Show HN: I wrote a book about Design Ethics called Tragic Design - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone!
After two long years of writing along side my co-author, we have finally released the book: Tragic Design.
It's about the true impact of bad design and how to fix it. We felt there was a need to shed light on the discussion of Design Ethics by exploring the ways bad design can harm people and offering up solutions. When most of us think about bad design, we think the worst case is lost customers. This book explores the very real impact it has: physical harm, emotional harm, and more.
We are excited to have John Maeda writing the Foreword to the book, who has been a long supporter of inclusive design.
The book is out right now and I made this website for it: http://www.tragicdesign.com/
Were excited to finally have this out in the hands of designers, engineers, and others making products, and start making an impact on this important issue.
Thanks HN - Jonathan <comment><USER3> Congratulations on shipping your book!

This is slightly off topic but something I've always wondered. Who picks the organism featured on the cover?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its random really. Whatever the illustrator is interested in haha. We got another animal initially and it was um... kinda ridiculous. So considering the serious topic of the book I campaigned for the man-of-war as the animal.

Aside from being a beautiful creature, as a nerd I find it REALLY interesting.

Wiki - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war)

Specifically this tidbit: >the Portuguese man o' war is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, which, unlike jellyfish, is not actually a single multicellular organism, but a colonial organism made up of specialized individual animals called zooids or polyps.

My post explaining why I chose it (plus link to awesome photos from NG) - [http://us10.campaign- archive1.com/?e=[UNIQID]&u=b2a9f2c796e2...](http://us10.campaign- archive1.com/?e=\[UNIQID\]&u=b2a9f2c796e250794d7fae7de&id=f4d1f975a6)

<comment><USER4> The man-o-war is one of the most terrifying creatures on the planet, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been up for a couple days working on a big project and my brain is having trouble saying what I want to say. Hopefully this makes sense.

My only comment is with your primary quote featured right on the landing page of your site. As far as marketing goes, it feels sketchy because your book title isn't part of the direct quote.

"This revolution is just beginning, and it's exciting to have [Tragic Design] to ground the growing movement of achieving truly inclusive design in the digital era."

My guess is that John said something like "this book," or maybe you changed the book title and he called it something else. But having your primary marketing item be a quote that isn't a direct quote just feels wrong to me. It seems like he could have said something not even related to your book, and you changed it to make it work. Obviously I know you didn't, I just wanted to give you my opinion. I would suggest contacting him and seeing if he can give you a direct quote that doesn't require you to use brackets.

Either way, congratulations on the book!

<comment><AUTHOR> It was "Shariat and Savard Saucier's book..." and the quote was taken from the foreword.

Thank you for the feedback. I'm going to talk to a few more folks to see if anyone else feels that way. I definitely don't want people feeling that way. Thanks again!

<comment><USER6> Can't you just ask the permission of the person who said that, and, if they agree, drop the []'s? If it makes anyone feel better, they could speak the revised quote out loud to an empty room before you drop the []'s.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendation. I did just that and he agreed. I'm gunna push the fix on the website now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started reading this on Safari Books Online (I'm bad about reading too many books at once). I got 3 chapters in before switching gears. What I read was excellent, and I recommended the book to several friends. Thanks for the book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much, glad to hear it!

<comment><USER7> I actually saw a comment (by you?) on the book a month or two ago, right before going to a (beta) one week course on software safety. I suggested it as a good source of material for case studies and discussions. This reminds me that I should contact the instructors and see what they've done with the feedback we gave them.

<comment><USER8> Would like to hear more about any software safety course, beta or not.

<comment><USER7> Summary: Beta course to cover software systems safety from the perspective of DoD, attendees were contractors and civilians. Specifically covering MIL-STD 882E and related documents. Generally covering topics in software engineering and design that relate to safety.

It was a beta, and rough. The instructors were trying to be all things to all people. It hit too low level at times for the program office types who don't do any actual programming but need to know about design and safety considerations and processes. That was also (somewhat) redundant for the programmers in the group. It was, however, informative as we discussed topics related to this book (why I brought it up in class), and software engineering principles (from safety and reliability perspectives) that the new programmers and non-programmers weren't aware of.

The intention is to teach this material rather than rely on people absorbing it (poorly) on the job, which is how it's typically done now for software. Processes exist, but people don't understand them. Techniques get used, but people forget why. This is intended to raise the bar across the board (or provide an opportunity to) so that safety and is more thoroughly integrated into the design and development process.

I'm not sure what else to add. If you want to discuss more, I may respond here, but you can also email me (username at gmail).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ordered paper copy (I'm old and find actual books easier than screen reading).

UK: Amazon showing £30 ish as price, other sellers showing £16 as price. What are your distribution deals like outside US?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ditto that or audio book.

I don't know the specifics. I'll read out to my editor and let you know.

<comment><USER9> Just want to make sure you are (both) getting your cut :-) A factor of two on retail price seems a bit odd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doing a long flight soon and this sounds like it would be perfect for it. Also, love the choice of a man-o-war.

From reading the website's bullet points I am reminded of the excellent talk by Mike Monteiro titled "How Designers Destroyed the World", which I would highly recommend for a discussion on the same subject.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes his talk was a big inspiration. We actually have an interview with his partner at Mule Design, Erika Hall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see from the few page previews that this book discusses, for example, the medical interface that killed the cancer patient. Does the book do critiques of various existing designs and then show the corrected designs that result from the application of fundamental design principles?

<comment><AUTHOR> We review the different ways bad design can harm with real life case studies as examples. We talk about basic design principles that would have mitigated that particular issue as well as broad solutions on how to design ethically.

The goal of the book was to give readers a broader understanding about how our decisions in how we choose to make our products, have very real impacts in people's lives. Then allow the reader to decide for themselves what their ethical redlines are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats on shipping John. Can't wait to receive my copy.

Maybe in a future podcast of yours, you and Cynthia can talk about how you approached researching for this book and the challenges you had over the 2 years writing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! PS I love your username. Makes me think of a designer who always has "one more thing..." to add. haha

<comment><USER12> Ha, well spotted. I think Columbo would have made a great designer - <USER2> consider him a virtual mentor.

He gets to the bottom of things, he gets people and their motivations and he's a humble and likeable guy.

Going to look out for your future podcast about your book.

PS just noticed I got your name wrong, but couldn't edit my post anymore... soz

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a good modal to shoot for haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am really looking forward to reading this. Please start a discussion thread on this on the LinkedIn Design Thinking group as well. Really important work.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hey, when did links start working in text posts on HN?

<comment><USER15> Although, they should change the color of hyper-link atleast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congrats on the book! I will have to check it out!

I went to the website and the header is a purple, and the purchase link is blue (so it is blue on purple). This doesn't have enough contrast ratio for accessibility reasons and is really hard to read. Since this is your purchase button, thought you would like to know.

Good luck with the book!

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm must be a bug in my css. I'll look into it thanks!</comment></comment>


I wrote an end-to-end encrypted chat app using Elixir/Phoenix and Vue.js - <AUTHOR> https://1op.eu <comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to share an app i wrote recently using Phoenix and Vue.js. It's an encrypted end-to-end quick-to-use websocket-chat app, which can be used to share secret messages between users. It uses AES to encrypt JS-generated RSA-2048 public keys shared between users which will be used to encrypt messages for each user separately. I'd love to hear some feedback from more experienced hackers than I am. Please don't bite. :)

technical overview here: [http://gladecki.pl/2016/11/23/1op/](http://gladecki.pl/2016/11/23/1op/)

</comment><comment><USER2> good stuff! elixir+vue is my frameworks dejour right now</comment>


"Strong Opinions Loosely Held" Might Be the Worst Idea in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://blog.glowforge.com/strong-opinions-loosely-held-might-be-the-worst-idea-in-tech/ <comment><USER2> In egalitarian non-competitive environments I am 90% in agreement that this can be useful, however as a philosophy for life I am certain that you will get further by speaking with conviction (strong opinions loosely held), and I don't consider it good advice to give someone outside of those environments.

