Ask YC: Are there any black or latino founded startups? - <AUTHOR> Came across a great post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104728
Although I think the more we focus on race, the worst we are (i.e. instead of referring to Dungy as a coach who won the superbowl, he's the "first black head coach" to win a superbowl), I'm going to break my own rule for the purpose of discussion:
How many founders in web/mobile/desktop applications have been Black or Latino in the last decade or so?
(Or even Y C applicants for that matter) <comment><USER3> It's interesting that there are 7 points here, yet only one comment so far. I am Mexican, I run my own startup without any outside funding and my ethnicity has not been an issue, the value our startup adds is all that matters in our success or failure.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm black and I run a technology startup. It's really shocking how many conferences in the Web 2.0 space are incredibly, well, white. Moving forward, I'm going to attend more conferences and workshops, if only to do my little part to make sure that questions like the one posed in this Ask YC title become ridiculous. Speaking of which, I'm going to SXSW Film and Interactive and the Cannes Film Festival, so anyone who'd like to meet up should let me know if they're going!

<comment><AUTHOR> shoot me an email david.adeyalo at gmail

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Internet is color blind. If anyone has a chance to make it it would be on the Internet.

I was watching the "Big Idea" with Donnie Deutsch some months ago and a 10 year old had a great eBay business and relationships with wholesellers. His age was not a limiting factor because he did everything online.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully in the next year or two :-]. If you want to dig even further, there aren't many of us in CS departments either. (I'm aware that not every potential startup-type studies CS)

(I'm making a generalization based on my school's CS population. I'm assuming it's similar at other institutions.)

<comment><USER7> I'd suggest that a large part of the reason is the issue of prestige. In America, intelligent black people will tend to choose high prestige, low-risk career paths more often than not. A lot of it is about the uncertainty of failure; In black communities, a lot is expected of the really smart kids. They're seen as not just representing themselves, but also their communities and, to an extent, their race. It sucks, but it's the truth. So a lot of them choose to be doctors, lawyers, etc, because you're viewed differently by society. If we ever get to the point that being a software engineer is viewed in the same light as the aforementioned occupations, I'm sure there would be a sizable increase.

<comment><USER8> Heh, I used to think that being an engineer was prestigious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If there are any? There are plenty of them...

I'm from Argentina, and here, as in many other latin countries, there are a real lot of local tech startups. Some important companies which started like startups here are Mercado Libre (MELI in Nasdaq), Core Technologies, and Wanako Games (a company in Chile, by Argentinians, recently sold to Vivendi for US$ 10 million).

Actually there are lots of incubators for entrepreneurs here, and there are local VCs, and there are many people working on Web 2.0 and general tech stuff. Recently, there was a local Barcamp here in Buenos Aires too.

There are many, many local startups here, and of course we are all latino here. So I'm not sure the question makes a lot of sense...

<comment><USER3> hhm please contact me at:

uclawins at gmail dot com

-Merrick

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen The guys who did Mercado Libre (like eBay, but for Latin America) were Hispanic. They did very well, to my knowledge.

<comment><USER9> Yes. The people who started Mercado Libre are from Argentina, and ML is in Nasdaq ("MELI"), so sure it's successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reg Braithwaite is a developer at startup Mobile Commons (weblog.raganwald.com www.mcommons.com)

Hank Williams is working on an unannounced startup (<http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/> ).

They're from Toronto and NYC. Maybe it's a coincidence of demographics - <USER2> startups and most of startup culture are in Silicon Valley, most people there are white or Asian.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> the reason I started this thread was after reading the article about NASCAR and the lack of minorities, I was sorta wondering:

Is there a high-barrier to entry that is restricting blacks or latinos from founding startups? (real or imagined) -- the same thing we see in high end sports such as NASCAR, hockey, or lacrosse that take lots of cash to participate in.

<comment><USER3> The question posed in the original thread is much different than the one you pose now. No matter what ethnic background you come from you have to ignore the stats and act as if.

Now that you clarified the intention of your initial question, it seems you want to know if the percentage of founders of startups correlates with each ethnicities percentage of population.

While I don't know the ethnic breakdown of tech startups founders, I know that disparities do exist and they vary by culture, social economic strata and in this case by geographic location.

Until recently, the stats for U.S. broadband adoption showed that income and ethnicity were strong indicators.

