Nonprofit CEOs Selling Equity in Themselves: $300K for 3% of Lifetime Earnings - <AUTHOR> http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/funding/invest-in-me-take-my-equity

<comment><USER2> Can I have a facts of life discussion with you for a second?

I enjoy giving money to charity. I also enjoy investing. Your proposal is not competitive with the investment options available to anyone with a substantial amount of money burning a hole in their pocket. (For that matter, your investment is not competitive with investment options available to me, and I'm just a middle class American who is capable of using the computer and a discount brokerage.)

For example, take TIPs. They're backed by the full faith and credit of the US government, not somebody who _will_ retire eventually and may be hit by a bus tomorrow. They pay out 3.785% of $300k (annually), rather than 3% of a number which is likely to be substantially less than $300k (annually). That starts accruing tomorrow, rather than whenever the US government gets a paying job.

They are liquid -- there are many people interested in buying TIPS, and while the value will fluctuate they can be exchanged for cash essentially instantly, for a minor transaction cost, at any point in the future. Your security is illiquid -- the number of people who would considering buying it is low, the number of people who would consider buying it from an existing holder is negligible, and the transaction costs associated with it are high.

TIPS have essentially no regulatory risk and have a built-in support infrastructure. Your security has significant risk that the contract will be unenforceable against you when you tire of your indentured servitude in 15 years (or 15 weeks), and no built-in infrastructure to make the guarantee anyhow. My accountant has no clue how to treat your security, but he is willing to investigate the matter at about $300 an hour. Hopefully he will tell me "WTF are you thinking, no, just no" early rather than running the clock out, if not, that comes directly out of my investment returns.

The details of your agreement are not fleshed out. This is presumably because the idea has not passed the napkin stage: that should tell you something. Let's see, does this cover investment income? Does this cover equity stakes you may receive in companies you found, and/or receive in return for services rendered? If so, does that 3% accrue immediately or at liquidation of the stake? Are you obligated to liquidate it at a timing preferable to the person holding the equity stake in you?

Do you smoke? Sorry for prying, had to ask to get a good picture of how to value this security. Can I sue you if you start smoking? I mean, I'm not an actuary (I'll have to hire one -- drats, more costs), but I'm pretty sure if you start smoking you probably cost yourself somewhere north of six figures of income, and since 3% of that is mine, you're essentially stealing from me.

Your proposal doesn't make much sense for charitable reasons, either. I like charity, but I do not consider all charities to be created equal, and most donors are like me (with different preference sets, granted). For example, when I think charity, I might think feeding the hungry or educating poor kids or supporting veterans. You might hypothetically think abortion clinics. That would be deeply problematic to me. I don't really have that risk if I direct my donor dollars.

<comment><USER3> All those same arguments basically apply against Angel investing in a startup. The only exception between the details of the agreement not being fleshed out, which I assume they would flesh out with any potential investor. Taxable Income might be a good guideline for what and when income is paid out to the investor.

<comment><USER2> Meet Bob. He's a swell guy. Would you invest in Bob's startup at a valuation of $10 million? I won't tell you what industry the startup is in, what its business plan is, or whether the startup actually exists or will exist in the future. But Bob's a hungry lad with a gleam in his eye, so that's alright then.

Seriously, if you really wanted to give Bob $300k for an angel investment, wouldn't it make sense to wait until he actually had a startup to invest in?

<comment><USER3> So these people are asking for a slightly high valuation. The basic concept isn't terrible though. <http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa072602a.htm> gives some numbers for average lifetime earnings. People with professional degrees earn over a lifetime an average of $4.4 million. Sure you need to calculate a net present value of that, but it's possible to estimate someone's potential future earnings.

Then you can pick a portfolio of people who you think will perform above average, in a variety of fields to hedge your risk, and provide advice and mentoring and....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Those guys are retards. Why would they place themselves in lifetime indenture to anyone? I don't know if the 13th amendment or other laws would prohibit this sort of arrangement. Why would anyone invest like this in an individual, given discount rates and possible other investments? They seem to think they're going to make lots of money--at least they are implying this. If these guys earned so much money then why are they making so much money out of nonprofits? I haven't exhausted the stupidity of this idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a great deal for the entrepreneurs since they'll probably never have to pay out due to the 13th amendment.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how I would feel if my "asset" filed for bankruptcy and discharged this obligation after taking my money and squandering it? _O tempora, O mores!_

</comment><comment><USER7> As I wrote in the comments of that article, their approach suffers from a number of fundamental limitations, that are addressed in the alternative "investing in superstars" idea discussed a while ago: <http://bit.ly/jQGzg>.

Nevertheless, food for thought!

<comment><USER8> Please don't use link shorterners, there is no need for them here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> At 80 this makes perfect sense. Too bad I'm 23, wherein this makes no sense.</comment>


Can Exercise Keep You Young? - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/can-exercise-keep-you-young/ <comment><USER2> Funniest comment in that article that I've read all month:

Ok, Ok, you don't have to beat me over the head with more research. You've convinced me.

I'm going to force the mice in my apartment to exercise more.

<comment><USER3> Possibly even the funniest comment in that article of all time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"... Half of the mice were allowed to run on a wheel for 45 minutes three times a week, beginning at 3 months. These rodent runners were required to maintain a fairly brisk pace, Dr. Tarnopolsky said: "It was about like a person running a 50- or 55-minute 10K." (A 10K race is 6.2 miles.) The mice continued this regimen for five months. ..."_

Do this every day for five months, year in year out? A 10km/hr pace might not seem fast but I'll bet you most people will not keep this up for long. The will power required, level of exertion and increased injury sees to this.

<comment><USER5> IIRC the Roman Army had hit its sweet spot at a 15-mile (~25km) march a day. They'd force march on occasion, but this was rarely before battle. They wanted their soldiers rested before battle.

I'd guess that exercising much beyond 2 miles/hour is going to be detrimental to your body if done daily. Our bodies were built for endurance, which is why our locomotion is derived from gravity. Our ancestors hunted animals that survived by their endurance.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm, not able to reply to your "reply" so I'll post here:

I'm still confused by that 2mph number, the average human walking speed is 5kph (or 3.1 mph), so to walk at a 2mph pace seems suboptimal and potentially more difficult and dangerous than walking at your "normal" pace would be.

<comment><USER4> _"... the average human walking speed is 5kph (or 3.1 mph), so to walk at a 2mph pace seems suboptimal ..."_

The forced march (140 cadence) is really is the realm of special forces. Moving over distance is as much about reliability. A function of carry weight X distance travelled. 5km/hr over distance, 30km+/day with 15kg pack, day after day is difficult going. A 100-120 cadence is more reachable. ~ [http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/history/marshall/militar...](http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/history/marshall/military/mil_hist_inst/m/march2.asc)

For your average person a 140 cadence daily over 10km is probably too hard. Just maybe a 3x week might be enough. But is it enough? From the abstract: _'Endurance exercise rescues progeroid aging and induces systemic mitochondrial rejuvenation in mtDNA mutator mice'_

 _"... The systemic mitochondrial rejuvenation through endurance exercise promises to be an effective therapeutic approach to mitigating mitochondrial dysfunction in aging and related comorbidities. ..."_ ~ [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/18/1019581108.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/18/1019581108.abstract)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I don't get is that they're "exercising" rats that are being forcibly sedate. Rats travel long distances on a daily basis, they have large areas in the wild (not so much in the city) where they find food.

For a fair study you would have to find how much a wild non-urban rat "exercises" during a day and then up that to see whether exercise will keep them young.

<comment><USER7> Before human civilization I suspect that we walked much more than a couple miles per day. Caging the rats is comparable to the reduction in daily movement due to cars, availability of food, etc.

Setting the baseline to non-urban rats would tell us more about the health of prehistoric humans than modern ones.

<comment><USER5> For their study to be valid in proving that exercise prolongs 'youthfulness' it requires that they be meeting the species normal exercise limits before expanding on them, otherwise they're actually performing a study on how sedentary lifestyles reduce youthfulness.

This is a scientific study that isn't being accurate about what it's even studying, which makes me instantly dubious of any of its results.

<comment><USER7> That is assuming the definition for exercise is any level of activity above the standard and expected activity level of a species.

