Ant colony 'personalities' shaped by environment - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28658268

<comment><USER2> Describing ant colonies as entities with a personality instantly reminded me of the dialogues between the anteater and the ant hill in Godel Escher Bach.

In it, Hofstadter likens an ant colony to the human brain, and ants to neurons in an attempt to explain how intelligence appears to be an emergent quality.

<comment><USER3> This shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone at this point. Environmental and inter-species signalling? Why would neurons communicating with each other in the presence of external signalling inputs be any different, fundamentally, than ants (with brains and neurons of their own, but not as many) communicating with each other in the presence of external [environmental] signalling inputs? There are scale differences but that's it. Aggressiveness or passivity is not something you'd only expect to emerge from highly complex biological signalling networks. If you can make people more peaceful by putting them in drunk tank pink rooms, it's perfectly plausible that you could find some things that make ant colonies more aggressive, and some things that make them less aggressive.</comment></comment>


Deep Learning State of the Art (2019) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53YvP6gdD7U <comment><USER2> Nice work. I can think of only two things that are missing:

* Normalizing flows - e.g., [https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.08803](https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.08803) , [https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03039](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03039) , among many others

* ODEnets and continous normalizing flows - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.07366](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.07366)

<comment><USER3> Yeah strange that ODEnets were left off, and I'm glad you mentioned it. That has the opportunity to be a transformative approach to more efficient training and much better performance on time-series problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main sections of the talk without note are:

\- Bert and Natural Language processing, \- Tesla Autopilot Hardware v2+: NN at scale, \- AdaNet: AutoML with Ensembles, \- AutoAugmentation, \- Training Deep Networks with Synthetic data, \- Segmentation Annotation with Polygon- RNN++, \- DAWNBench: Training fast and cheap, \- Big GAN: state of the art in image sythesis, \- Video to Video Synthesis, \- Semantic segmentation, \- AlphaZero and openAI Five, \- Deep learning frameworks

</comment><comment><USER5> Was good to hear Lex Fridman's take on where we're at.

Honest question: how have people's experience with OpenAI Five been so far? I haven't had the time to check it out in detail so I'm paying close attention to what others are saying.

</comment><comment><USER6> TL;DW: BERT and BigGAN</comment>


Sid Meier and game students take part in 48-hour game coding contest - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherboard.tv/2010/4/14/oral-history-of-gaming-game-godfather-sid-meier-and-the-48-hour-game

<comment><USER2> I really don't appreciate an autoplay video that I can't pause.

Why force me to watch it? It's not supposed to be an ad. Let me watch at my leisure, or at least let me stop it..

<comment><AUTHOR> Its got a pause button.</comment></comment>


What business model for the 100YL? - <AUTHOR>

Paul Graham has written about the notion of the "hundred year language".  I believe that the ideal 100YL will encompass every modern programming language use-case: interactive command-line interfaces (shells), systems administration & shell scripting, mathematical languages (Matlab/Mathematica), rapid prototyping (Python/Perl/Ruby), active content (JavaScript), and enterprise software (C#/Java).
Assume you could combine all these diverse use-cases and capabilities into a single programming language.
Is there a viable business model for such a language?   Must it inherently be free to prosper as a language?  What about free for noncommercial use, but put paid for for-profit use?
If you built such a language, how would you offer it to the world?  Would you release it for free?  Or would you try to build a business juggernaut? <comment><AUTHOR> Assume the BSD or Apache license:

Could the language have a not-for-profit entity devoted to managing the language, and license the use of the language commercially to a for-profit corporation dedicated to selling and supporting its use in industry?

Would this discourage open source contribution?</comment>


I kill every VPS I touch - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ssdnodes.com/blog/i-kill-every-vps-i-touch/ <comment><USER2> I tried ordering the SSDNodes 24GB $10 month server to replace my 2GB Linode server. Appears to be a scam as they immediately canceled the order after I put in my credit card. I'll probably have another $6,000 Rite Aid purchase on my card next month....

<comment><USER3> Hey there,

Thanks for reaching out and sorry to hear about the issues you're experiencing. We use several different services for managing fraud, and one of them flagged your IP. Not sure why since everything else looks fine, so we reviewed and approved your order.

We also use Stripe for payment processing, so we never see your credit card details.

Let us know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER4> Kind of strange considering I'm at work, it's a static IP, and work is a Fintec company owned by a bank. Anyway thanks for quickly resolving the issue; The server is up and I'm SSHed in.</comment></comment></comment>


Anyone Looking for Non-Technical Co-Founder in NYC? - <AUTHOR>

I am located in NYC and am looking to join a technical person or a team to work on a start-up.  I am willing to work my ass off including weeknights, weekends, or whatever it takes. I am willing to work 24/7 on this and give up everything else in my life to work on this.  I have my own ideas, but I am completely open to joining others on their idea.
Here is a little about me:
-I graduated from one of the top undergraduate business schools in America (currently ranked in the top 5 on Business Week's top undergraduate business school ranking list)
-I have worked at Google and Salesforce.
-I am really good at people's skills, presenting, networking, and business development. I am also an extrovert and pretty easy to get along with.
-I consider my specialty to be in business development, business strategy, marketing, and project management.
-I am a go-getter, and does not need to be told things. I literally can do everything that does not involve coding so that coders can concentrate on coding and building the product.
-I have researched heavily into how other start-ups have made it big in terms of their execution and marketing.
-I am constantly reading and consider myself well read.  I have obviously read classics such as the lean startup and all of Paul Graham's essays.  I also have read many books in different fields such as: management, psychology, philosophy, and biographies of successful entrepreneurs.
-Right now, I am getting more technical myself as I am currently learning Ruby on Rails very intensively.  Getting more technical never hurts but only makes me understand a technical person's point of view.
I am looking to join people who are extremely dedicated and are willing work their asses off to make a successful startup.  If you are action-oriented, hacker-type, live in NYC, and are looking for a non-technical co-founder that fits the description above then please contact me at email@example.com.
Thanks <comment><USER2> A bit of advice: your post is missing the one word that matters: sales. Don't say what you're not(ie not technical) or that you have "people skills". Just talk about your sales ability. If I were looking for a tech cofounder, this is what my entire pitch would be: "If you build a product, I can sell it. Here's how much revenue I brought in at my last job." And that's all you need.</comment>


Plants make bees remember them fondly with a jolt of caffeine - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/plants-make-bees-remember-them-fondly-with-a-jolt-of-caffeine/

<comment><USER2> The main reason plants do caffeine is that it hurts spiders trying to setup webs over their flowers.</comment>


Amazon reveals new web service: Amazon Simple Database - <AUTHOR> http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/eng/299279879.html <comment><USER2> Wow, this is awesome. Unfortunately it will probably be a good wait before this is built and released to the public.

In the meantime, I've been developing a framework using EC2, S3, S3DFS (DFS = Distributed File System) along with SQLite to try and solve the database problem on AWS.