After I finished up my economics degree at UCLA I took a few sociology courses. I recall that in the first half of the 20th century Asian immigrants had a higher percentage of entrepreneurship relatively because of the lack of employment opportunities and discrimination. In the second half of the 20th century that percentage declined.

While it's interesting to study the plight of some ethnic groups, it's much more interesting to study how public policy can improve the situation.

The wonderful thing for everyone is that the access to information is a great equalizer, and that our parents socio-economic level is less of a predictor of our future than it was when our parents were kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You said it yourself... why does this even matter? Brains are all the same color (well for the most part anyway).

<comment><USER12> I think it matters because it's a sign of a problem in black and latino cultures, if they create startups at a much lower rate.

<comment><USER13> Is that necessarily a problem? There are more black basketball players than white. Does that mean there is a problem in white cultures?

People do what they want to do, and what they're good at.

<comment><USER12> I think startups are a good thing, and cultures which highly value being productive are better.

Also, what do you mean about people doing what they're good at? That seems to imply white people are genetically inferior at some sports, and black people genetically inferior at startups?

<comment><USER13> You're saying white people _can_ jump? ;)

I was just saying I don't think it's a worthwhile idea to try and make everyone the same. We're not. Why aren't there as many women founders? Why should there necessarily be. Why aren't there as many male midwives as women... is that a problem?

Sure if someone is actively preventing someone from doing something based on their race/gender/etc, then of course it should be solved if possible.

I think the main thing is for people to grow up with self belief that they can do whatever they want to.

<comment><USER12> There are less woman founders because our culture treats men and women differently. And in particular, it is more repressive of females, and cripples their ability to think more, especially in business and technical areas.

This is definitely a big problem, and the lack of woman founders is a good signal to get us to look at the area and wonder what is being done to women to prevent them from being founders.

<comment><USER13> That's terribly wrong IMHO. Very wrong. I used to think similar thoughts until I had kids. Girls and boys are just into different things. From a very early age. They have vastly different interests. Their brains work differently. They have different strengths. The key thing is that it's not just due to surroundings/culture. It's due to how they are wired.

The fact is, the probability that a male will 'do a startup' is going to be greater than the probability that a female will. Why try to blame that on society? Why try and change that?

<comment><USER12> I'm not _trying_ to blame anyone, but I believe the _truth of the matter_ is that it is caused by culture. I believe the truth is that boys are girls are not wired differently, and their brains do not work differently.

One reason to question the notion of specialized hardware (brains) for boys and girls is the concept of universality. The easiest, by far, way to be able to do many computations, is to create a computer that can do _all_ computations. Similarly, the easiest way by far to create a system capable of creating a variety of kinds of knowledge, is to create one capable of creating _any_ knowledge.

One reason to believe culture would be behind these kinds of differences is we know that our culture transmits vast quantities of knowledge to children. Far more information than is in DNA, just in terms of bits. But also in terms of importance. We also know our culture believes boys and girls are different, and treats people different for many reasons.

<comment><USER13> "I believe the truth is that boys are girls are not wired differently, and their brains do not work differently."

Do you have children? A girl and a boy? I do. I can tell you categorically that they most definitely without a doubt are 'wired' differently. Regardless of what you do. Treat them absolutely identically. Even before they have outside influences. Before they start nursery/school. Before society/friends influence them. They act very differently indeed. I didn't get that before I had kids. I thought girls liked dolls because people give girls dolls. They don't. It's a reflex. It's how they're built. Just like boys love cars and doing outside stuff.

I seriously don't know what else to say here if you think men and womens brains are identical and work the same.

<comment><USER12> Authority of experience, based on anecdotal evidence, is not a valid way to argue scientific issues.

Further, you have not addressed well known exceptions to your claims, such as tomboys and males who do not love to be outdoors.

<comment><USER14> However, all you provide is your belief, which frankly to me seems to be driven by your wishful thinking. I personally don't know if men and women are wired differently or not, but I can't understand your concept of belief. Give us some scientific evidence, and I will mentally assign your claim a probability. But I won't believe it.

<comment><USER12> I have provided some arguments (for example, about universality). I have also provided some (as yet unanswered) criticism of the other view. If you don't understand my comments, and wish to, you could ask questions, and I will be happy to explain further.