Put into context, your reasoning implies that a rat running around all day looking for food is not exercise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My big question is about the difference between this kind of body pummelling exercise and gentler types of exercise such as the Chinese have done for millennia to promote longevity. I don't think the Chinese live longer than Americans or europeans, but then most of them don't do their traditional exercise styles any more. But i know that the feeling you get after an hour of Chinese-style exercise is so much fresher and more invigorating than after strong western style exercise. In my experience western style exercise circulates your energy (which is really good for you) and also drains it but Chinese exercise actually boosts your energy as well as circulating it. This is only based on personal experience - no science, but it would be worth investigating more seriously for anyone interested in longevity.</comment>


Forstall for CEO - <AUTHOR>

After watching the keynote this morning, it looks like we have a new Apple CEO in grooming.
Scott Forstall took the floor for majority of the keynote, presenting the new and upcoming iOS 5. A frail looking Steve Jobs came on first with a brief introduction and welcome to WWDC attendees, which was followed Phil Schiller with the announcement of OSX Lion. After this, Forstall took the stage for a 45 minute presentation of iOS 5, by far the jewel of WWDC. Jobs then resumed and concluded the keynote with the announcement of iCloud.
The audience response to Forstall's presentation was amazingly positive for the senior vice president of iOS. From this mornings keynote it looks clear, from the audience response as well as the responsibility of leading the iOS initiative, that in a post-Jobs world Forstall will be running the show. <comment><USER2> Being able to present on stage has nothing to do with one's ability to perform as CEO of Apple. Forstall is in charge of iOS so it makes perfect sense that he talks about it. That has nothing to do with his ability to be the next CEO or the fact that he possibly took up the biggest amount of time on stage.

He could be a potential candidate, who knows, but it certainly isn't because he can talk on stage for 45 mins. It'd be because of his abilities (if any) to play the roles of a CEO. No offense but I never get the rational behind this type of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't think he was all that engaging. Then again, public presentations are only a sliver of what a CEO has to do, for better or worse. I don't see a clear successor.</comment>


Ask HN: Which checklist, or other tools, do you use for estimation? - <AUTHOR> I'm researching different ways of estimations. We currently have a checklist in place but I'm very curious what else other people are using.<p>Do you use a checklist? If yes, which itmes do you have and what priority? Perhaps you use a tool instead? Perhaps you hardly estimate? <comment><USER2> After defining the Definition of Done (or equivalent) I find P.E.R.T.[formula] the most useful, with the Standard Deviation [formula] a good source of uncovering undeclared risks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. For those, like me, unfamiliar with PERT [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_and_review_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_and_review_technique)</comment></comment>


The LoRaWAN IoT Hack: Where You Can Go in the Aftermath - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@patburns/where-you-can-go-in-the-aftermath-of-the-lorawan-hack-5cfa02820f6b <comment><USER2> Surprised this is the first I'm reading about this and on the bottom of the new page as this seems pretty darn major, though not had a play with any LoRaWAN stuff, but this feels akin to when WEP was broken in some ways on an impact level.

<comment><USER3> The LoRaWAN authors copied a lot from WiFi, which seems kind of dumb, but this sort of thing happens a lot when there is no security expert in the room. In addition, they needed to address that physical access to endpoints is easy in IoT, but they didn't.</comment></comment>


It Isn't Junk DNA: God Just Commented Out a Lot of Crappy Code - <AUTHOR> http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2010/10/26/now-thats-a-fing-big-genome/

<comment><USER2> Decent article about genetics, DNA, evolution and science.

Nowhere is God mentioned in this article. Misleading title.

It is highly possible that god doesn't even exist. It is then almost certain that he does not code every living organism's genetic make-up.

<comment><USER3> Very misleading title - in fact, the title has pretty much nothing to do with the article, besides the mention of DNA. Besides, junk DNA isn't _junk_ , its just that we don't yet understand what it does.

Besides the HN submission title, the article itself was interesting to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct quote from sentence above the article, don't know why you can't see it.</comment></comment></comment>


Offbeat Name? Then Facebook's No Friend - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/04/AR2009030404159_pf.html <comment><USER2> May I congratulate the Washington post for writing about something that was circled jerked to death by certain areas of the press last year, and the year before that.

This post is as pointless as those stupid "mozilla firefox start page" posts.</comment>


Filesharing site revealed to be anti-piracy 'honeypot' - <AUTHOR> http://firstname.lastname@example.com&Linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardian.com%2ftechnology%2f2013%2foct%2f25%2ffilesharing-site-anti-piracy-honeypot-uploadertalk-user-data

<comment><USER2> From the comments section of that article:

Original Permalink to the comment:

[http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment- permalink/28303586](http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment- permalink/28303586)

>> This wasn't a "high-profile" website! Do some research! Alexa ranks these cowboys as being the 234,734th most popular website on the 'net.

This was a small time site, this is a small time outfit who are trying to get into the anti-piracy business by using a nothing site who nobody used to generate news (and business). Congratulations on being duped!

[http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment- permalink/28303653](http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment- permalink/28303653)

>> I have a blog (no I'm not telling you the address, I like to post anonymously!), it gets about 300-500 hits a day, I'm 299,749th on alexa btw. So this "high profile" website you just generated a nothing story about gets, at most, about 1000 hits per day. Real big time!

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's not so much that the site was high profile, but the people on it. Also it may the case that people, who are into warez don't have Alexa toolbar installed.

<comment><USER2> Oh. I know where you are coming from and do understand what you mention. And someone on the comments in guardian made this point too, and one response for that, that I liked was:

Original: [http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment- permalink/28303485](http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment- permalink/28303485)

(I am also attaching the entire long-ishly written comment here for retaining a cogency to the discussion, that link hopping might disrupt)

 __ _Comment_ __

Except... this will get people at the bottom of the food chain. The type of people who upload to web based download sites without proxying are likely to be school kids, people with limited technical knowledge (splitting a large file up in winrar really doesn 't count as being technically proficient!), who want to share a movie with their family/friends, or people who use websites who index these sort of things (in the vague belief they are immune to the law, but facilitating piracy is now an offence), and offer people who upload additional privileges.

They distribute to very few people (compared to say bittorrent). No big fish are being fried in this action. No release groups will be caught. Few (if any) mass-uploaders will be caught.

This is a cheap sideshow in which a bunch of nobodies get a bunch of ACS Law type letters demanding somewhere approaching (or above) £1k to avoid criminal action, and those who fight it will likely find the case dropped (there are so many untested defences, and nobody wants to test them. If the defence of "wasn't me gov, my router got hacked" became a valid defence, everyone for eternity would welcome their day in court and use the same defence!).

People share on the internet, either ideas, opinions (even in comments like this), music, movies, etc. That's how people are. You have to remember that before big (or even small!) business arrived on the web and made trillions, people were already here, on the internet or (pre-web) on bulletin boards; sharing "stuff". Not just other people's ideas and inventions, but writing entire applications and even protocols. The web itself was based (and became successful) on this very idea of sharing, being unregulated and being free.

We are a social race and we like to share the things we like with others, and the internet is the perfect platform for us to do that.

Obviously that cannot be allowed to happen unfettered, or the major movie and games industries will be wiped out (there has to be seen to be some control, but they'd have to shut down most of he internet to wipe out piracy. It will always happen, no matter how many "honeypot" sites and bit-torrent tracking companies are running).

If internet bandwidth (to the home) continues to grow at the current pace then there will be real problems in 10/15 years. You could download every album that was EVER in the charts in less than an hour (you can already download group discographies in under an hour, even ones who kicked out A LOT of music). You could download a studio's entire back catalogue of movies in less than a day (100s of films, every day!). Rather than making the "piracy funds terrorism" crap and suing people for 10s and even 100s of thousand of dollars (these cases have mostly happened in the US), they could embrace technology.

Despite all the negative numbers and constant deluge of misinformation we are being sold (as a lie - enough is never enough in this world!), game sales, music sales and movie sales (or sales of movie services) have NEVER been higher than they are now, and we are still on an upward trajectory.

Many (most?) people who can afford movies/games/music (and maybe we should add books to that) will pay for digital copies, or access to digital rentals/services, as long as the price is right and the service is good.

Steam (a service for legally downloading PC games - which were on the edge of dying out because of mass-piracy) now has an estimated 70% of the market/$4 Billion market share. Founder Gabe Newell famously said:

 _In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the U.S. release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate 's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> CAUTION: if you follow links from that article, prepare yourself for some extremely fucked up shit. I was wondering how CashWhore doxxed so many people, so I followed the link to WJunction, then clicked on one of the threads. There was a link to a site with young girls without much clothing. I had to close my browser immediately. Just wanted to put that out there, if anyone is browsing from work or doesn't have a strong stomach.

<comment><USER5> No adblock installed? It's just a one-of-many-of-its-kind boring forum when I clicked on the link?

Also; fucked up shit; I guess you are talking about 'normal' modern porn? Where they let 20somethings look like 16-18? Or it is something else / worse?

<comment><USER4> I have adblock. I went to the forum and clicked on a 'technical support' thread to see what kind of things people were using.

What I saw was not that 'normal' stuff. It was clearly prepubescent and sexual in nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a failed publicity stunt to me, borderline link farm. There's hardly any posts on this forum -- a mere hundred threads spread over dozen sub-forums, plus a bot-populated "News" section. No telling how much of the threads are just seed posts by forum founders. Moreover, polls -- a popular fixture of forums -- seem deserted.

