If You're Thinking of Launching a Social Media Startup, Please Don't - <AUTHOR> http://technori.com/2013/02/3290-if-youre-thinking-of-launching-a-social-media-startup-please-dont/

<comment><USER2> The reason why social media is valuable as an ad platform is because it actually is more measurable and more effective than straight-up Proctor & Gamble-style brand advertising that you see in magazines and on TV every single day. It's not for everyone, and yes, some people don't get an ROI on what they do. But that's not social media's fault -- that is the advertiser's.

My wife works in online marketing for women's retail. Every time they spend a dollar on Facebook or Twitter, they make two, or sometimes four, or more. An ad click or promoted post results in a measurable real sale.

Social media advertising is not that different from the kind of Google Adsense ads you see on blogs, at the end of the day. Sure, they convert less than Adwords and are less profitable since there's less intent, but these things are still a quantum leap beyond what was possible before the Internet.

New channels spring up and they turn out to be valuable and help businesses make a lot of money and build real brands. My wife worked at Modcloth and now at Bebe. Modcloth is probably going to go public in the next few years, and all with an online-only, email and social media-based marketing machine. They're a profitable real business built on a new channel.

Bebe was started in 1976 and also piggybacked on a new form of advertising medium that was unexploited. In 1976, it was bus terminals and bus shelter ads - they were cheaper than any other method (magazine, etc) and got their brand everywhere. Today it's a public company.

It is in 2013 as it is in 1976. I'm sure some people made bad ads and lost money on bus shelters back then too.

<comment><USER3> I sure would love to see examples of some of her more successful Bebe or Modcloth facebook / twitter / social ads. Or hear about how many iterations it took them to to get to a successful system.

<comment><USER4> Fab.com built their initial user base almost exclusively through Facebook ads and Facebook shares. They are still one of facebook's biggest advertisers, and even use demographic and interest data from their Facebook users to determine when and where to run tv ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read an article in the Economist not to long ago, that seemed particularly insightful. It's about investing, but I think it applies equally well here.

[http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21569397...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21569397-art-picking-mutual-funds-best-worst-and-ugly)

Here's the money quote:

 _Investors selecting a sector on the basis of its prior five-year performance would have earned much higher returns over the following five years by selecting the worst-performing sector than the best._

So if you're looking for an idea of what business to launch look at what did the worst over the last five years... Rather than what did the best (obviously this is just one thing to consider out of many, but I think there's a lot to be said for it.)

</comment><comment><USER6> As someone working on a social media app, I call bullshit. "The funding for these companies is plentiful because there is a serious bubble?" Now is the worst possible time to be building a new social network, because of the failures of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, and pretty much everything else last year. Investors have a pack mentality, as he says, but the pack has totally shifted.

Also, he claims that Facebook and others' business models have failed because they don't convert well, or because their users are "forced" to use them. So what if only some Pages have used the product? Those are the companies that get value from it, and they'll continue to pay for it. And Facebook has other sources of revenue. I hardly think it's an example of a failed business model.

</comment><comment><USER7> The post would be better if he didn't plug his book in the first paragraph. In effect he's benefitting from the thing he complains about which is also not a sustainable business model.

I think the more interesting question is what will emerge after this transition phase where old media is dying. At this point all the webby stuff is still bottom feeding but eventually will replace the old thing with something new and sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is both true and false. True for the social media startups that do not capture user intent in any meaningful way, but false for those that do.

It's very hard to make money off of people posting pictures of cats on a general forum (e.g. Reddit), but maybe not as hard to make money off of people looking specifically for pictures of cats (e.g. CHEEZburger). The latter captures user intent much more powerfully than the former, and the value to advertisers is thus much higher.

My startup (<https://www.zupstream.com>) is focused around making it easier to discover and organize real-world activities with your friends. We believe that targeted advertising can work in this case, since users are specifically looking for things to do, and then making plans with friends to actually do them. If someone creates an activity asking, "Anyone up for dinner tonight?", presenting an ad for local restaurants right then will be much more effective than displaying an unrelated banner ad.

<comment><USER9> Maybe I'm just boring, but I don't see the TAM being that big for something like zupstream. The people who use it must have friends in the same locale, who are free tonight, who _want_ to do something tonight, and have the money to do something tonight.

I think the challenge with social is that you need people who have the spending power of 25-30-somethings, combined with the social lives of tweens.

<comment><USER8> Definitely true if the only use case is for spontaneous activities. We're targeting the stuff that falls in-between spur of the moment activities and major planned events. These are the things that make up the bulk of most people's social lives (at least, for those of us no longer in our tweens)... things like getting a group of friends together for dinner, a movie, or whatever.

These are the activities that most people tend to fall back on email, texting, and phone calls to coordinate, which becomes a pain when more than two people are involved.

Instead of "Anyone up for dinner tonight?", imagine broadcasting to your friends "Let's do dinner this weekend". For me, there's rarely a destination determined up front. There's usually a bunch of back and forth with everyone before a place is agreed upon. It's during this period that targeted advertising could work really well, because something as simple as a "Get a free appetizer with your meal" offer could easily sway the decision towards a particular restaurant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Advising someone not to launch a startup in any industry because that industry is broken is an oxymoron. People should be launching a startup to disrupt that industry, not running away from it! Does social media equals ads-only revenue? Why a social app must be all about being also a media vehicle? Ok, maybe all founders are adressing the wrong pains, are not trying to disrupt anything, just jumping on the bandwagon. And that would be a good point to make. But as I see it, the whole post is about promoting his book, not a point (the book may have a point, not the post).

</comment><comment><USER11> While it's all been said before I did enjoy the article more than the title suggested I would. Plus the point about having a valid revenue stream is always worth hammering home again.

</comment><comment><USER12> In order to understand how misguided advice this is, lets do the following:

If You're Thinking of Launching a _____________, Please Don't

Now instead of "Social Media Startup" write an actual business idea.

Nobody starts a "Social Media Startup". People start companies that might involve social media to more or lesser extent or might have network effect, organic growht and so on. But starting a social media startup is not what people do.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands >>>>As I documented in the book, social media is a total loss leader for large corporations, too. They're more or less there out of obligation

I can back this up with some information. I currently work for a large corporation who has invested a ton of money into social media (facebook, twitter, instagram). Even after several years, there is a huge war being fought between "new media" types in our company and the "old media" types. Our CTO routinely joins our meetings and basically says, "Great, we had 5,000 likes on our Facbeook page, how many more widgets does that sell?"

For them, there is almost no way to track how much of an impact a tweet or a facebook like has on their bottom line. Conversely, when they run a print ad for a certain model, and sales increase x%, they attribute it to the print ad.

<comment><USER13> I think if you were selling widgets online (I assume you aren't), then the story would be much different. You can't know what behavior your customer took after seeing a print ad, but I know exactly how much traffic I get from our Facebook page, and how much of that converts for us.

Unfortunately since FB has started charging to promote posts, we get almost nothing from them, even though our likes grow, so we are all but abandoning FB. But that is a problem with Facebook's model, not social media inherently.

<comment><USER14> Why is this a problem with Facebook's model? It just sounds like you were priced out of Facebook network.

<comment><USER13> I'm not anti-Facebook. It's a better, more accountable, place to spend money than in a print ad. But, there was a bait and switch where they encouraged businesses to pay to connect to users, then they devalued all those connections by requiring payment for each communication.

The negative for them is that they are becoming more dependent on a smaller number of large businesses. It may work for them, but it is riskier to have a less diversified pool of customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Social media startup" is a very broad term. More specific examples of what wouldn't work (in the author's opinion) might have been more useful.

Any blog/ecommerce site with social sharing buttons on it is a form of social media startup, for example.

</comment><comment><USER16> People were saying this about search engines in the late 90's when the market was highly saturated. Until Google came along.

</comment><comment><USER17> Amen, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER18> I agree that the space is crowded. And there are other issues raising the barrier to entry: user fatigue and national/supra-national legislation (like the EU anti-cookie thing etc.) which may dampen your enthusiasm in case you thought about creating yet another social thinggy.

Even on _the_ almighty social network I can not just feel (that I could since a long time) but also _see_ people complaining.

No latter than today I opened FB just to see one post by a friend and lots of comments about the lack of privacy on FB and why FB "knew too much" about individuals.

It's also quite amazing: that friend (and several of those who answered) hardly post anything anymore there. And the consensus was pretty much: _"I'm not posting anything nor commenting on anything on FB, except when it's to bitch about FB's policies and use of our data"_.

Non-techies friends btw.

I'd say the problem for mainstream users is that some apps are _too_ targeted: it may be both effective (and the most cost effective way to advertize and reach your audience), it's also _creepy_ to many users. There are some users who realize that any site they open, anything they 'like', any video they watch is used to target them more and more. As a result they're not liking stuff anymore, not opening their mouth, not opening friends' links, etc.

<comment><USER19> Wait till the current internet generation hits their 30's and gets real jobs they're afraid to lose. All the opinionated Facebook chattering my friends did in college has all but dried up now, and has been replaced with fake names and low profiles during recruiting season.

In this job market, and with idiotic new features like graph search, having a Facebook presence is a liability for all but the most whitewashed profiles.

<comment><USER20> I am for fixing these problems if possible, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So this guy thinks he knows the full range of ideas, and that it's not possible that someone has thought of something he hasn't, that might just be good enough to warrant investment.