S3DFS allows you to mount an S3 bucket to one or multiple EC2 instances as if it were a local filesystem. It works at the block level and has read/write caching - so is very fast. (Note: It's free to use for development, but otherwise requires a paid commercial license.)

Since SQLite uses flat files and has no database server or client, it is ideal for use on S3. SQLite only scales well to a point, so to get around its limitations I am separating each user into their own database (each database is a separate flat file). This can sometimes be a bad idea, but SQLite allows you to attach multiple databases together to essentially create a temporary master database where you can run queries across all the user databases at once. This will be handy for search indexing, site-wide stats, etc. In order to change the user databases I will have utilities to allow global scheme alterations.

So, by adding EC2 instances that are all attached to the same S3 bucket, and using round-robin dns to distribute traffic among them, you can theoretically scale a web service infinitely. Just launch a new EC2 instance and add it to the round-robin dns pool and you're done! Even that could be automated to respond dynamically to traffic.

Imagine the long-term cost-savings from only having to build your app and architecture once and not having to go through a more complex scaling process like this: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/21793/Scaling-PHPMySQL-Presentation- from-Flickr>

Certainly you should only worry about scaling after your app is up and running, but what if you didn't have to ever worry about it? That's the goal of this framework.

This is pre-alpha of course and I'm still in the development and experimentation stage, but I wanted to share with the community and get some feedback!

<http://www.openfount.com/blog/s3dfs-for-ec2>

<http://www.sqlite.org/>

<http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonEC2/gsg/2006-06-26/>

<http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/2006-03-01/gsg/>

Update: Since this was so lengthy, I also added it as a post here: <http://blog.nanobeepers.com/2007/04/07/infinitely-scalable-framework-with- aws/>

Update2: Please leave any feedback here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=10001>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its a craigslist job posting, rather than an announcement... but just in case it disappears:

We're looking for an experienced technical expert in highly scalable distributed systems technologies to join our Software Platform group as a Sr. Level Engineer. The engineering team is responsible for the overall design and delivery of all the hard-core technical components that drive SimpleDB's huge multi-tier service-oriented architecture. The product (SimpleDB) is a new product designed to optimize real-time lookup of information for internet applications. As a senior leader in the business, the successful candidate will work closely with Management, Customers, QA, Design, Product Management, and Customer Support to maintain and enhance existing product as well as to develop new products. You will help architect, design, and implement highly scalable distributed infrastructure that has availability, reliability and performance guarantees. Drive server-wide and cross-group initiatives, and be the domain expert. Ivory tower architects need not apply - this is hands on pos!

ition where you will be asked to do everything from build rock-solid components to formulate strategy and evangelize technology, lead company-wide architectural changes, mentor other engineers and provide training and support for our supported technologies. You need to not only be a top software developer with an established track record of delivering, but also excel in communication, leadership and customer focus. If you want to test your limits and tackle technical challenges you won't see anywhere else then come join our group

Key Responsibilities:

_Translation of complex functional and technical requirements into detailed architecture and design_ Be very hands-on; work with the engineering team to manage the day-to-day development activities by leading architecture decisions, participating in designs, design review, code review, and implementation. _Responsible for the over-all systems architecture, scalability, reliability, and performance._ Help the development team delivery quality applications on-time and on-budget and execution against project plans and delivery commitments _Maintain current technical knowledge to support rapidly changing technology, always on a look out for new technologies and work with management and development team in bringing new technologies._ Candidate must be able to work with a minimum of technical supervision and supplemental engineering support, while responding efficiently to multiple program priorities _Work with engineering teams to design and optimize a wide variety of development projects using a variety of development tools and practices. In addition, the role involves developing shared components and tools, analyzing the latest technologies and development trends, establishing and implementing standard practices as well as training and mentoring other engineers.

QUALIFICATIONS:

_ Bachelors degree or equivalent experience _Excellent verbal and written communication skills_ Ability to work well with people and be both highly motivated and motivating _Experience working in a small startup, or venture- funded company highly desirable_ Proven results oriented person with a delivery focus. _10+ year's overall development experience and 7+ year's enterprise software experience._ Strong knowledge of data structures, algorithm, enterprise systems, and asynchronous architectures. _Deep understanding of web services software architectural and design issues._ Effective at architecting complex interactions across several subsystems to resolve real-world issues, articulating the architecture and obtaining buy-in from other teams. _Deep understanding of performance, memory, and I/O, threading._ Solid highly scalable database application design skills _Deep systems-level programming skills in Java/C++._ Experience developing middleware systems and/or distributed system software is preferred _Outstanding adherence to project deadlines and understands the balance between doing it right and getting the job done._ Works well in a team environment and be able to effectively drive cross-team solutions that have complex dependencies and requirements. _Experience of leading the architecture of an open source messaging product is preferred._ Strong technical vision, presentation and technology leadership skills. _Ability to handle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment_ Previous demonstrated project management success on similar projects emphasis placed on experience with high-volume web-based applications

In joining our team, you'll enjoy a competitive salary, great benefits, a creative and comfortable work environment, and the exciting opportunity to be part of a fast-paced and growing technology company.

</comment><comment><USER3> joe gregorio wrote more about this trend ~ <http://bitworking.org/news/158/ETech-07-Summary-Part-2-MegaData,> posted ~ bigdata ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=9483></comment>


How we saved money by replacing Mixpanel with BigQuery and K8S - <AUTHOR> https://blog.doit-intl.com/replacing-mixpanel-with-bigquery-dataflow-and-kubernetes-b5f844710674 <comment><USER3> Just to flesh out the vendor comparison...

Five weeks of, say, three engineers with $150k salaries ($200k fully loaded) is $60k. People say that the majority of software is after initial development. Let's say 20% is development [0]. That means this project costs $300k total and lives for 5 years before the team decides to rewrite it. That brings us to $60k / year.

This is good savings! My general guidance to folks thinking about this sort of project is that you should implement a vendor and see how you like it. The reason being, MixPanel does a LOT more than this tool, and buying a vendor can help you figure out the subset of features that you actually need. Once you have a clear requirement list, you have a clearly scoped project and can hammer it out relatively easily to get that cost savings.

Beware of thinking that you can do this for $X,000 / year on your own, or get it right on the first shot. There's a reason MixPanel (and any other vendor) has so many engineers. You're paying them to have already made the mistakes that you're about to make.

[0] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3477706/development- cost...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3477706/development-cost-versus- maintenance-cost)

<comment><USER4> The whole thing is a big ball of mud. If you commit to a vendor you risk vendor-lock in. If you commit to hand-roll you risk runaway deadlines, feature creep, and a slew of other threats. Once you pick one or the other and get it to a business functional level you lose all momentum and willpower to pivot to the best solution now that you have a "good enough" approach.

<comment><USER5> Software is always 'Pay me now, or pay me later'. In the end I believe you usually always end up paying pretty close to the same, it just depends on if you are happy with the solution in 18-36 months or hate it.