</comment><comment><USER3> Understanding the uncertainty of a decision is important to make good decisions however, software massively benefits from first mover advantage so there is a reason why absolutism (even when usually wrong) is actually beneficial. For every conversation you have where you debate the nuanced merits of a direction you give your competitor that many more minutes of time to beat you to the punch. Facebook isn't doing bad because zuckerberg decided to use PHP. Most technology companies have the luxury of being wrong, what should be elaborated on here is how this theory doesn't apply to new areas people from tech want to apply it to (see: anything that has risk you have to actually consider).

<comment><USER4> Yes, there also often is not a single correct choice for many technology decisions. What is important in many cases is to pick a direction and get everyone aligned.

This doesn't hold for all types of decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm 50% sure this is a good article.

<comment><USER6> I'm 100 percent certain it's 90% terrible advice unless you never want to make staff or higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A person with strong opinions loosely held is unreliable. Today they fully agree with you and tomorrow you're the devil.

<comment><USER8> So you would rather they tell you the wrong thing twice? C'mon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with "strong opinions, loosely held" is that "strong" and "loosely" are poorly defined.

"Cubicles are worse than open-plan offices" is a strong opinion, but so is "Only brain-dead worker drones would put up with having to work in a cubicle."

Putting an uncertainty measure on the two statements won't have the same effect (to be clear, adding an "I am 90% sure that.." preface to the second statement changes very little).

<comment><USER10> "Strong" refers to to the level of passion with which you will defend the opinion.

The point is that you are willing to passionately argue for your side—as opposed to passively avoiding debate—but that you're not simultaneously ignoring the arguments presented by the opposing side.

The original article here is seemingly little more than a straw man argument against the quoted philosophy.</comment></comment>


What If Norway Bought Facebook (Or Google) - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/if-norway-bought-facebook-or-google-716c5501cca1 <comment><AUTHOR> Norway uses it's large pension fund to actively influence the world. The fund sold their shares in the tobacco and parts of the weapon industry some years ago.

Disclaimer; I am norwegian.</comment>


Ask HN: Who Might Be a User of Our CV Tech? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
As a side project, me and some colleagues built a software platform where you can use a webcam to track and monitor repetitive motions/tasks, powered by machine learning algorithms.
How it works: if you show the software a short 2 min video clip of e.g. a machine performing a task 10 times, the software learns to look for and recognize that task in real time. It can then report number of occurrences per hour or per day, alert you when output drops below some threshold of #tasks per hour, etc. Runs on a standard webcam and modern laptop (or embedded computer), and can generalize to most visual tasks with a distinct rhythm/pattern.
We're trying to brainstorm some client use cases and see if the tech can be used or modified to solve a meaningful problem. Would love to hear your ideas, and if you'd like to learn more about what we built feel free to leave an email address. <comment><USER2> Do you have an online demo? Is it possible or the processing is too heavy for that?

<comment><AUTHOR> If someone in particular wants to see, we can e-mail links to some of our internal demo videos.

<comment><USER2> Just a comment: The email field in the HN registration is private. If you want to make it public you should put it in the "about" field.

Also, perhaps you should get an account with a more relevant name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> count push-ups in gym?

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that really solving a problem? We can count repetitive human motions with a fixed camera. Thought briefly about sports but didn't think this kind of counting would be that valuable. But it could detect form breakdown, i.e. sloppy pushups.</comment></comment>


Via.js: Use the DOM in a Web Worker with WeakRefs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AshleyScirra/via.js <comment><USER2> This looks super neat, but I have one beef with it: Calling into other contexts is unavoidably async, yet this code lets you pretend it's not. Via.js handles this with a proxy object that, "records all operations and builds a queue of commands". That's all super neat and smart, but I worry that it totally breaks down when dealing with eg errors.

As a programmer, you think you're writing sync code but actually under the hood it's async. I'm not sure that that's the right approach, no matter how neat the code samples look.</comment>


The Happiest People Don't Let Their Minds Wander, According to a Harvard Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/quora/the-happiest-people-dont-let-their-minds-wander-according-to-a-harvard-study.html <comment><USER2> Is is odd that this is just an answer copied from Quora?

I wonder if Quora actively tries to syndicate answers for backlinks? Maybe Mellissa O'Brian sent this to the Editors at Inc to see if they would run it?

In either case I'm curious how this article came to be published.

EDIT: I see now that Quora has an author profile of syndicated content, which answers my question. [http://www.inc.com/author/quora](http://www.inc.com/author/quora)

<comment><USER3> Also, the article was written by a "mindfulness teacher" which should raise the question of the article's objectivity. How was this upvoted?

<comment><USER4> I think there may be growing pressure to game Hacker News. I've been seeing (anecdotally) increasing odd activity in early morning hours (EST) linked with some funny account activity, etc.

Seems most potential spam gets caught and flagged pretty quick, though. It's interesting browsing HN with the "showdead" option activated every now and then.

<comment><USER5> I've been more confused about the recent trend in just posting wikipedia articles on random subjects. No one in the comments seems to ever have a problem with it either.

<comment><USER6> I sometimes can spot why: it happens that there is a 'big' thread going on on HN and sometimes a Wikipedia article about one of the aspect of the thread or an argument in it is posted. I have also seen two articles on the front page that seemed to be part of the same discussion.

Eg: an article about Tokyo gentrification would trigger a discussion about waste management in big cities and then Wikipedia articles about Japanese sewers and some aspects of Japanese culture would be posted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "[...] the keys to happiness lie in mastering the mind, and not in changing external factors in our lives."

I have been interested in mindfulness for years, but I found it very unhelpful to follow strong statements like this one. In many cases I found pro-actively dealing with problems and trying to improve my situation is eventually easier than trying to keep my mind from them.

There is a balance between being mindful and content in the present on the one hand, and being analytical/critical/discontent on the other. Of course, most people in industrialized societies could certainly profit immensely from shifting more towards the mindful state.

<comment><USER8> If you are mindful you are way more proactive and productive. Mindfulness meditation (done properly) creates a bias towards action by changing the neurochemistry in the brain.

<comment><USER9> Well put! I would add that in mastering your internal frame of mind, a spotlight emerges on the "right" external factors to focus your action on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe you are able to focus because you are happier, more into the work or task, smarter so it's easier...etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> How to make it to top of HN: Tack on harvard/Mit/Stanford/in crowd institution's name to something that contrasts with a pop culture norm. Wait for lemmings to duke out the implications. It's as predictable as Trump getting elected.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wait but haven't there been posts on this very site where studies showed that daydreams & wandering minds help creativity as well? e.g. Something in this article must have been linked and upvoted here at some point: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/mind- wandering_n_40...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/mind- wandering_n_4024852.html)

<comment><USER13> Sadness is also linked to creativity: [http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/08/27/happy- sadne...](http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/08/27/happy-sadness-how- mixed-emotions-fuel-creativity/)

Bunch of stuff out there to support it, anecdotally I would agree. If you're too happy why bother doing/thinking differently?

<comment><USER14> When you're frustrated you also behave more variably, and behavioral variability is important to the discovery of novelty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm from the Midwest, and we learn to bottle it all up from a very young age! We must be the happiest people on earth.

</comment><comment><USER16> I find it easy enough to be mindful in general, assuming we're talking about the same concept, but lately it's relationships that have troubled my flow, and more particularly the repeated occurrence of getting attached to and then losing someone. I'm learning to deal with it, though.

</comment><comment><USER17> So simple yet so hard to get there, I've been trying to be mindful for more than a year now, but my mind is always full of worries and trying to find solutions, even though my life is no particularly complicated :/ anybody that achieved this has advice?

