true for Google's code is also true for any complex system such as trading software.

<comment><USER4> My best friend works at Goldman, and used to sit next to Sergey. Three things:

1\. There were definitely NOT daily updates about the progress of this case

2\. He WAS absolutely trying to steal code. Goldman high-frequency code isn't great (except in options market making). The thing that ultimately flagged him was that he kept trying to clear his .history file.

3\. He wasn't planning on selling it. He was planning on taking it to Teza, a place that has a notorious reputation for poaching people and code.

<comment><USER5> >The thing that ultimately flagged him was that he kept trying to clear his .history file.

I'll assume you mean .bash_history This discussion has been had here before. There are plenty of good non-sketchy reasons to delete it, and at some places it is mandatory.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it was the .bash_history file. My bad.

He also encrypted the files, uploaded them to his remote computer, and then deleted the programs used to encrypt and upload them.

<comment><USER5> Oh boy, this thread again. see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9044805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9044805)

      email@example.com:~/ >svn export --username Aleynikov --password Hunter2 \
      --non-interactive svn://subversion.ZOMG.think.of.the.children.com/plundered/exportFile
      email@example.com:~/ >rm .bash_history

It's also not unheard of to encrypt files for transit, and for storage on untrusted remote machines. I'm sure someone else around here could show you a few dozen ways to pipe that through gpg, a few of which might also require a password to be used in the command, necessitating the deletion of .bash_history

You may criticize him for using encryption but what would you have him use, plaintext and ftp?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cyrus R. Vance Jr. is a real prick who enjoys wasting taxpayers money trying to prosecute an innocent man who has already had his life ruined because of inappropriate charges and spent time in jail for crimes he did not commit. While, not illegal, his pursuit of Aleynikov is a hundred percent self- centered and illogical (as this decision shows). I hope the people of New York vote him out and choose a prosecutor with the people's interests in mind, not his own personal gains. After all, he is supposed to represent the people of his district.

<comment><USER7> I don't agree. Aleynikov did not win on the aspects of the case that folks in the tech industry rallied around (e.g. copying open source code). He won on narrow issues of statutory construction: 1) The National Stolen Property Act does not extend to intangible property; 2) The Economic Espionage Act does not encompass code used internally for commercial purposes, only code sold or licensed in commerce; 3) New York's law against unlawful use of secret scientific material did not apply because trading code wasn't "scientific material."

I think Vance should have left well enough alone after the first prosecution failed, and the New York "scientific material" charge was clearly the weakest of the three. But the federal prosecution was perfectly reasonable. The statutes at issue were intended to make that sort of conduct illegal. But they hadn't been updated for the digital era. Had Aleynikov made photocopies of the code instead of uploading it, the first conviction would have been upheld.

<comment><USER8> So, by "narrow issues of statutory construction," you mean the laws he was charged with breaking don't actually apply to what he did?

I wouldn't go so far as to call him "innocent", but it sounds to me like his defence is perfectly reasonable. What he did may have been a breach of contract, copyright, and common decency, but it wasn't illegal. And given the way Goldman is clearly out to get him, and the abuse of power on display by both the federal and state prosecutors, he's the least dirty of all the parties involved.

<comment><USER9> This guy was probably getting a fat paycheck during his time at GS, and then when he left he tried to take some of the code that he worked on. It's long been illegal to take intellectual property (even if you made it) from your employer. But to make a law, you have to define things like "take", to exclude the case of an employee taking home his work to be more productive, which may be against company policy but shouldn't be illegal. Inevitably, the law fails to capture the full complexity of the universe and ambiguities are resolved in court. There's nothing wrong about the government and damaged party pursuing charges in cases where the law is ambiguous. That's what courts are for. When the federal courts ruled that federal law didn't cover Sergey's actions, the New York state prosecutor thought that a unique element of New York law might make things different in state court. Nothing wrong with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From another source (law360, which is paywalled):

"prosecution failed to prove that Aleynikov made a tangible reproduction of the source code he was accused of appropriating, as required by the statutory language."

Damn this guy keeps winning on statutory issues. This must be pretty damn embarrassing for the state's attorney.