<comment><USER6> The tricky bit is when opportunity costs come in... "Pay me now" means sacrificing clear opportunities in the visible horizon, "pay me later" does the same thing at an less-controlled future point sacrificing presently unknown opportunities.

Personally I much prefer 'pay me now', because 9 times out of 10, IME, some form of technical debt underlies the reasoning about why a team can't do something. 'It always pays to take the pain up front', basically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article epitomizes the old adage: software engineers are terrible at estimating. I have absolutely no stake in Mixpanel, and it has its own flaws, but seeing something as misleading as this on the front page of HN means I have to write a clarifying, if not somewhat edifying, comment =/

1\. Right off the bat, there's the cost of building all of this + maintaining it. Something like Mixpanel at scale requires at least two, if not three, engineers: one for client libraries, one for infrastructure (which the OP blogs about), and another for the web app (dashboard, real-time user stream, etc.) To be sure, not everyone needs all features of Mixpanel. To be really sure, nobody needs all features of any SaaS tools. But if you really want to compare apples to apples, then you have to account for these. To hire competent software engineers who can collaborate closely and maintain a complex piece of analytics software requires at least $100k per year, if not twice that based on locale. That's at least $300k and more like $600k right there.

2\. The whole point of something like Mixpanel is to make analytics accessible to non-engineers. In their case, it's primarily product people and secondarily marketing/customer success. In any case, building an analytics/data product consumable by non-technical people is hard and takes way more than assembling a couple of cloud infrastructure together. If there's one reason Mixpanel is still in business, that's because of this.

3\. Finally, the OP has a valid point which should have been highlighted more, if not to make their own biases more clear: Mixpanel's diminishing differentiation is dev shops/consultancies' opportunity. It is indeed incredible that a dev shop can build even a third of Mixpanel's functionality by leveraging GCP components. Mixpanel had to build a lot of its core backend systems from the ground up, including its original key-value store. Just this year, they fully migrated to Google Cloud Platform themselves, suggesting that there's really little room for differentiation among analytics vendors at the level of infrastructure components (Mixpanel's arch-nemesis, Amplitude, leverages Apache Kafka and various AWS components, most notably Amazon Redshift, heavily)

With all of this being said, one thing remains true: the most expensive cost of any software is people running them and the dependencies created around them. These may not show up as line items, but they sure are deeply embedded in your total cost.

<comment><USER8> I think you are not counting: QA, user experience, DevOps, technical writing, security auditing, user training, integration support...

What happens if the system collecting all of your data has vulnerability? suddenly all of your apps and data are owned.

What if it's inefficient? then you have DDoSed yourself.

Non-functional requirements cannot be solved with a functional requirement mindset.

What if you are losing data? what if you aggregate it incorrectly? what if data is ingested in the wrong order? ... you get the idea.

It's not a 3 people problem. When you take on a hard problem like this you have 10 different things to cover and you need to pick all of them.

<comment><USER9> Having built something like this myself the components you actually need to write are so small and simple the scope for security issues is minimal. All the infra scales automatically.

Also, this post only addresses data flowing in one direction into BQ. Presumably they're then using something like Tableau or the Google/AWS offerings to build dashboards based on this data. There aren't many places for bugs to hide unless the BQ perms are wide open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This did not mention the front end at all. In my opinion getting a front end anywhere near as slick and powerful as Mixpanel's is an even bigger challenge than the data pipeline. The Google Reference Architecture diagram shows spreadsheets, which would require a bunch of handroll queries, and BI tools like Tableau which would be another cost and another big custom query integration job. I've seen PMs spend hours in mixpanel quickly generating custom report after custom report to really understand their data, none of these other front ends would come close to that flexibility for non-technical users.

</comment><comment><USER11> We've been doing something similar using keen.io.

Our goals were to get high volume web data (pageviews, clicks, etc.) alongside application data already saved in our Firebase DB and synced to BigQuery.

We picked Keen because it has an open source web tracking lib [https://github.com/keen/keen-tracking.js/](https://github.com/keen/keen- tracking.js/) that easily plugs into our React/Redux stack.

They also have built-in streaming to BigQuery: [https://keen.io/docs/integrations/google- bigquery/](https://keen.io/docs/integrations/google-bigquery/)

Keen pricing is about 10% of mixpanel, so for our limited needs it has been working well.

Long term if our volumes really grew the original post looks like a good option, but figured we'd pass along this lower dev approach.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's one other "big hammer" for saving money at MixPanel: "send fewer events".

We saved 60% (which was no small amount of money) by realizing that sending more than 1 of an event per user per hour was: A) Not necessary B) Not even something you could query in MixPanel.

more thoughts in: [https://blog.ratelim.it/blog/how-to-save-money-on-event- trac...](https://blog.ratelim.it/blog/how-to-save-money-on-event-tracking)

<comment><USER13> That's a great domain name and seems like a neat product. One of those things you never think of then when you see it you think "of course that's a thing, it makes perfect sense."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For me, the issue is not cost. It's the data. You're paying for what's essentially a data warehouse and BI tool... but you have little to no control over it. Sure, it's fully managed, but you want to change X? You want to evolve your schema? You need to change some data in history (I know)? You want to build real-time systems based on these streams of data? You want Mixpanel UI for other datasets in your company?

All of these are issues (that I have faced). From what I've seen, people just keep downloading Mixpanel data and uploading to their DWH, sort of voiding the reason to implement Mixpanel in the first place.

The tool is lovely, their export policy is great, but there's something about actually owning your data.

</comment><comment><USER15> Built a similar thing last year -- nginx (openresty) + lua -> NSQ -> python streaming -> BQ

Using Metabase for visualization.

The other key benefit is you can warehouse the rest of your data in BQ as well -- where it can be easily linked to your non-event data; marketing data from other systems, etc.

<comment><USER15> Forgot to add -- analytics.js on the frontend...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Did you not consider snowplow analytics with something like periscope over the top?

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the mention! We are working on our port of Snowplow to run cloud natively on GCP currently - you can see our RFC here:

[https://discourse.snowplowanalytics.com/t/porting- snowplow-t...](https://discourse.snowplowanalytics.com/t/porting-snowplow-to- google-cloud-platform/1505)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> # Requirements

Unless you have restrictions about how your data moves and where it is stored, or need to have a trusted computing base with no externally developed software, or have very strict requirements that no available service implements (unlikely), you are better off just using an open source solution or paying for a service.

# Real cost

Even if you have to pay for a commercial service, in comparison, the TCO of developing a similar solution in-house is very large.

When you create a system in-house, you are paying for: design, implementation, testing, maintenance, deployment, infrastructure, security audits, training for users, documentation, and sometimes costs go beyond engineering, e.g: UX and graphic design and such.

After you are done spending all that money, you end up with a custom built service that is far from the actual main activity that supports your business.