<comment><USER18> Maybe your worries are about important matters, and focusing in finding solutions to them has been useful for you. If doing that was useful then it's difficult to let go of that because nobody likes to cease doing what's useful.

If you want to worry less I think about two things that may help:

A - Set a time of the day for worries, and procrastinate worrying until that time. For example, set the worrying time from 18:45 to 19hs. This may sound strange, but it's recommended by some CBT therapists. [http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/Info- Postpone%20your%20...](http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/Info- Postpone%20your%20Worry.pdf) [http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/worryzones.htm](http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/worryzones.htm)

B - Train! Not following worry thoughts is a skill that requires practice, like building muscle. If you train you become better at it. You may train your attention by noticing your breath and when your attention gets caught by worry thougts, you notice that and go back to your breath. When it happens again, you notice it and go back to your breath. With practice, letting go of worry becomes much easier. You may practice that 15 minutes a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The way this article casually treats depression, anxiety, and unhappiness as basically the same root issue is mistaken. While shifting one's focus may allow one to be more happy, it will not cure a mental illness.

<comment><USER20> Due to involvement in communities seeking alternatives to the illness model of depression, I've come to the conclusion that that model is unhelpful to about as many people as it is helpful.

For myself (lifelong struggles with melancholy and several Major Depression diagnoses) this has been the rough effectiveness of approaches:

Medication: nil

Therapy: very slight, highly dependent on circumstances

Changing circumstances: Extremely effective when things go my way, but ultimately not effective because life is chaotic, and gatekeepers always have either more or much more control over your circumstances than you do, unless _you 're_ a gatekeeper. Or, you can be winning at life in every way, but you and your loved ones are still eligible for sudden misfortune.

Mindfulness: Very effective. Takes practice, but totally worth it, and ultimately becomes something you can control more than most other things.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. I have the exact same feeling on your first three, and have only ever given mindfulness a slight attempt. Maybe I should try it more. I'm surprised you came to the same conclusion on circumstances while still concluding that they may not matter if your mind is under control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't see a mechanism for this, whereas the opposite causation - that worry causes you to be distracted and you mind to wander - seems trivially obvious.

</comment><comment> d--b I wish I had known that the key to happiness was just a google search away...

</comment><comment><USER23> Corollary: Happiness and Creativity have an inverse correlation.

</comment><comment><USER24> Maybe happiness isn't the thing we should be prioritising?

</comment><comment><USER25> Makes me want to go code...

<comment><USER26> Can I code a girlfriend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think a girlfriend would make you happy?

<comment><USER26> that's truely a good question</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Use Monads(2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.intensivesystems.net/tutorials/why_monads.html

<comment><USER2> The most clear and concise write up of monads I've seen. Explaining how monads remove the need for boilerplate code is the equivalent of how loop constructs remove the need for goto is when I had my aha! moment.</comment>


NSA director tells staff to remain focused - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/nsa-director-tells-staff-to-remain-focused/2013/06/27/41252d74-df5c-11e2-b2d4-ea6d8f477a01_story.html?tid=rssfeed <comment><USER2> Nice letter.

But you can't "protect and defend" the Constitution by destroying it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office#United_States)</comment>


Ask HN: What programming blogs do you read daily? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> CSS Tricks is awesome. Chris Coyier is basically the CSS god, and his posts are always about the newest and most highly relevant topics.

Joel on Software is old, and not updated often, but still an unbelievable source of knowledge about programming and especially developer careers.

And of course shameless plug for my own blog, Hacking UI, which I do read it every day since I develop it. My partner and I write about front end development, Design and everything in between.</comment>


Ask HN: Will Bitcoin ever go mainstream? - <AUTHOR>

I've been reading a lot of Bitcoin discussion on bitcointalk lately and it frustrates me how misinformed most Bitcoin "evangelists" are on the economics that are critical to Bitcoin's future. Most of these people see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a thing to "buy low and sell high" thinking they are more of a stock than a currency. If there opinion represents a majority of Bitcoin owners, then we can expect a huge devaluation of Bitcoin in the next couple of years as they start to "cash out" as the prices increases significantly. I think this is speculator mentality is a factor in the extraordinarily high variation in the exchange rate of BTC/USD compared with relatively low variation in the exchange rate of EUR/USD.
This has me worried about the future of Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin and its derivatives have a lot of potential as a future currency but the way that people treat it now worries me. For Bitcoin to have a future it needs to be used by people in the same way that we dollars and euros day to day. People need to start buying more things with Bitcoin, get paid with Bitcoin, and keep savings and money market accounts in Bitcoin. We need to start "thinking" in Bitcoin like we think in dollars. But, the high changes in price scare adoption of Bitcoin. Why would I buy a laptop for 2 BTC when tomorrow that laptop could only cost 1.5 BTC because the value of BTC changed over night?
What is your opinion on the Bitcoin's future as a true currency? Is my concern valid or will the power of the technology trump the speculators in the long run? Can anyone point me to resources that go beyond the "speculator mentality" that has started to plague BT and various "Bitcoin evangelist" magazines? <comment><USER2> Recently I have been looking at the numbers and wondering if we are kidding ourselves.

Consumer sales transaction numbers are trivial It fails as a remittance vehicle due to the buy/sell delta Chinese moving money offshore 58% inflate transactions/price Bitcoin playing mother hen to alt-coin falsley aids price You'd never buy if calc replenishment costs Mining it's wasteful and inefficient

My prediction is Bitcoin will be a casualty of showing the way but not having the legs to deliver. In part because of flaws in its design and in part because open-source projects lack direction.

Positively, I'm certain cryptos are here to stay and we will see the currency of the future emerge in the next year or two.

One last thought, it's money going into Bitcoin investment or rather crypto - infrastructure?</comment>


Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskell.org/platform/#2014.2.0.0

<comment><USER2> Great opportunity to clean the cabal hell I was in. This time I can install you, Vector module!

</comment><comment><USER3> Haskell Platform feels a bit like Prelude; fine for people who are just using it for small self-teaching projects, but once you're supposed to do something "serious" then people seem to throw up their hands and say "No! never mind that.". I don't know. Maybe I've got the wrong impression.

Now that I know enough cabal to get by and not screw myself over (by creating dependency hell), I feel like Haskell Platform might not be relevant to my needs any more.

<comment><USER4> No, you're perfectly right. And while HP may be up to date right now, it'll be out of date next month and it will keep getting more and more obsolete until the next release in a year or so.

<comment><USER5> This release was unusually delayed, but future release should be more frequent again.

To quote the release announcement [http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2014-August/024284....](http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2014-August/024284.html) (Mark Lentczner):

 _" I realize this one was a long time a'comin'. I take the responsibility for the decisions that lead up to being this late, including deciding it was worth it to wait for GHC 7.8, and that this was the right time to re-write the platform build system. I hope the speed that we can now turn the platform will be evident in future releases."_

<comment><USER6> > This release was unusually delayed

I've heard that about Haskell Platform releases for 2 years now. I doubt that's suddenly going to change.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?  - <AUTHOR> At the London HN meetup last night I was amazed at how few people raised their hands when the group was asked "who is working on, or planning to work on a startup?".<p>Regardless of how one defines a startup/how the question was phrased/whether people just didn't bother to raise their hands, am I wrong to assume that a room of HN faithful should have more than ~5% of people trying to turn their software in to viable businesses? <comment><USER2> Logging in anonymously, because it lets me be slightly more direct.

As someone who does work on a startup in London, but didn't go last night, it's because I've found the HN London meetups to be chock-full of people who don't work on startups, but simply talk all evening about recycled opinions they've garnered from reading HN posts.

Not an interesting way to spend an evening.

<comment><USER3> HN is probably quite an aspirational thing for those still stuck in the perceived drudgery of enterprise and large scale software development for established companies. It's their dose of inspiration, I feel.

