After Your First Big Startup Success, What's Next? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://feld.com/archives/2014/06/first-big-success-whats-next.html <comment><USER2> Go back to school and explore.

I never had a traditional education and I work with a lot of CS grads and people with great educations. Personally when I was college age I just wasn't a good student, I didn't appreciate it and I wanted to work.

Recently I went back to school for a class as part of a career change and I loved it. The idea that someone was there every day to provide me knowledge was exciting and filled me with energy. I went to school, then head home and care for the family, and when everyone was asleep hit the books and it was the most fun I had in a long time... maybe decades.

I'd love to go do that again.

<comment><USER3> I had the same college experience. Graduated in 2001 with a 2.8 but was deeply passionate about my first startup job while working as a senior.

After two decades in the startup world and a couple of exits, I realized the value of "enough." Broke free from the golden handcuffs and decided to teach at my alma mater.

With my work experience, the university allowed me to teach without a Masters. I'm currently enrolled in a Masters program and loving it. I now treat school with the same care and interest I treated work. Plus I get to enjoy more time with my 2-year old daughter.

Caring for a child during the day (unless I'm teaching) leaves me only her sleeping hours to lesson plan and to attend to my grad school workload. Surprisingly, I've never been so exhausted in my life, and yet, I feel much more fulfilled.

I taught for the past 3 semesters on a volunteer, unpaid basis. This proved to me I would do this work for free. I start full-time as a clinical professor in the fall.

<comment><USER4> reading this comment made me very happy. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors, professor!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My plan was always to dedicate myself full time to the arts once I don't have to worry about putting food on the table.

I don't need nice cars, yachts, mansions or expensive friends. I want to be able to rent in a reasonably pleasant place, and then have the rest of my life to pursue what keeps me interested. Maybe I'll find that terribly dull and will need the rush of putting all the chips in every single day, but probably now. I know people who can't wait to start company #n+1 as soon as they exit, but that's never resonated with me.

Maybe my ambitions are embarrassingly timid, but being able to buy myself full access to my one non-renewable resource seems like a fantastic outcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is tempting, and it sounds really nice.

I'm wondering why so many people go back to the "rat race" (as a commenter wrote earlier) despite this seems to make so much sense.

<comment><USER6> > _I 'm wondering why so many people go back to the "rat race" (as a commenter > wrote earlier) despite this seems to make so much sense._

Because, in general [1], people that would retire after making "Fuck You money" are not driven enough to make FU money. Or, put another way, people that are hugely successful enjoy (or need in some way) the rat race.

[1] The "in general" is very important in this sentence. Of course there are some people to which this doesn't apply, either because they got lucky (e.g., by being an early employee of a billion dollar startup), or because their success and the necessary work "cured" their drive and ambition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Start another farm but this time not have to worry about losing the land because I couldn't afford to keep it?

My cell phone would live on my dining room table as much as possible, my laptop would only be opened once per day; it takes all kinds but I couldn't imagine making "fuck you money" and choosing to stay in the rat race.

<comment><USER8> Don't you think that technology is beautiful? There is more to it than the rat race

<comment><USER9> Same here :) Your ation.io project sounds interesting. How can I get in touch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those who have experienced their first big startup success, what did you end up doing next? Are you satisfied with the decision? Is your life better or worse than before the exit?

<comment><USER11> 10 years ago exited with FU money.

Golden handcuffs for a while, left work 2012.

Honestly didn't do much else. Easy to find subpar ideas but lack the hunger to execute.

Fast forward a decade and are kids, wife, unhappy marriage (with no fault divorce so you can transfer most of the wealth over) and you really wish you just had a "normal life". You know, where going to work each day is necessary and thus defensible and rewarding.

Quite honestly I spend a lot of time thinking about departing life. People thinking startup success is the end game are kidding thenselves in my anecdotal experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As far as I can tell, the phrase "fuck you money" comes from James Clavell's 1966 novel "Tai Pan."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai- Pan_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai-Pan_\(novel\))

<comment><USER13> Are you sure you aren't thinking of "Noble House"? That's the one that takes place in the sixties. In it, Casey Tcholok tells her boss she's looking for "drop dead" money, which is once also referred to as "screw you" money.

Tai-pan is the original story of Dirk struan in the 1800's, and I didn't think the concept came up there at all.

<comment><USER12> Blergh, you are 100% correct

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It depends on what kind of person are you.

I saw people who sold their company for millions and still working hard every day just because they like what they do.

I also saw someone who made millions and now he travel all day long, diving in exotic places and didn't work for more then 3 years

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a fair number of friends in this boat. Most find their way back to the startup game in some form (investor, startup studio, etc). They just can't stay away. I find below myself entering a similar phase (raising money at a late enough stage that there is $10m of secondary on the table or going with a strategic and selling the whole thing) and the fear of complete freedom is a little bit terrifying tbh.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would love to travel full time. Around the world by cruise ship, flying some places but I think long trips would be much more comfortable at sea since you can get up and walk around, plenty of entertainment and food unlike an airplane being stuffed into a tube for 8 or 12 hours! Well if you are rich enough, screw flying commercial and could buy a private jet!

Then become a full-time RVer and visit all 49 states you can drive to in an RV. There are a few nomad friendly domicile states South Dakota, Texas, and Florida that let people get their driver license and registration using a mail forwarder without having to own any property. Plus would force you to into minimalism, being organized and not having a cluttered place since less space to work with.

I remember when I was a little kid we used to go on family road trips, but haven't been anywhere really in like the last 7 years other than a short 3 day trip to the smokies which I enjoyed but wish was longer. Just something about being away from home and seeing different places just excites me for some reason. So I think to get rich from a startup or building up enough passive income to be a nomad I'd be probably the happiest ever. So much to explore and do around the world!

It makes me sad knowing that many people can't afford to travel, too busy working. Some people haven't even seen their own city or state fully really outside of their small city. I was reading in the US people get an average 10 days a year of vacation and many end up using them for other things. Apparently, after working 25 years at the same company you only get an extra 5 more. Then only about 36% of Americans even have a passport, however if you are limited to how much vacations plenty of touristy areas to visit in the US much closer, and probably less stress since the same language and culture too.

I was watching a travel vlog where someone went to China to visit the great wall and it seems like even getting a Taxi and other daily tasks is a challenge due to the language barrier, however there's stuff like Google translate that might help... Then you also have to put your political and religious views aside too.

However there's world cruises that spend like half a year sailing but costs as much as a new car per person. So maybe more organized travel but doubt most people could afford it both money and time wise but sounds like a fun dream! I seen one has a excursions to the great wall, so don't have to worry about getting a taxi and stuff. In some of the ports of call they dock overnight too. I seen one that circumnavigates the globe as a world cruise package, but costly and then probably some places need Visas and stuff but would be a once in a lifetime adventure! Then I'm a picky eater, so probably familiar food back on the ship so you don't have to starve. Take a short flight to Miami and come back half a year later seeing a bunch of the world without flying or packing and unpacking over and over as going from hotel to hotel. Hopefully someday as a huge dream of mine.

CNN has a article that has many valid points about why Americans don't travel abroad. [http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/04/americans.travel.domest...](http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/04/americans.travel.domestically/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Open a mobile grooming service called Mutt Cutts.

<comment><USER18> For the benefit of those who might not have gotten the allusion:

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I got the reference, but it's not clear why Matt Cutts is relevant for this conversation. He made tons of money at Google, I don't know what he did next (besides his stint working for the government at some point). Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry, but I am utterly at a loss as to how to respond to this.

If someone said to you, "I don't understand why Albert Einstein is held in such high regard. He won a Nobel prize for his work on the photoelectric effect. I don't know what he did next (besides discover relativity at some point). Can you elaborate?" how would you respond?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't get the meaning of "Mutt Cutts", and it seemed to refer to something that he did that I am not aware of.

I am not questioning the importance of what he did at Google. In fact, I met him in 2007 and think he's a brilliant guy. [0].

[0]: [https://ubuntista.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/matt- cutts_goo...](https://ubuntista.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/matt- cutts_google.jpg?w=472&zoom=2)

<comment><USER19> This words was on a car from film Dumb and Dumber with Jim Kerry

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any article recommendation for the opposite situation?</comment>


Advice giving: A subtle pathway to power - <AUTHOR> https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6779&context=lkcsb_research <comment><USER2> i find receiving advice to be difficult because the other person essentially places himself above you. That is why i try to be careful with dishing out too much advice. But sometimes its necessary. and sometimes i just cannot help it.

if i give advice, i try to do it in a non-personal way. like 'i just found a cool trick to do y' rather than 'you are doing it like x, but doing y would be better'.

<comment><USER3> It's amazing - and sad - how powerful the ego (for want of a better term) can be. A colleague complained about a nasty rash from using a particular cleaning fluid during DIY and when I suggested, in a very gentle way, a far gentler yet comparably effective alternative he seemed annoyed by the suggestion of something that would help him. Some people will just throw things back in your face even when your advice is well intentioned, freely given, and beneficial to them in an immediately apparent way.