The guy served a year in prison and there is no indication that he used the misappropriated code. I can't imagine the judicial resources are best used continuing the case.

Though, anyone leaving a company shouldn't take this as a signal that you are allowed to just take code and run out of the door. The federal law he was acquitted under was amended to make what he did illegal. And in most states he's definitely flirting with trade secret misappropriation laws. Don't take any code with you.

<comment><USER11> >I can't imagine the judicial resources are best used continuing the case.

Are you kidding? Its Goldman Sachs we are talking about here, nothing is too good for our banker overlords.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> when i briefly consulted for a security firm working for banks, i learned that most banks takes daily hits as high as 100,000 and they don't even get reported to the police as to not generate any public record. most get reported to the insurer, which also avoid reporting it in most cases. i confess i never got the whole picture. but most issues I've been involved with was to try to track down the internal people, if any, and the exact means used. and this only over for criminal reports if we did find something conclusive and it was overseas. if it was local it was usually dealt with lawyers and such out of the records.

edit: forgot to mention it wasn't the us. but the banks were american.

</comment><comment><USER13> What I find interesting is that Aleynikov (and the sources I've read about him) claim the code was open source. The issue of Goldman making false claim to GPLed or similarly licensed code hasn't come up. If the court ruled that modified GPLed code can't be taken by an exiting employee then that has a whole host of other implications.

<comment><USER7> The Second Circuit ruling expressly addressed that aspect: [http://sunsteinlaw.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/2013_01...](http://sunsteinlaw.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/2013_01_IP_Update_Aleynikov.pdf) ("Aleynikov also transferred some open source software licensed for use by the public that was mixed in with Goldman's proprietary code. However, a substantially greater number of the uploaded files contained proprietary code than had open source software") (Page 5, Footnote 1)

<comment><USER5> Link appears to be broken.

<comment><USER7> Fixed, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There isn't a whole lot of content here but since this case has had a lot of publicity I thought it would be nice to highlight when the programmer wins one over the larger corporation.

<comment><USER14> I agree it's time for the prosecutors to let go of this one. But, he did take Goldman's code. So, I don't quite share the sentiment that this is a hero standing up to an evil corporation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hopefully he can return to hacking Erlang now.

<comment><USER16> If you followed him on GitHub you'd see he has continued to be very active hacking on erlexec, among others :)

see: [https://github.com/saleyn](https://github.com/saleyn)

<comment><USER15> Yes, I know :-) [https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec/graphs/contributors)

That whole thing had to have been hugely distracting, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it absurd that someone should go to jail because of stealing code. At most, the penalty should be a fine (if it should be considered a crime at all).

EDIT: Of course, breaking into a building or hacking a network to get it is a different matter altogether.

<comment><USER10> It's really no more or less absurd than someone going to jail for stealing a car. Though I have to admit I think sending people to jail for that is a really bad idea.

<comment><USER18> A car is a physical good whereby for one person to have it, another must be deprived it. Code is not a physical good so the rules can be very, very different.

<comment><USER19> Inany cases the value of a good depends on other people not having it. Why this is hard to understand is beyond me.

<comment><USER20> That is absolutely untrue in many (but not all) cases of "intellectual property". Let's take some extremely valuable "IP", Microsoft's "Word" word processor.

If one person had exclusive use of "Word", the "IP" would be worth a great deal less than it is right now, when almost everyone has "Word". The property here is called "network effects", and it also applies to physical property. If only two telephones exist, they're a good deal less valuable than if everyone has a telephone.

<comment><USER19> Typo: should be "in many" instead of inany

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Quite unusual for the finance industry : a small win for capitalism and loss for crony corporatism.

</comment><comment><USER22> So, the prosecutor might appeal even though the man has already been punished as much as he'd ask for anyway if the conviction is upheld?

Seriously, wtf?

</comment><comment><USER23> >> two jurors were dismissed after one accused the other of trying to poison her lunch.

Is it common for both jurors to be dismissed in such a case? Or is it determined on a case by case basis?

<comment><USER24> Seems like an expedient way to avoid appeals on the basis that the wrong juror was excused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like a familiar analysis... Oh that's right, I posted it the last time this came up, and a certain prominent legal mind here shouted it down as ignorant and insulted my intelligence.