Any damage dealt to piracy scene will be minimal, and the `NukePiracy LLC' will soon be forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Where Real Uploaders Meet

This slogan reads like a bad dating site

<comment><USER8> More of a Freudian slip I thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused by this. This guy has publicly admitted, in detail, that he started a site specifically in order to facilitate copyright infringement. Regardless of his view of his own "intention", this is a violation. He's enabled piracy and has stated his specific intent to do so, and he is not a government agent.

What if someone started a club where drugs were sold and then publicly announced a year later that is why they started the club? Except it was supposed to be a citizen's sting operation? And he was trying to get a payout from the feds by providing information? Does he think that provides immunity? My guess is they'd nail him to the wall while laughing at him.

Hasn't this guy opened himself up to legal action, both governmental and private, by his statements? He has stated publicly that he enabled "illegal" activities IN ORDER TO MAKE A PROFIT.

What about Nuke Piracy's complicence through acquisition?

On another note, that is in no way an analysis or conversation starter, or even constructive: what a prick.

</comment><comment><USER10> >A high-profile file-sharing site

I have never heard of that site and after looking at it, it really looks like a shitty scam site for dummies.

</comment><comment><USER11> "I work for Nuke Piracy now, this is very bad for anyone profiting from piracy," proclaimed WDF.

Except WDF really did profit from piracy by literally selling everyone else out. Ironic.

</comment><comment><USER12> Aside : Did anyone notice that stephen's email address is hidden in the URL. These analytics tracking programs should really anonymize things a bit better.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't help but laugh. I always joke with my irc buds that we are chatting in a NSA honeypot. Maybe it's actually true? lol I think I'm actually disillusioned now. Just another example of why you should never put information you wouldn't want someone to know on the internet.

<comment><USER14> Ironically, it turns out the entire internet is an NSA honeypot.

<comment><USER15> Why else would they listen in to the majority of the Internet traffic? That's like the whole point.

iPhone phones home with its location? NSA's most likely listening.

Googled for something naughty? NSA's most likely listening.

Chatting on an open Internet Relay Chat server? Yup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think a "honeypot" is protected by law for any criminal activity it engages in.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't want to risk downloading from a honeypot?

Download encrypted and anonymously (from friends-of-friends-of-friends-of- friends-of... you get the picture): [http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/](http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/)</comment>


Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns about HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/adobe-cto-kevin-lynch-defends-flash/ <comment><USER2> _Adobe is in a battle for developers, who buy its Creative Suite software to make Flash apps._

A fine example of how a comma can completely alter the meaning of a sentence :) Most of the articles points are valid, but there's an awful lot more to the CS series than Flash; it's by far the most well-integrated content creation system (everything from vector graphics to video, on both PC and Mac).

A decline in Flash use would, of course, hurt Adobe, but wouldn't cripple it, any more than the failure of Quicktime to become a widespread internet video standard inhibits users of Final Cut, Motion etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Do productivity posters do anything for you? What works in your office? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> We have a tv per desk (we have wide u shaped desks in an open-office) above our desks in my office with chromecasts in them. Presumably these tvs are for showing things off, or displaying things should we ever have a meeting in our production area, but for the past 3 months I've been here, I've just seen beautiful sunsets, waterfalls, cats and many other relaxing images.

Just walking into the office, or taking a break from a frustrating problem and seeing these 30second (or however long) stills has done infinitely more than any motivational poster could or would ever do for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Motivational posters have become such an annoying cliché that you can make a successful business out of parodying them:

[http://despair.com](http://despair.com)

<comment><USER4> One of their posters seems perfectly apropos here (quoting from memory because their web site seems to be dead): "If all it takes to motivate you is a cute poster, you must have a really easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You're kidding, right? Being surrounded by empty platitudes with the expectation that they'd motivate me would serve only to demotivate.

Try giving your developers responsibility, autonomy, trust, and respect. You'd be amazed how far a little self-determination and native pride in ones work can go.

And if your developers are incapable of handling autonomy or have no particular desire to take pride in their work, your problems run way deeper than motivation.

</comment><comment><USER6> The only thing that has ever worked -- for programmers anyway -- is a quiet, roomy office with a comfortable chair, plenty of desk space and a solid door.

And very few interruptions.

</comment><comment><USER7> The posters that boost productivity for me are usually reference ones may not be specific to the field - i.e. [http://www.unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/](http://www.unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/)

Makes me look at big picture and think of possibilities

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm sorry that you've been tasked with improving productivity in your office haha.

Here are some things that you can try that will actually have a positive effect:

-Better pay

-Better hours

-The ability to work remotely

-More vacation and sick time, with the encouragement to actually use it

-More autonomy in the jobs that they're doing

</comment><comment><USER9> They sometimes make me giggle with their bombastic promises of teamwork and winning. Posters are just another kind of wallpaper.

Only thing I've ever seen work to raise productivity and motivate the workers is a sincere and firm handed bit of support from the higher ups. Leads, managers, and the rest that would act like regular people, make sure you had what you needed and could feel free to complain. Also higher ups that protected all the workers in the trenches from Client crazyness and subsequent fallout emotions.

The only kind of wall coverings I've seen that made a difference to the people working there was art from people working there, prints, paintings, photographs. Many people have side projects and they'd love to get some viewers.

</comment><comment><USER10> I found most of them a bit meh but this one resonated enough that I put it up in my office.

Apprently it's quite popular amongst industrial designers but I think the advice is relevant enough to most industries.

[http://goodfuckingdesignadvice.com/collections/prints/produc...](http://goodfuckingdesignadvice.com/collections/prints/products/classic- advice-print)

</comment><comment><USER11> Productivity posters might spark motivation for a a short moment, but after that motivation leaves, you're back to relying on your regular patterns / habits

On a small team, most of our productivity comes in the morning after we've said hello and settled in. Gets real quiet and we all just get in the zone. As the day winds down we loosen up. It's a very pleasurable way of working, for us at least.

</comment><comment><USER12> I never thought the posters actually did any sort of motivation. I always saw them as decorations, and wanting to give a certain feel to the space.

</comment><comment><USER13> In 8th grade, I was in the band, and at the end of the year, for the last 3 weeks of school, the 8th graders would go practice with 9-11th graders of the high school band to perform at graduation. In the high school band room, there were a bunch of home-made motivational posters on the walls, and you know what? They did work _then_ and they probably helped inculcate some enthusiasm into me. Of course, that wasn't an organization trying to make money off of me, and I was 13.

</comment><comment><USER14> Back during the dot com days the joke was the only motivational poster that did anything was the whiteboard that had the current stock price on it.

I don't think I've ever heard someone say "Wow I really like the motivational posters" but I have seen some that went pretty wrong (and as a result were ineffective).

So my guess is the have high downside and little upside.

That said, nice artwork (no pithy saying), seems to always make the space feel more inviting and comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER15> They do - not posters, but those wall stickers. They make me feel more productive, and make the space seem like something more than a collection of white walls. Seeing a motivational quote when starting your day is a good affirmation and even tho they might be a cliche they bring a good vibe and I think everyone is acting a bit "holier than thou" by shitting on them.

</comment><comment><USER16> More than mere posters what really works is getting the team to do exercises which improve mindfulness like a yoga etc, inter personal relationship is the key to an individual engaging himself fully in his work , this is what works for us

</comment><comment><USER17> For me, no.

What works in our office, obviously this is personal, but we use an open office space so the fact that others are here and working motivates me.

</comment><comment><USER18> We have no posters, but if we did I would prefer something comical</comment>


Judge Forces David Copperfield to Reveal Famous Magic Trick - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/5247771/david-copperfield-lawsuit-magic-trick/ <comment><USER2> I was hoping for something more exciting than "they walked through some dirty passageways to the back of the room". Magic must be easy.</comment>


Baseline Acceptance Driven Development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tinganho/baseline-acceptance-driven-development-f39f7010a04#.e4z6cpg7c <comment><AUTHOR> One thing that bothers me about TDD is that whenever anyone talks about it, its always such trivial examples as to be ridiculous for explaining how to do it. For example explaining TDD by using the example of addition. Seriously, testing adding two numbers. I personally think the reason for this is that testing is really difficult, maybe more difficult than the problem being tested. So the cognitive load is at least doubled, maybe more.

With this methodology you accept the results as "correct." We programmers do this anyway, we validate what we are working on in some fashion so we "know" what the correct results look like.</comment>


Japanese researchers build robotic tail to keep elderly upright - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-robotic-tail/japanese-researchers-build-robotic-tail-to-keep-elderly-upright-idUSKCN1V411X <comment><USER2> I, for one, look forward to an old age where I slowly get more cyborg prosthetics to prevent injury.

There's no way it won't have a marketing budget. We're going to have a bunch of geriatric Millennials rocking retro-power armor modeled after video game characters. Best case, anyway, and I'll work for that future hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it's heavy enough to counterbalance a person's weight, then it's heavy. How large is the niche of elderly people who are both unbalanced enough to need this and strong enough to be willing to use it?