<comment><USER4> Context is important. Your colleague got a nasty rash from what they did. You offering an alternative could be received as criticism or even blaming them for the rash. The time for offering corrections is probably not while they are suffering the consequences of their action.

You are right of course - people can be tricky in such situations.

<comment><USER5> It's also possible that the person you're replying to is completely tone deaf to the signals they've been sending out and people are lashing out of them due to an ongoing pattern of behavior.

Usually when someone says "I've been completely normal -- I don't understand why people are so sensitive!" it's a red flag that that sort of thing has been going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The abstract talks a lot about advice giving creating a _sense_ of power.

But does it also _create_ power?

I don't know enough about this field to answer that question for myself, so I'm raising it to the HN hivemind.

<comment><USER7> I also think the headline seems misleading, even if you start reading the first few paragraphs.

I think advice giving doesn't necessarily confer power. Especially if you're always handing out unwanted advice, a lot of people don't like that. They get hurt in their pride because they believe they can do it without you.

If you want to exercise power through advice you have to ask good questions to find out whether the advised person actually needs your advice, and in which area specifically. You have to get to a point where they actually ask for it.

<comment><USER8> There are also other reasons to dislike unsolicited advice.

* It robs you of possibility to figure it out for yourself and think for yourself. It kills pleasure or achievement of whatever activity you are doing. It prevents learning.

* You look less capable to third parties. That actually matters.

* It is often wrong, as whoever gives that advice does not have full information. As in, I am doing it this way and not that way for a reason and really really don't care about defending my choices to strangers who are no more qualified then me.

<comment><USER6> I think the base assumption with advice giving, when considered a positive, should be that the recipient asked for advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was curious, but they don't mention increasing affiliation (another of the 3 needs). If advise is accepted it may also provide validation to the advice giver - is that a sense of power? I guess I'm a little disappointed that they only used one scale.

I was happy to see p<0.001 for a change!

</comment><comment><USER9> Someone just read The Prince.

<comment><USER10> Maybe so, but please don't post shallow dismissals to HN. Especially of other people's work—this is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).</comment></comment>


What Every Data Programmer Needs to Know About Disks - <AUTHOR> http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/20137

<comment><USER2> Paint me unimpressed. "eat my Data" was a way, way better and deeper presentation:

<http://www.oscon.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/detail/3172>

Get the presentation here: <http://flamingspork.com/talks/2007/06/eat_my_data.odp>

<comment><USER3> Thank you for that link. This is a far more interesting presentation than the OT. (Though it does assume some prior knowledge, like what fsync is, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This talk totally failed to properly discuss the issues of the various kinds of fsync, instead (it seems to me) just making a selection of vague comments. That is a shame, as really properly understanding file integrity is a really important issue, which is very easy to get very wrong.

When ext4 came out, I remember a large number of apps losing data, as the metadata and 'normal data' caches can get out of order, meaning that:

Write file B. Rename B -> A.

Can result (after a crash) in A being empty, as the rename can occur before the contents of B are actually written.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. These slides are like "Disks are not memory 101". I'd hope the talk went into more details.

After an hour or so reading semi-related material I have an understanding that goes beyond these basics :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Converted the Presentation PPTX to PDF for accessibility: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5137/pdf- link/What%20Every%20Data%20...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5137/pdf- link/What%20Every%20Data%20Programmer%20Needs%20to%20Know%20About%20Disks%20Presentation.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> Slide 6: "[Disk] throughput: 768 MB/sec on SATA 3" is misleading, consumer- grade rotating disks barely fill SATA 1 with ~70 MB/sec. SSD are faster in raw transfer, and if you have a RAID you are not limited by a single SATA channel any more.

Slide 13: "Laugh at MongoDB" is pretty stupid, mongo makes certain trade-offs that are not for everyone, but they are still meaningful.

The presentation doesn't explore the RAID options, which is a shame.

<comment><USER7> He's referring to the bus speed of SATA 3 as an upper bound -- but like you mentioned, if you throw RAID and such into the mix, I'm not so sure either that it's a very useful number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a video recorded of the presentation somewhere? This seemed really interesting

<comment><USER9> I was really hoping for a video, actually. Audio would suffice too :)</comment></comment>


Software Maintenance by Skeleton Crew Is an Anti-Pattern - <AUTHOR> https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/02/23/software-maintenance-is-an-anti-pattern/ <comment><USER2> I work for the government (and perhaps more significantly, have never worked as a developer outside of government), so it's difficult for me to understand the ideas and concerns promoted here. Just as in private industry (according to the article), our first versions are MVPs which have a roadmap for future additions and improvements. Based on funding, those may or may not result in an increase in team size.

At some point though, the team will decrease in size and the software will be considered "complete for now". Generally, that software will continue to be "on life support" (I guess you could say that?) for the next 5 - 20 years. That isn't a bad thing. Some of the projects I maintain have code from the mid-90s that I'm still making incremental updates to. Sure, I'd like to rewrite it in something newer, but it isn't about me, it isn't about fancy shiny. It's about the fact the system as it exists is proven and solid and meets 90% of the customers stated need. "Whack-a-mole" changes are just a sign of poor testing, poor architecture, or lazy developers. All of our teams here make incremental changes on aging software and generally don't experience major regressions except when it's time to do the big rewrites (which are usually customer-initiated when they bring a raft of changes and some money). When existing technologies are so obsolete as to be unsupportable, then we (IT) will initiate a rewrite as well, but hopefully with incremental upgrades we can keep a product running for as long as the customer likes without spending any more money than they want to spend.

<comment><USER3> Steven -- I applaud your team's approach. From my two and a half years in government I have rarely run into projects like you describe. We have lots of legacy systems, typically built without automated tests. Often a vendor is hired to build a "complete" piece of software, then given a meager budget to "maintain" it.

<comment><USER2> Thanks.

We have a lot of that issue of "hire contractors to build, then use FTEs to maintain". I try to push back where I can because contractors that know up- front that they won't have to support the system are often not inclined to either follow standards (which are less exciting, I know, but make maintenance more predictable) and/or not be concerned about avoiding excessive technical debt up front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It may be worth noting that some government-sponsored software is intended to get dropped as soon as version 1 gets released. Of course, this is a small fraction of government-produced software.

This happens for a variety of reasons. Often funds are allocated specifically to develop what industry calls a minimum viable product-- with the understanding that if the project is deemed successful, the research group can seek further funding to improve the tool.

There is also a model, in government research funding, that says the government's role is mainly to point the way, or to open up markets. In this model, if version 1 of the software proves itself useful, then an industry partner can step in and it take over. However, if nobody shows interest, then the government should _not_ sustain the effort, because the lack of interest implies a lack of utility to the public.

For example, the OpenEIS project [0] was funded specifically to produce "reference code" that a company can use to check the output of a professional implementation. The reference code is not at all intended to be fast or robust. It's intended to demonstrate the algorithms, and to document the expected output for a variety of reasonable inputs. As a programmer on the project, I knew from the start that my work would end with the first deliverable.

[0] [http://eis.lbl.gov/openeis.html](http://eis.lbl.gov/openeis.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Without any concrete evidence or cases, the general description of a problem in this article is not very convincing. Software maintenance itself is not an anti-pattern. Instead, what is described is a situation of product/project mismanagement.

        > ... software is not considered complete when it's first released.

I don't know where this assumption comes from.

        > Governments often use two anti-patterns... (2) moving to reduce
        sustaining staff too early;

This seems like a complete description of the problem, which doesn't sound like a pattern but an issue of conflating deadlines, releases, and project completion.

        > To keep teams from constantly plugging leaks while missing
        the reason the boat is sinking, we need to apply the
        principles of agile development and user centered design

Honestly, this sounds like the waterfall model is preferred to agile development in this case. Agile development can more easily lead a team into constantly plugging leaks than other, more traditional development models.

But I think this article is really addressing public facing web platforms instead of all "software," which the US government has only really experimented with during the last administration, so some of the sentiments of this article, in the context of government, may be true even though it reads false.

Beginning with the analogy to building construction: A skyscraper isn't complete when just the floors and frame are put in place, and the building team doesn't let the builders go at that point. When it is opened up, the maintenance staff have their own job, but it's nothing like what renovators might have to do years later.

<comment><USER6> _> ... software is not considered complete when it's first released.

I don't know where this assumption comes from._

My anecdata, doing IT support for about 1,000 small-business sites: it's customary to only adopt new Microsoft releases after SP1 has been released. Our customers sometimes even explicitly instruct us so.

<comment><USER5> While this is changing, in game development the finished product ships on read-only media and without patches or online support, that is all the customer is going to get.

Now there's a prevalence of day one patches but it's pretty lame to see developers waiting till the weeks between pressing the disc and it appearing on shelves to fix standing issues.

In the case of M$ software that's a security or support issue not the absence of core features.