I agree it doesn't add a lot of value to the community, though. Speaking for myself, as someone who works at a startup, I was actually busy working last night. Like most nights.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, instead of talking about starting, how to and when to start... Just use your time well! Voted +1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rob actually asked "who is thinking of starting a startup soon, or has done so in the past couple of months", which may have prevented people who have started a startup or have been employed by one from raising their hands.

<comment><USER6> Exactly, most people at the meeting were working on startups, just currently a little later in the life-cycle

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I live in London and am currently trying to get my startup off the ground. I am also an avid reader of HN, and was considering going to last nights event.

Due to work pressures, i.e. launching soon, I saw it better to spend my time working on my startup than going to the HN event. I have 2 children, and work from home, so I need to grab any opportunity I can to work.

Also, there are now lots of startup events in London, and if you are busy then you really need to pick and choose which ones you go to. In my case I am going to the lean startup one next week, which I see as being currently more relevant (and maybe more useful) to me than the HN event.

<comment><USER8> We're all busy working, I think is the answer.

Like you I'm working away furiously trying to get the MVP out the door so we can start doing some testing.

While I'm very positive about HN, I feel that in some ways attending stuff like HN meetups seems like a bit of a popularity contest, "look at me!".

<comment><USER9> I am not sure why you see socialising with fellow geeks in the real world as a popularity contest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The HN meetup clashed with the Springboard mentoring & networking event hosted at TechHub. There must have been about 50 startups there (+ VCs/angels/jurnos/mentors). Quite a lot of HNers were there so I wouldn't be surprised if that had a negative impact on the number of startups at the HN event.

(For future reference if Springboard runs one of these events again, it's definitely worth going. I got a lot of practical advice that's going to have a major impact on my business, plus I had an early stage VC ask me for a pitch deck. I'm not sure how the event could have been any better.)

</comment><comment><USER11> That really surprised me too. In my experience there certainly isn't any shortage of web startups in London, so I have to wonder why so few of them come to an HN event.

Off the top of my head, possible options:

1\. Startups don't engage on HN, or don't feel part of the community. This seems pretty unlikely.

2\. (London) HN readers are predominantly people in full time jobs, or just not entrepreneurial.

3\. Startups are too busy working.

But none of those seem particularly probable. Maybe it is a cultural difference?

Or maybe it was just a bad night for startups :)

<comment><USER12> It's a combination of 3 and 1, I'd wager.

I've worked in startup environments in both the UK and the US.

In the US, being an entrepreneur is seen as a good thing, and people bond, mesh, and engage as a result of their common interest in stepping off the standard path.

In the UK... not so much. The vast majority of founders I know are a) busy working their nuts off and b) pretty bitter, due to the UK attitude to entrepreneurs (urgh, why would you do that? Starting your own business is _stupid_ ).

I guess what I'm getting at is that entrepreneurs in the US and the UK are pretty different - in the US, they rely on a support network of other entrepreneurs, and are part of a community. In the UK, you're on your own, definitively, and entrepreneurs shy away from potential support networks because they're so used to any large group of people being overwhelmingly comprised of naysayers.

Oh, and finally, London isn't the entire UK. You want to see startups? Get yourself out of the city. Bootstrapped startups start elsewhere in the country, as London is so disproportionately expensive - Bath, for instance, is chock full of 'em.

<comment><USER11> > pretty bitter, due to the UK attitude to entrepreneurs (urgh, why would you > do that? Starting your own business is stupid).

I have heard this attitude mentioned a few times but it is something that I have never encountered (I really cannot think of a single instance). I feel very lucky for this, but also surprised/dismayed that people can be so negative about others who go an such an adventure.

Keep your head down, know you are doing the right thing. Speaking of which, I need to write some code...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I live in London and am working on a startup.

I used to go to quite a few tech events in London but found I was spending too much time with like-minded people (techies) and not enough with people who had other backgrounds and interests.

These days I pretty much just go to LRUG once a month to socialise with the good friends I've made there over the years.

HN strikes me as a fairly diverse group though, so I'd be interested in going to the next meetup.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am working on a startup, but didn't raise my hand. I should have.

Honestly, and this is not a criticism, that evening felt much more like "talk about programmer stuff" than it did "talk about startup stuff". There were a couple of good talks about the business of startups, and the rest felt like coding, or pitches, or both (and again, this is not a criticism).

</comment><comment><USER15> Where was it advertised? I heard about it on twitter DURING the event, but I would have been interesting in going.

<comment><USER9> Hi Piers, this is the meetup page <http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/> . We'll announce the next event shortly, expect it will be at some point in March depending on venue availability.

I did not advertise the last event on HN because it got booked up very quickly and were at pretty much full capacity last night.

<comment><USER16> Get it on Lanyrd.com please! :-) TYVM

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Where are all the London hackers working on startups? Places like TechHub and White Bear Yard, mostly. Working.

(Speaking of which, nearly everyone I know – including us – is hiring.)

</comment><comment><USER18> I went to the HN meetup last night, and I'm in full-time employment with no start-up experience; just some ambitions to do something in the future. I go along for a little inspiration and to talk to other developers - do people object to folks like me coming to these events?

<comment><USER9> Absolutely not. You are very much welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It'd be interesting to see what level of involvement HN members have with startups generally. I've submitted a poll here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2179696>

</comment><comment><USER19> At the pub afterwards, about every other person I met was working at a startup - especially later on when it wasn't so packed. The pile of business cards I'm going through now reflects this. Perhaps there was some self-selection amongst the people who stayed on at the pub for a while?

(I regret that I missed the talks - unfortunately I was held up by a meeting that ran late).

</comment><comment><USER20> Sadly missed last nights HN meetup. But just wanted to say I'm a London hacker working on a Seedcamp '10 winning startup.

</comment><comment><USER21> I went there with the rough expectation that I might find some people to co- found something with, but since I'm a wuss I didn't talk to anyone I didn't already know.

If they're not already working at a startup, are people who attend these events likely to be open the idea of work for equity or co-founding?

<comment><USER22> Yes. Even if they're in a startup, the best is usually keeping an eye on the menu, and options available (knowing your opportunity cost allows you to make more informed decisions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm in London and we're working on a startup, although it's been going for so long it's more like a bootstrapped company type affair by now. We didn't go because of time issues. We don't have enough of it! I would like to attend one of the meetings though, when I get a chance.

</comment><comment><USER24> I live in London and work for a Boston-based startup with a small office here. So, not actually a London startup. But I'd be interested in attending one those meetups in the future. Where are those events announced btw?

<comment><USER9> <http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Judging by the number of people in shirts and ties there, I'd imagine a large proportion are in full-time employment and on the periphery of the startup scene.

<comment><USER26> as one of the suited and booted attendees, I'd just like to say I'm running a startup but selling into conservative / corporate organisations so the shirt and tie helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sorry I've missed the last two meetups. I'm in India currently, about to get married :-)

 _Raises hand_ (see profile for details)

</comment><comment><USER28> heya, I was wondering the same thing. I'm busy working my nuts off, and wonder where I should be networking.