Evidence would not be the right thing to provide, because I am not predicting different human behavior than the mainstream theory, I am simply explaining the same evidence in a different way. So evidence can't resolve this dispute. (Setting aside evidence from analysis of brains which is beyond our present technology.)

<comment><USER14> Well the universality thing is really a very weak argument. The brain is quite universal, but it still is specialized, for example for image processing. It is a finite resource, you only have so many neurons in a brain, and only can train them on so many tasks. So it probably makes sense to devote more neurons to some tasks than to another.

Of course you may ask, when is it decided what specialization is chosen, genetically or by nurturing. Clearly we can learn and specialize on things through nurturing, but some things we are also born with, for example a language instinct. So I don't think your argument is an argument at all.

I don't know if you are a woman or a man, but one thing I notice is that women can always tell me what everybody else is talking about in a cafe. I can only concentrate on the woman I am talking to, and blank out all the other people in the room. Maybe it is a personal deficit of mine (bad hearing or whatever), but I could imagine it is a women thing (broader attention). Just an example.

<comment><USER12> Apes do image processing too; that is from a time before intelligence.

The meaning of one's mind being born specialized is that either it's incapable of some functions (not universal), or it's pre-loaded with enough complexity to make some functions easier and others harder. And further, the claim has to go on to say that we don't put layers of abstraction over this and do whatever we want anyway, low level complexity be damned. Do you have an argument this is the case?

You give language instinct as an example. So, do you have any argument that our DNA contains knowledge to facilitate language in particular? But perhaps more importantly, an argument that this is done differently for different people, in such a way as to cause differences in adult personalities?

<comment><USER14> As far as I know it has always been the case that people developed a language. For example there are cases where children had been raised in total isolation from society, and they developed their own language (I think even single children). So it seems to me it is fairly certain that something in the brain makes it develop a language.

Your "image processing is not intelligence" again refutes itself: so you admit that there are some things in which brains might differ. Surely, even if some parts of the brain are universal, the ultimate development must depend on the inputs available. For example, no humans have ultrasonic "vision" like bats, because they lack the respective organs. It follows that it is possible for brains to be different, depending on the body that provides the sensory inputs.

Also, it is not clear in my opinion that apes are not intelligent.

Btw. I am still not claiming that women can not be good at maths - of course they can be, there are many examples.

I guess I am not even claiming that the difference between men and women with respect to founding startups is not cultural. But I am claiming that the culture is not arbitrary, but has evolved because of the biological preconditions. Not arbitrary means it can not simply be explained by "repression through men".

<comment><USER12> _As far as I know it has always been the case that people developed a language. For example there are cases where children had been raised in total isolation from society, and they developed their own language (I think even single children). So it seems to me it is fairly certain that something in the brain makes it develop a language._

That does not follow. For example, maybe they developed language because it's very useful.

@image processing: There are things inside brains which can/do differ, the issue is what effect this has on adult _minds_. And personality in particular. For example, how does the difference survive layers of being interpreted to remain a difference in adults personalities?

@ "repression through men" -- My position is that culture is largely transmitted, _unintentionally_ , through behavior of _parents_. Further, mothers appear to have more influence over children than fathers. And female friends appear to influence young females more than their male friends. And I think the same sorts of things are done to both male and female children, just differently.

<comment><USER14> "And female friends appear to influence young females more than their male friends. "

Well if you believe that, then you admit that there is a difference between men and women (within your kind of logic).

Of course nurturing has an effect, but the fact remains that men and women are different and have to face different challenges in life. It is not only the 9 months of pregnancy - yes, men could stay at home after pregnancy (now that we have breast pumps for the milk). But there are still several other differences, as I explained elsewhere, not the least the problem of finding a mate to begin with. It is a completely different challenge for men and for women, simply because women can only have a few children, whereas men can have thousands of children in theory. So women have to be more selective etc. Again just one example, but in the sum things like that end up evoking behavioral differences.

If all behavioral differences were only the result of nurturing, then why are there no more random variations? Why are there not more societies where all boys behave like girls in our western world, and vice versa? If boys and girls really were equal except for the nurturing and their visible difference, then we should see such variations, because if a society with our boy/girl pattern is stable then the reverse would be equally stable.

Edit: I think you yourself mentioned tomboys, so there are people with reversed roles. Therefore, all else being equal, whole islands of societies should develop where roles are mirrored (because apparently the reverse strategy is being evaluated on a regular basis - so if it would be equally successful, it should from time to time become dominant). But they apparently don't develop.