<comment><USER7> Already in 2013 92% of PC game sales involved no physical media [[http://gamerant.com/pc-digital-physical-sales- comparison-201...](http://gamerant.com/pc-digital-physical-sales- comparison-2013/)]. This enables the day-1-habit, of course, but it also mitigates the problems - there aren't any shelves on which unpatched versions of the game keep sitting after launch.

<comment><USER8> Console is lagging behind for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to assume that all "private industry" does things in a way different than how government does.

Different kinds of projects have different needs for upfront design. One can quickly ship and iterate on an online dating app. One cannot launch a new space shuttle every two weeks and keep trying until the crew survives the mission.

<comment><USER10> >This seems to assume that all "private industry" does things in a way different than how government does.

It does. A skeleton crew would be abandonware.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand your reply. I'm familiar with private industry projects producing high-risk projects requiring lots of long term up front investment in capital and time and private industry projects working low-risk efforts where using the customers as testers is perfectly fine. Likewise there are small units of government entities that can iterate on low-risk projects in addition to the big infrastructure projects that larger government organizations work on.

I think the OP is painting with too broad a brush when talking about "private industry".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've worked O&M on software in the defense industry. Never again.

On my current project, when development is done and we're officially transitioned over to "O&M", my employer either gives me a new project to work on or I'm leaving to do something else.

Oh, and I've come to the conclusion that civil servants are not capable of grasping any development methodology other than 'waterfall.' Trying to do 'agile' is an exercise in frustration. The bureaucrats say they want agile (buzzword!), but they really don't. Eventually you settle on doing 5-week 'mini-waterfalls' and calling it 'agile'. :/

<comment><USER12> It's not just civil servants who can't understand agile. Most non-software people can't. Which is totally normal and expected if you think about it: the agile movement started in software. You can't build a house or a plane using agile. It has to be waterfall.

<comment><USER13> > It's not just civil servants who can't understand agile. Most non-software > people can't. Which is totally normal and expected if you think about it: > the agile movement started in software.

Agile is (to the extent it has concrete substance) very similar to Lean, which (while it has come to software) actually started in manufacturing and engineering of tangible products. The difference between the two is mainly that Lean has a much stronger culture (and has thus also produced a lot more tools) around validation of methods through measurement, and thus is a lot more woo-resistant than Agile, which has proven to be decidedly prone to devolving in exactly the same kind of one-size fits all, consultant-pushed, top-down methodologies without good feedback on what works in the particular environment that the Agile Manifesto was a response to.

> You can't build a house or a plane using agile. It has to be waterfall.

"Agile" and "waterfall" aren't opposed, agile is opposed to the idea that any one methodology -- Scrum as much as Waterfall -- can be selected as right for a team without reference to the particular team and context in which they are working. To the extent that it works in a particular context, waterfall _can be_ Agile.

<comment><USER12> Agile is the idea that requirements are always in flux, and therefore it's pointless to spend time upfront gathering requirements and writing specs and following those specs since there's a good chance they will have become irrelevant by the time the product ships. So agile says "just get something, _anything_ , out the door as soon as possible, receive feedback, then keep revising."

Waterfall is the opposite approach, where you have a formal requirements gathering phase, then you commit everything into design docs, and follow those docs with as few changes as possible. It's similar to how a house is built: first you check your local zoning laws, then have an architect draw the plans, then dig a hole and build a foundation, then build the skeleton, the walls, etc. You don't tell the client, "hey, we just dug the hole for the foundation, come live in it for a few weeks and give us feedback so we know what part to build next."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This could be applied to any software that is developed as a product (in the sense of a piece of software to sell to multiple players in a market).

The article talks about the demand/market for the software _increasing_ after the release, until it reaches a peak, then tails off.

Agile uses the term 'Product Owner', but if you're developing an intranet for Acme Inc, is it really a product? Once the new intranet site is released, is Acme Inc suddenly going to hire a lot more people, increasing the "market"? Will new features generate more "profit" for the intranet?

I wouldn't describe this as Gov vs Private Industry, but as software products vs bespoke software development. And for bespoke software development, private industry often has the same approach to maintenance: once it's done, it's time to wind down the team.

<comment><USER15> _> Agile uses the term 'Product Owner', but if you're developing an intranet for Acme Inc, is it really a product?_

Approaching this from a purely semantic perspective: yes, a product is something that is produced as a result of a process. Not "in the sense of a piece of software to sell to multiple players in a market", but that's a completely arbitrary distinction that you drew yourself, so it isn't really an argument against calling someone a "product owner" of a single customer product.

 _> Once the new intranet site is released, is Acme Inc suddenly going to hire a lot more people, increasing the "market"? Will new features generate more "profit" for the intranet?_

Maybe Acme Inc find that the product that they have paid for have benefits to productivity, but are willing to pay for continued development to refine it further?

Having worked on a lot of "one-off" type projects I think that it is important to maintain software gracefully. Existing customers will ask us to roll out new features on short notice, and having built the product in a way that lets us adjust and add to it easily enables us to sign deals at competitive prices.

That's not to say that this always happens, but I am less suspicious of this as an ideal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe the problem is that development is decentralized and done off-site? For each each website, or component is built by separate, often lucrative contract. On one hand developers re-invent the wheel knowing that they financially benifit from the bloat, on the other hand they feel little responsibility for their often weighty work.

Can we do something crazy like centralize our software development or have these administrative positions electable? If you can run for town dog catcher, maybe that asshole who made the WordPress site should also stand for office!

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't see the point of shoehorning technical concepts onto managerial problems. All it's doing is confusing the point. It's like the author just learned about the concept and now wants to re-imagine _everything_ in terms of that concept.

</comment><comment><USER18> Peculiar that the author makes very strong statements without any proof of research findings.

</comment><comment><USER19> If users have put up with bugs for this long, why should the system be improved?

Either fix the bugs quickly, or don't fix them at all, and move on.

</comment><comment><USER20> Or the "continuous release" model of browser-based and app software. Tehy seem to updated automatically nearly every week.

</comment><comment><USER21> This title is misleading, should be closer to "Government frequently adopts anti-patterns when maintaining software" Something more constrained to what the article is actually about rather that the global catch all "software maintenance".

<comment><USER22> I agree that the title is misleading, but I'd clarify it to "Software development _as typically practiced in industry_ is an anti-pattern." (Maybe it also applies to government; I don't know.) It seems fairly typical in my experience for the old thing to be continually patched over instead of fixed, awaiting replacement by the new thing that is never quite ready.

<comment><USER5> In general, "the new thing" doesn't solve problems that patches fix. For a web platform especially, it sounds like expecting a new engine from a new coat of paint.</comment></comment></comment>


Python Trainer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aaronchall/pythontrainer

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this to help people in my Python meetup group to quiz themselves on Python. I started it a long time ago, got busy with other things that left it broken in a re-architection (where I expanded it to quiz on not just builtin functions, but keywords and modules and stuff like that), but a friend in the group got it working and I got the rest of it working (for the most part). Just clone it and run it with python pythontrainer or python3 pythontrainer or whatever you have aliased various versions of python to, and it should work. Feel free to contribute pull requests, but I'm mostly going to encourage contributions from the meetup group.</comment>


Why am I getting a "stop spamming us" message? - <AUTHOR>

Wondering why all of a sudden I am getting the "Stop Spamming Us" message for every second post I try to submit. I'm putting them up from UNTETHER.tv - not spam. Thanks in advance!<p>Rob <comment><USER2> Because you _are_ spamming - Please stop!

You have 401 submisions and as far as I can see, 400 of those (ie all but this one) are to your site untether.tv. 400 submissions to promote your site (and no other contributions - submissions or comments) is very clearly spamming.

Some more stats: 400 submissions for the same site, roughly on submission a day since your account was created, no submissions to anything else, only ONE comment ever, out of 400 submissions only 38 upvotes. Honestly, I think people should flag future untether.tv submissions unless the content happens to be really relevant and informative, because HN isn't really a marketting/promotional tool (promoting your stuff every once in a while is fine, but if you don't otherwise take part in the community and you post self promoting stuff every few days, thats definitely spam in my books).

</comment><comment><USER3> Possibly because that is all you ever post...

</comment><comment><USER4> The admins here are a bunch of spazzes. But that said, if you're constantly promoting your own stuff and not contributing otherwise, expect to be perceived as a spammer.

<comment><USER2> I accidentally downvoted instead of upvoting - sorry :(

<comment><USER4> No worries :)</comment></comment></comment>


Free Bootstrap Themes - <AUTHOR> http://www.blacktie.co/ <comment><USER2> First thing I check when I read "Free" is I see what the license is (MIT/BSD). Unfortunately, you can't find out what license the theme uses until you get the actual theme. You don't get the actual theme until you put your email address in. I couldn't submit my email address until I subscribed to the newsletter (but upon trying it again in incognito I wasn't prompted to subscribe -- might have been an error on my part, although the checkbox seems borked).

I went ahead and took the plunge with a Mailinator address to see what I could find out, and it looks like there isn't any license to the themes at all. I'm not sure if this is good or bad -- if code has no license, is it a free for all?