<comment><USER4> Think of something more like a cat's tail

<comment><USER3> That does seem better -- but a cat walks on four legs, it's already pretty stable. A vertical animal is going to take more force to counterbalance.

I realize weight can be traded off for length -- but the longer it is, the more they'll have to worry about the tail knocking into adjacent stuff, particularly the sensitive bits of nearby short people.

Maybe it's actually lighter than it looks. Particularly if it were only designed to counter small imbalances, it could be pretty lightweight.

<comment><USER5> > but a cat walks on four legs, it's already pretty stable.

... that makes me wonder why so many quadruped animals have tails. Maybe it's needed for balance when they're preparing for a jump and are on 2 legs.

<comment><USER3> Horses' tails are (entirely?) for whipping flies. Some lizards' tails are for sacrificing when chased -- they separate from the body relatively easily. (I learned that the hard way as a child.) Some tails are surely evolutionary detritus. And I'm sure there are other uses.

For animals in which the tail is heavy enough to actually affect their balance, I believe you're right -- they generally do more acrobatic stuff than we do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Might this keep people upright when they're wearing it but simultaneously worsen their balancing skills when they're not using it?

<comment><USER2> The answer is yes, but that's a known compliance problem. So, you would have the same issues with the user deciding they "don't need it today" seen with canes or walkers.

Physical therapy is the better solution for long-term, with a device like this serving as a guide rail to get to health, like an assisted chin-up machine helping someone build muscle to be able to do an unassisted pull-up eventually.

This question definitely highlights the big thing: Your future health will be determined in large part to how compliant with medical recommendations you're willing to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Probably nice to have in alpine ski racing, slalom in particular ;)</comment>


Milk Completes $1.5 Million Angel Round, Packed With Valley Names - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/26/milk-completes-1-5-million-angel-round-packed-with-valley-names/

<comment><USER3> Somewhat off topic, but every year or so I check the domain milk.com to see if the owner ever sold it. Just checked again. He's been sitting on it for 17 years now with the following message:

<http://milk.com/value/>

<comment><USER4> "Bornstein", how am I not surprised? This guy will get nothing because of his greed.

<comment><USER5> Uh, is your comment intended to be as anti-Semitic as it sounds? Or am I totally missing some alternate interpretation?

Preserved in case of editing (so I don't end up looking like an idiot for asking): "'Bornstein', how am I not surprised? This guy will get nothing because of his greed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I imagine their first product will be a photo sharing application, that does group messaging, offering deals. Then they'll go on to raise 1 trillion dollars. You heard it here first folks.

<comment><USER7> It is investors who are investing their portfolio money and time. If you want to, please go-ahead and write apps, raise money and become successful.

Let's congratulate the folks who raised the money to build something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeh so I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is very risky - <USER2> guess the mitigation for the risk is the small amount per angel, but considering that they only raised $1.5M an have 6 people on payroll....that just seems excessive.

Should be interesting to see what Kevin comes up with and if he can re-invent another industry.

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't realize that Ashton Kutcher is an angel investor.

<comment><USER10> He's actually quite an active angel. In fact, he has invested in at least 2 YC companies that I can think of off the top of my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Off-topic:

Does anyone here work in one of these "development labs" who's able/willing to talk about it?

<comment><USER12> You could call YC PG's personal development lab ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> if i had a killer idea and a ton of money, i'd fund it myself.

<comment><USER14> It's better to have buy-in even if you don't need the cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to work for them. Unfortunately it looks like they haven't gotten around to putting up a "Jobs" page on their website yet.

<comment><USER16> If you really want to work there, that shouldn't stop you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am very excited to see what comes out of this shop. In fact I would like to see more entrepreneurs who cashed out the first time, start their own min- idealab.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, this will be interesting to see what happens.

They have min. 1.5 MM in funding - assuming they are all taking between 75 and 150K salaries, that should be ~24 months of runway -- shrink the salaries back a bit, and expect equipment / development costs and I'd expect thats realistically 12 to 18 months of funding.

So far, skull ninjas have produced (3?) projects, two of which seem to be about sharing (locations, and ranked lists)...

So we have 3 co-founders on the list, one of which appears to be biz-dev focused, a couple devs and some idea guys.

What I want to know though, is what they showed the investors to push them off the cliff to the tune of 1.5MM - divided among 22 people is an average investment of 68K per person, lets assume that the range is 25K++ as a base.

That is both a lot of faith in Milk, and a wide spread on the total amount...

I certainly hope they come up with something killer, but I just get the feeling that Kevin put a lot of work into getting investment into his own little idea incubator solely based on cult-of-personality and not based on the-next-big-idea, that is awesome, and I know that every geek in the valley would wish to do the same - but lets see what they actually produce.

(p.s. Kevin, if you were the Kevin in the wompt chat thread - you should reach to to that kid from MIT)

<comment><USER18> Random small companies are able to raise 1mm right now with little difficulty. A .5m delta to here isn't that big.</comment></comment>


Color schemes I can feel - <AUTHOR> http://design-seeds.com

<comment><USER2> So, there are colors extracted from a photo. Cool. Now how should I use this colors to have a usable design? Which should be text, link, background? Picking a 5 color scheme you like is easy, making something of it is the hard part.

<comment><USER3> Exactly my first reaction. But then I looked over this site again, and did not notice "web-" anywhere. And design is not limited to web-design.

<comment><USER4> Nor is text and a background

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Color schemes like this look GREAT next to the photo they're derived from, but don't always translate as well on their own to a website/printout/whatever you're making.

<comment><USER5> That is where a great designer comes in play. Space and color are there to support content not replace it. So if used right you can make anything beautiful. The real problem is people don't spend enough time crafting their color scheme and that is where the really issue is.

<comment><USER4> Well, all you just said is it takes a good designer to make something beautiful.

 _The real problem is people don't spend enough time crafting their color scheme and that is where the really issue is._

I completely disagree. I've never left a website because of its color scheme. There's no issue. This blogger is using a gimmick to please casual passer-bys to her blog: taking pretty photographs and pairing a few well-chosen samples from them with a nice name.

These kinds of blogs have bothered me for a while now because I've come to the conclusion that they serve to inspire bored designers by exciting them with this pleasant gimmickry, but never really help past a momentary aesthetic stimulus. I see no actual discussion of substance; process or strategy or how to be this "great designer" you reference. It's a shallow offering. The +50 contrast in her About Me photo speaks for her mission. It's a pretty website, nothing more. Hardly worth praise if you ask me (and I consider myself a designer).

<comment><USER5> What I have said is often people don't take the time to craft a color scheme. There is a difference between someone who understands the art of web experience and the person who is a coder and understands structure. If you think that major brands aren't focused on the color of packaging and web design you are dead wrong...have you ever heard of the advertising industry? The same philosophy and care should be taken into consideration when developing any website or app.

Furthermore, it was me that introduced Design Seeds to the HN community yesterday as a great resource in my article <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3467855>, before aymeric posted a direct link. Jessica is an artist that loves color and is simply giving you a "DESIGN SEED" from which to build not just your website but your life spaces from home interiors, events, weddings and all types of space. It was me that brought her here and she doesn't deserve your comments. You want to criticize, come after me.

Additionally she has more than 152,330 followers on Pinterest <http://pinterest.com/designseeds>. She is incredibly popular and at last word her site has crashed 5 times since this post. She is not trying to make money from this.

And if you were truly a designer you would actually understand.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware of what color schemes do for businesses, I just don't think the way she presents these is valuable. I also don't doubt she's popular on pinterest. Websites like that and tumblr revolve around anyone who can provide aesthetic beauty because their traffic consists mostly of bored people clicking through pages and pages of stuff they won't remember tomorrow. I do it myself, but I have to disagree that this sort of content is valuable to a designer. It skips past the thinking and facilitates the clicking.

<comment><USER5> "Websites like that and tumblr revolve around anyone who can provide aesthetic beauty"

enough said dude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jessica is freaking amazing at colors!! I did a story today about design that made front page of HN (<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3467855>) that referenced her company Design Seeds. Design is all about natural associations and the way she extracts colors from nature and light is maybe the most useful developer tool I have come across, as far as color schemes go.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link that is working: <http://www.design-seeds.com/>

<http://design-seeds.com/> is failing for me now.

<comment><USER5> That is because in front of your eyes, HN is blowing a company up. Just talked to Jessica and their servers have already crashed 3 times! Keep pounding her with traffic HN, good on ya! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stupid question: wouldn't the ND ("You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.") part of the license basically mean that you can't use these colour schemes?

<comment><USER7> From her FAQ: Design Seeds are meant to inspire, and you may apply the color combinations to your projects, home remodel, or wedding palette.