If you use MSN messenger ... add me as a contact. (That goes for everyone else) alainrichardt [at] hotmail.com

cheers

Alain</comment>


Ask HN: I own mrrobot.io Should I build something on it or sell it? - <AUTHOR> I have an idea to build a great website which is inspired by http://3564020356.org/deserve.htm but the hacks will be related to the ongoing series. I'm not sure, if I should go ahead and build it. Would it kick off? or should I just sell it? I'm inclined on the idea to build it. I asked a few friends around who weren't much impressed. So I wanted to ask more like-minded people. What do you think? <comment><USER2> You're not likely to make a non-trivial amount of money from selling the name, so it's more down to whether you're sufficiently enthused about the idea (the idea isn't likely to be a money-spinner either, but maybe it's a great fun project for you)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I agree with your opinion to an extent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you can manage to get any offer above $XXX, sell it. The show's popularity could very well be at it's peak, given that maintaining or even increasing television ratings after the first season are rare. Otherwise, it could be a fun side project worth sentimental value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Good tips. Kinda my thoughts too. Just needed an extra push mentally from others.. like you. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could create an ARG à la Halo 2's ILB ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Bees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Bees)), but for Mr. Robot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh.. so that's what we call it. ARG! While I was looking for a headstart on google, I was like.. "Has no one ever built things like this before". Thanks :) This is cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My first thought was that it would be good for a smart contracts platform, automating things for people/companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh.. good idea. You mean something around [https://bitshake.io/](https://bitshake.io/) right? First problem that came to my mind would be conflicting laws between two people creating a mutual contract from two different countries.</comment></comment>


Imageflow is open-source software which scales, edits, and optimizes images - <AUTHOR> http://www.imageflow.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> A significant portion of it is written in Rust. [https://github.com/imazen/imageflow](https://github.com/imazen/imageflow)</comment>


Homicides in America by Race: Who kills more? Using latest FBI crime stats - <AUTHOR> https://www.scedast.com/1/ <comment><USER2> Dupe - submitted twice by the author.</comment>


Show HN: Calculate full scholarships available based on your grades - <AUTHOR> http://www.collegemerit.com/

<comment><USER2> Pretty abysmal list, even with a 4.0 GPA and perfect scores on every exam.

<comment><USER3> Pretty abysmal idea, really.

Granted I graduated over a decade ago, but I recall scholarships not generally being tied to either grades or test scores. Many public universities will grant automatic _admission_ based on those (and a few years back I got to write a calculator that compared universities in a region based on their standards for that), but _scholarships_ seemed to be very rarely awarded based solely on those factors.

(during my own school search I went through multiple on-site scholarship- application programs, which typically involved analyzing my full high-school transcript, followed by on-site interviews and exams tailored specifically to the school)

<comment><USER4> > Pretty abysmal idea, really.

Please keep toxic comments like this as far away from Show HN as possible.

<comment><USER5> Ubernostrum is referring to "scholarships available based on grades" as a bad idea, not the OP's link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are the forums from collegeconfidential.com a good/trust-worthy source of data? I am not very familiar with the site but it seems like anecdata at best. Looking at some of the postings it seems like there is disagreement over the validity of the figures some people have provided.

<comment><AUTHOR> I double checked all of the listings myself, and only included scholarships that covered full tuition or more.

<comment><USER6> I would definitely put that somewhere on the site instead of the link to cc.com that leaves people wondering how legitimate your numbers are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Enlightening.

Also, imo this explains why the University of Alabama has been attracting so many amazing people the past 6 years^. _They implemented an automatic qualifying scholarship at least that many years ago (presidential) in addition to probably the best national merit scholarship in the country_ (free tuition, iPad, $1000 stipend per year, $2000 for summer research or study abroad, 1 year of free housing, not to mention your college will probably give you another scholarship)

But then again this just shows automatic scholarships I guess. Otherwise other universities make more discretionary decisions.

^ bias, I went to school there in that time frame.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't live in America so I haven't been through the school/college system here so I didn't know what either of the fields meant. Perhaps you could have some kind of tooltip telling you what to enter into each field (it took me about 5 attempt to get the form to submit because I kept entering wrong values). Although I guess the people using it will know what to enter but even so a little tooltip is always nice.

Also when I failed the validation the values I entered disappeared which is a bit frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER9> The site wipes the content of the inputs if I submit without enough information.

Since I'm not American and don't know what the score ranges should be, can you put a little tooltip or addendum to explain the test and what it's scored out of?

I was interested in poking around to see if I would have scored scholarships anywhere in America if I input similar grades to what I achieved in Australia but the lack of usability made me quit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. The site no longer wipes the inputs clean on a validation error.

The SAT has three subtests with scores ranging from 200 to 800. Scores are multiples of 10.

The ACT has a score from 1 to 36.

You only need either an ACT or SAT score.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> well this is quite upsetting</comment>


Show HN: uuidfmt – small CLI utility to formal UUID into the canonical form - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zshamrock/uuidfmt <comment><USER2>
      echo '3A2DD5E0D2C04F13A3E2F600C9530793' \
          | sed -r \
              -e 's/-//g' \
              -e 's/(\w{8})(\w{4})(\w{4})(\w{4})(\w{12})/\1-\2-\3-\4-\5/' \
          | tr '[A-F]' '[a-f]'

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Thank you, for sharing! Although it also supports the reverse option and could be easier to distribute (and keep in sync and up to date) between colleagues, and other people. But, yes, there could be multiple ways to do the same, and for that simple one using Go might overkill to some degree, but every approach has its own cons and pros.</comment></comment>


Vivaldi browser introduces Break Mode – Let us know what you think - <AUTHOR> https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-introduces-break-mode/ <comment><USER2> Great feature, even better to highlight the relevant parts of the URL and make them independently clickable</comment>


Apache Kylin – OLAP Engine for Sub-Second Count Distinct Queries - <AUTHOR> https://kyligence.io/blog/why-kylin-is-the-only-olap-engine-for-sub-second-count-distinct-queries <comment><USER2> Kylin is a really cool project, and how it's using OLAP for faster analytics on large datasets/big data is interesting - especially given how old the technology is. The Kylin community has found some creative ways of breathing new life into OLAP. If you'd like to join the project you can learn more here: [http://kylin.apache.org/](http://kylin.apache.org/)</comment>


Theranos Lays Off Most of Its Remaining Workforce - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-lays-off-most-of-its-remaining-workforce-1523382373 <comment><USER2> Often, we look at the negative in what Ms. Holmes wrought (rightfully so).

Instead, for a sec, look at one positive point in what Tyler Shultz brought forth through his heroic actions against Theranos[0]. His story showed us what SV is and what it can be. Though never guaranteed, he has a happy ending as he recently launched Flux Biosciences in 2017[1].

Remember: Be like Tyler Shultz.

[0][https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/explosive-new- detail...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/explosive-new-details- emerge-in-lawsuit-against-theranos)

[1][https://www.forbes.com/sites/elliekincaid/2017/10/03/after-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/elliekincaid/2017/10/03/after- blowing-the-whistle-on-theranos-tyler-shultz-is-going-back-into-diagnostic- testing/2/#399c8cc4fd5f)

<comment><USER3> I would love to be like Tyler Shultz but my grandfather is not George Shultz...

<comment><USER2> I hear this a lot about Tyler. It just shows that the commentor never read the linked articles or did any research. Tyler and his Grandfather are not on speaking terms due to the whistle blowing and likely never will be. Tyler very much forgave any inheritance and was likely to be bankrupted due to his heroic actions, yet he did them anyways because it was the right thing to do. Maybe his grandfather's position got him into the job in the first place, but Tyler very much was facing a life of endless poverty for his whistle blowing.

<comment><USER4> "Endless poverty" Wealth is relative, sure, but this seems a rather strong choice of words for what becomes of whistleblowers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still can't believe how Elizabeth Holmes got away with just a slap in the wrist. Is it because the board was full of connected people? Or because it's a successful woman CEO story? Either way, it's a disgrace. Sociopaths will pick this signal as a boost of confidence.

<comment><USER6> No question this Theranos situation would have inspired a whole new wave of startup con artistry, but I think all those people are currently peddling shitcoins.

When the shitcoin bubble completely falls apart (a process which it may be going through right now), we might see a bunch of Theranoses popping up.

<comment><USER7> > a process which it may be going through right now

Eh, I dunno. I'm not a big cryptocurrency fan, but that doesn't really sound like the current reality. It may have lost a lot of its December peak value, but the value of cryptocurrencies is still about where it was in November and has been stable there for a month or two. That's still a lot higher than the first ten months of 2017 (and previous years), so _" completely falls apart"_ seems a bit strong.