<comment><USER12> I said from the outset that our culture treats men and women differently. That includes, among many other things, what gender of friends they are encouraged to have as young children.

Why aren't there more variations in culture on Earth? First, there is a lot of shared culture across a lot of the Earth, like Abrahamic religions. Second, perhaps the logic of the situation (e.g. men being stronger) lent itself to certain simple gender roles. If so, that isn't why they still exist today in any form. Third, the general logic of memes can create common points across cultures. Fourth, Earth is a small sample size.

<comment><USER14> You yourself mentioned the tomboys. Therefore nature is obviously capable of still evaluating new strategies, even under the tyranny of culture. Therefore it needs explaining why none of those strategies ever reached a significant mass, if their efficiency is the same as the existing ones.

<comment><USER12> Why are you assuming tomboys have anything to do with nature?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, why don't you care about Asian founded startups? Or south- Asian (Indian, Pakastani, etc)? Or Middle-Eastern?

To answer your actual question, I have met exactly one (am currently a YC founder and was VERY active in the Seattle startup scene, FWIW).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was going for the uncommon social groups, and East Asian, and South Asian founded is definitely not an uncommon breeding ground for startups.

As far as middle-eastern, sure, throw them in there, but it was more reference to minority groups in the US -- Black and Latino are pretty prevalent as fars % of US population, and it does not correlate with startups

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> <http://www.ooyala.com/management></comment>


Cougar Night in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://vanityfair.com/culture/2013/05/silicon-valley-cougar-nights-love

<comment><USER2> Somewhat relevant: from a study cited in this ([http://whytherearenogirls.blogspot.com/2009/08/14-lop- sided-...](http://whytherearenogirls.blogspot.com/2009/08/14-lop-sided-gender- ratio.html)) interesting post we learn that

"unbalanced gender ratios did not seem to problematize proportionally. The research showed that as the sex ratio augmented in favor of women, at first, as you would expect, the women simply turned fussy and went for richer and more powerful men. But at a certain point a curious thing happened: the amount of socioeconomic status a guy needed to get girl increased way more than the math would predict. Specifically when the ratio was tilted in favor of women by 10%, low status men became not 1.1 times less likely to get a girl but 2.3 times less likely and high status men 1.3 times less likely."

The post uses this as proof for the fact that SF hooking up prospects are so bad.

<comment><USER3> Fascinating. I wonder if the same tendency ruins online dating?

My guess as to a reason is that women who have been hit on aggressively by some number of men eventually get cynical. But once you're cynical, you reflexively reject all of the aggressive men, and never spot the less aggressive men, with the result that you're in permanent "fast reject" mode.

<comment><USER4> > _Fascinating. I wonder if the same tendency ruins online dating?_

Yes.

Luckily, most men never really try that hard on dating websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I continue to be confused by the use of the term "Cougar Night" to describe Thursday nights at the Rosewood.

Isn't a cougar an established older woman looking for casual sex with a "boy toy?"

Seems like a better name for this would be "Gold Digger Night" or just "Rich Old People Trying to Hook Up."

</comment><comment><USER6> Why pay $30,000 to get "11 introductions" (with no guarantees, apparently), when you could have sex with 100 women by just giving the money directly to escorts instead?

Also if I paid $30,000 I would at the very least want a guarantee that the matchmaker will find girls that are definitely down to fuck that night, and will supply me a new girl every week at least.

<comment><USER3> Good question, if crudely put.

The answer is that the kind of men who want to use a service like this want something other than straight sex. They want to fall in love. An escort can deliver sex, but the odds of love coming out of that are really, really bad.

Also you're probably not going to go to a service like that if $30,000 is a lot of money to you.

<comment><USER7> I guess what surprises me is that there are people who can casually drop 30k and are having trouble meeting interested / interesting people.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't surprise me. It is easy for people who are well off to meet people who want a piece of their money. It is much harder to meet people who are smart, attractive, and have enough going on for them that they don't need your money. Doubly so when your success comes from your ability to be a workaholic, but you've never developed dating skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, this relates to the recent Time article summarizing Pew research.

> _"The holdout cities — those where the earnings of single, college-educated > young women still lag men's — tended to be built around industries that are > heavily male-dominated, such as software development or military-technology > contracting. In other words, Silicon Valley could also be called Gender Gap > Gully."_

[http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00....](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html)

I'd ask Vanity Fair for their studies and numbers on cougars, but I don't think I'd hear back.