# Quality

If you are to authorize a team to do something like this, audit their code constantly and impose a higher quality standard than you do for the rest of your applications. This is because this system will be a dependency for all your applications.

Even in large companies, it is unlikely that you have enough resources to have a large dedicated working on something like this. Because of this, requirements will need to be deprioritized or just neglected.

Because of this, you can lose all hope of selling this solution externally.

# Users

Then, since you are committing significant resources to your internal tool, it is likely that every single team will be forced to use it. That in itself is also a problem. What is better?

a) Learning how to use MixPanel, and put it in your resume (a skill that has market value and can be traded).

b) Learning how to use a proprietary system that is only used internally within a company. A skill that cannot be traded in the job market.

If I am a user, it is against my own self interest to push for an internally developed tool.

<comment><USER18> To be fair though, it seams to me that they moved from one service that was providing 150% of what they need to another one, Google cloud, that is providing 90% of what they need plus blueprint exemples on how to implement the 10% that are missing. If I'm not wrong this is totally reasonable, especially if it gives them the flexibility to mine this data the way they want, since it's really close to the core of their business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Having said that, the event data is crucial and no data loss can be > tolerated.

May I ask why? Seems like exactly the kind of data where some loss is fine.

<comment><USER20> Billing, perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The challenge for offerings like MixPanel is that the market on other scalable as-a-Service offerings (streaming data, big query, et al) has gotten to the point where it's far more trival for companies to just roll their own. Trying to build all this 3-4 years ago would have been much much harder. MixPanel's pricing doesn't reflect this change in their value-add proposition for larger companies.

Just as a company gets big enough to offer a large revenue stream to Mixpanel is the same time when it probably makes sense to ditch Mixpanel and and just run all this in house for collecting, storing and processing massive data streams. I see a lot of this sort of decision making taking place now.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Smart move, sure enough in this case.

See, once you have the data pipeline in place, you can bring front-end/ reporting platform to generate any reports you wish, from free (e.g Google Data Studio) to self-hosted open source based, up to SaaS solutions which available few hundred bucks per month. _Yet, you have full control /access to your data_. This is the main benefit IMHO.

In our region, Tel Aviv, where Jelly Button and DoIT are located, $240K per year == 2x great s/w engineers annual salary.

Perhaps it is time for MixPanel's product/exec. people to reconsider pricing model at large scale. I assume there was a discussion between the parties before they went on let's build our own.

</comment><comment><USER22> I do some of this but in a slightly different, maybe simpler way: 1\. App runs in App Engine (flex). It includes a simple /collect endpoint for mobile events that just logs to /var/log/app_engine/custom_logs/track.json which automatically gets picked up by Google's Stackdriver. App code can just directly log to that file as well to record server-side events. (no network involved in recording events). 2\. Stackdriver stores logs in Cloud Storage and also dispatches a Cloud PubSub push to a configured topic. 3\. Another mini App Engine flex app receives the message, does the ETL, and inserts the row into BigQuery.

<comment><USER23> The downside of app engine over GCE/GKE is lack of sustained use discounts

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "During July 2017, our new data analytics pipeline was processing about 500 events every second."

Is 500 events per second considered high throughput over here, or do other people feel they really just needed fault tolerance from Google cloud?

<comment><USER24> "500 events per second" is approximately zero. We go to 3rd providers, not for "tolerance" but because getting milk off-the-shelf in the supermarket is easier than feeding and milking your own cow (unless you need raw milk or something).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The "backend" would have been a perfect problem to be solved by Google's Cloud Functions (i.e. serverless), rather than a Kubernetes cluster with Node and nginx.

<comment><USER23> If you are processing at high volume, it might be cheaper to run a cluster rather than use Cloud Functions

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The biggest advantage of systems like this isn't even the money. You can use the same data warehouse/SQL/BI tool stack to do sales reporting, analyze marketing spend, track support KPIs---everything in your business. My company (Fivetran) does the data-pipeline part of that, we event have a Mixpanel connector for people who want to operate both systems in parallel or migrate over time.

</comment><comment><USER27> Building a self-hosted copy of MixPanel is surprisingly easy. I too did it for a desktop app I'm working on [1]. Took a few days, not more, and is much more flexible. Another advantage is that I retain control of the data.

[1]: [https://fman.io/docs/metrics](https://fman.io/docs/metrics)

</comment><comment><USER28> Why not use App Engine instead of Container Engine? You could likely save more that way.

<comment><USER29> What? Order of pricing cheap to expensive is GKE, GCE or Container Engine, App Engine.

<comment><USER23> How is GKE cheaper than GCE?

<comment><USER29> I think I messed up my branding.. I think GKE and GCE are now the same thing?

I was thinking GKE = Kubernetes, and GCE = was their "run container on a VM" thing, but I think GKE and GCE are the same thing...

<comment><USER30> GCE is Google Compute Engine for running VMs. GKE was Google Container Engine but makes more sense now as Google Kubernetes Engine. GKE runs on top of GCE VMs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I dunno. The way I look at it, whatever you could have been working on to advance your company when Mixpanel took care of things, you weren't when you were building this and can't when you have to maintain it.

<comment><USER32> You are confused.

MixPanel costs $X per month. That cost only increases. Self-based solution costs $Y to build and $Z to operate.

delta = $Z x n - ($Y + $Z x n)

Solve for that delta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> 240K - that's huge! I can't believe MixPanel gets that expensive - <USER2> considering their plans are like:

* FREE * 999 a year * Contact us

That number 3 must be really spooky!

<comment><USER34> I had the opposite reaction. If you're in a big city in the US, $240K is the cost including overhead of one, _maybe_ two engineers. If running this in- house takes up a total of a full-time engineering load (i.e., if the team maintaining this wants to add headcount to run this and maintain prior commitments), you haven't saved very much and you might be net negative.

(The math may be different in different job markets, in which case, yes, it makes sense not to pay a startup that's paying SF wages to its own employees.)

<comment><USER33> $240K for 1 Engineer? Wow-zie

<comment><USER34> It's not uncommon at all in the expensive markets (I'm thinking SFBA and NYC) for an engineer who isn't straight out of college. But I'm counting overhead - recruiting, benefits, employer-paid taxes, space, equipment, amortized cost of just becoming a bigger company (helpdesk, possibly management, etc.). Depending on how you count, that could add anywhere from 25% to over 100% to the employee's take-home compensation. [http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how- much-does-an-employee-...](http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how-much-does-an- employee-cost.html)

$192K ($240k/1.25) is definitely common; $120K ($240k/2) is _low_ in these markets for someone who knows what they're doing.

<comment><USER35> You said "a big city". While those two are in that set, they are outliers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> off-topic.

One of my goto none coding interview questions is to have a candidate design a mobile analytics solution.

From the article, I've learned Google has a reference architecture: [https://cloud.google.com/solutions/mobile/mobile-gaming- anal...](https://cloud.google.com/solutions/mobile/mobile-gaming-analysis- telemetry)

</comment><comment><USER37> The easy and cheap way to keep mixpanel cost under control is sample events or send only unique events per session.