<comment><USER6> You've mistaken what I mean when I say "shitcoin bubble". I'm talking about the thousands of ICOs that are utter garbage. At some point that has to fall apart.

Eventually you burn enough people and there's nobody left to scam, or governments step in to regulate it. There's a reason you don't see stock peddling scams anymore.

<comment><USER7> Ah, ok, fair enough. It seems that I did misunderstand. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wait. They still had a workforce? What the heck are they working on? How are they still extant? The entire operation was revealed to be a world-historical fraud! How is this company still in operation on any level? I don't get it.

<comment><USER9> AFAIR, they have switched focus to some other bullshit idea called miniLab:

> "We will return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform," writes > Holmes of the new device she unveiled in early August at the American > Association for Clinical Chemistry's convention in Philadelphia. She added > that "our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated > laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on > vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and > intensive care."

[http://fortune.com/2016/10/05/theranos-shuts-down- clinics/](http://fortune.com/2016/10/05/theranos-shuts-down-clinics/)

<comment><USER10> What's the opposite of "nobody every got fired for choosing IBM"?

This woman needs to steer far, far away from anything in the medical field for a LONG time. If she does end up back in that field, she needs to be way behind the scenes. Not presenting at a conference.

<comment><USER8> She's actually banned from being an officer of ANY company.

Associated Press, March 14, 2018:

"Under an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, Holmes is barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years. The SEC said it will pursue its case against the president of the company, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, in federal district court in the Northern District of California."

<comment><USER11> > She's actually banned from being an officer of ANY company.

Any _public_ company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Theranos is by far the most explicit example of "fake it till you make it" I've seen. Maybe that motto should be shelved in the future.

<comment><USER13> The idea of "faking it till you make it" is about projecting the self- confidence of someone whose already successful. I've never heard anyone use this phrase as a justification for providing materially false statements to investors or whatever.

<comment><USER14> I think the problem is that people often get away with doing ethically dubious things in early-stage startups. It only makes news when they got caught.

For example: Airbnb started out by scraping Craiglist for their listings. This was not only ethically dubious, it was against Craigslist's terms of service.

They got away with it, though, and have obviously gone legitimate since. Same with YouTube and copyrighted content.

<comment><USER13> > I think the problem is that people often get away with doing ethically > dubious things in early-stage startups.

No doubt. However, I personally don't see this as being at all related to 'fake it till you make it' as a concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They just raised $100M from Fortress Capital backed by their patent portfolio. If I had to guess this money is probably coming from a subset of their existing stuck investors banding together in a magical thinking exercise to win back. A good lesson in human frailties. It's hard to watch something you had that you thought was worth billions go to zero. They might as well have funded a whole new company.

<comment><USER16> unbelievable. After seeing this, can anyone doubt that luck is a major factor in success? These investors won't even take the time to do the most basic due diligence. They have no business managing millions of dollars.

<comment><USER15> Venture capital tends to be a badly performing asset class. Here a VC's motivation is easy to discern, it's a way to kick the can down the road. You take a liability (your shitty investment) and Fortress magically transforms it into something that looks vaguely asset-like (a portfolio of shitty investments). The only question is if the top up you pay will be worth it to the LPs. To the VC it is, because it saves embarrassment. Due to this moral hazard, there is a maybe an argument to be made here that distressed asset industry kind of breaks capitalism.

<comment><USER16> I appreciate the insight. There is more nuance here than my comment would suggest. What I said probably applies more to the initial investors, before Theranos was fully exposed as fraudulent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now take a minute to think about the actual employees. Most of them did nothing wrong. Many relocated of left their previous jobs, their carriers are disturbed, their CVs tainted.

</comment><comment><USER18> You'd have to be pretty stubborn to remain at this company after all of the bad news it's been getting lately. The writing was on the wall like a year ago that this ship was sinking, why would anyone stay?

<comment><USER19> Because they need a paycheck. Searching for a new job is incredibly stressful and emotionally draining, and is not the best option for everyone, at any particular time.

<comment><USER20> Indeed..

I suspect the average HNer is much more employable than the average corporate/office worker, and it's something we all probably lose sight of from time to time (particularly when I see comments like "just get a different job!")

<comment><USER21> Not to mention the fact that healthcare is tied to your employer, so if you are the sole breadwinner for a large family, you pretty much have to have another job in hand before you can jump ship. The recession ended a while ago, but it was a relatively jobless recovery and non-tech sectors still haven't recovered fully.

<comment><USER22> Well, there is COBRA but you'll have to cover whatever subsidy your employer was providing.

<comment><USER23> I've always wondered how in the world an unemployed person could possibly afford COBRA...

<comment><USER22> Obviously it's hard absent having had a decent job but people can and do take time off between jobs or take some time to find new employment. Health insurance isn't cheap but, given some savings, it's not in the couldn't possibly afford range any more than rent/mortgage is. I've been between jobs, albeit not for very long, and it was an expense but never a particular issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Again, what did you expect?

[https://medium.com/multiple-personalities-order/how-to-be- th...](https://medium.com/multiple-personalities-order/how-to-be-the-best- investor-in-the-world-ed31163fe965)

</comment><comment><USER25> Where does Elizabeth Holmes go from here? Does she have a future somewhere else, or is this something that will be hard to come back from? I don't see her as someone who would willingly work for others. Thoughts?

<comment><USER26> Write a book, maybe? You'd have to be insane to hire her or invest in anything she does in the future.

<comment><USER27> It's really up to if the investors felt she defrauded them all. Some clearly do but others? It's not so clear to me. For whatever the reasons, she seems to be loved by at least a few investors, enough so that it puts dorks here on HN off.

Unicorn funding makes it a little different but I've worked with multiple CEOs that lost investors millions of dollars, had companies fail and then had the same investors bank roll them again. So long as the investors feel like they're running things the right way and communicating with them the right way, they appear to think a 40% hit ratio is stellar. Greed has a very limited memory. She'll take a break, probably get some sort of sweetheart deal either as a CEO or C-level officer of some small existing company in a different space (ad analytics or something, who knows?) and if they knock that out of the park, she'll be a champion again ready to get funding for whatever hot idea turns up. I also wouldn't be surprised to see her working at a VC firm.

If the DOJ swoops in and has charged, that would make things different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I actually found it incredible that they had 125 people still working for them. Why would anyone continue to spend their time working for such a disreputable company?

<comment><USER29> Rent is due and you have no better options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Non-Paywall: [http://archive.is/xtXYU](http://archive.is/xtXYU)

</comment><comment><USER31> This article aged so well: [http://time.com/3822734/elizabeth- holmes-2015-time-100/](http://time.com/3822734/elizabeth- holmes-2015-time-100/)

<comment><USER32> Ahh, hahahaha. And it's by Henry Kissinger.

<comment><USER33> He whored himself out for so little.

<comment><USER34> So little? He and Mattis were the pimps in this case.