Second thing I check is whether the free theme inserts links in the code to their own website (visible or invisible). From what I see, that is not the case with the theme I downloaded.

Looks like some great resources guys, but a little more information would be invaluable. Can't wait to try some of these out for some quick sites though :)

<comment><USER3> Am I the only one who never care about licenses? It says "free" so I download it. What is the worst thing that can happen?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

<comment><USER5> Yeah some not-so-diligent person added some "free" code to our commercial, closed-source application.

"Free" as in GPL2.

Ripped that out pretty quickly.

<comment><USER6> Did you 'rip it out' in the sense of rolling back the commit, or did you refactor the code (and replace the GPL2 code with code that did the same/similar thing)?

If it were the latter, would your entire codebase be considered a derivative work (just as if I took some GPL2 code and refactored it until all the original code was gone)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somewhat tangentially related, but it's been bugging me for a while -- is every brogrammer in America _really_ this ridiculously attractive, or are hackers using model "stunt doubles"? One wouldn't expect GitHub to be full of gorgeous male models who happen to sit in perfect coffee shop lighting while laughing in an almost robotic perfection, but _here we are_!

(The stock photos on the site made me think of it, haha.)

<comment><USER8> Maybe people just put time into their appearance? It's amazing how far a good diet, good sleep, exercise, and some grooming can go.

<comment><USER7> > _Maybe people just put time into their appearance?_

Impossible.

> _It 's amazing how far a good diet, good sleep, exercise, and some grooming > can do._

It's a slippery slope, though. You start with that crap and, before you know it, you're doing flat-out irrational things like _getting dressed_ and _brushing your teeth_. I shudder at the thought!

<comment><USER9> Hey, i put time into my appearance , i don't wanna sound out of the blue or get into stereotypes but maybe is because i am gay, don't know. Really, i have seem in so many conference attractive programmers like the ones in the photos.

<comment><USER10> No.

There are attractive (develoepers|journalists|best buy employees), and there are unattractive (develoepers|journalists|best buy employees).

I think it's mostly sterotypes and confirmation bias. The ugly people are less liekly to post photos of themselves online, so you only ever notice the attractive ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The themes are beautiful and the presentation is nice but the required email opt in totally turns me off. Why not just host these on github? I actually want to be on your newsletter but I don't like that you are forcing people to do so [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7002338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7002338)

<comment><USER12> The "tweet to download" model is bad because you're forcing someone to endorse a product publicly before they even get a chance to try it, thus potentially hurting their credibility.

On the other hand, the "leave email to download" model is completely fair. Not only is it used by the overwhelming majority of companies (most apps require some form of signing up), but you're also the only one receiving those email. So the cost is entirely personal.

So in this case, it's really a matter of whether or not the transaction is worth it for you, and I don't think you have any grounds to complain.

P.S. I'm not the author by the way, I just get ticked off seeing that objection, especially when somebody is already not charging any money for their products.

<comment><USER11> Hey Sacha, I'm a huge reader of your blog and follow your work. I completely agree with what you're saying but I think you might be misunderstanding me. I agree that email to download is not a bad system. The problem I have is that in order to be apart to download the theme, you need to opt into his newsletter. This is different from registration because when you register, you are not forced to opt into a newsletter. This product isn't free. The cost having any theme is to be apart of an audience this creator is building. This is a weak cost admittedly but I think that it turns a lot of people off that they have to join his news letter because that doesn't fit in line with many people's definition of free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some of these are really great although I always chuckle at the idea of web design agencies using free themes for there own website.

<comment><USER14> I feel it says something fairly sad about the state of the industry when "Agency" themes are some of the most popular website themes out there.

Sort of the (sad) opposite of demonstrating your craft in your own tools: [http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodworking- plans/article/the...](http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodworking- plans/article/the-ho-studley-tool-chest.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Munter" means something that presumably you don't think it means.

<comment><USER16> LOL, I just looked it up, then went back to the page and now I can't stop laughing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why have a checkbox[1], if we can't toggle it.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/WbCJQsk.png](http://i.imgur.com/WbCJQsk.png)

<comment><USER18> Many European countries require an opt-in subscription model by law ("EU Opt- In Directive") where the user explicitly states it want to receive the newsletter (e.g. it not being a side effect of a registration).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it's really weird that the example content is about design companies. Shouldn't those design their own homepages?

<comment><USER20> I've always thought that too. Either way, these themes look pretty good. I like Bootstrap themes for simple one-off projects or demos that I want to try. For anything serious I'll at least change the colors and modify things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For the curious, I did some digging and found the following:

Blacktie.co was created by Carlos Alvares ([http://www.alvarez.is/](http://www.alvarez.is/)). He's a designer who has a number of paid themes on [https://wrapbootstrap.com/user/Basicoh](https://wrapbootstrap.com/user/Basicoh). Blacktie appears to be his own site where he gives away some free themes in exchange for your email address.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very cool, I might use one of these! The email with the download link was marked as spam by gmail, so you might have to do a search in:anywhere.

Some other free themes: [http://wrapbootstrap.com](http://wrapbootstrap.com) (I'm not affiliated, just love their stuff). They have less files and a compiled css file for their themes.

<comment><USER23> I realise they're cheaper than coffee but I'm not seeing any free themes here at all. Even sorting lowest to highest price the lowest is $4. Do they have a hidden category somewhere for free?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Education: Web Designer | Greenville University. Business Master | Loyal Univesrity." <\--

</comment><comment><USER25> The responsive breakpoints are not really optimized on the themes I took a look at. Leaves a bunch of space on the margins, sometimes breaks way too early, images aren't responsive, etc.

I guess you can't complain when it's free though.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the market for HTML templates is on the rise. Is anyone else seeing that?

<comment><USER27> I think it's more symptomatic of developers realizing that UI is hard (guilty), and while we may think it's easy to make something, it's hard to make it something people want to use. I can't tell you how many times I've nearly bought a Bootstrap theme rather than making one myself. Call it lazy, call it throwing money at your problems/weaknesses, but I agree, there's a rising market for themes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just downloaded a theme by using a throwaway email address and have already customized it. Looks really slick!

I have also just discovered fontawesome, which just shows that I really need to improve my front-end programming skills...

</comment><comment><USER29> As someone just getting started with front end development and who learns best by tinkering, this is a great resource.

What are some other Bootstrap focused resources to learn front end development?

<comment><USER30> getbootstrap.com/getting-started, getbootstrap.com/css, getbootstrap.com/components and getbootstrap.com/javascript

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are these awesome themes on GitHub? it would also be really nice if they were all under one repo, or each had their own! Just an idea. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER32> No Less files? That feels like something that would be really helpful.</comment>


Nginx on Wasmjit - <AUTHOR> https://www.wasmjit.org/blog/nginx-on-wasmjit.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like the big idea from Singularity (run everything in the same hardware security ring, use static analysis for memory safety) is going mainstream, incrementally. Unfortunate that this is happening right as it becomes clear that such a design is fundamentally unsound on modern hardware.

<comment><USER3> +1 for pointing at the irony but it's not really true.

1\. Hardware design flaws are not irremediable and will be fixed in time.

2\. It's still very useful to run software that is trusted to not be malicious and/but not trusted to be void of memory bugs.

<comment><USER4> > Hardware design flaws are not irremediable and will be fixed in time.

There's no particular reason to believe this. Neither Intel nor AMD have committed to any form of side-effect-free speculative execution or similar. That'd required a rather large chunk of transistors and die space, and if nobody is footing the bill for it it's not going to happen.

Preventing side-effects from leaking between _processes_ (and ring levels) entirely at the hardware level is definitely going to happen. Within a process, though? That's not going to happen without multiple major players demanding it. Since nearly all the major CPU consumers are currently happy with process boundaries being the security enforcement zones, there's no particular reason to believe that in-process sandboxing will ever have hardware fixes to prevent spectre attacks.

<comment><USER5> > That's not going to happen without multiple major players demanding it. > Since nearly all the major CPU consumers are currently happy with process > boundaries being the security enforcement zones, there's no particular > reason to believe that in-process sandboxing will ever have hardware fixes > to prevent spectre attacks.

The amount of untrusted code running in browser is only increasing over time, and the CPU vendors have absolutely noticed this. That's why ARMv8.3A added an instruction that literally has JavaScript in it's name (FJCVTZS) for instance.

Once you have mitigations for colocating trusted and untrusted code in ring 3, doing the same in ring 0 almost certainly isn't a big deal.

<comment><USER4> Browser vendors have already rolled out process isolation to handle this. So why would CPU vendors spend silicon on something userspace has already solved with the building blocks that are already supported?

In-process sandboxing by all appearances is simply dead.

As for "doing the same in ring 0 almost certainly isn't a big deal" no, very extremely no. If you let code run in ring 0 it has everything ring 0 can do, period. You cannot put restrictions on it, that's what spectre proved. Give code access to a process and it has _entire_ access to that process. Similarly give something ring 0, and it has the _entirety_ of ring 0.