"I must confess that a man is guilty of unpardonable arrogance who concludes, because an argument has escaped his own investigation, that therefore it does not really exist."--David Hume</comment>


Lawyers can scour jurors' social media sites - <AUTHOR> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_JURORS_SOCIAL_MEDIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-22-11-58-35

<comment><USER2> In some cases, there's limited advanced identifying information before the voir dire. There's undoubtedly an opportunity for a search engine that can take a name and maybe a topic and present a quick summary (or even a quick desirability score).

Someone could start by grabbing a few indicators derived from the online presences of former jurors, then rating those indicators on a pro-plaintiff / pro-defense scale. (Or more specific sub-scales, depending on the type of case and features of the case.)

It'd be like Netflix. "You 'liked' that baby video, you might also enjoy voting to convict/acquit in this case..."</comment>


How Object Oriented Is CLOS? - <AUTHOR> http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?HowObjectOrientedIsClos

<comment><USER2> Do we really need people combing through every page of C2 and submitting every page? Don't you think the recent C2 story encouraged people to check out C2 for themselves? This seems to happen to every site that gets a single story submission: they all get strip-mined for submissions. Does it really make sense to make HN a compendium of links to every page on every remotely technical web site? I think Wikipedia might have an article on bubble sort the someone can gain a few points by submitting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny how allowing voting on submissions makes some people judge the value of submissions by the number of votes they may have gotten, while at the same time completely forgetting that each of those votes shows that some person found the submission valuable.

Look, if submitting C2 articles had no value for anyone on HN, they simply would not get any votes.

The fact that they get votes means that the people who voted on them found them valuable, and that submitting them provides value to the HN community.

Now, you might personally not find the particular submission appropriate for HN, in which case you should remember the HN guidelines:

 _"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."_

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><USER2> Point taken. But reading HN, I feel a bit the way I did about a year ago as one of Philadelphia's city councilmen was goading the police into cracking down on miscreant cyclists: There are profound asymmetries in the way these guidelines (which people quote like the were whispered in PG's ear by God Himself) are applied.

In the case of Philly last year, you had cops obliviously riding their cop bicycles on sidewalks and the wrong way down streets. Meanwhile kids are getting cited for the same thing. You have people in 4,000 lb automobiles physically intimidating people balanced atop 25 lb of steel tubing. You have pedestrians self-righteously accusing cyclists of endangering people's lives while they obliviously cross against lights without looking.*

Your point that is someone's voting for it, it means that someone finds it valuable is the same argument that spammers used to use. This isn't anarchy: there are rules, as you pointed out. People will vote to have government spending increased and taxes zeroed out. Just because someone will vote for something, it doesn't mean it makes sense or is a good idea or is defensible.

* I'm still recovering from going over my handlebars a couple weeks ago when I wrecked my bike to avoid a space cadet pedestrian who crossed on a red without even glancing down Sansom St. Lucky for me, it was right in front of Jefferson Hospital's E.R.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"Your point that is someone's voting for it, it means that someone finds it valuable is the same argument that spammers used to use."_

It sounds like you're saying that people shouldn't be forced to look at something that they don't want to see. And I fully agree with that.

That's why I've long advocated allowing HN articles to be tagged. That way, if you (for example) don't want to see any articles from c2, you can filter out articles with the "c2" tag.

Unfortunately, the powers that be (and the majority of HN users themselves) don't want to allow tags on HN. So we're stuck with the situation we have now, where people will submit whatever they think is appropriate, and HN readers are deluged with everything that manages to get enough votes.

If you have a better solution for this problem, I'm all ears.

 _"This isn't anarchy: there are rules"_

There are guidelines, and the guidelines say that what's appropriate to HN is:

      Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than
      hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer
      might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

For me, that includes articles on c2 that I find interesting and that I think others on HN find interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article!

I have one nit-pick: Multiple dispatch doesn't, in and of its self, imply something isn't object oriented. You can certainly argue that multiple dispatch, as it exists in CLOS is not object oriented, but it is possible to have "object-oriented" multiple dispatch.

VB.NET is a good example.

The "late bound" dispatcher in VB.NET will:

1) Dynamically construct a "method-group" using the runtime type of a receiver of a method call. This collects all appropriately named instance methods in the receiver type and any of it's base types.

2) Dynamically perform overload resolution using the runtime type of each method argument. This behaves like the static overload resolution done in the compiler except that it uses dynamic types, rather than static types, and happens at runtime. It also doesn't consider extension methods.

In any case, this yields method dispatch that varies dynamically based on the runtime type of multiple arguments. It is very similar to multi-methods in CLOS, except that preference is given to the receiver over other parameter types, and that you can't override a "multi-method" without modifying the definition of at least one type.

</comment><comment><USER4> A good counter question is "What is Object Orientation"?

According to Google's definition

""" (of a programming language) Using a methodology that enables a system to be modeled as a set of objects that can be controlled and manipulated in a modular manner """

I think the OO fad wandered down some weird roads with Java and patterns and in some part lost sight of the goals of OO and got focused on the AbstractFactoryFactoryFactoryInterfaceFactories.

</comment><comment><USER5> To summarize the link "CLOS is not as limited in its functionality as the lame language I learned first (i.e., Java, C++, etc.) and since the lame language I learned first is the very definition of OO, CLOS isn't OO."

Such people see OO principally as a form of bondage. The link focuses heavily on encapsulation (i.e., restricting the programmer) rather than flexibility and capability (i.e., empowering the programmer).

You can have any degree of encapsulation and restriction you want with CLOS (see the responses in the link for precisely how). But you can't have any degree of freedom and power you want in Java, etc. Defining OO by how much your language limits programmer power and flexibility is a painful mistake.

</comment><comment><USER6> The 6th comment on the page says it all: the question as stated invites a religious war. "What style of OO does CLOS embody/encourage?" is a more constructive question to ask.</comment>


The leased life: Why own anything? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/01/24/the_leased_life/?page=full <comment><USER2> I think this concept is interesting, but it seems like a lot of the services mentioned in the article are having trouble gaining traction outside of their home bases.</comment>


Ask PG: Are these YC Enrollment projections official? - <AUTHOR>

I couldn't help but notice that the ATD piece on PG (http://youtu.be/6h8o_GEEEtw) had a chart (http://imgur.com/EoqIpqF) showing historical and projected YC enrollment figures till 2015. Are these official YC projections or just something the producer inferred from the YoY growth (~55%?) in YC applications and PG's comment about a 3% acceptance rate?<p>Just curious. <comment><USER2> They can't be official because we don't have any official projections. We never know in advance how many applications we're going to get, or how many of them will be good enough to fund. We do interviews in 3 parallel tracks; we couldn't accept a specific number of startups even if we wanted to.</comment>


Spotify Teams Up with Uber: Your Ride. Your Music - <AUTHOR> https://news.spotify.com/se/2014/11/17/uber/

<comment><USER2> I'm skeptical as to how popular this will be currently but it's a great infrastructure to have in place should Uber decided to move towards driverless cars in the future.</comment>


MATRIX – The Internet of Things for Everyone - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2061039712/matrix-the-internet-of-things-for-everyonetm <comment><USER2> A revolution in the IoT world! This device connects all the devices in your home and by itself transforms your home into an intelligent house. One of my favorite parts is the app ecosystem that allows you to connect with the creativity of other developers to continuously mold the MATRIX into a customized device tailored to your needs. And if you like to develop (or want to learn) you could make apps too!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be a sweet little IoE device that combines Kinect, Leap Motion, Nest Sensors, etc, all into one device.

</comment><comment><USER3> So excited to finally share the MATRIX with the world! We want to hear from you :)

</comment><comment><USER4> MATRIX is looking to reshape the IoT ecosystem!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is amazing!</comment>


Full Text Searching with Solr and Sunspot - <AUTHOR> http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2011/03/08/full-text-searching-with-solr-and-sunspot/

<comment><USER2> Good intro. I've been using sunspot for a year on a ruby webapp (merb, I found the sunspot lib nicely framework agnostic). It took a few hours to setup and get my content indexed. Its been running in production for a year with zero maintenance.

<comment><USER3> Solr/lucene (they're on a joint release schedule now) give you more config options than any other fulltext engine. Some alternatives are sphinx (blazing fast indexing), IndexTank, and Riak Search (I haven't tried the last 2).

<comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has any good resources on Riak search, please share them. I keep hearing good things about Riak and haven't dived in yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out Sphinx and the amazing ThinkingSphinx gem. Having used both extensively, I greatly prefer Sphinx over Solr.

<http://sphinxsearch.com/>

<http://freelancing-god.github.com/ts/en/>

CollectiveIdea also maintains a good fork of delayed_job for those who are interested in that.

<comment><USER5> If you have a really huge dataset go away from sphinx, it takes forever to index and doesn't offer incremental updates, as well it crashes regularly

<comment><USER6> No, there is no incremental mode to the indexer, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Create a counter table to keep track of what records you've indexed and cron frequent indexer runs using the latest records as offsets.

If you have documents that frequently change, maintain your full index less often and instead merge the two on a more regular basis.

Sphinx's indexer speed is one of its advantages, but it's largely dependent on the efficiency of your SQL and underlying MySQL indices. Perhaps something else is indirectly influencing your indexing performance.</comment></comment></comment>


The Beautiful Machine - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/the_beautiful_machine/index.html <comment><USER2> I love the concept of passive cooling / no moving parts, but I also like seeing the insides of electronics (my home build has a clear panel and white LEDs). Builds like this make me wish transparent aluminum was a real thing.