<comment><USER33> I guess I don't know what his payout was, but he attached his name to something embarrassing which couldn't have possibly made him that much extra cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> i take enormous pleasure in this, its great to see a fraud go down, simple as that

<comment><USER36> Arguably a step forward for feminism also</comment></comment>


Show HN: Realtime streaming data from all US courts (100 loc) - <AUTHOR> https://courts.zjonsson.com/ <comment><USER2> Pretty cool. Next, filter for fortune 1000 company names mentioned in law suits and connect to a trading platform api.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! This is open source so anyone can play with it</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cryptographic salary negotiation protocol? - <AUTHOR>

This is a maths/crypto problem.  Is there some means by which an interviewer (potential employer) and interviewee (potential employee) can establish whether they have overlapping salary ranges, without revealing the actual ranges to each other?
If possible, this would be a useful first filter to check for employment compatibility, without leaking information for the actual salary negotiations.
More formally, if interviewer Alice has a secret number X (the maximum salary that she is willing to pay), and interviewee Bob has a secret number Y (the minimum salary that he is prepared to accept), is there an exchange of information that allows both parties to establish if X >= Y without revealing Y to Alice or X to Bob?  Given that Alice already knows X, and Bob already knows Y, it should not be possible to determine the difference between X and Y from the exchange of information.
This is obviously trivial to solve with the use of a trusted third party.  Is it possible to solve without the use of a trusted third party? <comment><USER2> I get the nerdy fun of this, but I don't see the benefit. Consider the game theory. If there's no range overlap, it doesn't matter what your signaling is, because the deal isn't going to clear. You're equally well off as an candidate by revealing your ceiling, and as an employer by revealing your floor. Meanwhile, the cryptographic exchange simply defers the real problem of who's going to reveal a number first, because someone has to cough something up to move the protocol forward.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out Yao's Millionaires' Problem[1]. It's exactly what you're describing and does not require a third party.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire%27s_Problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire%27s_Problem)

</comment><comment><USER4> One approach would be for offeror to encode the same "you're hired" message multiple times, using standard salary numbers for the encryption keys, and randomizing their order. If applicant is able to decode one of the encrypted messages with his desired standard salary (and somehow barred from trying multiple times with different numbers) then there'd be no third party necessary.

Preventing multiple attempts would be the challenge with this approach. Alternatively, the "you're hired" message could itself be encrypted such that the applicant could send it back to the offeror to be decrypted. The challenge there is verifying the offeror didn't encode "$50,000" instead of "pay within range". The offeror encoding "no" and "yes" values and sending those two values (but not saying which is which) ahead of time would mitigate that problem, but again not if the applicant is able to run multiple numbers through the system (noting at which point the value changes).

The best solution would be an algorithmic third party search engine which doesn't even mention the job or candidate to each other if there's no overlap in salary, taking less tangible things like years of work experience, education into account.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great idea. Even if you could solve it with out a thirdparty it seems to me like a thirdparty solution is the way to go in terms usability. What would you name such a thing?

"Hi, I am happy to attend an intervjuv but before I do I need to make sure you can pay with in my range. Please go to www.dowefitinsaleryterms.com/X12xs2 ho is a third party. " Would that work?

</comment><comment><USER6> This type of problem is called secure two party computation. Tasty looks like a good framework to use for this kind of problems.

[http://code.google.com/p/tastyproject/](http://code.google.com/p/tastyproject/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Won't this just encourage both parties to choose arbitrarily wide ranges, which would cause the first filter to always pass? This would just get us back to where we started, where someone has to say a number first.</comment>


Firefox's faster, slicker, slimmer Quantum edition now out - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/firefoxs-major-quantum-upgrade-now-rolling-out-to-everyone/ <comment><USER2> My big question is whether people are really noticing such a dramatic speed difference? I've tried it several times, and it seems like there is a negligible difference, if any, between it and Chrome. And I'm a guy that uses Sublime even though I like the feature set on VSCode better because I can't live with the snappiness downgrade.

<comment><USER3> No. I try FF nightly very often because I really want to dump Chrome. But then it crashes (with devtools open, I should say; it's fine for regular browsing) or grinds to a crawl. Every tab. Total lockup, always within a few minutes of starting work.

<comment><USER4> OS?

Old profile?

<comment><USER3> Linux. I will try deleting my profiles.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps you can install Firefox stable, now that Quantum is available there. Nightly tends to crash more often; it crashes once or twice a week for me, but I already expect that. I'm using it to feel good about helping Mozilla.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have several atom-based 2-in-ones that are now unusable with edge and chrome, and installing FF57 (beta) brought them back to life. This is a great performance improvement.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been wanting to get back on Firefox for quite some time now, but the main thing holding me back was that all of my passwords were saved on Chrome. A few months ago, I moved to 1Password, so this is the perfect time to give it a real try!

<comment><USER8> For folks not using Chrome as their password manager. Firefox has a built in utility to import passwords from Chrome. Personally, I use both. Chrome for the less important things that I want super-quick access to (i.e. autofill) and 1P for everything else.

<comment><USER9> I've been looking for a way to import passwords from Chrome into Firefox, and was unable to find it. It is the only thing preventing me from using Firefox. Can you point to some place have any link where this is documented? (I'm using Firefox Developer edition.)

<comment><USER7> It looks like you can do it here: [https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/import-bookmarks-data-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/import- bookmarks-data-another-browser)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The UI is kinda sucky and for some reason every couple years they insist in switching the location of basic things like the refresh button, favorites, etc.

56 was already fast for me, didn't noticed much difference but it's a good thing they woke up and started doing the work instead of all talk and fuzzy feelings about other personal agendas.

<comment><USER11> I don't like the new default interface at all, but at least it's mostly customizeable without addons.

I changed to the "light" theme, disabled animations (toolkit.cosmeticAnimations.enabled;false), turned the title bar back on, turned off all of the pocket/highlights junk on the new tab window, and changed the density to "compact".

I like the experience now, except for the square tabs really bug me.

<comment><USER12> I can't make it to show a dropdown arrow in the URL box like any normal dropdown would, at the far right of the box, always at the same place. They moved the arrow to somewhere randomly in the middle, depending on the icons inside of the URL box. Somehow these icons are more importan to them?

It seems their developers don't use that arrow? Or is it because Chrome doesn't have it? I'm not using Chrome, but it seems the FF developers do, if true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm on 57 since some time now. It is certainly faster, but still not competitive on macOS compared to Chrome. Responsiveness and especially cpu load are quite high as soon as animations are happening. Is it just me?

<comment><USER14> Not just you. I've been using it on and off since Nightly and it drains my battery fairly quickly. I'm back to using Chrome.

Ironically, I read this blog post ([https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum- era-h...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how- firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/)) in Chrome and Firefox, and on Firefox the scrolling was noticeably slow to the point where I found it distracting.

Edit: Turns out scrolling a simple page up and down causes Firefox to use 40% CPU. Is it not using any hardware acceleration?

<comment><USER15> Not sure if it's using hardware acceleration _right now_ (i.e. in v57), but there's a new rendering component (WebRender) coming in one of the next releases which does everything on the GPU.

<comment><USER16> Hardware acceleration is a feature in the options. I've not found that it's very useful and had to turn it off for performance reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've decided to make Firefox my main browser after yesterday's discussion. Migrating from Chrome was relatively painless:

* Firefox could import my bookmarks and, equally important, most passwords without a problem.

* Firefox's syncing capabilities seems to sync everything that's important.

* There's a built-in dark theme, people! It isn't applied to empty tabs, though.

* You can customize the toolbar. Not nearly as powerful as Opera's visual editor but better than Chrome's.

* Many plugins haven't been ported to 57.

* It uses a lot of RAM. I only have two tabs open and 5 plugins active yet Firefox uses 500 MB. Doesn't really bother me because I can sacrifice RAM for performance.

* The unified address/search bar is better than Chrome's because it actually consistently searches your bookmarks and not randomly like Chrome. Also, because you can add metadata to your Firefox bookmarks, you can add synonyms and what not to make searching for bookmarks even more powerful.

* I absolutly love that Firefox makes it possible to create custom search engines via the context menu. Also, you can easily add shortcuts to specific bookmarks? Brilliant.

<comment><USER18> >It uses a lot of RAM

I think Firefox uses a bit more RAM than Chrome when being just opened with fresh session. The point is - that value doesn't increase so massively when opening more tabs as with Chrome. On my machine with 8 GB RAM, Chrome is just unusable, as it eats the whole RAM and everything starts to swap. If you actually use the browser, Firefox clearly wins regarding RAM usage.