<comment><USER38> That doesn't help for all kinds of data analysis - frequency analysis of a given interaction is one example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am using appengine flex and google compute instances. Do containers make your setup more cost-effective?

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone else spending around this much?

</comment><comment><USER41> "The whole project took us about 5 weeks to complete."

More valuable metric is person hours.

</comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone have any experience of negotiating your costs down with Mixpanel? Years ago I remember my CTO ringing up our hosting provider and in the space of a phone call bringing some of our costs down 90%.

<comment><USER12> Definitely can negotiate, but it's not going to be 90%. MixPanel is pretty solidly enterprise. At this level of spend they're sending a team of a couple implementation people onsite and price is def negotiated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Honestly you don't even need some kind of fancy google architecture, query engine, or columnar data store.

I recently implemented 99% of what mixpanel provides using S3 and lambda. I stored the events on S3 (actually get requests to an S3 bucket with logging turned on and what I wanted to track seeialized as JSON in the query string of the request.

From here it's as easy as writing lambda functions to process the logs and output the results in some location where a static web app can visualize them.</comment>


Ask HN: Ask for money before having a prototype? - <AUTHOR>

What are the chances of getting money before having a working prototype? In other words, having the idea only. <comment><USER2> Ideas are cheap. Everyone has them, and most have more than one. The ability to make something work is a whole different matter.

As an investor, you're determining risk vs reward. How much risk is there that I'll give my money to this guy and not ever get anything back?

If you have a prototype to play with, you at least know that the entrepreneur is capable of building his idea.

If you have actual users using the prototype, you know the entrepreneur is capable of building something others want.

And if you have any _paying_ users, even if they aren't paying much, you you know the entrepreneur has been able to build something that people want bad enough to pay for.

Each of these steps is a reduction is risk.

The more risk an investor has, the less likely they are to invest. And if they DO invest, the more expensive their money is going to be. Anyone willing to invest in just an idea is going to want a lot more of your company for their investment, because they're absorbing a lot more risk than the entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER3> 0

unless you are friends with the investor, and he just helps you out because he feels obligated since you are his friend.

The 5-6 months you'd spend chasing funding are much better spent coding a prototype/final product

</comment><comment><USER4> It would likely depend on the scope and scale of the idea, and how you go about proving that you can be successful at implementation.

If your idea is geared around a web-app, your chances are probably pretty small. It's easy to put together the basics of a demo, and anyone who did not put in that minimal effort would likely be met with skepticism.

If your idea is something like a complex new mesh networking algorithm and chipset... well, most investors wouldn't expect you to have developed a new ASIC out of your own pocket ;) However, you would likely need a very solid track record in the technology and other applications of it (eg: work at another company, research lab, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER5> You can spend the next 6 months of your life knocking on investors' doors with just your idea, and have nothing to show for it.

Or you can spend the next 6 months to hack an ugly prototype. You'll be amazed how much further along you are.

That's because in the second scenario, you actually _did_ something. That has value. It may not be your final product, but you'll learn so much more than tweaking the template on your powerpoint deck.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, please don't take this badly, but: if you don't have a few prototypes, how can you really know what works and what doesn't for your general ideas?

Definitely, build a few experimental systems and get feedback from them. With frameworks like Rails and Django, the cost of prototyping is small.

</comment><comment><USER7> Suppose that you were being approached to invest your money, how would you react to a "great idea" vs a "it's not done, and it's ugly, but let me show you what it does"?</comment>


Student Language Exchange - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/student-language-exchange#/story

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: This is not my venture. I found it randomly on IndieGogo. 38 hours left in the campaign.

"At the Student Language Exchange, we harness an underutilized resource on college campuses— the knowledge, experience and social reach of international students, particularly those from countries underrepresented in college curricula— to introduce groups of peers to their language and culture. By mobilizing students to run semester-long language and culture courses, we fill gaps in curricula and prepare students to build collaborative solutions to the world's most pressing social, economic, political and environmental challenges."</comment>


Go vs. Swift vs. C++ microbenchmark - <AUTHOR> http://lionet.livejournal.com/137511.html <comment><USER3> I don't care about micro benchmarks ... but if you're gonna do one, make sure your code is decent.

By replacing the Go slice declarations (var x[]int64) with (x := make([]int64, 0, 1000000)) you'll get an algorithm that in my iMac runs much faster:

\- your version: 4.93s user 0.28s system 165% cpu 3.151 total

\- my version: 1.93s user 0.04s system 168% cpu 1.165 total

EDIT: I'm sure this happens with all the examples, and that's exactly my point. What is this exactly microbenchmarking? Bad programs?

<comment><USER4> (Re)allocating arrays/vectors seems to be pretty much the whole point, otherwise both Swift and C++ could not only preallocate (reserve), but they could use iterators and elide all allocation instead, and then you'd get something along the lines of this:

        > rustc -O test.rs -o test_rs
        > time ./test_rs
        9999010000
                0.54 real         0.53 user         0.00 sys

here's TFA's C++ version by comparison:

        > time ./test_cpp
        9999010000
                3.17 real         2.29 user         0.86 sys

<comment><USER3> I totally agree with you on this. The code for all three languages is clearly not optimal.

I wonder how much of this performance difference is C++ being very good at optimizing your code rather than the runtime being more performant. I don't have any numbers, but I _feel_ like that's not a negligible factor.

<comment><USER4> > I totally agree with you on this. The code for all three languages is > clearly not optimal.

That's not really my point. My point's we have no idea what TFA is trying to do or see[0], so you may be able to say "this is stupid and nonsensical" because it is[1], but you can't say "I've got a better version" then provide something with a completely different behaviour.

[0] most likely they just threw some shit at the wall, ended up with relatively long runtimes and called that a benchmark

[1] or maybe not, maybe it's a reduction of actual workload in the system doing computation based on some sort of dynamic number of items so you can't preallocate the intermediate storage and the point's to compare reallocation overhead[2]

[2] not very likely though, considering you never need the array in the first place as you're just summing each item with the previous one, then summing every 100 item of that… anyway

<comment><USER5> _> , but you can say ""_

I'm guessing you meant to type, " _but you can 't say_"

<comment><USER4> Correct guess. Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh microbenchmarks.

All of this is going to be optimized away by a sufficiently smart compiler or a compiler you tell you want to spend lots of time optimizing.

In general: don't write microbenchmarks where the results can be easily statically evaluated by the compiler, unless you are testing whether the compiler can statically evaluate it (this is a reasonable thing to want to know of course, but it's not a test of the language).

There are also languages which will pretty much not bother to do a lot of the the actual work, like haskell.

(Note: In this case, the the C++ compiler being used actually knows all the recurrences involved, but decides it's too expensive to statically calculate the final result of sum. GCC would do the same.)