So those three are a go ;)

<comment><USER6> "Your projects" does have a rather wide applicability, I guess :)

That said, I'm wondering what a /proper/ license for a colour scheme should be. If it's a css file (or even an emacs theme), that doesn't seem to be so hard to imagine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of this book "An eye for color": [http://www.amazon.com/Eye- Color-Olga-Gutierrez-Roza/dp/00612...](http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Color-Olga- Gutierrez-Roza/dp/0061210064)

</comment><comment><USER9> Somehow, this website has left Google DNS and AT&T DNS. IP address: <http://184.108.40.206/>

</comment><comment><USER10> mmmmm.. edible color schemes...

also, color palette extraction tool <http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/>

</comment><comment><USER11> similar to dribbble's feature.</comment>


Startup Law 101 - Mistakes Founders Make – Neglecting Securities Laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup_012.html <comment><AUTHOR> What do people think of this advice? This law firm makes startup law seem very complicated. I can't tell to what extent they are promoting their services and to what extent issuing stock is actually very complicated.</comment>


Show HN: Cardpop – Snapchat for postcards - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cardpop-design-mail-fun-postcards/id1086532449?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN - Inspired by Snapchat and the desire to send real photos when traveling, we built Cardpop. It's an iOS app to design and mail fun postcards in less than a minute.

Looking forward to your feedback.</comment>


Soviets say Allied version of D-Day is a 'distortion' of history (1984) - <AUTHOR> https://www.csmonitor.com/1984/0605/060519.html <comment><USER3> > _' 'The outcome of the war had already been decided'' before the June 6, > 1944, invasion, according to a retired Soviet general interviewed by Tass, > the official government news agency. Those who see history in a different > way are, according to Soviet writers, ''falsifiers'' or representatives of > ''bourgeois'' mass-information media who blend ''deliberate distortions of > history together with ill-intentioned lies.''_

Well, they had a point...

In the 40s and 50s most Europeans who actually lived WWII considered the USSR as definitive in determining the war.

It took decades of new generations who didn't witness the facts, and tons of mythologizing from Hollywood movies to turn this around.

[https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the- successful-70-year...](https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the- successful-70-year-campaign-to-convince-people-the-usa-and-not)

<comment><USER4> IT is true that Americans have made their own propaganda version of WWII. The D-Day is seen as a decisive heroic operation while the retreat of Dunkirk is seen as almost comical because it only involved a similar amount of French casualties, who were losing anyway (in order to help the allies retreat to UK to continue the fight but nevermind that).

HOWEVER, while it is true that people who lived during WWII knew USSR was winning and would prevail, even without USA's help, there was also a widespread, majority in almost every European countries, to hope US forces would come before USSR's. Germans who deserted or surrendered, when they had a choice, overwhelmingly did so to the western allies.

We knew that USSR would come to occupy while US was not interested in territorial gains. Yes, US occupation was not without propaganda and political compromises, but compare the date of the first free elections in France or in Ukraine, you will see that these opinions were founded.

One could argue that the D-Day was a decisive operation for the Cold War, less so for WWII. Without US involvement, USSR would have "freed" all of Europe by 1947, but the rest of the century would have been far more different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sad to see the Soviet complaints about the allies not opening a second front in Europe until 1944 uncritically reported. The allies invaded Italy in 1943.

<comment><USER6> Nor any mention of the clear delays to D Day _as a direct result of_ the sheer quantity of war materiel sent to Russia via the Arctic convoys and through Iran.

Hundreds of thousands of trucks and jeeps, tens of thousands of tanks and aircraft. Not second rate or surplus but Spitfires, Hurricanes, Sherman tanks and so on, and enough to restrict the allies.

It was deemed more important to try and help keep Russia in the war.

Reporting the claim uncritically is the distortion to my mind. The role Russia played in allied victory, but clearly not D Day, is rarely forgotten.

<comment><USER7> > _Nor any mention of the clear delays to D Day as a direct result of the > sheer quantity of war materiel sent to Russia via the Arctic convoys and > through Iran._

This idea sounds patently false and I can't find a single source to support it.

According to Wikipedia, the total US expenditure on Lend-Lease was 48 billion, with 31 of those going to Britain and 11 to the USSR [1]. But saying that D-Day was delayed as a result of the sheer quantity of aid sent to _Britain_ would still be incorrect. Nearly the entirety of Soviet economic aid during the war can be attributed to the U.S. It provided the bulk of the actual raw materiel and effectively paid for the rest through the funding British production. Now combine this with the fact that Roosevelt and his advisors were pushing to open up the Western European front in 1942, a year after Lend- Lease had gone into effect, with Churchill winning out in opposition to the idea. It simply doesn't make sense that the cost of aid to the Soviet union was even part of the equation.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend- Lease#Multilateral_Allied...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend- Lease#Multilateral_Allied_support)

<comment><USER6> 31bn did NOT go to Britain. That was the gross figure to Britain and Empire including the dominions with independent governments. As they break it down no further I'd have to find a source with the true British figure.

Nor does it take off the roughly 8 or 10bn of British lend-lease to the US, or the end of war lend-lease loans. Or take into account the British lend-lease supplied to Russia, which was far from insignificant - your Wikipedia link mentions in the otherwise unpriced list £1.15bn of aero engines - that alone would be about $4.5bn US - as wartime exchange was pegged at $4 to £1.

Neither the US - nor anyone else - achieved a fully mobilised war economy overnight - supply was a _constant_ issue for much of the war going on most of the histories I've read, and it was only by late 43/early 44 that the US was manufacturing her way out of trouble. Even that fairly poorly organised Wikipedia page includes the throwaway quote of "Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 1943–1944, Lend-Lease continued".

Russia got about 12% of all the jeeps produced, 50% of the P39s, etc.

It doesn't make sense that it wasn't part of the equation in several campaigns. Not the cost, but the logistics and production - number of tanks or whatever actually available in theatre. By 44 not so much.

Sledgehammer in 42 would have certainly failed, and failed badly. Much has been written about it. To summarise from Wikipedia - who write surprisingly little about it:

 _" However, the elements required for such an operation were lacking, i.e. air superiority, amphibious warfare equipment, sufficient forces and adequate supply. Despite all this, the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered Sledgehammer feasible.

If Sledgehammer had been carried out, the British could have landed only six divisions at most, whereas the Germans had 25-30 divisions in Western Europe"_

It could very possibly have been the war losing campaign.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Soviet armies bled the German armies white, but that does not take away from the accomplishments of D-Day.

In the closing days of WW II, many Germans fled to the US/UK side to escape the terror inflicted by the Soviet armies.

In 1984, the Soviet propaganda machine was in full swing, and the Soviets still occupied a big chunk of Europe. They were making threats with short range nuclear missiles and a 20 to 1 tank advantage. It looked like WW III was about to break out, but the Soviets would be out of power within 10 years.

<comment><USER9> The D-Day celebrations also usually forget to mention Operation Bagration, a massive soviet offensive in June-August 1944, which is perhaps the biggest German army defeat in history and is very important to keep in mind in the context of the Allies advance in France.

The fact is that keeping the Russians out of D-Day celebrations and of the D-Day narrative is a political decision.

<comment><USER10> They also don't commemorate the liberation of Rome (just before) and the departure of Japanese forces from Burma (just after).

<comment><USER11> Mark Clark basically gave away the chance to encircle and destroy the better part of the Wehrmacht in Italy so he could roll into Rome before D-Day and get the publicity, so that really shouldn't be celebrated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 90 % of the German casualities were inflicted by the Red Army. The decision to hold the D-day celebrations without inviting Russia is a rude insult to the memory of the Russian soldiers, without whom there would have been no Normandy landings.

<comment><USER6> VE day commemorations, or Battle of Berlin commemorations would seem appropriate, but they did not take part in the Normandy landings.

Would you expect the US to invite the British and Russians to commemorations of the liberation of the Philippines on the same grounds?

<comment><USER13> Were we not allies spilling blood in the same war lending each other equipment and assistance?

What is the exact harm in it? I'm always highly impressed when foreigners come to Australian war ceremonies of their own accord.

<comment><USER6> No harm at all, but it would get complex quickly if it's extended for every major campaign in every theatre in a five year war. Official invite and attendance or not - where not attending will be painted by one media as a snub, and not inviting painted by the other country's media as a snub...

Yet no one would think it odd or unusual if a Russian veteran or someone with a relative involved chose to go personally for whatever reason. I'm sure they'd be most welcome and hopefully treated with as much respect as any campaign vet or other attendee. I would think it odd if our PM was invited to say commemoration of the Battle of Kursk, despite that being of huge significance. I'd expect a good few Russian veterans or relatives might think it odd too.

Commemorations are for the veterans and relatives of those that took part, and to honour the participants. Which tends to make it expected to have official presence for the nationalities that took part in each campaign, the former commanders, and the descendants of those who took part, or who lost a parent or grandparent. For many attending it's a deeply personal act. I'm uncomfortable, to say the least, with commemoration as national or political PR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a story from a different world, one that is almost as distant in time from us as D-Day was then. It mentions four world leaders present at the ceremony then, three are now dead but the fourth was there again yesterday and in the same role.