Untrusted code goes in ring 3 in an isolated process. That's the security model of x86, and it's the only model that CPU vendors have any pressure to fix.

<comment><USER5> It's worse than what you're stating. Spectre is remotely exploitable with network packets (NetSpectre). The current state of the world isn't just fine with process level security, and the chip vendors are going to need to fix it, because ultimately you can exploit then if you control the data, not just the code. They have several options available to them, all of which also let's you run sandboxed untrusted code in the same MMU context as trusted code.

<comment><USER4> It is unclear if NetSpectre works in a real environment, but either way it's fundamentally similar to an IPC call and can be treated as such. As in, that's where you'd insert hardening boundaries.

Chip vendors have & will fix process boundaries. But _nobody_ is talking about any sort of protection of any kind that would let in-process sandboxing work again. It's just not even on the table at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The intention here is to use wasm to allow you safely run user code _within_ the kernel. Their primary targets are nginx and FUSE. Conceivably, avoiding the context switch into and out of the kernel will have significant performance implications, but there aren't any numbers out yet for nginx specifically.

<comment><USER7> That's certainly a fascinating idea. My initial thought was "Wait, doesn't the kernel already provide a sandboxed execution environment -- called userspace?" This would still have scheduling overhead, but I assume the idea is to avoid a lot of the other context switching steps such as switching page tables. And instead rely on Wasm/JIT checks to ensure ahead of time that memory violations won't happen.

<comment><USER8> Once upon a time syscalls were slow, but architectures now provide features like syscall/sysenter for switching privilege levels, with costs comparable to userspace function calls.

Once upon a time switching page tables was slow, but now we have features like PCID that allow preserving buffers.

Soon, if not already, the principle cost to context switching will be the necessity to flush prediction and data buffers. In-kernel solutions like Wasmjit must incur the same costs. Quite possibly they may turn out to be slower overall: 1) they won't be able to take advantage of the same hardware optimized privilege management facilities (existing and future ones--imagine tagged prediction buffers much like PCID), and 2) they still incur the extra runtime overhead of running in a VM which, JIT-optimized or not, eats into limited resources like those prediction and data buffers that have become so critical to maximizing performance.

Granted, if it's going to work well at all than Nginx seems like a good bet, especially because of I/O. But there are many other solutions to that problem. Obsession with DPDK may be waning, but zero-copy AIO is still a thing and there are more ergonomic userspace alternatives (existing and in the pipeline) that let you leverage the in-kernel network stack without having to incur copying costs. And then there are solutions like QUIC that redefine the problem and which should work extremely well with existing zero-copy interfaces.

CPUs are incredibly complex precisely because so much of the security heavy- lifting once performed in the OS is being accomplished in the CPU or dedicated controllers. And these newer optimizations were designed to be integrated within the context of the traditional userspace/kernel split.

Wasmjit looks like an extremely cool project and I don't doubt its utility. There's plenty of room for alternative approaches, I just don't think the value-add is all that obvious.[1] Probably less to do with performance and more to do with providing a clear, stable, well-supported environment for solving (and subsequently maintaining!) difficult integration problems.

[1] I just want to reiterate that by saying the value-add isn't obvious I'm not implying anything about the potential magnitude of that value-add. I've been around long enough to understand that most pain points are invisible and just because I can't see them or people can't articulate them doesn't mean they don't exist or that the potential for serious disruption isn't there.

<comment><USER9> Just an honest question, could you elaborate on what methods are the: "there are more ergonomic userspace alternatives (existing and in the pipeline) that let you leverage the in-kernel network stack without having to incur copying costs". I've been curious about DPDK, FStack, Seastar, IncludeOS/MirageOS, etc. but wondering if there are easier ways to get the zero-copy IO.

<comment><USER8> Off the top of my head:

Netmap - DPDK-like packet munging performance but with interfaces and semantics that behave more like traditional APIs. Signaling occurs through a pollable descriptor, meaning you can handle synchronization and work queueing problems much more like you would normally.

vmsplice - IIRC it recently became possible to be able to reliably detect when a page loan can be reclaimed, which is (or hopefully was) the biggest impediment to convenient use of vmsplice.

peeking - Until recently Linux poll/epoll didn't obey SO_RCVLOWAT, which made it problematic to peek at data before using splice() to shuttle data or dequeueing a connection request. I have a strong suspicion that before this fix many apps like SSL sniffers simply burnt CPU cycles without anybody realizing. Though in the Cloud age we seem much more tolerant of spurious, unreproducible latency and connectivity "glitches".

AIO - There's always activity around Linux's AIO interfaces. I don't keep track but there may have been a ring-buffer patch merged which allows dequeueing newly arrived events or data without having to poll for readiness first.

Device Passthru - CPU VM monitor extensions make it easier to work with devices directly. Not quite the same thing as traditional userspace/kernel interfaces, but it seems like people are increasingly running what otherwise look like (and implemented like) regular userpace apps within VM monitor frameworks. Like with Netmap all you really need is a singular notification primitive (possibly synthesized yourself) that allows you apply whatever model of concurrency you want--asynchronous, synchronous, or some combination--and in a way that is composable and friendly to regular userspace frameworks. VM monitor APIs and device pass thru permit arranging the burdens between userspace/VM and the kernel more optimally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand. How is this possible? The POSIX API is not implemented for WASM. Non web embedding have not yet been standardized, nor threads. How have they implemented this? Are they implementing a non standard embedding and pthreads?

[https://webassembly.org/docs/non-web/](https://webassembly.org/docs/non-web/)

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems like wasm will finally enable the "write once, run everywhere" promise that java made but never truly executed by starting with the premise that you don't need "one true language" (java), but rather just the VM.

Yeah, I know the JVM supports several languages these days but most require non-superficial similarities to Java (garbage collected, etc.)

<comment><USER12> This ignores the tons and tons and tons of work that would really have changed that. I don't think it really has anything to do with whether you have one true language or not.

There were plenty of well-funded efforts to have "write once, run everywhere" in the past that were just VM's and formats (ANDF, etc).

In practice, a lot of things have changed since Java that have made this kind of approach feasible. As a simple example: good compiler infrastructure to build on top of is _much_ more available than it was then. These days you pretty much just have to write a frontend.

Even though GCC existed then, it was still compiling statement at a time!

<comment><USER11> I know there have been many efforts to write a universal VM. Two things I think will make wasm more successful than prior attempts is:

1\. it comes on with platforms already via a browser or node.js

2\. like you said, the tools are here now (really LLVM made most of this possible)

<comment><USER12> Sure, i'm just saying your comment seemed to be saying "java's write-once run everywhere failing was due to trying to have one true language", and i think that part is fairly orthogonal.

<comment><USER11> I don't believe it's failure is entirely based on it shipping with a prescribed language--but I wouldn't say it's orthogonal. Java, the language, promised "write once, run everywhere" whereas the JVM in the beginning was just an implementation detail. The JVM slowly evolved into a universal vm concept, mostly at the hands of the community and not those (Sun, Oracle) that had the most control over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you avoid having to copy buffers from the kernel into WebAssembly? As far as I know WebAssembly does not provide a way to access memory outside the linear memory block, but maybe in this specific case (nginx) it is possible to have all syscalls write to a buffer allocated by WebAssembly.

</comment><comment> lachlan-sneff Wasmer just got nginx working on their wasm runtime as well!

</comment><comment><USER14> I might be getting too old, because I truly don't get the benefit of doing this... Nobody I know really cares about portability, and I don't see how running nginx with WASM is in any way better than running it directly on the system. Does anyone care to ELI5 for me?

<comment><USER15> This is satire but still very interesting: [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone else look at this title and see a jumble of letters?

I miss the days of pronounceable acronyms

<comment><USER17> "engine-ecks on whaz'm-jit" It's certainly pronounceable, though perhaps that pronunciation is non-obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obligatory birth-and-death-of-javascript

[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)

I suppose calling it METAL would have been too on-the-nose.

<comment><USER19> Not sure why you're downvoted, this is a very interesting talk.

<comment><USER18> It's pretty relevant to the discussion of "why would you want to run wasm in the kernel", but I'm not too worried about the votes.

<comment><USER20> It's not, though... WebAssembly doesn't really have all that much to do with js, any more than Flash or Java plugins would if they ended up being standardized instead. Every time there's a wasm thread it gets posted, but it misses the point of the talk to suggest that wasm is the prediction bearing fruit.

The talk is great, but I'd suggest that's the reason for the downvotes.

<comment><USER21> > it misses the point of the talk to suggest that wasm is the prediction > bearing fruit

Does it? It seems that the talk has two main points:

1\. Javascript succeeded because it was (at least initially) just good enough not to be completely unbearable, but bad enough that people ended up using it primarily as a target for other languages.

2\. Ring 0 JIT can be 4% faster that normal binaries.

WASM is primarily a target for other languages, and qualifies as a language that can theoretically be JITted 4% faster than native code can be run.

<comment><USER20> Point number one isn't applicable to wasm.

The execution inside the kernel is related, but nobody replies to a lua in kernel post with a link to the talk.