<comment><USER7> Doesn't the std::vector calls mess things up? Now the compiler has to track those as well, they involve the allocator which calls into the OS.

So for the compiler to be able to statically compute the result it would need to know that the std::vector stuff doesn't have side effects.

Of course, the compiler could have special knowledge of std::vector, like for example in general it has about memcpy.

<comment><USER6> "So for the compiler to be able to statically compute the result it would need to know that the std::vector stuff doesn't have side effects. "

It can know this the same way it knows about memcpy.

Most of them have library call info for things that have standardized guarantees.

Even if it didn't, it knows what malloc does, it knows this variable never escapes, and ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As far as micro-benchmarks go, this one is particularly egregious. It is likely completely dominated by the array reallocation. So a runtime that - <USER2> - chooses to preallocate an array at size 1000000, or to go to 1000000 at first resize would win at this benchmark. More realistically, a runtime that conserves memory by reallocating arrays with a 1.5x factor vs a 2x factor will appear slower.

It's exactly because you don't want to rely on the runtime making the right call for your use-case that you preallocate arrays where it makes a difference (i.e. where you're appending a million items).

And 99% of the time you're doing less than 100 items, and so the array reallocation behavior just doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER9> Concurrency model will be a big focus for Swift 4.

(Swift is currently v2.2, the focus of v3 is to stabilize the ABI.)

</comment><comment><USER10> So what's the conclusion of this besides some useless numbers?

</comment><comment><USER11> > "But it adds some checks and GC, so Swift also exhibits a serious slowdown, > though well within 2x of C++."

Swift does not employ GC, it uses ARC. While that may be a form of GC, it doesn't suffer from the same "slowdown" that GC would in this context because ARC is doing exactly what your base case (C++) does at run-time (ARC is a compile-time tool).

I think if you're going to be doing benchmarks, you should have basic knowledge on how each system works first.

</comment><comment><USER12> I really think this is mostly just testing how well the list/vector/array class is handling being asked to expand itself by one element a million times.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you want to compare fast languages, you need to compare C++ with rust and pony, not swift and go.

<comment><USER14> And include multiple implementations of each one, as that is what really counts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the point, seriously?

</comment><comment><USER16> FYI, unary operators and C-style for loops have been depreciated in Swift.

</comment><comment> oussama-gmd Where is Rust :)

<comment><USER15> In academia.

<comment><USER17> This is totally unfair. We're looking at using Rust for production workloads and cross system development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And Haskell, in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to see Erlang here. Anyway Swift performance is impressive.</comment>


Why Mt. Gox is full of shit - <AUTHOR> http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2014/02/10/why-mtgox-is-full-of-shit/ <comment><USER2> There's no acceptable middle ground really. Practically every Bitcoin service is full of incompetence of varying degrees. Coinbase for example uses MongoDB for their accounting and apparently was hacked (and the funds returned) as an effect of that. Every other service has issues with the founders (BTC-e is run by who?) or their security record (inputs.io had a cold wallet?) in some way.

You can't trust much in this particular corner of the internet.

<comment><USER3> You left out Bitomat, the incompetent exchange that deleted their own amazon instance accidentally which contained all their keys, and thus customer funds.

<comment><USER4> Perfect[ish] cover story?

<comment><USER5> Victims can monitor the blockchain to determine if their coins were spent? (Of the victims know their coins public keys, I guess)

<comment><USER4> Indeed that's what made me temper it with an -ish. Whilst you can monitor it that doesn't really help if the perps have escaped beyond the reaches of the relevant laws.

How many people are monitoring the blockchain in that way - sounds like an app idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think anyone has pointed out that MtGox said "We have discussed this solution [additional hash in the protocol] with the Bitcoin core developers and will allow Bitcoin withdrawals again once it has been approved and standardized." [1] A Bitcoin protocol change like that is not going to happen for a long, long time, if ever so do the math on MtGox's statement and when they will allow withdrawls.

The Bitcoin team did push out a change in 8 hours once for a critical signed/unsigned bug that threatened the whole system [3], but this problem looks to me like NOTABUG/WONTFIX. The transaction malleability is an annoyance, not a real bug. Basically the support team just needs to spend an extra 5 seconds checking a transaction instead of blindly issuing refunds.

My recent article [2] goes into the Bitcoin protocol in great detail if you want to know more about transaction signing, which should help explain technically what is going on with malleability.

[1] [https://www.mtgox.com/press_release_20140210.html](https://www.mtgox.com/press_release_20140210.html)

[2] [http://righto.com/bc](http://righto.com/bc)

[3] [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0)

<comment><USER7> ok, but please read the related pull requests

[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2131](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2131)

[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3637](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3637)

[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3016](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3016)

[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3025](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3025)

<comment><USER8> These are not all that directly related— they're the start of a set of changes which will probably take us one to three years to fully deploy... what mtgox was talking about in their press releases was just some simple standard way of generating a stable ID, this wouldn't be a protocol change at all... and is only a few lines of code: [https://github.com/sipa/bitcoin/commits/normtxid](https://github.com/sipa/bitcoin/commits/normtxid)

But whats more important is that this malleability stuff is not very much related to fraud risk, I explained more here: [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=319565...](http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=31956576)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Of course Gox is full of shit, anybody see his php ssh implementation? Karpales is a guy who rolls his own crypto everyday and has no idea it's completely flawed, and when you point out the flaws he doesn't believe you and uses it anyways.

He's a cancer and nobody should be using MtGox. You're supposed to trade coins in IRC decentralized using the web of trust, or localbitcoins in person. Exchanges should only be used if you have a business bank account and are on first name basis with the guy who runs Bitstamp or Cavirtex on IRC otherwise you get delays and holds for identity verification, limits, other problems like your bank freezing your account when they notice wires going to Slovenia too often.

*Edit Gavin just posted a response on the bitcoin foundation blog, confirming Gox is indeed full of shit.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone who uses Mt. Gox is a fool, especially after the first few security issues. Hearing about further issues in terms of security, etc is sort of like hearing the wailings of a person whose spouse is cheating on them... for the 5th or 6th time. At some point, the victim only has themselves to blame.

<comment><USER10> Literally 2 days after I registered on Mt Gox (2011), I got this email: "[Mt.Gox] Account database compromised". I'm glad if they're going away. I've never trusted them since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One interesting aspect of this whole ordeal is the fact that, thus far, exchanges' prices have depended on each other. That is, a huge sell order on Bitstamp will more or less immediately affect the price on BTC-E, MtGox, etc. (The exception seems to be Coinbase, which seems to use some kind of exponential weighted averaging, but even Coinbase will get dragged down if the price drop is dramatic enough.)

If people lose all confidence in Gox, but still retain faith in other exchanges, then that means we're going to witness MtGox's price drop while the other exchanges' prices rise. However, this becomes an economic opportunity for anyone who wants to do arbitrage between exchanges. Therefore it seems like the prices won't ever diverge too much.