<comment><USER3> It is I believe, but I haven't seen many applications. It's marketed under the name ALON iirc.

I don't believe they can make big pieces though.

<comment><USER2> That's pretty cool! Unfortunately its actually a ceramic with only around 5% the thermal conductivity of straight aluminum so it wouldn't work for this. Most transparent materials tend to be thermal insulators afaik.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure if OP is the builder, but a question. How did you/he thermally couple the cpu and gpu dies to the case? Is it really just air?

EDIT: Saw the LH6 heat pipes. That's super neat!

<comment><USER5> You have two options.

1 - You can use a thermal pad which is not recommended by the vendor.

2 - You can used thermal past which is the option I went wish. So far it is working well. Obviously not practical if you plan on changing parts often but I don't forecast doing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Passive cooling is great but I am only at nuc level. Surprise to see it might work with 1050 ...

<comment><USER5> I am unsure how much I can trust Geeks3D Furmark GPU load generation. I feel like it is probably heavier than actual game usage. So far it is holding up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh that really looks awesome! Makes me wish I had a need for a desktop PC at home :(

<comment><USER5> Extra incentive: A desktop PC with a standing desk is great way to remaining a good posture.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to avoid double-post in HN? - <AUTHOR>

Hey, guys.  I was going to submit an article to HN.  More often than not, the article has been posted already. Aside from clicking through all the New article pages, and manually trying to find key term.  There must be a better way. <comment><USER2> There is a built-in duplicate detector, but it doesn't work very well. More and more the URL people end up with has loads of feedburner crap and other junk, and that breaks the URL dup detector.

I made this suggestion ages ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012215>

The idea is to use just the first part of the URL, and then to use the extracted title. Seems much more reliable - I use it to auto-detect duplications. It annoys me to have the same item submitted over and again, mostly because it splits the discussion. For me, most of the value here on HN is in the comments - often the discussion has more value than the original submission.

<comment><USER3> It may split the discussion, but also creates new discussion. What we need is a way to repost links for those who haven't seen them before (potentially many people), while maintaining the old discussion and adding on to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not just search? <http://searchyc.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Not a bad solution, though not a perfect. I just search some of the newest HN entry. It seems to have a 2-3 hour lag to crawl and update to the latest post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In many ways the submission process is the way to check. However there is the one extra step of inserting a title and possibly tweaking it.

I suggest you paste the URL with random text as a title. If it shows up as a unique new submission then update the title immediately with the original. If further tweaking to the title is in order then follow-up again.

But yeah, its a pain when it happens but its not very high up on my list of grievances.

Given the choice of eliminating problems on this side it would be getting people to put "Ask HN: " in front of questions.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also, I believe if you submit the exact same link as something that is already posted it normally takes you to the article if it's up on HN already.

You would mostly run into a problem if you are submitting a blog post that is talking about something that is already on HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been wondering the same thing for some time. I've been wanting to make a bookmarklet that would take me to the HN discussion of a URL, yet there's no way to search for submissions by URL on HN or searchyc.com

Sob.</comment>


Choosing Ember over React in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.instant2fa.com/choosing-ember-over-react-in-2016-41a2e7fd341#.ixkgrb5b1 <comment><USER2> Very interesting insights on Ember. I am currently getting hands on with Meteor and found it interesting. Was there any discussion on whether Meteor suits your purposes?</comment>


One of Apple's Best Ideas Ever — Made Worse - <AUTHOR> http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/one-of-apples-best-ideas-ever-made-worse/

<comment><USER2> I just received my retina MBP, and it's magnet is actually substantially stronger than the one in my old MBP. I do hate the "T" design, though.</comment>


Kotlin 1.0 Beta 3 is Out - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2015/12/kotlin-1-0-beta-3-is-out/ <comment><USER2> I like Kotlin, but I'm a little bit disappointed with some of the recent changes to the syntax. In particular, I'm sad that you can no longer use infix method invocation for any method.

It's a feature that I really liked using with third-party Java libraries, which is much less practical now that you have to explicitly define methods with the infix keyword in order to use it.</comment>


Github down - <AUTHOR>

https://status.github.com/ <comment><USER2> This seems to be happening more and more often. I notice connectivity issues with Github, and/or extremely slow downloads of tarballs quite regularly (at least two or three times a week) when running deploy scripts that download vendor packages from Github.

</comment><comment><USER3> First load gave blank screen with nothign but header tag. cmd+shift+r fixed it. Seems to be limited. Pretty slow.</comment>


Private Equity Investing Now Allowed in 401(k) Retirement Funds - <AUTHOR> https://news.bloomberglaw.com/employee-benefits/benefits-overseer-oks-private-equity-investing-by-401k-holders <comment><USER2> Can we now subject large "private" firms to the same scrutiny that "public" have to obey? I always thought it was ridiculous that you could call a trillion dollar company with millions of shareholder, "private."

From the sounds of it, this ruling handwaves away the inherent risk of investing in a company whose finances you have no visibility into by claiming that putting it into a diversified private fund is the same as a diversified public fund. Which is fine, but they should be subject to the same reporting requirements as public companies.

These regulations didn't appear out of thin air. The business world is full of evil people looking to rob everyday investors. See: Enron.

<comment><USER3> I believe the assumption is the fund manager is the kind of investor that will have the ability and resources to do proper due diligence before investing, contrary to the case of public companies that can sell stock to the average Joe

<comment><USER4> But now the issue is due diligence of the GP, the fund manager. I think that's what OP is talking about. PE firms don't have the same level of disclosure requirements as public companies (with the exception of those that are now public companies), and you need to research a fund just as you would research a stock.

Fund investors are usually family offices, endowments, foundations, fund of funds, secondaries funds, etc., and they all do a huge amount of due diligence on prospective fund investments. It's just as much work to research funds as it is to research public equities.

For reference, I have been an investment professional at both a PE firm and a hedge fund.

<comment><USER3> But similarly, to my knowledge only accredited investors may invest in PEs / HFs, and shares in those funds are special kinds of securities that differ significantly from those covered by SEC / blue-sky laws and therefore are not subject to the same disclosure requirements. It's not in anyone's interest to treat these different types of investments as if they were similar.

I'm not in PE per se, but would think investment in one is through an investment contract which is an exempt security

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. Just if they are no longer for only accredited investors, there should be increased disclosure

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Private equity isn't an appropriate asset class for 401(k)'s. Public markets have a threshold for rules/regulations and reporting requirements.

You don't want your retirement account to be a casino. You want companies that can provide stable, long-term growth of your portfolio-- so the money's there when you need it.

<comment><USER6> Private equity is commonly how the rich got rich. Theres all sorts of asset classes not available to the common public that keep them from reaping rewards. Another being investing in catastrophe bonds and insurance. Tons of fortunes made off all sorts of financial assets, that really arent that esoteric, they are just in the shadows.

<comment><USER7> "how the rich got rich" is survivorship bias. Private equity is also how many people lost some or all of their life savings. I myself have "invested" tens of thousands of dollars in a few startups that have actually gone on to be moderately successful. But my equity has been so diluted that I will be lucky if I get back half of my original investment. The game is heavily biased towards the last shark in the pool, and I am not a shark.

<comment><USER8> Startup investing isn't private equity. Private equity is acquiring a profitable company with limited equity and a pile of debt, paying it down, and selling it at a profit.

<comment><USER9> Startup investing is a subset of private equity investing.

Pe includes many illiquid subcategories including real estate, LBOs, startup investing, even niche stuff like infrastructure investing

<comment><USER10> > _Startup investing is a subset of private equity investing_

Not as the term is used in finance. Venture and PE are separate asset classes. Venture-like assets can become PE-like, in the same way private equity can become public equity. But PE is based on cash flows and leverage; VC is based on growth.

<comment><USER9> Not according to the CFA Institute, or any number of other sources. LPs may incorrectly label PE and VC as separate subsets, but most large, institutional LPs will have PE, then separated by type.

CFA is the best source, but there are so many others, including my professional experience at a major asset manager.

[https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/membership/professional- deve...](https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/membership/professional- development/refresher-readings/2020/private-equity-valuation)

> Definitions of private equity differ, but in this reading we include the > entire asset class of equity investments that are not quoted on stock > markets. The private equity class stretches from venture capital > (VC)—working with early stage companies that in many cases have no revenues > but have potentially good ideas or technology—all the way through to large > buyouts (leveraged buyout, or LBO) in which the private equity firm buys the > entire company. In some cases, these companies might themselves be quoted on > the stock market, and the private equity fund performs a public-to-private > transaction thereby removing the entire company from the stock market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didnt Mitt Romney shield a fortune from taxes by wrapping Bain Inc deals inside IRAs? Sounds kind of similar.

<comment><USER12> IRA withdrawals are taxable at income rates: 37% for that kind of jack. He's delaying rather avoiding. If he was really smart, he'd have done this outside of a retirement account and paid the 20% capital gains rate.

<comment><USER13> He did it in a Roth IRA.