<comment><AUTHOR> I could give you a few numbers on cougars ;)

<comment><USER9> I know a few people who could give you some numbers as well, but I think they study the other kind of cougar.

<comment><USER10> I would assume that confusing the two could be problematic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Work scheduler for Go with early WASM job support - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/suborbital/hive <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this as a way to simplify and standardize how my projects do background tasks/concurrency, and yesterday I added support for running WASM jobs natively. Take a look and let me know what you think!</comment>


Documentary film-makers face decades in prison for taping oil pipeline protests - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/20/north-dakota-oil-pipeline-protest-film-makers-face-prison <comment><USER2> USA - better every day.</comment>


iOS app piracy soars - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/316996,special-report-ios-app-piracy-soars.aspx

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry to say I was once heavily involved in this. I am Kyek, or "Kytek" as the article misspelled. Among other things, I wrote and maintained Appulo.us, and the quote at the end of the article is mine.

While many called BS on the whole "we do it for trials" aspect -- and who can blame them? -- that is, in fact, how this all started. A small group of people on IRC and a forum, who figured out how astonishingly easy it was to dump the entire unencrypted executable from RAM, who shared apps among each other because those little $1-5 purchases added up to a lot when the apps proved misrepresented and worthless. Back then, it was far more common that reviews were gamed and descriptions were blatantly false, and 'lite' versions were quite rare.

I eventually left when that dynamic became an obvious foregone conclusion, and only a very small handful of us continued to purchase the apps that we intended to keep. Frustratingly enough, those who remained and admitted behind closed doors that they were in it for the free apps kept up that mantra, so it became far more of a joke than a meaningful message. I'd have loved to see Apple innovate and find a way to offer developers an easy method of providing time or usage-limited trials, but their response was to dump money into legal rather than R&D.

This article is really nothing new; nothing has changed much from a standpoint of the piracy or Apple's reaction to it since Appulous launched, except Apple's methods are more streamlined and so are the pirates'. However, this article makes the same misleading assumption that all the articles of the past made: They assume that every pirated app is a missed sale.

When you report that 92% of your application's installs are pirated copies, the implication is strong that you've missed out on 92% of sales. That's simply not the case. Many people -- and let's be realistic with the demographic, many young teens who may not even have access to purchase apps on their own -- install these apps just because they're free. If piracy weren't as easily available, I have no doubt that the 92% figure would shrink in direct proportion to the number of installs. Reporting otherwise is wholly inaccurate, and exaggerates the impact that this community has had. And I say that as someone who hasn't supported the community and in fact has spoken out against it for years.

Appulous was an education for me. It taught me about running seriously high- traffic sites, and query optimization and caching algorithms unlike anything I thought I'd ever dig into. Over the past five years that's transported me professionally into a great position where I get to coach dev teams through that kind of work daily, and continue innovating and learning about scalable design. As a vehicle for rapid improvement in my trade, it was a fantastic opportunity. But as for the the lasting impact my contributions have had on the topic and on indie developers, I'm deeply regretful, and disappointed. Apptrackr's proved that if it weren't me, it would have been someone else; it's just a shame that the agenda has switched so obviously from pushing for a better app store to enabling single-tap piracy -- regardless of the _actual_ impact that might have on sales.

<comment><USER3> Hello, Kyek. I was also involved in this. I am happy to see you here as I remember your work. I remember when people figured out that GDB would let you dump the decrypted memory and you could put it back into the main executable file with a hex editor or dd. I can't help but think the real tragedy is that apple didn't work to make it harder to pirate apps. I really think they missed out on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is very old news that any iPhone app can be cracked easily. This article has no information at all related to the amount of actual piracy going on.

'99% of all apps have been cracked!' != '99% of all app downloads are theft'

</comment><comment><USER5> > The security vendor said more than 92 percent of paid iOS apps were pirated

But what % of the total user-base actually pirate apps? That is the more important figure.

As an aside: I've "educated" a few acquaintances re: pirating apps on their jailbroken devices. They indicated they getting apps for "free" was a benefit of jailbreaking. I responded by telling them that many of the apps they'd jailbroken were not built by large corporations, but actually indie dev houses or even lone developers. When they realised they weren't 'sticking it to The Man' they appeared to boast a little less about this particular benefit.