 _On June 6, President Reagan will join French President Francois Mitterrand, Queen Elizabeth, and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau at ceremonies in Caen, France, to mark the occasion._

<comment><USER14> That's a little Trudeau joke for the reader, yes?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, Pierre was Justin's father.

<comment><USER14> I know that. Pierre is dead and was not there in any capacity, as parent claimed. His son was.

<comment><AUTHOR> The quote is from a 1984 news story, Pierre was Canadian PM then and Justin would have been 12 years old at the time.

<comment><USER14> I know that too (I know when Reagan was prz for a start), but Trudeau was not there in the same capacity as before - ie Prime Minister.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a Pole, I see the Soviet Union as badly as Germany.

Sometimes when reading discussions, I think that some westerners forget that the Soviet Union assaulted Poland 17 days after Germans attacked us.

So to remind everyone, Soviets started the whole bloody Second World War!

Not to mention, that after they crashed Poland they killed 22 000 Polish captives by shutting them in the back of their head in an effort to eradicate Polish culture. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre)

Russians did not fully admit this crime until freaking 2010. These liars were either denying it or blaming this crime on Germans while they had documents clearly stating orders.

They assaulted Poland in 1939, and they were assaulting us in 1944. They were waiting for Warsaw Uprising to fall, they were preventing western forces to help the uprising. Then they proceeded to effectively occupy Poland till 1989.

Even today if we discuss historical events some Russians will tend to get upset that we are not grateful for the sacrifices of the Red Army. But they were not liberating us. They were raping, pillaging and brutally crashing anyone who dared to think.

Putting any moral equality between western participation in World War II and Soviets is just wrong!

<comment><USER16> Not to mention the fact that the Soviet Union kept the half of Poland that they took, and it's now part of Belarus and Ukraine.

<comment><USER17> Stop calling these territories Polish ones. They belonged to Belarus and Ukraine before. Poland took these territories after 1918-1921 Soviet Polish war. These territories were Part of Big Belarusian- Lithevian country. This country was in Union with Poland.

<comment><USER15> Where did you take the "Big Belarusian-Lithevian country" from? As far as I know, this name is used neither in Polish, Lithuanian, nor English. The proper name is "the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia and Samogitia" (Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie, Rusi i Żmudzi), that was part of the "Crown of the Kingdom of Poland" and the "Grand Duchy of Lithuania". After the Constitution of May 3 and Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Guarantee_of_Two_Na...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Guarantee_of_Two_Nations)), this state became the "Commonwealth of Poland" ("Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów" or as referred to in the current Polish constitution "Pierwsza Rzeczpospolita").

And... What belonged to who is quite close to meaningless. When do you want to set the date of the original ownership? Some 35 000 years ago when these lands were probably first settled or at some arbitrary point later on? How do you treat the right to self-determination and regions of mixed ethnicity with no absolute majority?

Lands of current Belarus and Ukraine belonged to Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth before partitions, then they belonged mostly to Russia. After the first World War, we ended up in a very complex situation with vast regions with populations of mixed ethnicity and conflicting claims that resulted in wars. Poland claimed these lands as did Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine based on the wave of the modern ideas of a nation state. Poland managed to overpower them and focused on Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as the original ownership.

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

The idea of state ownership of land has really no absolute truth to it. There are no rules that will allow fairly dividing Africa after what was done to that continent during colonialism, Middle East including Palestine or central and eastern Europe. Well, even dealing with Brexit is quite an impossible task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure any given event has to be a symposium on the war in it's entirety.

The Soviets sacrificed a great deal, as did many nation's and individuals. They also received a lot of support. I'm not sure an accounting of all that is required for remembering those who fought a specific battle.

Let alone something like "well the outcome was already decided....." when we talk about the sacrifices people made.

<comment><USER19> The Soviets lost between 20 and 27 million people in the war. It's a sort of understandable position for a country that lost 40 people per us casualty.

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

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

<comment><USER18> I don't think ''The outcome of the war had already been decided'' is an understandable position if you're talking about an event for a given battle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Obligatory link to "The Fallen of WW2" (watch the video, the interactive version is broken for me in Chrome on macOS 10.15 beta):

[http://www.fallen.io/ww2/](http://www.fallen.io/ww2/)

I think the focus of US and British WW2 movies on their own accomplishments played a big role in this "distortion of history" (OTH if you've grown up on the other side of the Iron Curtain" there was no shortage of Soviet propaganda movies about WW2 either).

Personally I've come to the conclusion that the US/British invasion didn't turn the war around (it may have shortened it by a few weeks). But it most likely saved most of Western Europe from Soviet post-war-occupation.

(edit: AFAIK, what _was_ an incredibly important contribution of (mainly) the US was the Lend-Lease-Act though to provide the Soviet Union with weapons and resources)

<comment><USER21> I've read once that Stalin insisted on a landing in Normandy fearing that the progress in Italy would cut him off Eastern Europe.

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nearly everything about WWII is a "distortion of history" because the Winners write the "history".

<comment><USER23> Nearly everything about reality is a "distortion" because your brain writes the "perception."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For most of my life, I believed that British resistance, D-Day, and the Western front were the primary reasons for German defeat. That's certainly how it appeared to a lay person. It was only recently that I realised the vital role the Eastern front played in Nazi defeat.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_W...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II)

The Nazis lost over two million soldiers in the Eastern front, whereas all the other fronts combined produced a loss of ~800k soldiers. The turning point of the war came in Stalingrad, an entire year before D-Day even started.

The Soviet Union has been a brutal regime and I'm glad they lost the cold war. But the Russian people deserve more credit than they are being given for turning back the Nazi tide.

<comment><USER25> They were on Nazi side at the beginning of the war, so really they were trying to stop the Nazi tide that they helped to create.

<comment><USER20> Everybody downvoting this should read up on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact), especially the secret protocol to divide Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union.

<comment><USER26> Isn't this common historical knowledge? Sad if not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Let's not forget that by attacking Poland, Finland, and by taking over Baltic countries, Russians help Hitler conquer most of Europe. They really should be considered the aggressor in WW2, not savior.

On the other front, if France and England helped Poland, as they promised in the treaty the later broke, Hitler would be stopped much earlier and World War 2 .

<comment><USER14> A little churlish, I think, about UK and France. They both went to war, as promised. France was defeated and UK deployed all its resources to engage and try to win the War. When precisely do you think that these two nations could have halted Hitler?

<comment><USER25> Right when, they were supposed to - when Hitler attacked Poland. If Hitler had to fight on two fronts in September 1939 there would be no Blitzkrieg. And possibly Russian would not attack Poland, Finland and other countries at that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It was all decided in Teheran conference in November 1943. WW2 was considered a done deal so Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to discuss the future of Europe.

At the time of the conference, Red Army was about to enter Poland.

While Churchill was happy to let Soviets do all the dying, Roosevelt cared about getting them involved in pacific. He wasn't much concerned with the war in Europe.

As soon as it became clear from Stalin that, when it comes to talking about the future of Europe he holds all the leverage, Churchill decided it's necessary to jump on the bandwagon.

And so the outcome of the Teheran conference was the "Operation overlord" (aka D-day)

To clear any doubts about the significance of Soviet contribution all that needs to be done is go wikipedia and look at the size of the battles in East Europe and compare the to the D-day.

Normandy landings don't even make it to top 10 in terms of the size. Germany was operating with 1 million+ soldiers in multiple battles compared to 50,000 including untrained and underquipped teenagers and seniors allies faced in Normandy.

Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Rzhev, Kharkow, Leningrad, etc. were mostly 10x larger in size and personnel. 90% of German army was killed in the East front.

The fact that most western people don't even know what was the major turning point in the WW2 and think it's the D-day, would leave most of those generations speechless.

Soviets and East Europeans (Yugoslavia liberated itself, Polish army took the Monte Cassino, the largest battle of Allies) won the war. Allies helped, then made a lot of movies about it.

<comment><USER16> > 90% of German army was killed in the East front.

This is an overstatement. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II#German_sources_for_military_casualties)

If you go by KIA, MIA, and POW, Eastern Front is about 2 million, France/Belgium + North Africa + Italy + Navy is about 900k.

<comment><USER27> If you go by Overmans

Eastern Front until 12/31/44 2,742,909 Western Front until 12/31/44 339,957

makes eastern front 91%. If you look at the size of the battles in Western front it's hard to see how would the figure exceed 339k.

For comparison, Stalingrad alone claims 500k Germans and 900k axis total. Battle of Moscow estimates 500k killed, missing, wounded or captured.

Now we can play with semantics. Are we looking at killed only, or captured and wounded or otherwise incapacitated? Is it Germans only of axis.

I think did overstate. To put it better, I would say 90% of Nazi power was defeated in Eastern front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If anything, the 'distortion' of history is that only one brutal totalitarian regime was defeated and condemned, but not the other. It is often forgotten that the World War II was started by __both __the Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia [1][2].