<comment><USER12> Did he? All I can find is that it was a SEP-IRA : [https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2018/08/03...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesfinancecouncil/2018/08/03/mitt- romneys-retirement-account-makes-case-for-roth-iras/#34ff0702215a)

"At the time, Mr. Romney was not able to use a Roth IRA to make these investments because his income tax bracket exceeded the allowable threshold."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone set up a "professionally managed fund" where you can set up an LLC, have the fund invest your 401k in that LLC, pay yourself a salary equal to the amount invested? Bypassing early withdrawal fees for some nominal fee?

<comment><USER15> I suspect you phrased this poorly:

1\. I set up an LLC.

2\. I have a regular job which is earning me income.

3\. I put some of that income into a 401K.

4\. I direct the 401K to invest in my LLC.

5\. As the guy running the LLC, I take that amount of money and pay myself a salary equivalent to what I put in.

How is that money ever going to grow? What's the benefit? You didn't pay taxes? Pretty weak benefit, IMO.

There is such a thing as self directed retirement. People buy real estate with it all the time. The regulations require, though, that any profits made out of it must go back into the retirement account until you're old enough to withdraw. I could use retirement money to buy a broken house, fix it up, and flip it. But all profits have to go back into that account. I cannot keep any for myself.

<comment><USER14> I did word it poorly, and you captured what I was trying to get at (thanks).

The benefit is for people that need to withdraw from their 401k before retirement without getting hit with the interest/fees. I guess another part of the benefit is if you want to take advantage of employer match but you don't want to invest in your 401k.

I didn't know about self directed retirement. I'll have to go do some research.

<comment><USER15> Well, avoiding taxes, and getting employer matches are the benefits, but you haven't explained how the amount will grow. You haven't invested it in anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't many (most?) private equity funds have very very long horizons, like 10 years? And perhaps that's a mitigating factor to the opaqueness?

<comment><USER17> 12 is common though many allow for a couple of extension years to sell the stuff

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those against -- do you really prefer that only well-connected billionaires are allowed to invest in startups, and actually capture the rapid growth?

Most unicorns (and no, they aren't all scams -- many are pretty stable, or exited successfully, a la LinkedIn, Salesforce, etc) were private until they were worth tens of billions. Any gains post-IPO are small multiples of the original investment.

The only people able to invest, and actually capture that growth, were already wildly wealthy. Do you think that's fair?

<comment><USER5> I'd consider permitting it outside of 401(k) funds. But the quality of private equity investment opportunities offered to middle class people != the quality offered to folks like Tiger Woods, who investing in Google's Series A back in '99.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd buy SpaceX stock, if Elon would allow.

<comment><USER20> [https://blog.sfgate.com/pender/2015/03/25/see-which- fidelity...](https://blog.sfgate.com/pender/2015/03/25/see-which-fidelity- funds-invested-in-spacex/)

<comment><USER21> I believe none of the Fidelity funds have even a 0.1% weight for SpaceX. (I haven't checked recently and I can't read the blog because of HTTP 451, but I don't think this has changed.)

I criticized buying Google in my other comment, but at 0.29% it's actually better than the Fidelity funds in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't buy OTM options expiring tomorrow in my 401k and somehow PE is allowed?

</comment><comment><USER23> Sigh. Just another avenue for wealth transfer. Thanks Trump!

</comment><comment><USER24> This opens up some excellent tax avoidance strategies.

I'm assuming this is available also for IRA and Roth IRA. What you do is setup two transactions: One that will lose money in the IRA, and the other that will gain in the Roth IRA. (A straddle.) Make sure you execute both at the same time (if it's a thinly traded security you can end up trading with yourself, but that's not necessary).

Then sell, and do it again.

You effectively move money from IRA to Roth IRA. (And yes it's legal, I contacted the IRS and asked.)

In the open market you can only move a small percent at a time, but with private equity the gains and losses are much greater and you can effectively move all your money.

<comment><USER12> Is this assuming you can pick winners?

<comment><USER25> ...and if you can, why bother with the losing side of the transaction?

Conversely, if you can't pick winners, then I think you can only set up a pair of trades which _sometimes_ moves money in and sometimes out, with a net of zero.

I tried making charts of option prices in Excel and didn't come to any particular conclusion, except that maybe you always lose because of the dividend rules, spread, and commissions, and it seems like the maximum expected value is at-the-money.

It makes me think of violating thermodynamics with Maxwell's Demon.

If you trade with yourself, then it would be uninteresting plain fraud, and if you don't, I have the feeling the market will prevent you from getting anywhere.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Misakey – end-to-end encryption for your documents and discussions - <AUTHOR> https://www.misakey.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Misakey secure documents exchanges with your clients.

For that, we have put together three apps in one.

A multi browser messaging end-to-end encrypted, A confidential cloud storage, A security assistant you can integrate in your usual tools.

We just launch the beta today, so you can test the app. All the feature are not here but we are working hard on it!

Here are some examples of features for the beta:

View & organize documents, End-to-end encryption, Instant messaging, Room creation.</comment>


Martin Fowler: Cheaper Talent Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CheaperTalentHypothesis.html <comment><USER2> Corporations won't benefit from gambling on more expensive programmers. They've already created a structure that takes in programmers, anyone with even a basic proficiency, and ensures that they produce at some specified minimum. It's a system that grinds down anyone with lofty ideas about programming, but it's also a system that's relatively riskless, and that's all large corporations care about---eliminating risk. (Particularly in a department that isn't responsible for generating revenue.)

No matter how bad you are, as long as you're consistently churning out code, in whatever language, enough work is being done that the project moves ahead. It doesn't matter who does it, and at this level of quality it doesn't matter who sits down to work on it (this is huge to anyone in charge of staffing the department).

It's a model that seems to have evolved organically inside the corporation, rather than as some anti-programmer conspiracy, but certainly smart executives at Microsoft and the banks have recognized it for years.

If ThoughtWorks doesn't use this model, and it benefits them, why are they more expensive? If you're paying less overall for talent, you can increase sales by charging less for the same product. When you save on production costs you don't raise prices to celebrate. His evidence only contradicts his claim.

If you amend his blog post to say, "well...you pay more for a higher quality version of the same thing", then what he's saying isn't news to anyone, and his old thesis becomes wrong.

[Software that works 97% of the time and software that works 99.9% of the time look very, very different at the code level. The user, however, can't tell the difference. More to the point, they won't pay for it.]

</comment><comment><USER3> Larger companies run up against the fact that this approach doesn't scale. Even if such an organization could reliably identify super-talented programmers before hiring them (which it almost certainly can't), there just aren't enough of them to meet the inexorable demand for growth. Thus, as the organization grows, so does its mediocrity. But it can coast on its earlier reputation for some time.

On projects I've observed, companies like this placed one or two of their best people on the project early, as a loss leader. These did good work, which enabled the sales people to then bring in a larger number of considerably dimmer (but highly billable) light bulbs. That's how the profits are made - land and expand. It seems to take a while for clients to figure this out.

</comment><comment><USER4> pg made this point in one of his essays - but his conclusion was that since it's impossible to measure productivity, the more productive hackers should create startups where they will be rewarded for their superior skills.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting thoughts. Visuals in the article would have been a nice touch.

What about lower pay as a cause of lower productivity?

Also, poor leadership can play a big factor in software development productivity.</comment>


A Big List Of Free Computer Support Tools - <AUTHOR> http://lanarkshireitservices.co.uk/index.php/computer-support-tools

<comment><USER2> Good stuff! Thx for posting. It would be great to see more such sys admin/IT support type of postings.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ubuntu, so nice, it must be on there thrice. Lists like these often substitute fanboyism for open-minded reviews and the full range of possible packages.

You need to break lists like these down into categories, and then list out options. There's dozens of very, very good tools out there for about any problem you have each with a specific focus where they are the best.

Everyone has biases on what they prefer to use, but it's super important when you are influencing people that know less than you to give them the full picture.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anybody had any experience with ComboFix? It really saved me once, and I was surprised not to see it here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> hi there

just let me know what kind of sys admin /IT stuff you would like and i'll post it.

regards

<comment><USER5> Why do you prefer tightVNC to UltraVNC?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> just hadnt listed uvnc thats all</comment>


Collection of scientific comic books by Jean-Pierre Petit - <AUTHOR> http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/JPP/telechargeables/free_downloads.htm#english

<comment><AUTHOR> When my physics teacher lent me _Euclid rules, OK?_ (1) I was struck by how effectively and engagingly comics could explain concepts and help build mental models. Scott McCloud analyses the medium superbly in _Understanding Comics_ (Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible- Scott-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott- McCloud/dp/006097625X/); TED: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.h...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html)).

Which are your favourite non-fiction comics?

(1) _Euclid rules, OK?_ is now titled _Here's Looking at Euclid_ and can be downloaded from the linked page.</comment>


ABC news is trying to pass gun range videos as combat footage from Syria - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/dhmqzm/abc_news_is_trying_to_pass_gun_range_videos_as/ <comment><USER2> There are more instances of credible or plausible media manipulation specifically regarding Syria, e.g. the story of gas attacks in Douma:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical- attack-g...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas- douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html)

Edit: This, attributed to the same author, is even clearer: [https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/27/the-evidence-we- were...](https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/27/the-evidence-we-were-never- meant-to-see-about-the-douma-gas-attack/)

\----

"For in the last few days, there has emerged disturbing evidence that in its final report on the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime in the city of Douma last year, the OPCW deliberately concealed from both the public and the press the existence of a dissenting 15-page assessment of two cylinders which had supposedly contained molecular chlorine – perhaps the most damning evidence against the Assad regime in the entire report.