Whether it actually changed their behaviour is another thing.

<comment><USER6> > But what % of the total user-base actually pirate apps? That is the more > important figure.

This very idea is explained really well in this article: <http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy>

<comment><USER7> and also more recently, by <http://lightmare-studio.com/the-piracy-fallacy/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's an inaccuracy - Dead Trigger was hit hard by piracy on _Android,_ not on iOS. I think Lifehacker publicized it after the creator made it free on Android - "buy it on iOS to show support!"

Edit: I wasn't fully informed. They first made it free on Android, but they made it free on iOS a week later, giving the same reason. From Daring Fireball: <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/23/dead-trigger>

</comment><comment><USER9> I thought we were supposed to be outraged at having DRM forced upon us because developers don't trust us. Now we have to be concerned that "less than five percent of apps were secured against cracking"?

<comment><USER10> I find the double-standards that people have quite interesting; what was really striking to me was seeing that it was often the exact same individuals who would argue against technologies like DRM and laws like SOPA while at the same time lamenting widespread piracy and demanding effort be put into stopping it (with explicit descriptions of possible schemes that involve either DRM or centralized filters very similar to those we would see under SOPA). When you point out the hypocrisy directly, these people get quite defensive. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any evidence for the claim in the headline? There's a lot of numbers, but none that I see that indicate the problem is worsening.

</comment><comment><USER12> Apple needs to figure out how to build a bootloader + OS that isn't so quickly jailbroken.

<comment><USER6> Playing cat & mouse. Always a smart move.</comment></comment>


Nikola's (NKLA) house of cards crumbles as GM acts like nothing is happening - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2020/09/11/nikolas-nkla-house-of-card-crumbles-gm-nothing/ <comment><USER2> Things did seem off with Nikola before.</comment>


Database heresies (The "right" and "wrong" way to do ORM) - <AUTHOR> http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2008/aug/04/orm/

<comment><USER2> Sigh. There is so much misinformation being spread by today's software engineers without proper CS backgrounds. As anybody who's read Date and friends knows, relational databases are fundamentally more expressive (and therefore better) than network databases (which is the model used by object databases), being grounded in set theory and predicate calculus.

Your bad taste for relational databases is more likely a result of using a crappy ORM pattern (such as Active Record). Go try a proper implementation of Data Mapper (I can't recommend SQLAlchemy highly enough), then come back and tell me how you feel.

<comment><USER3> That sounds dangerously like pedantry to me. The point is not that the mathematical expressiveness of the network model is as powerful or more powerful than what you can do with relational stuff. The point is that the network model maps nearly 1:1 with the actual programming model used to implement the application logic.

All that relational goodness does you no good if you want to architect your application using an OO data model in a web application server. Maybe you're trying to argue that that's the wrong way to do web applications? But if you accept that people _want_ to use Rails/Django/etc... then you have to also admit the argument that RDBMS's are the wrong tool for the job. This is true for the same reason that a Dremel is the wrong tool for framing a house, despite the greater expressive power of the Dremel's cutting tools.

<comment><USER2> I'd actually argue the best approach is to develop both sides fully: I agree that an OO data model is the best fit for non-trivial application logic, but I also believe relational databases make the best data stores. The two can coexist just fine, it's just a matter of selecting the proper design patterns and supporting libraries -- which is why I mentioned SQLAlchemy. In its developer's words:

"SQL databases behave less like object collections the more size and performance start to matter; object collections behave less like tables and rows the more abstraction starts to matter."

This false dichotomy that's always presented is distracting, and leads to people naively taking religious positions about what should in fact be a non- issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rant:

I'm afraid I have to side with the author against the "relational set theory purists." I actually don't care much about styles of ORMs, and I don't even care that much about having to write SQL, either. I can do, and have done, both. For me, both work equally well, or rather equally poorly.

I loathe relational databases because, every time I have used one, it has eaten a vast amount of time in making the schema and queries fast enough. Yes, I know what third normal form is, and I start my database designs with it. I know how and when to denormalize to improve join performance. I know how to look through a query plan and create necessary indices. I've even looked through low-level IO statistics to figure out where a slow query wastes time doing unnecessary IO. Guess what: that work sucks. I've used Sybase, considered a "real" RDBMS, and I used MySQL, considered a "crappy" RDBMS. Both have sucked about equally, just in slightly different ways.