The conclusion, it seems, is that no matter how bad one exchange is, it will simply drag the overall price of Bitcoin down across all exchanges rather than suffer punishment as an individual company. The fact that arbitrage is doable seems to give MtGox some insulation from consumer outrage.

This poses a question: Is it true that as long as an exchange keeps functioning, then it's "here to stay" no matter how badly they behave? Is there any way that an exchange could go out of business from nothing more than consumers losing faith that _one_ exchange?

<comment><USER12> You can't do arbitrage on Mt Gox though because you can't get any money out. That's the whole reason the price discrepancy exists.

<comment><USER13> Why can't you get the money out via a Japanese bank account? They claim to send funds to those within a few days.

<comment><USER14> Is is supposed to be easy to get a Japanese bank account if you've, say, never been to Japan, and don't speak Japanese? Honest question...

<comment><USER15> No, you need some level of residency. Maybe it could be worked around by incorporating in Japan and getting a business bank account. I think Gox can do withdrawals to Polish banks too, but unsure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The candlestick charts are not telling a pretty story about trust right now. Bitbugs keep the faith and talk about buying with blood in the streets since it always bounces back, but every flash crash comes with a worse story.

The headline is "Largest Bitcoin Exchange Doesn't Understand Bitcoin"

What hope do retailers and any but the very-technical have in managing the risk implicit in digital currencies?

Not to mention, seeing supporting forum posts where people are discussing the parts of fractions of coin being sent around... do people really think 8-10 digits past the decimal can hope to be manageable for consumers? It's bad enough to deal with Yen conversions.

Please tip your server .00343874938239487 bitcoin. When 15% of the value can evaporate while business is happening... when do you bill the customer for lunch? When they order?

</comment><comment><USER17> News flash: people don't like to admit they are wrong. They will find ways to rationalize their actions to fit a model where their fears of being wrong are temporarily alleviated. Unfortunately most people don't realize it's more work in the end to deny being wrong than just coming clean.

We've been through this several times with Mt. Gox. It's time for everyone to STOP using them and start using something else for trading. Continuing to use them and making rationalizations that things will 'get better' will only result in a global case of cognitive dissonance.

They are threatening an ecosystem that is important and which has a large potential value. In my opinion, they need to be removed from that ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not wholly surprised here. As a side note, I wish it was easier to move coins _out_ of mtgox. They require "verification" to even transfer coins to another BTC address at this point, which means sending them proof of identity and proof of address. I'm not against identifying myself but given their absolutely abysmal security record and repeated demonstrations of incompetence, I'm loathe to send them anything even remotely sensitive. which leaves me in a bad position where I'm stuck with coins I can't even access...

Ugh. Local wallets, people. Local wallets.

</comment><comment><USER19> Let this be a warning to everybody with bitcoin in wallets they do no absolutely control, for example, Coinbase - you can and almost certainly will lose them at a moment's notice, sooner or later.

I feel really sorry for those with funds tied up with MtGox. It was only recently where I used MtGox to store most of my bitcoin and I am lucky to have decided to move them all to paper wallets.

This demonstrates one of the biggest issues holding back widespread adoption of bitcoin, the ability of the layperson to securely hold large amounts of bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER20> Mt. Gox is indeed full of shit. As I understand the issue, due to their bitcoin implementation, there is a possibility that someone would send bitcoins from their Mt. Gox. account to a wallet, than alter the signature of the transaction, and than claim that the transaction did not go through and contact support to request the funds to be resent.

Here are 2 easy solutions to this problem which do not require anything to be done by the bitcoin community, and could be exacted by Mt. Gox today:

1\. Allow all transactions to go through as before, but state clearly that if your transaction does not go through after being submitted, it will take a long time to clear the transaction, because it will have to be checked by hand. Assuming that 90% of people are not planning to scam Mt. Gox, 90% of people would be able to get their money. The remaining 10% would have to wait a bit longer while Mt. Gox checks transactions by hand.

2\. Alternatively, write a system were a user can request to withdraw bitcoins. The Mt. Gox server first generates a new wallet, than transfers the BTC to that wallet, than send the user the public and private keys for that wallet. Assuming that the user (for good reason) does not trust Mt. Gox, they than can simply transfer the BTC from a temporary wallet to a permanent one.

</comment><comment><USER21> My experience exactly. I was just buying a hundred bucks worth of coins, and I had to suffer through inexplicable delays, error messages that were obvious lies, the list goes on and on. Incompetence is one thing ("sorry about the hassle, but look aren't we cheap!") but trying to obfuscate the real reason of problems is just a huge red flag.

I'm in Europe, and I like Kraken very much. blockchain.info recommended them.

</comment><comment><USER22> FTA: "The time to stop using Mt. Gox has been long overdue. Move your business to a more serious exchange, one that is willing to admit their failures, should they occur. One that has the best interests of the entire Bitcoin ecosystem in mind, rather than their own bottom line."

<comment><USER23> Yes. I'm shocked this hasn't happened already, since this seems like a textbook instance of where the unrestricted free market should correct ignorant or malicious behavior by a bad actor.

</snark>

<comment><USER24> Keep in mind that if the market was free, US and EU would be full of bitcoin ATMs and there would be several working exchanges in every country. So if someone had a slightest problem with MtGox, they'd easily switch to another exchange already.

However, in reality there are huge obstacles to moving fiat money around and the market is simply not allowed to improve liquidity how it desires.

<comment><USER25> A free market isn't just one with lower amounts of regulation but also one where regulation is applied indiscriminately to all participants. Many bitcoin exchanges have only been viable because a they did not yet have the same regulation applied to them as is applied to "fiat" exchanges. There are necessary regulations for how exchanges or ATMs work, what sort of reporting they need to do, and what sort of safeguards are in place to protect customers from fraud and loss. And there is a lack of financial professionals who believe in bitcoin enough to help adequately build these systems, and of course far more importantly, a huge lack of demand from the general population.

<comment><USER24> By your logic, if His Majesty The King applies his laws equally to everyone, then it's a free market?

Any organization which is tax-funded has inequality and discrimination built in. Some are net tax payers, others are net tax receivers. Then, net tax receivers dictate why it's good and honest for them not to pay, but receive and why it's good and honest for them to extract payment from others. And under what "regulations". Obviously, tax-funded regulations cannot be applied indiscriminately to _all_ participants.

Free market is not about equality. It's about ability to protect property against anyone's opinion. Bitcoin and the internet themselves are a fine example of a nearly free market: no matter what you think of me and no matter what I think of you, we both can avoid each other and no one can take each other's coins. But if we don't have such technology and have to keep our cash in a bank, then we both depend on someone's opinion how the money should be used and how much we can spend and where.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Trying to find an European alternative. Suggestions next to [https://localbitcoins.com](https://localbitcoins.com) or [http://www.coinnext.com/](http://www.coinnext.com/) ?