The OPCW officially maintains that these canisters were probably dropped by an aircraft – probably a helicopter, presumably Syrian – over Douma on 7 April 2018. But the dissenting assessment, which the OPCW made no reference to in its published conclusions, finds there is a "higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft"."

<comment><USER3> I like Robert Fisk, he is hell of a solid correspondent but on this case he is absolutely wrong.

The Douma gas attack has been investigated not only by the OPCW, but by organisations such as the UN, the Red Cross and pretty much all serious journalism from the BBC, NYTimes to The Times and Wall Street Journal. They all agree that the Syrian Governmant gassed its own people i Douma.

The consensus is overwhelming, the wiki page on the incident lists 119 sources. I obviously haven't checked all of them but most look credible to me.

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

<comment><USER4> The consensus became less overwhelming since you commented this. See:

"Expert Panel Finds Gaping Plot Holes In OPCW Report On Alleged Syrian Chemical Attack" by Caitlin Johnstone [https://link.medium.com/7qYYVU2Z40](https://link.medium.com/7qYYVU2Z40)

Back in 2012, when ISIS beheading videos where showing up on my Facebook newsfeed every week, I recall it was Syrian rebels who were brandishing chemical weapons - but the MSM never mentions it: [https://youtu.be/TpIRRRuCEyg](https://youtu.be/TpIRRRuCEyg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does this seem to be disappearing from the HN front page? This blatant war propaganda was broadcast to millions of people, possibly after someone at ABC doctored the video. That's a big deal by itself. And if that's not enough for this to be relevant to our interests here, we only know about this because of tech companies like reddit and twitter that give a platform to some random person who can identify this BS within minutes. Decades ago ABC and others could have gotten away with this on every single one of their broadcasts.

Are people numb to this? Do we just not want to discuss it because we don't think we can be civil any more?

<comment><USER6> It's not relevant to the HN guidelines and so most people will flag it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Is it interesting that some news org is passing stock footage? Is that in any way new? Maybe if they were using "deepfakes" to generate fake news videos it would be interesting, but it's not like the Turkish attack is in any way disputed.

Is reddit a good "detective"? Well,: [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-did- it-reddit](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-did-it-reddit)

<comment><USER5> Those guidelines are fairly subjective when it comes to something like this. They don't say "most stories about politics..." rather than "all stories about politics..." for a reason. I think you could effectively argue either that this is on-topic or off-topic...

That said, then why not err on the side of leaving this up? I like HN because there are usually insightful, level-headed discussions about a wide variety of topics. This is definitely one I'd love to read a larger take on from the HN crowd on. This isn't a status quo I'd like to see more people accept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mainstream news media has really gone to the dogs. Doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum you are on, I highly recommend not watching mainstream media on TV and instead find indie youtube channels.

<comment><USER8> > instead find indie youtube channels.

Like Infowars?

<comment><USER9> If you're watching _any_ news source, and think it's not biased, you need to stop and figure out what their angle is, and why you're allowing them to fool you.

The easiest way to do this is usually listen to the other side.

I'll skeptically take self-admitted bias over subversive "neutral" any day.

The danger is limiting yourself only to sources of similar bias.

<comment><USER8> > I'll skeptically take self-admitted bias over subversive "neutral" any day.

The trick is to read about the same event from all sides.

Self-admitted bias will gladly skip, ignore, distort, and excuse elements of stories they think reflect poorly on their side. With out other perspectives you'll never know and end up with a warped sense of reality.

<comment><USER9> That's basically what I was trying to get at with the last sentence. In hindsight, it's confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of the time ITV in the UK showed footage purporting to show the Provisional IRA shooting down a British Army Lynx.

Turns out it was a video of an ARMA2 mod.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern- ireland-15082177](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-15082177)

</comment><comment><USER11> How possible is it to realistically fake something like this, instead of just re-purposing some gun porn? I'd be more concerned about that than some anxious journalists getting trolled into publishing something that is, to the initiated, obviously not from Syria.

<comment><USER12> In the present, faking something like this convincingly is probably more expensive than just passing off stock footage as the real thing. If they are motivated by laziness/greed, I wouldn't expect them to cough up the resources for an outright 'hollywood fx' style fabrication.

(When the stakes are higher and spy agencies are involved... who knows.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Actual reddit thread: [https://old.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/dhmqzm/abc_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/dhmqzm/abc_news_is_trying_to_pass_gun_range_videos_as/)

</comment><comment><USER14> > It should be noted that Kentucky is located nowhere near Syria.

I am horrified that the author felt the need to clarify this, as if it was in dispute.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure it was a joke.

</comment></comment><comment> java-man Do we know who is the major owner of ABC?

<comment><USER9> You mean Disney?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really hope there's an incompetence (as opposed to just not caring about doing their job right) based explanation for this otherwise it calls all of ABC's other reporting into question as well as that of every similiar media company.

Edit: I'm genuinely curious why this getting down-voted?

<comment><USER17> I suspect someone sold them the altered footage and they rushed to get it on the air. Either for a financial benefit, or to specifically get them to air falsified footage. (Project Veritas?) Responsibility still lies with ABC to verify.

<comment><USER18> It's a shitty situation, I doubt ABC knew it was footage from the US. But how do you verify that a random video clip, filmed at night, actually took place in Syria (assuming the crowds were cropped out before they saw it, otherwise its fairly obvious)

<comment><USER12> I might be treading on thin ice here, but more cultural diversity at ABC could have prevented this. The Knob Creek machine gun shoot is kind of famous in gun-enthusiast circles. With the number of machine guns being shot and the number of hollywood style gasoline explosions going off, I do think I would have recognized the source of this video if it were presented to me without context. There are many videos of this event from different years and from different spectators, but they all generally look about the same; tons of tracers and tons of gasoline fireballs.

I am not a combat veteran so the following is speculative, but I suspect the footage may look suspect to combat veterans as well. Big orange fireballs like that are from milk jugs of gasoline, not high explosives. That sort of thing is done for visual effect, not lethal effect. Certainly vehicle fuel will catch fire on battlefields, but I can't help but suspect the video would look "off" to a combat veteran.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> News outlets and so-called journalists only ever had "credibility" insofar as there wasn't another information medium by which their claims could be (in)validated. Now that this medium exists (you know, the internet) "journalist" is no longer someone we need to trust, believe, or finance.

<comment><USER20> I think I can take it as an axiom that in order for a democracy to function well, the people in it need to know what's going on both domestically and abroad. Who do you suppose should go out and find and publish needed information? If your answer isn't "journalists", then what separates those people from journalists?

<comment><USER21> In this case, the complete and correct information was provided by some random people on Reddit, not "journalists".

And one answer to your second question could be: money. Professionals need to generate (exactly) 60 minutes of news every night (minus time for commercials), and have it be entertaining enough to get people to watch (so they can sell more commercials). Amateurs providing random facts on the internet are not dependent on other corporations to generate income, or daily TV/newspaper deadlines.

Thought experiment: if we didn't have a profession called "journalism" today, and free worldwide publishing already existed (i.e., the internet), would we wish that they existed? Would people be saying "For the sake of our democracy, we need to pay these random Reddit fact checkers a good salary"?</comment></comment></comment>


What is Indemnification? - <AUTHOR> https://www.shouldisign.com/what-is-indemnification/ <comment><USER2> IANAL, but I owned my own tiny business for a few years. Here's what you need to know about indemnification clauses:

\- your lawyer will zero in on them like a fly to poop

\- you could easily spend thousands on lawyers playing indemnification clause ping-pong; provide guidance that you only care about "egregious" clauses

\- the larger/more powerful party will always get the indemnification clause they want

\- if a claim is ever made against you, you might be going out of business; that's life

\- get business insurance and spend your time worrying about other things

This is not to say indemnification clauses are not legally important. They are! But there's almost nothing that plucky little startup.com can do about GlobeCorp's GC's office devotion to their indemnification clause. It's part of the risk of running a business. Make sure your business's corporate paperwork is in order so the "corporate veil" cannot be "pierced" and continue on with life.

<comment><USER3> Yup.

GlobeCorp is trying to transfer risk to startup.com. So they push these types of clauses. The reality is that startup.com can't manage that level of risk if it actually materialized (they'd fold)... so GlobeCorp really hasn't managed their risk at all.

<comment><USER4> What risk?

If it's litigation risk pushing it onto startup.com now gets GloboCorp off the hook. startup.com goes out of busiiness, GloboCorp is fine.

If it's risk of simple failure then maybe.

<comment><USER5> _> If it's litigation risk pushing it onto startup.com now gets GloboCorp off the hook._

That's not how _indemnity_ works. If Apple sells a Macbook with a flawed battery that explodes in consumers' laps, the plaintiffs will sue _Apple_ and not the outsourced Chinese battery factory. Just because the Chinese company agrees to an indemnity clause, it doesn't prevent lawyers for the plaintiffs to _name Apple as the defendant_ on the lawsuit.

Indemnity is about _monetary compensation_ from the other party and not some type of shield against lawsuits. That means that Chinese company _compensates_ Apple's cost of lawyers and losses to pay judgments and settlements. To grandparent poster's point, if Chinese battery company goes out of business, the indemnity clause means nothing since Apple was unable to receive reimbursement from that manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never really looked for these, or thought about them explicitly, in my contracts. They feel very standard and I feel like I may have overlooked the implications for these in the past.