I am an application and system-level programmer. I want to be able to tell my app: "store this data for future retrieval." I want the store to be instantaneous. I want the future retrieval to be instantaneous. Period. As a major bonus, I want to be able to distribute the store between multiple machines, but do so as transparently to my application as possible. I also don't want to risk losing my data when one server loses its disks, so I want at least semi-transparent replication. ACID semantics are, obviously, a big plus. No RDBMS gives me this flexibility in designing an app. Oracle RAC, supposedly the cat's meow of scalable RDBMS, has RW database load balancing, but it still relies on having a single centralized SAN store on its back end.

To add insult to injury, the promise of arbitrary queries against the data just doesn't pan out. Yes, I can run an arbitrary query. Overnight. Adding this query to an application with a non-trivial schema and a large dataset usually requires so much indexing and query optimization work, that I might as well write the equivalent retrieval code for a Berkeley DB store by hand. I hate going through my queries and using trial-and-error to figure out where a subselect will outperform a join, and I can't afford to hire a bunch of DBAs, who also happen to know set and relational theory, to do this work for me.

<comment><USER5> It seems the Prevayler or HAppS style of data storage & retrieval is what you and I want (and perhaps in their hearts, every other non-db-specialist as well)

Basically, you just define data structures in your language like you would any other piece of data, and it is silently in the background serialized into an efficient (I would hope) ACID datastore.

<http://www.prevayler.org>

<http://happs.org>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FTA:

 _It turned out that relational databases were in the right place at the right time, and the "good enough" implementations and uses took over the world._

Yeah, that's what I've thought for a long time too. It's nice to see that in writing.

But I guess the rest of the essay leaves me a little cold. If the relational model is fundamentally flawed (rather: fundamentally mismatched to the overwhelmingly popular application design paradigm) then isn't the solution just to chuck the SQL database in the trash and start over?

So what has us tied to SQL and afraid of using the filesystem for storage directly? What are the _other_ things we get from a database that we want? As far as I can see, the real need is for atomic transactions and consistent backups (or replication, which is the flip side of those features). No one cares about the "relational" stuff at all, really, as proven by all the awful ORMs out there.

And yet, if that were true, we'd all be happily using Berkeley DB. So what _else_ am I missing? Some part of me thinks that there's a great startup idea in this space, but I don't quite see it yet. Tools like Google's App Engine seem to be attacking part of the problem by at least tweaking around with the SQL assumptions, but they're still fundamentally relational at their core (and they're still services, and my gut tells me that most of the world will never trust their data to someone else's service, no matter how well-justified it might seem).

<comment><USER6> A big part of the reason for Relational DB's continued supremacy, is that it's become a part of the back-end language of business IT. Even though an OODB might be a better fit for an application, it's a handicap that your app is not on top of a relational database. SQL has become a kind of protocol for data exchange. Unfortunately, it makes for a very loose and sloppy protocol that completely spoils encapsulation.

<comment><USER3> Sure. I'm not expecting something new to displace SQL at a Fortune 500 IT shop. But the question is why are otherwise-groundbreaking technologies like Rails still wedded to the ORM stuff, when clearly there isn't any conservatism at work there. Anyone willing to bet the company on some weird language from Japan isn't going to blink about changing their datastore.

<comment><USER7> Actually one of the most interesting things at RailsConf was MagLev, which applies the GemStone object persistence engine to Ruby. Apparently there are some pretty big Smalltalk apps out there using GemStone. <http://chadfowler.com/2008/6/5/maglev> and <http://ruby.gemstone.com/>

<comment><USER6> One of the interesting technologies that Gemstone has had in its portfolio for years is the ability to make its data available in relational/SQL DB form. You can have your app running on top of an OODB, but still interface with your Fortune 500 comrades who want to do SQL queries for Crystal Reports.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos Can't Lose - <AUTHOR> https://www.cringely.com/2020/05/11/jeff-bezos-cant-lose/ <comment><USER2> Once Trump is out office and Bezos is still in business Trump may be heading into heavy weather business wise. Imagine something like a Bezos Tower beside each Trump Tower but higher quality at half the price, etc.</comment>


Some Numbers to Ponder - <AUTHOR> http://www.contrarianconsulting.com/some-numbers-to-ponder/ <comment><USER2> I agree with the premises this article is getting at but keep in mind that word of mouth and online connections are not mutually exclusive. Sure my friend might say that for example his financial advisor is good, after which I will check into their online presence before engaging in any business with said person. I also very much agree that hiring a professional to manage a professional's online presence is a wise decision. Just as the old proverb that goes "a person who represents themselves in court has and idiot for a client", transfers very well to online representation. IMHO</comment>


Vint Cerf: If you thought the internet was cool, wait until it goes space age - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/17/internet.google

<comment><USER2> Classic site is 'Cerf's Up' (sic) which was fine before MCI/Worldcom went belly up, now seems a sick joke.