No hard feelings. Cheers, sir.

<comment><USER26> Got a link?

<comment><USER27> I think this thread, but to my eyes, the discussion remained civil: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9044805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9044805)

<comment><USER24> sqb's primary argument in that thread is that the FBI should have done more investigating instead of believing what GS told them. That doesn't appear related to the analysis in the submitted article.

<comment><USER25> There was also a strong current of discussion about the legality of the underlying actions. The tone did remained civil, after a few choice edits on all sides.

Tptacek can bother me because he often presents the best possible form of the counterposition, as can Rayiner. We have different minds about jurisprudence, but I respect them both tremendously.

The discussion was in large part about the legality of the actions, as you can see through Rayiner's comment: >"The Court concluded that he had in fact tried to take 500,000 lines of valuable and mostly proprietary source code, but that his conduct didn't fall within the reach of the two laws charged in the indictment. Solid legal analysis, but an ordinary person would say that he got off on a technicality."

Although my central point was indeed regarding the FBI's outsourcing of its investigation to Goldman Sachs, a private corporation and interested party, which seemed to offend fundamental notions of justice.

But the discussion most definitely significantly touched upon the legality of Aleynikov's actions.

See e.g. Rhino paraphrasing Rayiner's analysis: >" _Aleynikov definitely violated New York trade secret law._

He got off the federal charge because the trading software wasn't a product for sale, it was a product for internal use. The law was poorly drafted and once that came to light it was immediately fixed.

Like Rayiner said, in layman's terms, he got off on a technicality."

Or Rayiner himself: >"That was his defense. But the jury found that he had in fact grabbed valuable proprietary software, and the Second Circuit agreed that the 500,000 lines that he uploaded were mostly proprietary, valuable code."

For example, this exchange:

"tptacek: >I have a passing understanding of the policies and procedures binding on developers at trading firms. I dispute the idea that any senior developer could work at Goldman Sachs on an HFT infrastructure and believe that they were authorized to --- or, indeed, that they would not be immeditely fired for --- uploading the code to a proprietary automated trading system to a random SVN host in a different country. This is the code we, as security testers, were never allowed to see, even after owning up the machines hosting it. These firms are not kidding around about this stuff. It is a huge smoking gun to have uploaded any of it to some off-brand foreign svn host.

These are firms where you can be fired for plugging a thumb drive into your computer, or for using the company network to access Dropbox. I have worked for more than one financial firm that spent literally millions of dollars merely on the problem of detecting their network users trying to reach Google Mail. I also dispute the idea that because developers commonly use ssh, gzip, and svn, that it is common practice to (1) gzip a tarball of source code, (2) encrypt that source code, (3) commit that compressed encrypted blob to svn, (4) remove all traces of the encryption key from their work computer. That's something happens zero times on normal dev machines. The conviction was overturned because the technical details of exactly what Aleynikov took from GS didn't fit the ambitious charge the DOJ filed against him. But the appeal doesn't refute the finding of facts from the original trial, which include: There was more than sufficient evidence presented at trial, however, for a rational juror to conclude that Aleynikov intended to steal Goldman Sachs' proprietary source code. First, it was undisputed at trial that Aleynikov actually did take proprietary source code from Goldman Sachs. As Aleynikov concedes in his motion papers, the code he took from Goldman Sachs included a "purposefully designed" portion of the Goldman Sachs "proprietary, custom- built trading system." Indeed, the evidence showed that Aleynikov took a significant percentage of the proprietary source code for that system. While Aleynikov attempted to show that there was open source code embedded within the proprietary code and to identify the files in which that might be true, his expert witness was only able to identify one file among those taken by Aleynikov that both bore a Goldman Sachs copyright banner and appeared to contain open source code.

I'm just fine with Aleynikov's conviction being overturned. Again, the charges against him seemed ambitious. But this is a forum full of software developers.

Rayiner is a lawyer and a compiler developer. It's somewhat insulting to everyone's intelligence to pretend that people here are unfamiliar with ssh and svn. We understand how software development works. What happened here was extremely sketchy. You can't play the "well in the world of software development, this is totally normal" card on HN.""

s_q_b: > "...Agreed, but it was established that he did this fairly consistently throughout the course of his employment. It's idiosyncratic, but not unexplainable. Sure, it was poor development practice, but I'm not convinced it was malicious.