I have refused to sign contracts with non-competes several times in my life. Most companies either remove it or say, "No there's not a not compete. Oh .. huh .. well I'll remove it." I've had two companies fight me over these and I came close to walking away from both, but we ended up being able to work things out.

Most realize they're not enforceable in most states and I've even seen contracts that specify "except in California" since there are laws restricting non-competes there.

<comment><USER7> How did you work things out? They caved or some compromise? If it was a compromise do you remember what it entailed?

<comment><USER8> You can always ask for money. If someone asks for a 6 month non-compete, ask for an X month parachute (where X depends on how narrow the field is and how likely it is for you to find a job in a different field). You might have to negotiate something wrt being terminated with cause, or if you terminate the contract.

That can end up being a bit complicated, though. My standard is to only agree to non-competes that trigger when my service ends up being more than 12 months (I have no special skills that would hurt anybody in a specific industry in such a short time). Then I ask for a 3-4% increase in salary, depending on what industry they want me to stay out of. Basically this is my insurance money and reflects my ability to get a job in a different industry.

If the non-compete were for programming in general, it would cost them up to 50% of my salary. A non-compete when I'm on contract will likely cost up to 100% of my normal fee, depending on the duration of the contract. TBH, unless they are already paying through the nose for exclusive access to specialised skills, I've never heard of contract work having a non-compete clause.

Another thing you can/should do is make sure that any exercising/vesting of options/stock carry over into the non-compete period.

Personally, I love non-competes. I use the time for writing free software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In reality it does nothing if the party that's going to indemnify you does not have funds to do so. You are much better getting insurance if you really think there is a risk of something like this happening to you. There is a much greater level of protection than a mere clause in a contract. As a contractor, you should never agree to such a clause unless you are a big company capable of covering such a clause. If you a contractor put in such a position, go get insurance and make the company putting in the clause pay for it. That's the cost of doing business with them.

<comment><USER10> What's involved in getting this type of insurance? Do you just fork over some cash to the insurer or is there a vetting process?

<comment><USER9> The insurance company usually looks at the contract to decide. They don't care that much though. It's really a question about how much coverage you need in terms of price. And it's not that expensive. A few hundred bucks will buy you multi-million dollar protection.

<comment><USER10> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Completely unrelated to the article: Why do sites (like this one) increasingly do some hacky javascript-based non-native-scrolling that makes the UX shit? Is this just because I'm on desktop and it's actually well-suited for mobile or something? Or is it just designer-bloat so sites can demonstrate what a special snowflake they are? Or is there some utility I'm missing/am I just being oversensitive?

<comment><USER12> I'm on desktop - feels like native scrolling to me.

Safari.

<comment><USER13> Same for me with Firefox on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two general rules I follow:

1\. You want me to indemnify you? Hahahahahaha. No.

2\. You want to indemnify me? Sure, sounds good.

<comment><USER15> > Hahahahahaha. No.

Then you probably get few contracts. Every contract is full of so much garbage that you could argue over that if you actually did so, then:

\- you'd frustrate the other party and eventually they'd hire someone else, or stop working with you in the future

\- you'd spend large amounts of your own time, or worse, money for a lawyer

\- you drain your own psychic energy on that instead of doing programming or whatever is it that you do

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An important takeaway not specifically stated here: Don't rely on layman knowhow and common sense when negotiating contracts. Lots of people, myself included, assume we can understand things outside of our areas of expertise easily because we are experts in one field or another. Such an assumption of unqualified competence is wrong and can be dangerous.

Get a lawyer, have the lawyer review anything you might be planning to sign. Going into a contract negotiation of any kind without an attorney is like bringing a plastic spork to a gunfight and shouting "Careful, I've got a knife!"

</comment><comment><USER17> I took a picture of a sculpture of 4 men staring down at the Louvre. It's on my flickr marked CCBY. Some magazine in the UK wanted to use it for free and they wanted me to sign an indemnification clause. I have no idea what the legal ramifications or licensing issues there with pictures of things in the Louvre so no, I wasn't about to sign. Certainly not for $0

Separately I thought one point of CCBY to me was NOT having to have them contact me to use the images I post.

It did cross my mind that it might have been a scam. Get me to sign, claim breach, take my money. (probably not but it did cross my mind)

</comment><comment><USER18> I was once asked to sign a software development contract that would have made me _" responsible for estimated loss of profits"_. I quoted that part of the contract and wrote back: "Nice try but yeah, no. :-)"

We worked something out and now they are a great client. Lawyers/companies will put all kinds of crazy stuff in their "standard contract". I had my own lawyer go over it and find all the other booby traps.

<comment><USER19> >I was once asked to sign a software development contract that would have made me "responsible for estimated loss of profits".

I usually walk away completely at that point. Something like this is a red flag that you're dealing either with shysters or people who don't read what their lawyers give them. Both imply you're going to have a bad time.

<comment><USER18> If a _person_ was asking for the crazy things I see in contracts, yes, I'd agree with you since it shows _intent_.

If you treat companies like that, you miss out on opportunities since the crazy stuff in the contract is negotiable and the guy you're negotiating with didn't write the contract and won't mind you crossing out the bad parts that keep both of you from a mutually beneficial deal.

Companies are made of various factions who's goals may only be loosely aligned with the company's goals.

The lawyer drafting the contract is trying to protect the company. If you weren't rewarded for making the company lots of money, only punished if the company gets sued, how would you write a contract?

<comment><USER19> >If a person was asking for the crazy things I see in contracts, yes, I'd agree with you since it shows intent.

Usually somebody did. And, if the person who hands you the contract acts surprised about its contents that isn't good either. It demonstrates a dangerous lack of control.

>If you treat companies like that, you miss out on opportunities since the crazy stuff in the contract is negotiable and the guy you're negotiating with didn't write the contract and won't mind you crossing out the bad parts that keep both of you from a mutually beneficial deal.

This is exactly what I used to think when I encountered a guy who apparently hadn't read his contract, acted surprised about its contents and he _was_ happy to change it.

He later ended up not paying me as he ran out of money without noticing. Apparently he not only neglected to read his contracts, he neglected to read his bank statements.

So far he's the only person who acted surprised about the contents of his contract.

>The lawyer drafting the contract is trying to protect the company.

Egregious fuck-you clauses can actually hurt the company's standing in court since a judge may decide the rest of the contract shouldn't be enforceable (at least under UK law).

Either way, unless the client is exceptional in all other respects or you _really_ need them it's usually worth walking away.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure I agree with you (at least not yet) but I upvoted you for sharing your experience/data points. My own view/thoughts on this is are shaped by an extremely small sample set so I could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I couldn't come to employment terms with a start-up because they were unwilling to indemnify. Turns out executives were covered, employees weren't.

Their stance was part of early employee risk of joining a start-up is not being indemnified; that risk was part of their culture at their current stage.

<comment><USER8> I once refused to sign a contract that had me indemnify the employer for losses in the event that they terminated me. They wanted to be able to terminate me without cause and then recover damages that they incurred as a result of doing so. This was a big company too. Luckily the HR person didn't understand the word "indemnify" and so agreed to strike the clause. Afterwards the legal department tried to force me to sign a new contract, implying that I would no longer have a job if I didn't sign. I sent them an email saying, "Wanting me to sign a new contract does not seem to be one of the reasons for termination on my existing contract. Are you saying that you will fire me unless I agree to a new contract?" Contracts signed under duress were not legally binding in the country where I was working. They did not reply and I kept a healthy distance from the legal department for the time I worked there.

Contracts are annoying. Next time I look for work, I'm seriously considering just hiring a lawyer to handle all the negotiations for me. One of the reasons I agreed to work at my existing job is that the contract had virtually nothing on it. I'm working on contract with them now, not full time, and they asked _me_ to draw up the contract. I _really_ like working with people like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could anyone elaborate on more examples of the indemnification clause in use? The IP example was useful, but I'm still not sure if I understand it generally.

<comment><USER22> Say I rent a crane from you. In the course of renting the crane to put new air conditioning units on the top of my building, there is an accident and the crane causes damage to a nearby building.

If the owner of the damaged building sues you, the renter, to recover money to repair the building, the indemnification clause(s) in the crane rental agreement would state something along the lines that I, the renter of the crane, would cover any costs from the lawsuit and "hold you harmless".

<comment><USER21> That was helpful, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Eight free (and legal) FPGA/VHDL books - <AUTHOR> There are lots of free resources on the Internet to learn. Here I list eight legally free VHDL books. Some of the sites require registration to download the free book.
MicroZed Chronicles (Vol. I) – https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/the-microzed-chronicles-free-fpga-book/
Free Range VHDL – https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/07/24/free-range-vhdl-free-book/
Altera's FPGA for Dummies - https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/fpga-for-dummies-free-book/
Xilinx's High Speed Serial IO - https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/high-speed-serial-io-book/
FPGA prototyping book - https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/06/23/prototypical-fpga-prototyping-free-book/
FPGA's now what - https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/fpgas-now-what-free-book/
The Zynq book - https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/the-zynq-book-free/
Introducing Spartan 3E and VHDL - https://fpgasite.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/introducing-the-spartan-3e-fpga-and-vhdl-free-book/ <comment><USER2> There's interesting material at then end of the link chains. Rather than linking to a blog that links to the relevant material, it might be better to share a single blog post with direct links...or maybe a Github repository with direct links in the Readme file.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> [https://gist.github.com/ActuallyFro/02ef54f440bfc331f1bd9cb2...](https://gist.github.com/ActuallyFro/02ef54f440bfc331f1bd9cb28a66d02a)</comment></comment>


Sho: An interactive environment for data analysis and scientific computing - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/sho/default.aspx

<comment><USER3> Can someone familiar with Matplotlib comment on how Sho's Python plotting utilities[1] compare?