<http://global.mci.com/ca/resources/cerfs_up/?SetLang=en></comment>


Space Invaders was launched forty years ago today - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders <comment><USER2> Imagine a novelty pop song on the radio about Call of Duty or Skyrim. There was one about Space Invaders! "He's hooked, he's hooked, his brain is cooked..." A novel time; there were previous video games, but this one was the first that even your Mom had heard of.</comment>


The Sega Genesis is officially back in production - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/debug/sega-genesis-preorder-details/ <comment><USER2> Decent bundled game selection, as it's really about the content and not the system. A real content breakthrough would be a game market where I could pay to download roms and add them to the SD. In any case I will probably pick one up so I can be 12 years old again.

</comment><comment><USER3> It was hugely popular in the nineties. Most people here in Brazil play Fifa, Overwatch and LoL on Playstations and PCs like the rest of the world...</comment>


100 million Facebook pages leaked on torrent site - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/7/28/100-million-facebook-pages-leaked-torrent-site/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't seem much like a "leak" to me. It's like leaking the front page of the _New York Times_ by looking at a copy.

<comment><USER3> FTA: "Accessing a user's page from the list will also enable you to click through to friends' profiles - even if those friends have made themselves non- searchable."

I see your point about it not being a "leak" exactly, but I think there's something to be said for it exposing how ineffective Facebook's privacy controls are. Then again, anyone who expects to prevent something from being public information after telling it to all their friends isn't thinking things through.

<comment><USER4> Accessing a user's page from the regular directory will also allow you to click through to friends' profiles. This is nothing that wasn't already available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The guy who did it, and a link to the actual torrent file: <http://www.skullsecurity.org/blog/?p=887>

<comment><USER6> A link to the actual torrent file: <http://www.skullsecurity.org/blogdata/fbdata.torrent>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is just an archive of URLs and names. It's pretty useless data. It saves you from crawling Facebook's names directory but to actually get any data about users you'll need to crawl 100 million+ pages. This data is hardly worth putting a torrent up for.

</comment><comment><USER8> >A directory containing personal details about more than 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on an Internet file-sharing site.

Oh you mean like the public directory that is already available on facebook that you've linked to in your article? Give me a break.

</comment><comment><USER9> About as invasive as the visualization of the connectedness of Americans on FB was[1]. And FB made a super-huge deal out of _that_. I'm curious to see how this goes down.

[1]: [http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how- to-s...](http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-split-up- the-us.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I can see this as a privacy threat, depending on how comprehensive the archive is.

Running for a political office in the next 20 years? Do you know the state of your Facebook profile when this archive was created?

<comment><USER11> How is this a privacy threat? All the information in the torrent is totally public, and existed for everyone to see on the internet before this .torrent file was created. Google's cache certainly has copies of all the data too.

What does running for office have to do with this? If you put some sort of compromising information on to the internet, that was probably a bad idea. If that's the case, _then you have nobody to blame for your failed political career but yourself._ But this .torrent file is just another copy of that information...there are probably another 10-20 other, unique copies out there.

Edit: also, it's not like this torrent makes any of the data _easier_ to access...it's actually probably much easier to just go to someone's facebook page and look at it than it is to download multiple gigabytes of data, most of which will be useless.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Do we have to collect sales tax on SaaS? - <AUTHOR>

I am selling an online subscription to a web product - just like 37Signal's line of products. Has anyone had any experience on the official Federal or state policies? <comment><USER2> In some states, there is a use tax that applies like a sales tax would for services purchased. In GA, it's 4-8%.

<http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/state/state_tax_home.asp>

Often, you only have to worry about users in your state, and the rate you have to pay may be dependent on your city/county.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you need to collect for people in your state.</comment>