Again, if the intent was trade secret theft, why not take the valuable part, the trading strategies?"

I held that his actions violated neither state nor Federal law, so I'm razzing those that insisted his action were criminal, just a bit, all intended in fun. Perhaps the language could have used a bit of softening :)

<comment><USER28> Did the prosecution not establish that Aleynikov did in fact take software that was instrumental to the implementation of trading strategies, useful exclusively in that context, and labor-intensive to recreate?

I am not "pro-prosecution", but I am anti-"default position that evil banksters are behind prosecutions".

<comment><USER25> Was he guilty of violating the law with intent to unfairly profit from stolen intellectual property? No.

And in this case, it was not so much the _default_ position as the _actual position_.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure I understand your first interrogative.

<comment><USER25> Did he steal code for profit? No.

<comment><USER28> It sounds like you're stipulating that he stole code. Ok. Then:

He stole that code for use in his next job, for which he was paid handsomely, and recruited based on his experience working with that code at GS.

What does "for profit" mean, if not "for use in a commercial project"?

<comment><USER25> Wow, do you really not understand what was stated, or are you simply attempting to manipulate words for your purpose?

Allow me to rephrase.

Assuming arguendo that their was any such admittance, which there was not, in plain English two courts have now found him legally not liable for any crime, and one court found that he was subject to an illegal arrest and search.

No crime was committed. I cannot write this either in more simple English, nor in more precise terms.

I refer you to the court documents and the appeals court decisions for further discussion of this now legally established fact.

<comment><USER28> I genuinely thought you were trying to stipulate he'd stolen the code, from your first comment (where you made a point of talking about his intent) and your second, where you simplified not to "did he steal code" but "did he steal code for profit".

Since we're at that unproductive point in the discussion where we're spending more time parsing than actually discussing, I'm going to go ahead and bow out now.

<comment><USER25> Ah, fair enough, I see your interpretation of my comments. It wasn't what I intended but your's was a fair understanding.

And you're right, we're parsing semantics and having meta-arguments now. We've said our peace, and as usual we can let the readers can decide.

<comment><USER28> We disagree and don't hate each other! _It 's an Internet miracle!_

(Checks morning toast for image of Blessed Virgin.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gov. of Canada websites under attack, Anonymous claims responsibility - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/government-of-canada-websites-under-attack-environment-canada-foreign-affairs-down

<comment><USER2> I'm strongly against C-51, but DDOSing 🍁's servers is the same kind of action as bombing its buildings.</comment>


Show HN: A torrent search engine to search various public indexes - <AUTHOR> https://snowfl.com/ <comment><USER2> I want to help developing this. How can I contact you?

<comment><USER3> Nice try, MPAA.

<comment><USER2> lol :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are there no software projects on Kickstarter? - <AUTHOR> Why are there no software projects on Kickstarter? I see hardware projects from both small teams and large companies. But I don't see any software projects. Why is that? <comment><USER2> Several projects related to the Django web framework were funded through Kickstarter, e.g. built-in schema migrations [1], improved support for PostgreSQL [2], and work on the Django REST framework [3].

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema- mig...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations- for-django)

[2] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mjtamlyn/improved- postg...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mjtamlyn/improved-postgresql- support-in-django)

[3] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django- rest...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomchristie/django-rest- framework-3)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say that most _pure_ software project are not necessarily capital intensive, so if you have an idea you can just execute it, and directly start selling to customers, so it makes less sense to do a Kickstarter.

Even if you do not really intend to monetize, and you want to develop something to scratch an itch, a Github account is rather affordable.

<comment><USER4> So true, even though time and focus is worth lots of $$.

<comment><USER5> I'd counter that money can give some runway for the project to better exist than it otherwise would be able to as a side project. If someone said, "If I can raise $20,000 on Kickstarter I'll quit my job and work on this full time, aiming to deliver in 6 months" that's a different value proposition that simply running a GitHub account and coding in spare time does not afford.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Patreon ($x/month) seems to have more mindshare since the heyday of the big all-or-nothing Kickstarter.