Here, right now, with 136 tabs open and 20 extensions, Firefox Nightly uses 2 GB of RAM, with 0.5 GB being used by 1 one of 8 content processes (so probably mostly by long-running Facebook tab, which is massive resource hog). Chrome would eat the whole 8 GB somewhere around 30-50 tabs already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am happy to see a return to the simplified options menu. When I do remote technical support it's much easier to say click on the icon with three horizontal lines then click "Preferences" rather than find the gear icon that may be moved due to screen resolution.

<comment><USER20> Same.

I still miss Classic Theme Restorer, but the main reason I used it was to bring back the old FF menu button, as I refused to use the weird "bag of squares" menu that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Still feels like it's in the wrong place, and I feel like I should be able to move it, but I'm starting to get used to the new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's supposed to support FIDO U2F devices, but I'm unable to log into my Google or Github accounts like I do in Chrome. I'm not sure if it's on their end or Firefox's.

I get that it's an edge case, though. Has anyone else noticed this or looked into it?

<comment><USER22> It's available from 58 (so, not current release) and you have to explicitly enable it in `about:config`. Search for "security.webauth" and enable what you would like.

With that method, you can successfully login to GitHub and other services using U2F. Unfortunately, not Google, because Google doesn't check if Firefox has U2F support or not. Instead, it makes the assumption based upon the browser agent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Being faster is one thing (good thing).

Having most of extensions unusable - not quite.

Till 'UnMHT' or 'Custom Tab Width' and several other extensions are not present for Firefox Quantum, I stick to 'slow' Firefox 56.

</comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone else noticed really slow performance on Google sites (especially Inbox and Docs) with Quantum? Are there any theories on what's causing it?

I really want to use Firefox more but I spend a lot of time in GSuite.

<comment><USER25> Google likely doesn't test/optimize for browsers other than Chrome as much as they do for Chrome. It's similar to how Microsoft used to mainly test/optimize for IE and if anyone complained they just told them to use IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _should remain quick and responsive even under heavy load with hundreds of tabs._

What is the use case where someone would require hundreds of tabs to be open?

<comment><USER27> Actually, I'd like to revert the question: why would I close tabs? I generally have a few hundreds of them opened, because it works.

Once in a while, I realize that I'm not going to read all of these things and I remove most of them. But I'm glad my Firefox scales up to these use cases.

<comment><USER28> > why would I close tabs

Anxiety at the "I must read this" a bunch of open tabs can create. Frustration at being unable to find the tab I actually wanted to pull up out of the hundreds available to me. Forgetting something I actually wanted to do because it's buried in an avalanche of windows.

It's kinda funny to watch a colleague who follows that mantra try and find the right tab, sometimes cycling through the 4-5 copies of the same website to find the one with the proper state.

Then I see them do the same thing with terminal tabs/windows and cringe because they can never remember where they are or where their windows are connected to. Given that they have prod access and are connected out there while also developing locally, I'm sure nothing will ever go wrong...

<comment><USER29> That anxiety does not exist for everyone. I do a thing I call "immutable browsing" with tree-style tabs. I open EVERY link in a new child tab (and I might try to make my browser [0](shameless plug) support new-tab form submission). When I no longer need the parent, I just close it and other tabs move up.

Navigating a tree of your actions or your current context is actually way easier than re-navigating a website. This is especially true with things like API docs where you might open a bunch of things and constantly re-reference them. Saving off trees and supporting a kind of quick-tab-find approach both help here too. This also helps when navigating things like source repositories on GitHub.

We don't tell people to retrieve files externally because their filesystem makes it hard to find things. And we don't really chide people for too many editor tabs open either because we have a navigation panel. Why is a browser any different here?

0 - [https://cretz.github.io/doogie/](https://cretz.github.io/doogie/)

<comment><USER28> > And we don't really chide people for too many editor tabs open either > because we have a navigation panel

> Why is a browser any different here?

"navigation panel" In which case the tabs are effectively duplicated, and not of much use.

> Navigating a tree of your actions or your current context is actually way > easier than re-navigating a website.

It really depends on the size of the tree, and the speed of page loads. For example, I keep a local copy of the Python, Go, and Boto documentation. This makes navigation fast and simple, even in the slowest of browsers. Click on a link, loaded (virtually) instantly. Hit the back button on my mouse, loaded instantly. One tab, fast as I could ever ask for.

Ultimately, OP was asking why, I answered. No chiding intended, and only a little judgement - but disorder is incredibly ineffective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Did 57 fix the profile rot problem? (wherein the user profile will eventually start causing the browser to bog down over weeks and months of continual use).

AFAICT, it's still very common for someone with a "slow firefox" issue to be told to nuke their user profile.

<comment> Anthony-G I recently heard of user profile resets being touted as a solution to various issues. I found it interesting because I've been using the same set of user profiles for the past 10 years without issue.

Perhaps it's a solution for problems caused by too many installed add-ons (that may conflict with each other). I'm fairly conservative about what add- ons I install and don't have more than 10 installed at any one time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm really glad that Firefox is back in the game! But I haven't got a compelling reason to switch from Chrome just yet.

<comment><USER32> Compared to Chrome, Firefox has the huge advantage that it is Free Software, while Chrome (the whole package) isn't.

Compared to Chromium (the Free Software part of Chrome), Firefox has the advantage that it has no anti-features in the first place, rather than having the Chromium community trying to keep after Google removing each anti-feature as soon as they notice.

<comment><USER33> Mozilla is an independent advocate for the open web, compared with a for- profit entity. This means the incentives are better. They try to fight the good fights, even if they don't always succeed.

That's a key reason to support them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's no Policeman like extension avalaible now :(

<comment><USER35> You can try umatrix - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/umatrix/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/umatrix/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I dislike it intensely. What I had was working for me.

<comment><USER37> All my add ons got disabled and many will never get updated

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> FF 57 feels quite good on my Mac, but it has an impediment to me to use it everyday: Google Hangouts videocalls. I use GSuite on my organization, so I use it practically everyday.

Any news on that? Will the introduction of WebExtensions might help?</comment>


Job Titles That Can Sink Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2010/09/13/job-titles-that-can-sink-your-startup/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2> A duplicate of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1686430>.</comment>


Show HN: Data Is Plural – A weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets - <AUTHOR> https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural <comment><AUTHOR> TinyLetter archive: [https://tinyletter.com/data-is- plural/archive](https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural/archive)

Structured archive: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wZhPLMCHKJvwOkP4jucl...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wZhPLMCHKJvwOkP4juclhjFgqIY8fQFMemwKL2c64vk)

Most recent edition, sent this morning: [http://tinyletter.com/data-is- plural/letters/data-is-plural-...](http://tinyletter.com/data-is- plural/letters/data-is-plural-2015-11-04-edition)</comment>


Wired Feature on Deep Sea Cowboys Using 3D Models to Save Giant Ships - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> An excellent article that raises my pulse, reads like a Tom Clancy foray into engineering. Thank you.

How many engineers do you know have a mini-fleet of high-end German automobile engineering? And deserve it?

These guys do.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the most amazing Wired article I have ever read.

</comment><comment><USER3> Damn. Men of the right stuff...</comment>


Show HN: Prove your job skills to get hired - <AUTHOR> http://Makeconnex.com <comment><USER2> All I see is a landing page with nowhere to navigate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be a login/signup in the top right corner. What device are you on?</comment></comment>


Don't Get Trampled: The Puzzle for "Unicorn" Employees - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/positiveslope/dont-get-trampled-the-puzzle-for-unicorn-employees-8f00f33c784f <comment><USER2> A killer quote from the article:

"To bring this home, it's like negotiating your salary without specifying the currency you're being paid in."

This part has always baffled me. Potential employees accepting X shares without knowing the total share count.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a dupe.

Original - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13305066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13305066)

Best - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13313550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13313550)</comment>