<comment><USER22> Because Lua isn't related to Web development, while JavaScript and WASM are.

<comment><USER20> Right, but that's my point. Wasm is tenuously connected with JavaScript because both are web technologies, so people link the talk.

But they couldn't be more different technically, and if wasm does indeed become the lingua franca of future computing it will be much more boring than the craziness of js doing the same.

The talk was great because it was about an insane yet plausible future. We now have a boring and probable future.

<comment><USER22> I don't believe in that, too much experience to believe in a miracle bytecode format that will magically succeeded where others failed.

It will just be yet another VM platform.

<comment><USER20> Even less reason to link to the talk then :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hi HN!

I'm Syrus, from the Wasmer team. We have been working in something similar, but with a special focus on maintainability and with bigger goals in mind:

[https://wasmer.io/](https://wasmer.io/)

Here is the article about our journey on Running Nginx (which funnily enough we actually accomplished just before wasmjit):

[https://medium.com/@syrusakbary/running-nginx-with- webassemb...](https://medium.com/@syrusakbary/running-nginx-with- webassembly-6353c02c08ac)

<comment><USER24> > but much more maintainable.

> we actually accomplished just before wasmjit

> Wasmer is the first native WebAssembly runtime [...]

Whoa there. I like both projects and respect competition as much as the next guy, but maintainability is subjective and being first is of little importance.

<comment><USER23> True! This statements without analysis are wet paper.

In the article I've linked there is a better analysis on why:

1\. in wasmjit, the machine instructions are hardcoded into the runtime (this is like creating your own LLVM, by hand... and only available for x86)

2\. it doesn't have a single test

I was talking about my own experience here, because I tried to contribute to wasmjit before creating Wasmer... and was quite challenging!

It might be useful to check how many people interacted with the code in each of this projects! ;)

Also note the timeline that took for this projects to accomplish the same: wasmer (<2 months) wasmjit (6 months)

<comment><USER25> You may be correct on all those points but still come off as rude. And I think you're just trying to be helpful and steer people in the direction that you think is right. However, given the context of where you're doing it, it feels like someone is trying to ruin someone else's parade.

<comment><USER26> They are competing and think theirs is better. They are trying to get people to look at the competition. That's not ruining anything for anyone

<comment><USER27> Then the discussion should have been a post unto itself, not a comment piggy- backing on another project's thread. I dunno, seems like basic netiquette to me.

But I agree that if you think your solution is better, there's really nowhere better to put it out there than in front of eyes that are looking at something similar.

<comment><USER28> Piggy backing rubs the wrong way, but sometimes there is interesting content.

Personally, I would challenge the piggybacker to show me something.

Talk is cheap.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you make your website mobile friendly? - <AUTHOR>

I am working on the css for my new website, one of my consideration is that it has to be mobile friendly, much like posterous.com and avc.com ... Their website look awesome on my iPhone. Here's something I dun quite get.
At AVC, they include multiple css to make to make it mobile friendly. <link rel="stylesheet" href="/a_vc/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/a_vc/touch.css" type="text/css" media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/a_vc/touch.css" type="text/css" media="only screen and (min-device-width: 481px) and (max-device-width: 1024px)" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/a_vc/print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />
Nothing of this sort with posterous.com... I could be wrong here. Not sure if anyone else has got experience making their website mobile friendly, if so, please share. <comment><USER2> Check out the Safari Web Content Guide (<http://cl.ly/2pug>). It's written to specifically target the iPhone/iPod touch, but most of the information applies straight across to the Android platform as well. It has information on conditional CSS, viewport sizes, etc., that will help you optimize your site for mobile devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice!

Seems like a lot of websites (Smashing Magazine and Abduzeedo to name a couple) are using Mobify -- <http://www.mobify.me/> ... I have yet to try it out. Can't comment on it.</comment></comment>


Relocate the downvote button to the right - <AUTHOR>

Currently the downvote icon is directly below the upvote icon.  This gives a small margin for error and I have noticed a few times were people have accidently downvoted an artcle due to this.
Instead of the layout we have now ( A= Upvote icon and V= downvote icon):
A  Name n minutes/hours ago | link
V
I propose that a layout such as this:
A  Name n minutes/hours ago | link   V
At least to me it would make more sence from a usibility regard to avoiding misclicking and more useful for those upon smaller screen sizes as well.
What are peoples thoughts upon this suggestion? <comment><USER2> Please use the feature request link at the bottom of this page to submit a feature request.

<comment><AUTHOR> AH my bad, will do.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Whilst my outline above does not fully capture how close the up and down arrows are for up and down voting this comment will at least serve as a reminder that only a few pixels seperate you from a misclick.</comment>


Anonymous exposes private prisons - <AUTHOR> http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights-criminal-law-reform/anonymous-exposes-uss-biggest-private-prison-company-bad

<comment><USER2> >>> The country now has 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners.

Strangely the "nation of Free" has double the number of people inside the prison than the "human rights violator" China.

Number of prisoners. USA - 2,239,751

China - 1,640,000

And when you consider that China has a large population... the percentage of people inside the prison is enormous.

[http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_country.php...](http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_country.php?country=190)

[http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_country.php...](http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_country.php?country=91)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting seeing the ACLU and Anonymous team up...</comment>


EC to audit Apache HTTP Server and Keepass - <AUTHOR> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/node/153614 <comment><USER2> Keepass seems like a questionable choice, seeing as it's very unlikely to be affected by any particularly interesting bugs.

Besides the crypto, there's not much to break and breaking the crypto requires access that would in almost all cases allow for far easier attacks against it (i.e. wait for user to decrypt the passwords).

<comment><USER3> That's why you do an audit, to determine if there is "much to break" or not.

Maybe it's caching passwords in a tempfile somewhere, or it uses "4" as it's random seed every time, or any one of a million other things that could go wrong. Nobody knows until they read the code.

I'd rather use an audited Password saver program, everything else being equal...

<comment><USER2> There's absolutely value in auditing Keepass, I'm not denying that. It's just a strange place to start.</comment></comment></comment>


WalMart employees can now deliver your online orders on their way home from work - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/01/wal-mart-employees-can-now-also-deliver-your-online-orders.html <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like an interesting way for Walmart to compete with Uber and Amazon logistics/delivery services.

What about?

\- Privacy Concerns (same that exist with Uber eats)

\- Will workers do it

\- Will workers be 1099'ed or get more hours?</comment>


Ask HN: Any easy way to automate mouse clicks in Linux (Gnome)? - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/HamsterTrainer2.swf I'm curious to see what happens on that page when I get to 0, but I want to be a smart hacker about it ... <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious to see what happens on that page when I get to 0, but I want to be a smart hacker about it ...

<comment><USER2> I assume you're using Firefox...

<http://lmgtfy.com/?q=firefox+macro>

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think those would support flash though. Clever link though.</comment></comment></comment>


Neon Waterfalls : Long exposures of glow-sticks floating over waterfalls - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/n6LnZ

<comment><USER2> We built something similar for a party in our dorm one year, only because our waterfalls were completely artificial we were able to add fluorescent dye to the water and illuminate them with blacklights.</comment>


Life in the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://www.hawking.org.uk/life-in-the-universe.html <comment><USER2> Hawking mentions values of physical constants that support life as being often given as an evidence that the Universe was designed. I was wondering once if the values of constants are not enforced by the structure of the Universe, and are not magic numbers that could theoretically be changed. Maybe we don't really understand the underlying mechanism that gives a physical constant a given value, and if we did, it could turn out, that the constant can not possibly have any other value.

Take PI as an example. People very well understand what a PI is and how it can be delivered. Because of this, we do not argue what would happen if PI had a value of 3.15... not 3.14... In a Universe with different PI circles wouldn't be circles, atoms or planets would maybe collapse, but such deliberations do not make any sense because what PI represents enforces the only value that it can have. Maybe the same is true for the electric charge and other constants Hawking mentions?

<comment><USER3> Math and Physics are two _very_ different realms. There's no a apriori reason for anything in the real world to obey a law or regularity. The fact that it does is amazing. The fact that we are able to think it's amazing is mind blowing. :)

<comment><USER2> But maybe as we acquire knowledge we will be able to explain why constant have given values. For example: the distance from Earth to the Sun during a given day of a year could in the past be considered a magic number. But today, thanks to Kepler, we understand why this distance has a given value and we know that it could not be different without changing the mass or velocities of bodies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case you missed it, this was written in 1996. A very interesting read indeed. Yet it is somehow disappointing to see that 16 years later, there are yet not a lot of examples of what he calls the "self-designing" of the human race. Quite contrarily there's still a strong opposition (both amongst the legislators and the general public) against stem cell research and human cloning in many countries.

<comment><USER5> I would suggest you read cell biology papers from 1996 and from the same authors and institutions today, nearly 20 years later. There has been a pretty staggering amount of insight gained into how cells "work" and by work I mean where folks can predict changes that would occur by making changes in the structure of a cell.