<comment><USER7> Patreon is much better fit for continual software maintenence. You get a monthly income to keep improving the software.

That said, video games aren't unheard of on Kickstarter. There's a final product to deliver to the backers so they can check the "successful Kickstarter" box and then move on to a new project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The exception: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost- just-a...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a- blogging-platform)

</comment><comment><USER9> Don't software-based games count? I always see games asking for funding on Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER10> Font Awesome raised money on Kickstarter (I was happy to participate)

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/232193852/font- awesome-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/232193852/font-awesome-5)

I think part of the issue is that most software projects tend to be a service or have managed components, making it tricky to provide ownership to a finished product, which is ambiguously stated as a requirement:

> At some point, the creator should be able to say: "It's finished. Here's > what we created. Enjoy!"

[https://www.kickstarter.com/rules](https://www.kickstarter.com/rules)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! $1m raised as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> When you're making hardware, there's a logical way to structure backer rewards by offering the first units off the factory line. You can give these to your early backers (to incentivize them to sign up) or to people who back later but pay tons of money.

With software, there is no equivalent of "first unit off the factory line". You could artificially create this dynamic by releasing the software in phases to different tiers of backers, but this would probably just anger people because it's entirely artificial. There are also limitations around apps, for example Apple won't let you offer TestFlight beta testing as a reward. And of course, you can't let people buy an iOS app through Kickstarter either.

I had to think creatively about the rewards/tiers for my software kickstarter, which was successfully funded. [1] We let people who paid a little money vote on a certain set of features, and people who paid more money could both submit options and also vote. We also had branded mugs for higher-tier backers as well, which we drop-shipped via Costco (note: only offer this to US-based backers...). I think these voting/nominating tiers would work well for most software, since it's costless to let people vote, and you want to make something that your users want anyway.

1: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/72264020/read-across- th...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/72264020/read-across-the-aisle)

<comment><USER12> I've also seen prepay or discounts work well.

Such as a free pro account for life or 50% off platform fees

I like your idea too. Id expect that it would create a trusted beta group that has more buy in... How did it work out?

<comment><USER11> Worked out great! We were fully funded, and I reached out to the community again when we launched a tool for another platform (Chrome extension). Several years later, and we still have thousands of active users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would love for something like "Kickstarter for software" to exist. It would help separate the "oh, that's a nice business idea, you should build it" crowd from the "I need that app now and will happily pay for an ugly but workable version of it" crowd.

</comment><comment><USER14> Magit, the Git frontend for Emacs, has a Kickstarter: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit- th...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-the-magical- git-client)

</comment><comment><USER15> There are lots of software projects on Kickstarter! I think what you're considering, though, is _consumer_ or _enterprise_ software. Which is because the incentives don't align that way. The way to capitalize those businesses isn't through Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are, just not frequently.

This was a pretty successful product for 2d animation:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/esotericsoftware/spine](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/esotericsoftware/spine)

</comment><comment><USER17> There are a fair number of video game kickstarters - they have a mixed reputation.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does Kickstarter allow you to raise money to build a product, where in exchange for their support, you offer to give your backers a percentage of future profits? And with an agreed upon profit sharing restriction.

Or is something like this in contradiction with SEC investing rules.

The interesting thing is if you build something that brings in $1 billion in profits, and you continue to pay that small percentage out to your initial Kickstarter supporters.

<comment><USER10> No.

> Projects can't offer equity.

> Investment is not permitted on Kickstarter. Projects can't offer incentives > like equity, revenue sharing, or investment opportunities.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/rules](https://www.kickstarter.com/rules)

<comment><USER18> I always found that confounding.

You put up a half-baked idea, and random people will throw a few hundred dollars at you to help you achieve it. And all they get is a thanks, and perhaps a mention, and possibly a tshirt.

And sometimes the person never had any intention of building the product to begin with. It was an elaborate scam.