This looks cool; still trying to wrap my head around what's fundamentally new vs. what is packaging together existing Python libraries and letting it all talk to .Net code (not that that isn't neat and useful in itself).

[1] [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/sho/...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/sho/documentation/sho2.0/TheBookofSho.html#_Toc282280659)

<comment><USER4> IPython, with Matplotlib and Numpy, has a ton of numerical libraries, especially LAPACK, which aren't in SHO. Matplotlib is also much more extensive in its capabilities. Some coder cried when they were told to write another Matrix class.

SHO has all the advantages of .NET's ecosystem, so that it can call anything .NET and be called by anything .NET. Making an environment like this should not be about using a Python REPL. You could work on the hard parts - <USER2> for asynchronous interactive calculations, or provenance tracking, or helping translate data formats from one API to another - and let the user choose a REPL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like "R.Net" - which is great, since I've never been a fan of the R language syntax and the available documentation

<comment><USER6> My immediate thought was 'why wouldn't I just use R?' R has the advantage that almost everything you need to do statistically already has at least one package built for it.

The examples in the video section; a sticky sorter prototype? What is sho? I don't get it.

<comment><USER7> There's a lot of useful stuff built on R, but I think it's a shame to say there isn't any scope for innovation in this area.

Incanter (Clojure) is worth a look, too.

<comment><USER6> I tut-tutted and pish-toshed for the first couple of slides but Incanter actually looks quite interesting. Is Clojure here to stay or a fad?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any ideas how practical it might be to get this running under Mono?</comment>


You need internet connection to adjust volume or switch tracks using the AirPods - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-airpods-review-2016-12?r=US <comment><USER2> It uses Siri, which needs the internet to work. So any Siri command will require the internet. You can still adjust the volume with the physical controls on the phone, and switch tracks with the on screen controls.

Not defending the AirPods, mind you.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you meditate? - <AUTHOR>

Details?
What kind of meditation do you do? How long/frequently? What benefits have you experienced?
Basically, are the time and energy requirements worth it? <comment><USER3> I meditate a couple of times a day, as needed, for about thirty minutes.

I generally use it as a refocusing process. Whenever I feel discouraged, overwhelmed, apathetic, or like my head will explode if I can't get this button to render properly in Firefox, I stop, sit in my Big Comfy Chair, and focus on breathing. Usually I count to a certain number with each inhalation and backwards to zero with each exhalation. Sometimes I focus my mind's eye (and other mental senses) on a simple object like a piece of modeling clay or a pebble. Often I do both by visualizing varying quantities of an object (one pebble, two pebbles, three pebbles…). I used to listen to music (something in the vein of either Bach or Tangerine Dream), but now I just absorb the ambient noise.

Usually, after twenty or thirty minutes, the irritant is no longer an irritant, and I'm eager to resume my work. Once in a while, an idea or a solution to a problem will surface. (Maybe this is because the din of compulsive thought drowns out subconscious thought.)

And even though it's not technically meditation, I have found mindfulness — or at least not staring at a glowing rectangle every second — to be helpful. Instead of compulsively pulling out my phone when I'm waiting for someone, I attend to my surroundings. Instead of listening to podcasts when I walk, I listen to the traffic. Instead of ploughing through RSS feeds when I eat lunch, I enjoy the food — or maybe even speak to another human. Basically, less doing and more being. The irony is that the less information I engorge, the less guilt I felt that I'm missing something.

So it is absolutely worth it. Especially if you make concomitant changes to your habits to reduce digital ADD.

</comment><comment><USER4> My goal is a 20-minute sit in the morning and a 20-minute sit in the evening. The morning sit happens more frequently than the evening sit these days!

I do centering prayer, which is a very simple and receptive practice that involves the use of a sacred word to bring the mind to a state of concensual awareness. ("When thoughts arise, return ever so gently to the sacred word..")

The benefits have been many; some I was initially unaware of. I asked my wife once if she had seen any change, and she said I am not as angry a person as I once was. This was slightly off-putting initially, because I had had no idea that people viewed me as an angry person.

There appears to be developing body of science on the various effects of meditation. One is that the amygdala (a gland in the brain that is involved with fear, "fight or flight" reflexes, etc.) is calmed down.

The extent to which highly charged emotions and fears have shaped my thoughts, actions, and reactions has been substantially reduced. Instead of spending all day reacting tactically to short-term crises, I find it easier to calmly consider the big picture.

An example of this is in how I approach writing code (I am a software developer). There is a crisis-driven frame of mind, when I anxiously bang out a chunk of code in a hurry. Alternatively, there is a calm, aware, "outside of time" frame of mind, when I reflect on the cleanest, simplest, most gentle and easy-to-understand way to go about a piece of work. I am free to redo a piece of work a couple of times if needed to get it so that it really feels right.

Needless to say, returning to code written in the latter frame of mind is a much better experience than returning to code written in the former frame of mind! The former results in an accumulation of technical debt that begins to compound, and productivity, code correctness etc. eventually grind to a stand- still. The latter results in code that is a pleasure to return to, and generally moves the codebase incrementally in the direction of sanity, quality, and trustworthiness.

</comment><comment><USER5> Meditation (lucubration, introspection, "going into the silence", reverie, etc...) is a highly subjective and personal experience - the primary goal of which is to reach an expanded or better aligned state of being. Some will argue that you can meditate on many topics that aren't related to the Self, like, meditating on the meaning of the word "ease" or focusing on the void - <USER2> argue that because you are deliberately focusing your mind you are focusing the Self (no matter what the topic), so no matter what you choose to focus on you are focusing Self and the act of deliberate focus is the endogenous inspiration that evolves the being as a whole.

I generally meditate on something pleasing, or of good report; things that make me feel good, no matter what they are. Sometimes I'll do a no-mind meditation (focus on the void) and sometimes I'll do a psychic meditation in which I focus on the energy centers and "consoles" of my body (and mind) and fine-tune or tweak them.

I try to meditate everyday, sometimes I get too wrapped up in what I'm doing though and have to sit in silence or go on a nice walk for a few minutes to make up for it. Benefits have been many things. Clarity on personal issues, increased happiness, apperceptive awareness, sensitivity to what makes me feel good and what makes me feel bad (most people don't realize how critical this sensitivity is, if a thought doesn't feel good, it is not serving you). I attribute much of my personal success, character, intelligence, and awareness to my path through self-reflection, introspection, and meditation; it's an ongoing journey too.

My day, after meditating, is more productive and things just "go well" for me; my body and mind feel healthier and more vibrant than when I don't and my self-esteem seems to drop too when I don't meditate consistently (which hasn't been for a long time).

There are no energy requirements, if you do it right, you should feel an increase in energy, vitality, happiness, and clarity. Is it worth the time? Meditation comes first before physical sustenance for me - it is that important.

If you do try meditation, realize that it takes about a week of consistent practice before you start to fall into synch with yourself on it. The first few times you will sit there with your mind racing and your body antsy; after about a week it gets easier and you will feel relaxed through the whole thing. When starting out just stick with ten minutes per session, as you get further along, you will begin to feel an urge to stay in meditation each session even though the ten minutes is up - when you feel this urge stay in meditation until you feel the urge to come out of it. I generally do my meditations that way now, some will last two hours and some will only last ten minutes.

Also, there is no need to do it with your legs crossed, just sit in a comfy chair that supports your spine in as much of a vertical line as possible with no socks on and your feet firmly planted on the floor and with your hands resting on your thighs facing toward the sky. Meditation is best earliest in the morning when light is breaking, the energy is "newest born" in the morning, it is the freshest it will be (there's also no one awake early so it is less disturbing!).

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, 30 minutes in the morning, and 30 minutes in the evening. I started off doing mindfulness meditation, using 'Mindfulness in Plain English' as a guide. I now do a type of Buddhist meditation called 'placement meditation' which entails generating a specific state of mind and using that as the object of meditation, as opposed to the sensation of breath.

Meditating has helped me to relax, to concentrate better, and to generally feel more comfortable in my own skin.

Incidentally, I wrote a free Android app to help to motivate me to meditate every day. I wrote it because I would quite often find a reason to skip meditating, especially in the evening. In my experience, the days that I felt like skipping meditation were the days that I really needed to meditate. Now, using my app, I am currently on a run of 65 days where I have hit my meditation target of 1 hour per day.

See [http://meditation-helper.blogspot.com/2010/08/using- widget.h...](http://meditation-helper.blogspot.com/2010/08/using-widget.html) for a more detailed explanation, or search for "Meditation Helper" in the market.

</comment><comment><USER7> Keeping in the present moment, at all times. No matter what one is doing, whenever a thought arises, come back to the present moment, to awareness.

I also do this for a couple of hours daily while sitting on a chair or lying down, or sitting on a park bench, or walking in the park. But i try to keep it on all day.