This does not undermine the tremendous human sacrifice by the ordinary people on the Soviet/East side: it must be remembered and respected. However, the fact that the Soviet Union was on the winning side undermined the terror, repressions and immense suffering inflicted on millions of people, including their own people and the people of the countries they invaded [3][4][5][6]. The Soviet regime, as a political subject, should not be glorified; and they certainly should have had very little to complain about. Let alone the D-Day.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism) [4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag) [5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_So...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_Soviet_Union) [6] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_occupations_by_the_So...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_occupations_by_the_Soviet_Union)

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, everyone will praise their own contribution more (given that both sides here are winners).

But Hitler must have been shocked at what Russians threw at him. Brutal war, take no prisoners and millions upon millions of soldiers.

<comment><USER30> _" millions upon millions of soldiers"_

That shouldn't have been a shock to Hitler, not even an unknown information. In the Russian Civil War¹ that preceded WW2, the Red Army amassed well over five million soldiers, and the soviet's control over the country and subsequently over the army enlistments could only improve since then.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well, what is says is true. Of course they wanted to do as much damage to the Soviet Union as possible.

Most allied generals believed URSS was going to be the next enemy after Hitler.

The nuclear bombs against isolated Japan were more a warning to Stalin than anything to do with Japan as disclassified documents have shown.

</comment><comment><USER32> Many items of the discussion here remind me of two books I casually browsed through without actually reading them, "Conjuring Hitler" and "None dare call it conspiracy".

</comment><comment><USER33> People like to think of WW2 as a noble war, and I'm not for a moment suggesting that Adolf Hitler shouldn't have been stopped. But the fact is that none of the sides entered the war for benevolent reasons.

An interesting historical essay is Noam Chomsky's "Background to the Pacific war" (1967) in which he explains an often missed cause of that war - <USER2> economic one. Japan being shut out of the international trade by tariffs imposed by the British and US in 1937. This crippled Japanese industry, as expected.

[https://chomsky.info/196709__/](https://chomsky.info/196709__/)

<comment><USER34> But the war in Asia had already started, Japan was sanctioned because of their aggression in China.

<comment><USER33> The western powers also colonised China, by force. One could say the war in China was over which colonial powers would have rights to trade in China.</comment></comment></comment>


Java 9 with GPU processing, Java 10 will be all-OOP without primitives - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2012/120315-oracle-s-java-roadmap.html <comment><USER2> Wow, how can you seriously plan releases of a programming language out to 2021? That is an eternity in this industry. Even 2015 for JDK 9 seems mighty far off, especially accounting for the usual slippage of release dates with big software projects.

<comment><USER3> Why don't they start now and build Java 2.0 from ground up instead of Java 10 for 2017?

That would be way faster and they learned so much by now to make a great successor. Who wants a Java 1.x in 2040?

<comment><USER4> Because they learned from netscape's mistake, that's why.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

<comment><USER5> "You are wasting an outlandish amount of money writing code that already exists."

On the contrary, there has been a number of times that I've _completely_ rewritten some code to use a framework or library that was already battle- tested and more fully-featured than the previous effort. I ended up _saving_ myself from writing code that already exists.

<comment><USER6> Right, but you're one person and you're redoing the plumbing.

At this point oracle can't rewrite Java. If they don't support the current programs, nobody would use it, if they do, they will really be rewriting code that already exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The presentation declares, "Java is not the new Cobol."_

It shocks me that a major company like Oracle would be so foolish as to make a statement like this. Stating that something is _not_ is one of the most effective ways to imply that it _is_ and the speaker knows it.

<comment><USER8> Freud somewhere talks about a primitive tribe where the punishment for saying "The king is not an ass" is the same as for saying "The king is an ass".

Edit: I remember reading this years ago and have been unable to track it down. Would love it if somebody did.

<comment><USER9> Probably in Totem and Taboo? This concept is expressed in a number of his books, however.

<comment><USER8> Oh if you could find it I would be super grateful. I've done my usual rounds such as searching on Google Books and found nothing. Made me start to wonder if it had been Jung instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to me that eliminating primitives could be a really bad idea. If you have a class:

        public class CompoundObject {
            int i;
            int j;
            double k;
        }

This class's data members are all a few bytes away from each other, so once the object is loaded into the CPU cache, all operations should be fast. With boxed types, you might get 3 cache misses when accessing i,j,k.

On the other hand, referential transparency can help here. Given referential transparency, the compiler can transparently unbox Integers and translate method calls. So if Oracle does it right, rather than slowing down unboxed code, this might just speed up boxed code.

<comment><USER11> They don't say how they're implementing it. Given the compiler always knows the actual type of a primitive at compile-time, they can probably implement most of the Object functionality by plugging in the class meta-info at compile-time. When a primitive would need to be boxed, Java programmers are already used to the performance implications of this. The only object functionality I can think of that would be hard to implement on primitives is wait/notify/synchronization, but I don't actually know how those are done in the JVM either.

Even if these things turn out to be impossible to optimize at compile time, they're probably then betting on JIT functionality to detect primitive objects that are only used as primitives.

<comment><USER12> The "boxed primitive" types (Integer and so on) should be `final`. This means no inheriting from them, which means no polymorphism, which means their sizes and all operations on them are known statically. This means you can store them as values in the object with no fuss, and you can inline all of their access functions.

<comment><USER11> Java objects have functionality beyond dispatch tables. Synchronization is one. You can also have x != y where x and y are different objects with the same value.

<comment><USER13> >You can also have x != y where x and y are different objects with the same value.

May be true, but it's not guaranteed one way or the other. In the Oracle JVM the smaller integers are cached such that

      new Integer(10) == new Integer(10)

but

      new Integer(1000) != new Integer(1000)

<comment><USER14> Actually, "new Integer()" is guaranteed to always return a new, distinct object. The caching only comes into play during autoboxing conversions, or when you call Integer.valueOf().

<comment><USER13> Ah, you're right. I was thinking of autoboxing, i.e.

      Integer a;
      Integer b;

      a = 10;
      b = 10;
      a == b; // true

      a = 1000;
      b = 1000;
      a == b; // false

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious how they're going to handle the GPU thing since there really isn't a unified GPU architecture, yet (by 2015, who knows but still). Have vendor specific translations or try to rally around something like OpenCL? I'd love it if GPU coding would become more available and vendor agnostic, so I'm really curious about this.

I know the article didn't mention it, I also wonder what the memory bloat will look like when they turn all primitives into Objects and introduce object overhead just to track int i in a for loop.

</comment><comment><USER16> Marta Jasinska posted her notes: [http://kreskasnotes.blogspot.com/2012/03/qcon-2012-future- of...](http://kreskasnotes.blogspot.com/2012/03/qcon-2012-future-of-java- platform-java.html)

These slides were posted last November, so they're probably a bit stale, but might give some insights: [http://www.slideshare.net/JAX_London/keynote-to- java-se-8-an...](http://www.slideshare.net/JAX_London/keynote-to-java- se-8-and-beyond-simon-ritter)

</comment><comment><USER17> Video and slides of the same presentation by the same presenter in October 2011: <http://lanyrd.com/2011/jax-london-autumn/sgzyx/>

It's mind-blowing that they plan on having GPU and FPGA support before they offer arrays of structs and multidimensional arrays. Frustrating, too. I guess I can't complain, since clearly somebody is paying for all this, and it isn't me.

</comment><comment><USER18> All-OOP? So functions will be objects too? And classes? And contexts?

Not meaning to start a flame, just saying the title's a bit inaccurate IMHO...

<comment><USER19> This is a very good point. If functions become objects, interfaces would become literally useless. Somehow it seems that it would not be the case since this would be a drastic change (even thought getting rid of primitives are as well.)

<comment><USER20> Literally useless? Would you like to elaborate on how specifying a contract that has to be implemented is suddenly useless because you have function types?

<comment><USER10> I think the experience of Haskell is relevant here. Once Haskell introduced first class functions, everyone stopped using typeclasses.

[edit: apparently my sarcasm was too subtle. HOF and typeclasses are both vitally important pieces of Haskell, which are orthogonal to each other. I'm pretty sure both were in Haskell from day 1. Some code for which both are essential:

        class Monad m where
          (>>=) :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b
          (>>) :: m a -> m b -> m b
          return :: a -> m a
          fail :: String -> m a

    ]

<comment><USER21> I don't think typeclasses were in from day one, they were added quite late in the development of the language (but some years before H98). I don't think they're in Miranda, for example.

Here's a paper introducing them.

<http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=227700>

<comment><USER22> Type classes were in Haskell 1.0. See [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rtFsiQC...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rtFsiQCtqxYJ:www.haskell.org/definition/haskell- report-1.0.ps.gz+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They _can_ plan like this because they _are_ the new cobol - they have an assured install base. If they make 100% back-compatible, and definitely better, everyone will upgrade.