<comment><USER10> Kickstarter knows many projects fail, which is why they want to ensure there are no guarantees or legal entanglements with the types of projects there. As a Kickstarter purchaser, you have to know what you're getting into. I actually was burned by one project (the HydraDock) but I honestly wasn't that angry; I knew the subtle difference between sponsoring a project and a pre-order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it relates to the most common reward type permitted for the project backers. Generally, they get the item they have backed, such as a game, a movie. This tends to favour physical goods

<comment><USER20> Except for computer games, of which there is a ton.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why would you not consider a computer game a software project?

</comment><comment><USER22> Software projects have a much lower barrier to entry and doesn't require upfront intensive capital. The only thing you can do with kickstarter for a software project is to get paid for your own time building the project. Most people don't want to pay for that unfortunately. Doesn't have the same appeal as a tangible physical product that you can showcase.

Kickstarter is for experimental and new things. Software customers are not looking for new things. They just want their problem solved and will not wait for a kickstarter project to do that unless you are building the next AI but then you have the FAANGs doing it already.

<comment><USER20> KS has long been used as a promotional vehicle for kick-starting not so much the product development, but marketing/sales of the same. Often times it looks like the developers themselves cover the final gap if the project can't achieve its set goal naturally.

This way they basically go after a permission to spam supporters with project updates, asking for retweets, mentions, etc. It helps gathering free beta testing crowd. Perhaps there are also some SEO benefits too.

So in this context OP's question is really quite valid. I'm guessing that no one has thought about using KS this way yet and it's definitely worth a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are about a dozen notable software projects that raised money on Kickstarter, but it's a tiny percentage compared to the total.

Font Awesome, Light Table, LiveCode, Lavabit, Diaspora, Ghost, NoFlo Flowhub, Hypothes.is, etc. used Kickstarter to fund parts of their projects. See Kickstarter Technology > Software category [1]. There's a steep drop off from amount raised by notable projects to all other software projects.

The total amounts raised by software projects is significantly less than other categories like hardware, board games, and art. Mostly this is do to 1) how Kickstarter rewards work, 2) how Kickstarter marketing works, and 3) the psychology of backers and existing angel investors.

It's hard to come up with good rewards for software projects. Since Kickstarter does not allow equity rewards, the only option is a discount or tangential reward like a t-shirt. People are already accustomed to seeing special deals or bundles for software that's already built. Giving a 50% discount or lifetime access on Kickstarter is typically not enough for potential backers to take the risk for a project in prototype or concept stage.

Projects that raise $100k+ in any category are almost exclusively driven by marketing. Ads, influencers, email lists, cross promotions, etc. Kickstarter will give an algorithmic discoverability boost to projects that are generating a lot of sales, but you pretty much have to bring your own traffic.

Kickstarter marketing agencies almost always pass on helping software projects. Disclaimer: I have a marketing agency and get a lot of inbound requests to help with software, which I turn down. Kickstarter marketing is already a niche (about 1M backers in the USA) and narrowing further down to software makes the niche too small to work on most ad platforms.

Software projects with large built-in audiences or existing customer bases have used Kickstarter to fund new milestones. See Lavabit Dark Mail Initiative [2]. But we don't see this very often since the risk to reward ratio isn't in the project's favor. It's unlikely that a software project will get a lot of organic exposure on Kickstarter. Most of the backers will be existing project users.

Due to the public nature of Kickstarter and limited campaign length of max 60 days, there's a high risk the raise will be seen as underperforming by the public or existing angel/VC investors.

Summing it up... if you want to raise money for software by pre-selling at a discount, you might as well just do it through Stripe and save yourself the 5% Kickstarter fee and hassle of doing a Kickstarter campaign.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=51...](https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=51&sort=most_funded) [2] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ladar/lavabits-dark- mai...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ladar/lavabits-dark-mail- initiative)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am curious if KS can improve marketing spend for software project, where the success of a project is story in and of itself.

<comment><USER23> I've wondered this as well. I think the idea of a small-team open source project funded on KS in milestones is feasible. However, the promotion would need to be handled by the community and backers vs the developer team. Otherwise the time and monetary cost of frequently running campaigns on KS would be too high of a distraction.