Results: mind becomes quiet, i am no longer behaving and reacting based on conditioning and the past. The identification with the mind, and the mind- story is almost gone. Now there is an identification with the living force that is there in the present moment.

One can return to silent awareness by many means:

\- focus on breathing for a few seconds

\- remove thoughts of past and future

\- see what is present when there are no thoughts

\- still the mind and see what is present, or what is paying attention to the silence

\- focus on feet while walking for a few steps

All these will sooner or later reveal what is always present and aware.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've mediated for ten years.

My grandma started practicing zen meditation in the 1950s, when it first was introduced to the US. She taught my mom, who's now a teacher, and introduced me to the practice when I was sixteen.

Meditation, I find, confers a number of benefits. It's energizing and relaxing. It improves my sleep. It hones my listening and observation skills. It makes me more aware of the thoughts in my head -- which can be deafening at times -- and will help me quiet them.

I find that the time and effort I spend meditating is tremendously valuable and enriching.

</comment><comment><USER9> "What kind of meditation do you do?"

The mindfulness variety. I got started with it as a part of my explorations of ACT: (see <http://thehappinesstrap.com/>)

"How long/frequently?"

Most days, once or twice a day for about 1/2 hour at a time.

"What benefits have you experienced?"

I feel I am more aware of things in general and I do feel I struggle less with negative thoughts and emotions as I am learning to take a step back from them and see that they are just the output of an active mind.

<comment><USER10> Do they help you control your thoughts? As in, focus on what you want to/ prevent ADD.

<comment><USER9> The idea is more that you can't really directly control your thoughts and emotions but you can learn to see them as just thoughts and emotions and that gives you some room to move towards what you want instead of struggling with your thoughts and emotions by trying to change them or get rid of them; which just tends to increase the negative thoughts and emotions. I don't know the efficacy for ADD specifically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes. 20+ years now.

<1hr.everyday.

Totally worth it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love the idea of meditating, which often comes to me when I'm experience outrageous levels of stress. It's like a pre-meditation.. just the THOUGHT of actually taking some super isolated quiet time, on the ground, in a sitting yoga pose is enough to bring me back down to earth. But the actual ACT of meditating -- doesn't happen that much.

Great question and tips. Just reading it has already put my mind at ease. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been practicing Vipassana Mediation for several months now. It involves focusing on the breath. I started doing it for about 5 minutes once or a couple of times a day. Now I it's about 20 minutes a day. Benefits: More restful sleep, more relaxed, increased clarity of mind, less stress, less anxiety, less tension, more productive, and of course being able to levitate (occasionally).

</comment><comment><USER14> I was trying Vipassana, as taught by S.N. Goenka (<http://www.dhamma.org>). It is based on "tactile sensations".

But I'm trying to understand if a prayer-based approach (like "Lord's Prayer") is better for my nature.

</comment><comment><USER15> I do standard TM. Have done it regularly for 38 years - 20x2x7. The practice is very simple and pleasurable. With TM, it is easy to be consistent. Transcending regularly makes a broader awareness of reality my daily experience.

I love strawberries also.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm praying 5 times a day. About 5-10 minutes in each session. It helps me to forget everything and focus on my pray and urge me to follow praying time. My mind become more fresh after each pray.

</comment><comment><USER17> If silent prayer counts as meditation, yes.</comment>


An Homage To Douglas Engelbart And A Critique Of The State Of Tech - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/an-homage-to-douglas-engelbart-and-a-critique-of-the-state-of-tech/?_r=2&

<comment><AUTHOR> I never cease to be amazed by how far ahead people like Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson were. Since Doug died last year, I have been spending a lot of time reading his works (most or all of which are available online at [http://www.dougengelbart.org](http://www.dougengelbart.org)) as well as papers and books by J.C.R. Licklider, William Ross Ashby, Norbert Wiener, etc., and it's a bit awe-inspiring to see what these guys were doing, WAY before computer hardware was advanced enough to implement a lot of their ideas.</comment>


South Korea is composting its way to sustainability - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/09/how-south-korea-is-composting-its-way-to-sustainability <comment><USER2> If you're interested in learning more about this, the movie Wasted! (one of Anthony Bourdain's last appearances before his death: [https://www.wastedfilm.com/](https://www.wastedfilm.com/)) has interesting perspectives on handling food waste around the world.

The segment on composting in South Korea is really cool, but the one on Japan is really neat: they initially started diverting food waste and using it as hog feed, which was a great way to divert it from the landfill. This then blossomed in to a desire for pigs that had been fed only a certain type of waste, so you can now purchase pork that was mainly fed leftovers from pineapples, or pork that was mainly fed leftovers from sake production, and it's created a whole separate boutique pork industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> I eat tons of fruits (currently mandarines) and I don't know if it's a good thing but, instead of throwing the skins in the bin, I cut the skins in smaller pieces, and scatter them in the nature. It seems to degrade quite fast, it loses its bright color quickly at least

<comment><USER4> Yes! We do this with pretty much all vegetable, fruits, onion peels, egg shells, etc.

Of course some fruits skin don't compost at all. Like watermelon skin, pineapple leaves and skin, but you can definitely cut down on trash.

<comment><USER5> I've composted all of those things. Even coconut husks. If you're doing it right, it doesn't even take that long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://archive.md/nswgx](https://archive.md/nswgx)

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems similar to the approach used in palo alto, minus the RFID tech since you can directly put into the recycling bin.

I think just having a bin there for you to use works as a reminder to use it as a compost bin, no need for criminality or fines.

<comment><USER8> Bins and human nature are a surprisingly interesting topic. I would not draw the same conclusion as you did for where I live. Having the bin there would prompt -some- to use it, and they would probably use it wrong. Uncompostables in the compost bin and so on. It always boggles my mind how otherwise intelligent people in my life arrive at our colour coded bins, with clearly marked instructions on the lid, and choose instead to use their trusty intuition to sort the trash.

<comment><USER9> We've had food waste bins in my area (Oxfordshire, UK) for nearly a decade now. As far as I can see it works really well, nearly everybody uses it.

<comment><USER10> That may or may mean that it works.

The usage later on may be more or less tolerant of what people actually put in the bins.

Here, a lot of people throw food waste _in plastic bags_ in the bins, which works about as well as you think. There are people who spend Monday to Friday fishing around around in the compost by hand, fishing out and emptying the bags. More thoughtful people throw food waste in compostable bags in the bins, but those bags aren't quite compostable enough (the city composts for six weeks, those bags need twelve at the very least) so those bags, too, have to be fished out by hand.

It works. I imagine the cost could be lower and those poor people could be employed in less soul-crushing work.

<comment><USER11> Where I live, the guidance is actually that plastic bags are ok (yes, non- biodegradable ones). Given that there is bound to be a certain amount of contamination, including things that are harder to break down than the process allows, I would imagine that mechanical separation is accepted as a required part of the process.

<comment><USER10> Yes. I'm curious though — do you happen to know the end result of the process?

The compost makes earth, which can be used for something. Mechanical separation leaves bits of torn plastic bags, whose number is a function of the amount of plastic in the input and the effiency of the separation. What "something" have they found that tolerates so much plastic that they don't have to push down on the plastic in the input?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Composting is great. One thing to note though is that compostable food containers potentially not great because of the PFAS which could get into the water supply and potentially make its way into plants.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190529084838.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190529084838.htm)

</comment><comment><USER13> i'm looking at getting worm composting going for food scraps. being vegan means i can feed all my food scraps to the worms

<comment><USER14> I tried it and it has been very disappointing:

\- the worms are very fragile, so they must no be too cold, too hot, having not enough food or too much of it or they die

\- it supposed to be able to be inside, with no fly. But having no fly requires a very balanced PH, so if you mess up, you're gonna have a bad time

\- it's slow. In the summer, I eat so much fresh vegetables and fruits the worms can't keep up.

Eventually I gave up.

The 2 setup that worked for me were:

\- I'm in a flat, but the gov have a composting spot for the whole street. Common in Germany, very handy.

\- I'm in a house with a garden, then I just have a big pile to compost things outside, no worms required. It's simple, no-maintenance, and handle up to 10 people green trash in the summer in the source of France.

<comment><USER13> have you tried putting the worm bins directly into the soil with the bottom cut out? It is a permaculture technique and i believe the soil keeps temperature relatively stable. I am in scotland and it never gets below -4 degrees celsius or above 25.

something like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pEq2QkBG4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pEq2QkBG4U)

<comment><USER14> In this case, no need for worms.

<comment><USER15> The "wild" worms are the wrong type for this job.

<comment><USER14> No need for any worms. Just stack stuff on the soil.

There is nothing else to do, it works by itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This headline sounds really dark given the coronavirus outbreak.

<comment><USER17> I think that interpretation says more about your own mental state.

<comment><USER16> I'm not arguing with you there.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk doubles down on universal basic income: 'It's going to be necessary' - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.nl/elon-musk-universal-basic-income-2017-2 <comment><USER2> [2017]</comment>


HP Laptop Battery Explosion - <AUTHOR> http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Other-Notebook-PC-questions/HP-Laptop-Battery-Burst/td-p/321675 Pictures posted, another battery recall in the making? <comment><USER2> It's a good thing it's still under warranty! I just hope his battery was far enough away from the hard drive that he's able to recover his data.</comment>