As for the very vague improvements mentioned (GPU, no primitives), these can be seen in response to clear technology trends. Even the embedded GPUs in x86 are getting pretty powerful, though not every business has them - but by 2015 most will. Java has primitives primarily for performance and memory efficiency. Absolutely crucial at Java's inception, they though remain important today, many applications can get away without them (e.g. ruby apps). By 2017. even more apps will be in that category.

Most of the others are similarly responses to clear trends, such as hypervisor-aware and large data support. However, true generics seems problematic because it would break back-compatibility.

My prediction: _if they plan to break back-compatibility they will change their mind._

</comment><comment><USER24> More discussion from Java vets: [http://java.dzone.com/articles/oracle- discusses-features-jav...](http://java.dzone.com/articles/oracle-discusses- features-java)

</comment><comment><USER25> I just want passable functions, or even better, first class functions in module namespace.

I still find it hilarious how even Swing shows how crippled the language is without that feature, where adding event listeners is complicated like new EventListener(Event e) { @override onEvent... etc. When just overriding some declared event handler method would be so much clearer.

</comment><comment><USER26> At first I thought this might be an early April Fool's Day joke. But I don't think it is.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd really like to see some of the deprecated parts of the JDK removed.

</comment><comment><USER28> April 1st in two days, but I guess some people can't wait ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone have a link to the actual slides from Oracle?

<comment><USER30> Not sure, but maybe this:

[http://qconlondon.com/dl/qcon- london-2012/slides/SimonRitter...](http://qconlondon.com/dl/qcon- london-2012/slides/SimonRitter_TheFutureOfTheJavaPlatformJavaSE8Beyond.pdf)

I hate those articles not mentioning sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think I will switch to Google Go</comment>


Palm Pre vs iPhone vs G1 - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5126870/in-a-nutshell-palm-pre-vs-iphone-vs-g1

<comment><USER2> The G1 is hardly mentioned at all. If you want to compare the Pre to the iPhone then just title your post Palm Pre vs iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't items posted in Hacker News be "news" - as opposed to recycling Gizmodo items from six months ago?

</comment><comment><USER4> Totally biased toward the iPhone. Nothing about Android and Java, being that there are nearly as many Java developers as JavaScript developers. This may as well have been an Apple press release.

</comment><comment><USER5> No comment on available applications, tethering or battery life (particularly w/r/t multitasking). I also don't need multitasking so much as a background app for IMs</comment>


WeWork's Adam Neumann Was Right About One Thing: Someone Needs to Reinvent Work - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/weworks-adam-neumann-was-right-about-one-thing-someone-needs-to-reinvent-work-11569038406?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> That doesn't make him a visionary any more than Zuck is a visionary for promising people a solution to loneliness.

Neumann didn't fix work, and it's incredibly generous to describe WeWork as an attempt to fix it. It's just new wrapping paper on the same package.</comment>


Ask HN: What Are You Willing To Do For The Rest of Your Life?  - <AUTHOR>

This is the central question from Randy Kosmimar's book 'The Monk and The Riddle', definitely worth reading. Share your projects, thoughts, feelings, and goals. This is the most important question for your daily productivity, happiness, and contribution. <comment><USER2> Work at writing something worthwile a minimum of four hours evey day</comment>


Ask HN: Pls. give me a hard prog. problem (re: talent wars) - <AUTHOR>

This will be an unusual request for a job.
I've read Fred Wilson's blog post: 'The war for talent'. I am living in Eastern Europe (Hungary) and when I read posts like that (and similar Techrunch articles) I am always wondering: I know most people in the Valley are very talented. But are they that much more talented than people in other parts of the world? My yearly salary is $36.000. It is very good in my country. People in the valley earn $100.000 or more. Why are most SV companies not looking for help from other countries? Do they think communication problems are so serious that it is not worth it? Or do they somehow think that there is absolutely no talent in cheaper countries?
Here is a crazy request: give me a very hard programming (algorithmic) problem. Harder what you usually ask at interviews. (I usually very easily solve interview problems at typical companies.) Give me something so hard that if I can solve it in some days you hire me as a freelancer for remote work for $50/hour. (It is a crazy amount for me, but give me a very hard problem.) A problem can be for example something like this: Do this and this in O(nlogn) time and with O(logn) memory.
Does not matter if I will fail. I want to know: The reason I cannot earn SV-level salary is that I am not talented enough. Also I love thinking on very hard problems, I am addicted to them. (Once I was thinking about P vs. NP for a whole month. I learned tons of math during that.)
Please don't give me something which cannot be solved in 6-7 hours. I have a day job and two small children, so I can think only for 3 hours / day.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Things are not so black and white. In my personal experience many times over, communication and ease of communicating correctly and how fast you move, especially in a startup environment, IS significantly better if not entirely necessary. I've had lots of personal issues making a long distance thing work even with last partners located in a different state much less a different country. I'm sure others can make it work but that's never been the case for me.

Second, in a startup culture early on, in my personal experience, we've had guys jam out all day and night, weekends, etc to push a product out when timing was critical. I can't honestly say I believe the same deadlines can be met with a remote team.

Finally, to be a great coder, beyond godlike programming abilities, you must have certain quality traits (too many to list here).

But per your request, here's a technical challenge we've done in the past. Find an insanely hard captcha, figure a machine learning algorithm for it to be able to read the captcha without relying on human eyes. As the mahine continues to view more and more captcha, it learns to decipher it. I will say you shouldn't do it for the purpose of breaking captchas and in some cases this is illegal but the technical problem to solve it is really good in terms of coding capabilities.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I've had lots of personal issues making a long distance thing work" Yes it is a problem. The best way it works is when you modularize your organization so that module boundaries are where the least communication is needed. This is how the business world works: The whole thing is modularized into companies, companies take ownership, specialize and communicat with each other mostly remotely. What most companies do wrong with offshoring is this:

\- They don't try hard enough to find real talent. They are just searching for random people. \- For the low amount of money they find random sub-par people. \- They find out these people are capable only of munadane tasks. \- They offshore only mundane tasks. \- They think it is risky to give ownership to these people, so they try to 'integrate' them. They don't give ownership to remote teams.

In reality they could find talent and they could give ownership to talented remote teams. Do you know this?

<http://netfixprize.com>

The top teams contained insanely good quality people. By far not all of the top teams live in SV. (While it is well represented.)

"Finally, to be a great coder, beyond godlike programming abilities, you must have certain quality traits (too many to list here)."

This is also a prejudice of american companies (I am not saying you have this prejudice) that people in the 'east' can be good coders, but cannot be well- rounded. 'They cannot see the big picture'. This is not true. I was a math and algorithm enthusiast early-on (I started programming at the age of 12). I mentioned algorithmic problems in my post because this topic is quite objctive. But otherwise I am not a young coder. I am 36 years old. I am an experienced programmer. I know the importance of good software design. Managing big codebases and creating algorithms: these are different things. I have a bunch og cognitive patterns in both fields. I love linguistics, I love philosophy and psichology. I am interested in interaction design. I am interested in business strategies. I am a very intuitive person. On the side I am working on my startup which is about how ordinary/business people can intuitively create and access databases. (I am working on something like Excel for relational databases.)</comment></comment>


Issue: Async script stalls page load - <AUTHOR> https://git.habd.as/comfusion/fractal-forest/issues/4 <comment><USER2> Would using defer instead of async fix this issue? The latter allows the page to continue parsing, but will still run as soon as it's loaded (possibly before the rest of the page is parsed). The latter always waits until the page is fully loaded before running.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I'm not sure but that's something worth investigating. Thanks for the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would recommend not doing that. The script tag is always bound to the load event. If the payload is huge the load event will wait for download. The _async_ attribute merely tells the browser to execute the script contents asynchronously if properly supported and if fetched as a file from a _src_ attribute.

A more stable approach is to put the code within a timer. This covers all use cases and is universally supported since nearly forever. Example:

let myCode = function () {}; setTimeout(myCode, 1);

Or

setTimeout(function () {}, 1);

Either way you are still stuck with network resolution of the script tag contents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Assuming apps composed of light weight micro-libs I tend to find apps:

1) Miss taking advantage of browser capability to parallelize downloads, leading to lost real time in most browsing contexts.

2) Make it difficult if not practically impossible to leverage before domready cycles in the event loop.

Is it stable to detatch from the load event in the case script is not the initiatitor? Yes, unless one can reasonably expect document body to close (no more writes) at some real time after external downloads complete. But that potential pitfall, in any case, can be controlled with a deferred bound to the domready event.

What I have witnessed, however, is the browser tends to do a better job optimizing for scripts loaded over HTTPS in a way fetch cannot when controlled by the implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone tell when this would happen? At least on mobile, there's no visible context when opening the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> This happens when an `async` script tag is encountered on a page programmatically fetching external assets. Not shown is the usefulness of Fetch Injection where control flow of script execution is concerned. But the blocking is not ideal in any case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is CBT in this sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cross-browser testing. Sorry for the jargon.</comment></comment>