I also think there's room in the market to create a KS alternative specifically for software that actually helps with promotion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if there's a kickstarter for starting FOSS software/libraries...</comment>


The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613034/the-hipster-effect-why-anti-conformists-always-end-up-looking-the-same/ <comment><USER2> In case anyone didn't see the link in the article, here is the paper the article is based on: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.8001.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.8001.pdf)</comment>


All The Cheat Sheets An Up To Date Web Designer Needs: CSS3, HTML5 and jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://designresourcebox.com/all-the-cheat-sheets-an-up-to-date-web-designer-needs-css3-html5-and-jquery/ <comment><USER2> For those who get disproportionately pissed at scribd for requiring facebook account in order to print or download pdf version of the document, here's an alternative link.

Jquery 1.4.2 cheat sheet [http://www.nostalgic.nl/assets/nostalgic/documenten/jQuery-V...](http://www.nostalgic.nl/assets/nostalgic/documenten/jQuery- Visual-Cheat-Sheet-1.4.2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Tangentially related: I have found <http://dochub.io> to be absolutely indispensable for JS, DOM, and CSS.

<comment><USER4> yeah agreed - way easier to type what you want than scan like 10 pages to try to find it

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone found this site actually useful? As in, you wouldn't have been able to find this information, in a format as nice as this, when you needed it?

This site just looks like SEO spam to me. But it is number 5 on the 1st page of HN so maybe I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER6> Honest Question - How do you guys use these cheat sheets? Take large print outs and keep on desk? Just keep the electronic copy somewhere easily accessible? Printout and hang it on the wall?

<comment><USER7> I've always felt... awkward about them too. I usually print out a copy on regular 8.5"x11" paper, and keep it next to my computer for a few days. A few days later when it either gets buried or knocked off, I know it all by then. I'll keep an electronic copy, in case I do something else for a while, and come back to it, but then it usually doesn't even warrant a print out.

<comment><USER8> It usually depends on what it's a cheat sheet about - I always keep an electronic copy, but specific ones get pinned to my cubicle walls.

These are the two big ones that I keep up at all times. I don't always use the VI/VIM one (a lot of the keystrokes become ingrained after repeated use, but when I have to switch environments, the transition back is always smoother with it).

VI/VIM: <http://michael.peopleofhonoronly.com/vim/> RegEx: [http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/regular- expressions-c...](http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/regular-expressions- cheat-sheet/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> DZone has a large set of professional cheat sheets called Refcardz, including HTML5, CSS, and jQuery. <http://refcardz.dzone.com>

Also check out <http://cheatsheets.org/>

</comment><comment><USER10> If only this was in HTML5 and CSS3 instead of PDF.

</comment><comment><USER11> The designer is supposed to be an expert in all of this stuff? I thought he was supposed to be an expert in graphic design?

I remember a time, many years ago, when if you wanted to edit a graphical user interface, you would use a graphical user interface to do that. Since the interface you are editing is graphical.

I have been manually doing this CSS / HTML stuff for many years, but I think that it would make about 100x more sense if we used the CSS/HTML just as a format for the editing and display tools to store and retrieve the data.

I actually think the biggest reason we are still doing it by hand is that people (like myself) are afraid that someone will think they aren't a real programmer if they use a GUI.

After all, programmers write ASCII codes, and if you're not doing that, you're not programmer. Right?

<comment><USER12> Dreamweaver, Frontpage, and a dozen other random tools I've used that proclaim to reduce the code associated with design are that way --->. Let us know if you find anything that works for anything non-trivial. Or anything trivial for that matter.

<comment><USER13> <http://scrollkit.com>! very flexible in terms of design, though not made for liquid layouts. (disclosure: my project) let me know if there's anything you want it to do that it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cheat sheets are really great and I bookmark all of them but somehow I never use them (or find the bookmark again). I rather google "<language> <topic>" which works best for me.

Are you using them actually? Printing them all out or using them as wallpapers??

<comment><USER7> The most common type of reference sheet I use, is just a table of values that don't have a real meaning, for example I have bookmarked a table of ANSI terminal escape codes, and this table of Bash string operations: <http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/refcards.html#AEN22587>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmm... at one point I came across a really nice physical laminated HTML / CSS / JS cheat sheet but haven't been able to find it since. Would anyone happen to know what I'm talking about and where to get it?