As others have observed it is now possible to 'print' a virus using a DNA printer. Further there is growing evidence that viruses are a change agent for evolution as they physically re-write the genetics of a cell to propagate, and even after the virus is conquered sometimes their structure lives on.

When you combine those, you can see that we're approaching a point where a non-nation state actor (basically a smart biologist in reasonably well funded lab) will be able to code a genetic change, print up a retrovirus to make that change, and then instantiate that change in a test subject (or themselves).

Evidence suggests the first 'customers' for that technology will be athletes who are looking for an 'edge' but when it happens, it will appear to have happened 'over night' where something fundamental about a person can be proactively changed. Whether its baldness, red blood cell production, or the color of your eyes, the changes will be profound and for many quite upsetting.

The key is that people will be able to get changed without the regulating agencies being able to intervene and _that_ will change things quite dramatically.

<comment><USER6> > Further there is growing evidence that viruses are a change agent for > evolution as they physically re-write the genetics of a cell to propagate, > and even after the virus is conquered sometimes their structure lives on.

Retro-viri do this. (Not all viri are retro-viri.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It really is surprising that life could be so rare. But then you realize that the chance of us detecting life from a distant star comes in only very fine bands: in other words our post-SETI civilization needs to be _within_ the light-distance of the star _at or after_ they first produce radio communications but _before_ they start using something far more advanced for communication that we don't yet know how to detect. Plus they need to not destroy themselves. And we need to actually look right at their signal, and notice it!

Basically what this means is: SETI is looking for stars that have developed intelligent life and radio roughly exactly as many years ago as they are light-years away from us. This minimizes the ease of finding significantly.

We could assume civilizations always use advanced forms of radio after they develop it but then why haven't we found life? We assume there must be a limit to the usefulness of radio in that sense. After all, we're moving to fiber etc.

<comment><USER8> Also, this alien civilization needs to be broadcasting a signal we have a likely chance of detecting, something we're apparently _not_ doing:

<http://www.seti.org/faq>

 _Are we also sending any signals?

We conduct a passive experiment, designed only to look for signals, not to send them. However, humankind has been unintentionally transmitting signals into space – primarily high-frequency radio, television, and radar – for more than fifty years. Our earliest TV broadcasts have reached about one thousand nearby stars, although any alien viewers would have to build a very large antenna to detect them.

SETI researchers have not been very interested in broadcasting because of the long time one has to wait for a reply. If the nearest civilization is 100 light-years away, we would have to sit around for 200 years for a reply to a deliberate broadcast._

...

 _If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to Project Phoenix, could they hear Earth?

In general, no. Most earthly transmitters are too weak to be detectable by Phoenix-type equipment at the distance of even the nearest star. The exceptions are some high-powered radars and the Arecibo broadcast of 1974 (which lasted for only three minutes). To detect "leakage" radiation similar to our own will require instruments that are many times more sensitive than what we now have._

I never thought of the SETI guys as being _particularly_ crackpot, but these answers make little sense to me. They're admitting that even if there's another roughly equivalent SETI project on an Earth-like planet 25 ly away, neither of us will hear each other because we're too impatient (!!) to continuously send a transmission and wait for a response?

I know very little about the propagation of microwaves, but my guess is that SETI doesn't want to admit that real interstellar communication would require vastly more signal power or vastly better detection capabilities than our civilization is capable of mustering.

<comment><USER9> An assumption of SETI is that we're listening for slightly older civilizations which would use much more energy (many orders of magnitude more). And it's a quite reasonable assumption.

Responding would be possible, if we knew the direction - a focused beam in direction of a specific star can be a billion times stronger than our "leakage", but we can't transmit to all stars, or 1% of all stars, or 0.01% of all stars - there are just too many of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always wondered what the minimum unit for mechanical life would be. I.e., what's analogious to a biological cell?

It seems to me to have an automated spaceship that can land on planets and produce more automated spaceships, it would require most of the tools available on earth in one way or another; vehicles, mining equipment, refineries, factories, and more. And for each piece say vehicles you need all of the infrastructure to create those.

<comment><USER11> It's a different design paradigm than mass manufacturing. Huge refineries and assembly lines are setup because they build large quantities cheaply. Not because this large apparatus is inherently necessary for construction.

Think about it a different way. Imagine you had a robot arm with attachments for every type of tool. Grippers, welders, drills, nut drivers, hammers, etc... Couldn't this single arm build anything given the proper schematic and enough time? To further reduce complexity, you could add design constraints to your 'replicating spaceship' so that only a subset of tools would be required. Finally consider what tools could build the other tools. At some point you approach a minimum amount of gear needed.

Consider that the minimum amount of gear needed could potentially be under 200lbs in weight and under two meters in height.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hawking is a great writer, I first encountered his writing with his "A brief history of time" book - which was easy to read for someone without much physics knowledge. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time>

</comment><comment><USER13> My favorite quote from the article "By contrast, there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life"

</comment><comment><USER14> Never was there a more perfect candidate for the text-to-speech function in Safari.

<comment><USER15> I really hope this was meant to be a joke. If so, it seems to be lost of the guy who mentioned Evernote. Regardless, I thought it was hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "But Freeman Dyson has shown that, despite this, life could adapt to the ever- decreasing supply of ordered energy, and therefore could, in principle, continue forever".

Does anyone knows what he's talking about ? Dyson's sphere ? Surely there's some energy loss involved in the process ? But if it's true I'm happy to learn that an intelligent lifeform can theoretically live forever.

<comment><USER17> This is Dyson's "eternal intelligence" scenario. A summary can be found at [1], but the details are in "Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe" [2]. wcoenen very helpfully linked to a text version of this paper [3].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%27s_eternal_intelligence>

[2] "Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe", Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 51, Issue 3 (July 1979), pp. 447-460

[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4777857>

<comment><USER18> So, Achilles never caught up with that tortoise, after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I believe there is a fourth explanation on why no intelligent life forms have presented themselves to us, and Hawking states the rationale in his article. The fourth explanation is that we have been visited by intelligent aliens, but they have hidden themselves, like the Star Trek "prime directive", so that we don't end up like native Americans to the intelligent aliens' Colombus.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised at how little new information I found in this talk. Which is not to suggest I'm very knowledgeable, only that a few of my favorite wikipedia articles must do a damn good job of summarizing these topics, particularly <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

<comment><USER21> Note that this talk is way older than Wikipedia though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> About classifying computer viruses as a form of life:

"Maybe it says something about human nature, that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive."

Other (constructive) computer programs could just as well be seen as a form of life. The difference would simply be that one spreads without our immediate consent and the other needs to convince us that it is useful to us before being allowed to spread (kind of like pilot fish). Both use a combination of pre-existing infrastructure/ecosystem to procreate - our brains, computers, language and other methods of communication.

They are all the form of life called memes or temes by Susan Blackmore ([http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes....](http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html)). (Also Dawkins et al)

</comment><comment><USER23> Great reading!

I would like to add that the development of a brain is another huge milestone. Somehow Hawking forgets to mention that.

And the development of the computer and Internet is a big milestone in the external transmission period in my opinion.

If you like this kind of reading, I recommend the book: [http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly- Everything/dp/076...](http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly- Everything/dp/076790818X)

</comment><comment><USER24> > _because there's no way one can show a period of ten thousand years, on the > same scale as billions of years_

Isn't that what log scales are for?

</comment><comment><USER25> This was an amazing read. It elegantly covers Life from the inception of the universe to what might occur next.

What I liked the most was when he talked about "externally transmitted information". I never thought of books and written knowledge as being part of human evolution as much as DNA, though it definitely fits the description.

<comment><USER26> It's easy to regard ideas themselves as having evolution. Only those ideas that resonate with humans are preserved and passed on. The rest die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Given he so eloquently puts the arguments, it baffles me to think that we might just be an extremely lucky and rare occurrence in the universe. To me, it is more terrifying to think we are the only ones, than to think there are aliens. The vastness of spaces suddenly seems so claustrophobic.

<comment><USER3> I don't see what difference does it make if we're 7blns on this planet and alone in the Universe, or if there are other planets populated with bacteria or intelligent life.

Actually, I think, it makes no difference. Look at Star Trek, a large series of civilizations which are pretty much variations on the same human theme.

Claustrophobia starts when acknowledging that there's nothing else but the Universe. And nothing beyond our limited life. That's the scary thought.

<comment><USER28> I like his ideas about biological life not being suited to spread throughout the galaxy, that it's going to be mechanical or at least completely engineered.

If that's the case, why would engineered life ever want to land on a planet? It seems easier to take everything from asteroids and stay near shining stars and away from other gravity wells. Visiting/colonizing planet Earth doesn't make much sense, other than the challenge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there an available Hawking text-to-speech converter? Or perhaps a recording of this by him?

<comment><USER30> In OS X, you can do this:

1\. Copy the text of the talk and save it to a file, say "life.txt"

2\. Use the "say" command to read it:

        $ say < life.txt

To change the voice, go to System Preferences > Dictation & Speech and pick the one closest to Hawking's. (On my system, "Fred" comes pretty close.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I strongly recommend reading the Carl Sagan book in a similar vein called "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" for folks interested in a pop-intro to genetics and the history of life.