<comment><USER16> Possibly the one produced by Visibone? <http://www.visibone.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My favorite in the day was gotAPI (<http://www.gotapi.com/html>) because you could quickly type what you were looking for. Sadly they have not kept up.

</comment><comment><USER18> The HTML5 security cheatsheet was an enlightening read.. Glad to see most of the vulnerable browsers are older than old..

</comment><comment><USER19> My preferred was visibone.com but sadly it is not including the latest techs.

</comment><comment><USER12> By time I've looked something up on these I could have "Ctrl+T ?<whatever>"d it or use dochub or one of a bunch of others that do the same thing. Is it the physical presence that makes people love these so much? They seem far less usable as a horizontal PDF than more... digital and accessible means.</comment>


Rekord – client-side JavaScript REST ORM with offline and realtime capability - <AUTHOR> http://rekord.github.io/rekord/ <comment><AUTHOR> We're (I am) looking for assistance in writing examples, tutorials, documentation (currently using JSDOC to generate API documentation from comments), and additional test cases. A good portion of documentation is started and hundreds of test cases already exist. This library is already being used in production applications.

Any help/criticism is greatly appreciated!

<comment><USER2> 1\. If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN". Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

2\. An email to the contact address, can get the moderators to change the title.

3\. My impression is that asking for help non-development tasks like writing documents (or design) man be seen as off-putting by some writers and designers. In those fields, there's little return from working for free, i.e. an ORM isn't a tool that makes a technical writer's job easier.

4\. For a developer, if the author isn't willing to forgo the joy of coding for documentation and test writing, there's less of a case as to why someone else should make that sacrifice.

5\. Successful open source projects often tend to be as much about the community as the code. If the project has users, that's where the request for help is most likely to be answered and if it isn't, community is where work is needed.

Good luck.</comment></comment>


University of Washington and Chinese University Form Technology Institute - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/business/university-of-washington-and-chinese-university-unite-to-form-technology-institute.html <comment><USER2> UW Seattle has long been the target of a donation war between Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Intel, and others. Their CSE department is one of the richest on the campus. But space on the campus is at a very high premium. I wonder if they have options to expand to a different location.

This development will be located somewhat near the newly-accredited Bellevue College, which only recently gained 4-year degree approval. Perhaps BC will spin up their technology undergrad degree soon, then they might be able to feed undergrads into this new institute as well.

The vast majority of programmers, developers, architects, and IT that I've worked with in this area have degrees in other areas: business, sociology, English, sports therapy. It's become a tradition to major in an interesting subject during college, then leave that career behind for a better-paying job. And joining these self-taught software engineers are the ones who never attended college.

I wonder how this will impact the immigration and visa situation - I met some people in college who were not allowed to stay after graduation. The article implies that graduates will remain local and fill the glut of tech workers, but it sounds almost like Tsinghua University will be sending students there as well. So maybe it will be a program where Chinese students learn at this joint university, and then return to China?

<comment><USER3> This place is only going to hand out Masters degrees in 'technology innovation.' It's goal is to be a diploma mill for people Microsoft wants to bring over from China because there is a higher H1B cap for people with masters degrees. Obviously, people trying to get a real graduate degree will go to a top 100 school where actual research is going on.

<comment><USER4> UW is #6 in the nation in CS (US News & World), #48 in national universities (US News & World) and #26 in global rankings (Times Higher Education Rankings)...

<comment><USER3> This school is not UW though, is it. Who, specifically, is going to teach at this new institute since UW profs are already at capacity and Tsinghua profs are in China. They certainly are not funding any new research here. How can you have a graduate institute in technology with no research, pHds, or even undergrads? What are the diploma's going to say? GIX, UW, Tsinghua, Microsoft?

<comment><USER2> You could make this argument for any nascent learning institution. Obviously, they're going to do what anyone does when starting a school: pull respected faculty from other schools, start new research programs and import research- in-progress if possible, hire PHDs and other lecturers, and eventually develop an undergraduate program.

And I'd guess that since the Global Innovation Exchange will be the name of the school, that's what the diplomas will say too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an H-1B funnel from China. Seattle is competing to take the reins as the #1 startup center (along with many other cities), but they need engineers to do it.</comment>