</comment><comment><USER31> So many of the points made by Hawking could be used to justify Creationism, and yet it's waved off as 'impossible'. That is bad science.

<comment><USER32> It's not waved off as impossible, it's waved off as unprovable. For something to be scientific, it has to be possible to be disproven.

<comment><USER33> A genuine question based on the requirement you gave for something to be scientific: how is Darwinian natural selection and the theory of macro (inter- species) evolution disprovable?

<comment><USER9> If we were to observe that it does not happen in cases where we see it now?

Students can (and do) perform experiments on evolution+natural selection on bacteria in a lab in reasonable timeframes - put in bacteria, add feed, maybe add extra mutagens or radiation, and then observe the changes in bacteria when a stressor or a particular "poison" is added - the bacteria strain changes, evolving resistance. If one would see simply the strain suffering&not changing, then it would disprove Darwinian selection.

Inter-species evolution for larger organisms is more time-consuming to study (since many generations are needed), but the existing "ring-species" such as some bird groups are a good example - if inter-species evolution would be false, then we'd expect to see distinct species that can successfully interbreed within a species, but not between species; instead, we observe a "ring" where everyone is "the same" as their neighbour, but the opposite sides of the ring are "different species".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> <<This lecture is the intellectual property of Professor S.W.Hawking. You may not reproduce, edit, translate, distribute, publish or host this document in any way with out the permission of Professor Hawking.>> How to write for the net, 1980's style. It feels like a provocation to do so.

<comment><USER35> Its his choice how he wants his works to be distributed. You can still link to it. And if you want to translate it just ask him.

<comment><USER36> you can link to it as long as the court in question agrees that linking is not publishing or distributing. this is (unfortunately) not the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I haven't read the article yet, but I find the intro

"This lecture is the intellectual property of Professor S.W.Hawking. You may not reproduce, edit, translate, distribute, publish or host this document in any way with out the permission of Professor Hawking."

bad taste for a person carrying a degree granted by the public.

Besides, is my squid proxy already in violation of this?

EDIT: Seriously, why the downvotes?

<comment><USER17> Hawking received his phd in 1966. Are you seriously saying that he can't can't claim ownership of the products of his intelect, 46 years later?

<comment><USER37> Maybe I wasn't clear, but I was referring to "reproduce, edit, translate, distribute, publish or host this document" (cf. my remark on the squid proxy). IMHO, prohibiting "distributing" or "hosting" this document is just ridiculous in a world where there is an internet and has nothing to do with "ownership of the products of his intellect".

Further, the "products of his intellect" are themselves a partially reproduced, edited, or translated versions of documents his has read previously, in all likelihoods. I thought, every scientist (in particular, Mr. Hawking) is aware of this and thus claiming "ownership" of this "product" seems unfair. Hence, I find it bad taste.

Of course, we can now start to argue what does "edit", "reproduce" or "document" mean.</comment></comment></comment>


The Myth of Organic Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.seobook.com/myth-organic-marketing <comment> onreact-com That's like saying "provide the content and they will come", both are myths that never die. Also in most cases not the best product wins but the one that spreads the fastest, think Betamax vs VHS.</comment>


The VC, The Professor, And The Valley Of Death  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/29/the-vc-the-professor-and-the-valley-of-death/ <comment><USER3> _University researchers don't know how to commercialize their discoveries_

I realise I am going to be kindling for the next HN bonfire for saying this... but...

... some of us don't _want_ to commercialize our discoveries, and in fact we are in academia partly because we find the commercial world so unattractive.

Now please stop throwing things at me and go back to your start-ups.

<comment><USER4> That's fine - no one has a problem with that.

The problem is that some people do, and it's impossible to get the tech out. The vast majority of R1 universities have moronic - utterly moronic - <USER2> transfer offices. I can speak to this better than most as someone who did VC and had to deal with researches fighting against moronic tech transfer officers that insisted on onerous terms, insanely high royalty rates, and copious paperwork to get tech out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few years back, my advisor and I went through the process of applying for a patent for some of our reseach, via our university's IP office. They would only pay for the provisional patent -- we would have to come up with any funding for a full patent (like $20k) and they would still own the patent. That doesn't give much incentive for researchers to push for patenting and commercialization.

We just dropped the idea, given that it would take a lot more work to develop the idea to the stage that a VC would be interested.

What he said about funding is generally right -- at least in the CS world, most research projects are only implemented far enough to get a paper published. The funding (and tenure system) doesn't really reward any further development.

The one exception that I've seen is the NSF SBIR/STTR program: they can give you some angel-level money to get the project beyond a research prototype (and do not take any equity!).

edit: I've also heard that the funding situation is better in Europe, but I don't know any details.

<comment><USER6> Your story is very strange, the usual way the university patent system works is the following.

You ask them to apply for a patent. They either apply for it (eating the $20k themselves) or else they send you a letter declining any interest. If you get the "decline" letter, that means they gave up any interest or ownership in your invention.

<comment><USER5> My experience was in the University of California system. I certainly would have preferred that they either declined it immediately or paid for the full application. It may be that they don't have much experience in software. Also, software patents are less valuable than those in other areas, like biotech. We didn't really care too much about the patent but wanted the IP ownership to be clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Digging through and commercializing research in whatever field you may be interested in is one thing. But it would seem like you would be missing out on many more opportunities in unrelated fields. Many advancements in tech/science in general were born from research in other fields. How do you cross pollinate those ideas with other fields on a large scale?

</comment><comment><USER8> how much of that 48 billion worth of research is worth anything in the real world?

A lot of that research is useless. Take biology for example, they might spend 5 million, trying to find out why a certain tree has slightly yellower leafs. Useful for their field? Maybe. But there is really no feasible way for them to monetize it.

<comment><USER9> Funny you should use that example. I remember mentioning to someone years ago that biologists had discovered that certain trees send chemical signals to each other through the soil- especially when they're traumatized.

He scoffed and laughed and said "Can you believe the stupid stuff people research? All this stuff with absolutely no application..."

I was frankly a little stunned. I was thinking that it could affect crop growth, depending on how you harvest the last crop, how if there was a trauma mechanism there might be a reverse mechanism that could cause revolutions in biological growth, etc. etc. etc. I couldn't believe he didn't see the potential I saw.

Which brings me to my point: saying "...no feasible way for them to monetize it" is, in my opinion, a symptom of lack of imagination. While it's not all monetize-able, I believe with the author that 48B of research represents a goldmine of ideas for someone with the proper eye for opportunity and business acumen.</comment></comment>


What I learned from being horribly wrong about Facebook as business - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Andrew-Chen/Tech-and-Startup-Opinions <comment><AUTHOR> Great reflection by Andrew Chen about Facebook and how he didn't see the potential because he focused too much on "known" metrics about social networks at the time.

Also a comment by Josh McHugh was a good story about early days of Facebook.</comment>


The Truth About the "Robber Barons" - <AUTHOR> http://mises.org/story/2317

<comment><USER2> most analysis of the period fails to take into account the huge increase in standard of living that the average worker saw between the end of the civil war and the beginning of WW1.</comment>


How do I make my code ugly so that it is not understandable by others - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-make-my-code-ugly-so-that-it-is-not-understandable-by-others-C-and-Python/answer/Dave-Wade-Stein?ch=10&share=2d5074fc&srid=43O3 <comment><USER2> The big question, of course, is "Why would you bother?"

What are you trying to hide? What benefit is there to you in obscuring your code?

Why do you think your code is so wonderful that anybody actually cares? Why is your code so unique that nobody has ever produced it, or anything like it, before?</comment>


200 Million Facebookers? Wishful Thinking - <AUTHOR> http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/09/12/200-million-facebookers-wishful-thinking <comment><USER2> I grow tired of people comparing MySpace's 'user' numbers to Facebook and other networks. There are so many spam/fake accounts on MySpace, yet they are reported in their member totals? (Have you guys even come across a spam Facebook account?)

Even if Facebook doesn't hit 200 million in the next year, they are surely taking away many legit users from MySpace and I think that's what matters most...not how many countless spam accounts they can add to their totals.

<comment><USER3> _I grow tired of people comparing MySpace's 'user' numbers to Facebook and other networks. There are so many spam/fake accounts on MySpace_

Most people are counting the number of users (read: unique visitors) over a reasonable time period, not the number of registered accounts. [http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myspace.com+facebook.com?me...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myspace.com+facebook.com?metric=uv)

 _"they are surely taking away many legit users from MySpace"_

Source?

<comment><USER2> This article wasn't referring to traffic, rather accounts created. While it did cite inactive accounts, it didn't touch on spam accounts.

As far as legit users moving over to Facebook, I speak from personal experience with my friends and colleagues. That statement was more personal opinion and speculation, rather than fact. Sorry if that caused confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% in 1976? If these trends continue...Aayyyyy" - Disco Stu</comment>