</comment><comment><USER24> Today's price fluctuation only proves that people do not really understand how Bitcoin works. Many keep all their coins on the exchange because they got used to the traditional banking. MtGox says "it's a fault in the protocol" and people sell off in panic. Thankfully, over time we have more exchanges, more different implementations, more and better educational resources to learn about real risks of Bitcoin. Meanwhile, smart people pick up cheap coins while they can.

</comment><comment><USER27> This article seems rather biased and brings in lots of past problems at Mt. Gox rather than focusing on the current issue - perhaps because a more detailed explanation of the current issue would reveal that this problem goes beyond Mt. Gox. There is a disturbing tendency among some Bitcoin partisans to instantly dismiss any issue that comes up as being well-known and well- understood, even if "well-known" means that it was posted somewhere on a message board read by few.

<comment><USER28> If it goes beyond Gox, why are other exchanges operating seemingly with no problems? Bitstamp is a good example of a well run exchange. Gox has been mired in self inflicted problems for many months.

<comment><USER27> From my understanding, workarounds do exist for the issue, and some exchanges probably have implemented them. However, the issue goes beyond Gox in the sense that without those workarounds in place, any exchange could be vulnerable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _the official Bitcoin daemon (bitcoind) does not rely on a transaction ID to determine if a transaction succeeded_

Sooo how does it do it? How does it determine a unique transaction id?

<comment><USER8> It tracks the coins you were spending when you made the transaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> >Their implementation, against all advice, does rely on the transaction ID, which makes this attack possible.

I think a lot of the comments here and especially the article detracts from the discussion. The article seems to go on a rant of all the other mistakes mt gox make rather than addressing the issue.

What is the recommended solution by bitcoin implementers to verify a transaction succeeded, with transaction malleability existing ?

</comment><comment><USER31> Why do these services exist at all ?

Cannot the bit coin protocol be used by end users with full features without a third party "wallet" service ?

Are these services purely for people that don't understand files and encryption utilities ?

I do not use bitcoin, but if I did, I assume I would just protect and back up those computer files like many other extremely valuable computer files I have.

What am I missing here ?

<comment><USER32> These services generally provide a service that is not part of standalone bitcoin, whether that is a payment API which generates addresses and verifies transactions for customers, an exchange to trade and value bitcoin based on fiat currency, or a user-friendly wallet that allows access from anywhere with internet access and bypasses the need for a user to download and update their own copy of the blockchain. (The blockchain is pretty large. It currently sits around 13GB and is always growing.)

There are also end-user applications like Armory, which are meant to manage and secure a wallet on an end-user's machine, but its inevitable that people will use online services for foreseeable future.

<comment><USER33> There are clients, like Electrum and MultiBit, that don't require downloading the whole blockchain. The average person should be using these, IMO, not trusting any e-wallets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not mentioned in this post is that during that hack where hashed passwords were released, Mt. Gox was using md5. What jokers.

</comment><comment><USER35> Hacked bitcoin exchange patforms, its not the point the structure, there cs or a bug in the bitcoin system.The big players have to coopered to avoid the unlimited use from the fed of fiat money to buy bitcoins and attac the big .platforms on using a extreme blow off

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder which side is actually telling the truth...

<comment><USER37> If you'd like an in-depth discussion of what Mt. Gox has screwed up and how:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x93tf/some_irc_cha...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x93tf/some_irc_chatter_about_what_is_going_on_at_mtgox/cf99yac)

They didn't discover anything - they were warned, quite some time ago, that they were not correctly spending and opening themselves up for double+ spends due to their own misunderstanding of how to reliably track a spend (compounded by their coding errors).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> the justin bieber of bitcoin exchange

</comment><comment><USER39> In case anyone needs a reminder:

Magic The Gathering Online Exchange.

Chase Manhattan, they are not.

<comment><USER4> They don't seem too dissimilar.

JP Morgan Chase started as The Manhattan Company ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhattan_Company](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhattan_Company)). Formed to provide a clean water supply instead the owners took 95% of the $2 million to form a bank and created a system of waterworks that caused massive cholera outbreaks ... I don't think MtGox has killed anyone yet, though I've been convinced for a time that they've probably made-off with a lot of the money.

JP Morgan Chase aren't exactly trustworthy either, motivation based on pure financial profit will do that - a synopsis of some of their major indiscretions: [http://www.icij.org/offshore/jpmorgan-chases-record- highligh...](http://www.icij.org/offshore/jpmorgan-chases-record-highlights- doubts-about-big-banks-devotion-fighting-dirty-money)</comment></comment>


The 2015 global avg temp was the hottest on record – NASA/NOAA [video/animation] - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/689885606990581760 <comment><USER2> Global warming is by far the greatest threat humanity is facing.</comment>


Just launched new lead company – giving away 25 leads free Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.leadsy.co <comment><USER2> This would make a good "Show HN".</comment>


Ask HN: Why Isn't Go Functional? - <AUTHOR> One of the things I keep reading about functional languages is how they make reasoning about code easier and how this is particularly useful for distributed systems. Given that Go was built by Google specifically for the purposes of building distributed systems, why isn't it functional? <comment><USER2> As discussed in the Go FAQ relating to the design principles of Go, the language was designed with the idea of using it in situations as an alternative to older object-oriented/procedural languages like C, C++, and Java.[1] So they chose to make a language with less "book keeping and repetition", and with a focus on ease of entry to the language itself. Creating a purely functional or even mainly functional language to replace or start new services and programs written or designed by people familiar with the OO/procedural paradigm would be to add another entry barrier or level of complexity to adopting the language. I believe this would be counter to their goals for the language.

[1] [https://golang.org/doc/faq#principles](https://golang.org/doc/faq#principles)

<comment><USER3> I like that they aren't trying to hide that it's a beginner language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go was built by Rob Pike and based upon the work that was done for the distributed operating system Plan 9 and the Limbo programming language that was built along with it. When these things were being developed, functional programming techniques were not in vogue in the mainstream software engineering world. It likely might not have been practical.

</comment><comment><USER5> Go was designed by some of the most gifted engineers of our time. In particular, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson had been working in distributed system for more than 40 years, and before Google they worked for one of the most renewed research facilities in the whole world.

Murray Hill gathered together people focused on solving real problems for the most distributed industry in the last 150 years. They had the opportunity to witness technologies and solutions that worked. And I quite sure that they suffer those that doesn't.

From my humble point of view, Go is a compromise of what works in real life, the first time I see the go compiler, I traced it back to the good things of Limbo, C, object oriented programming and the adding of a simple syntax to create CSP concurrency made it a killer application.

</comment><comment><USER6> The idea that functional languages are overall superior is just not accepted by the majority of software developers. In practice, most popular languages borrow many concepts that originated in functional languages, but don't restrict themselves to being purely functional.

</comment><comment><USER7> They definitely make automated reasoning about code easier. But perhaps they don't always make it easier for humans. See for yourself by comparing functional and non-functional versions of various algorithms on this site: [https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Sorting_algorithms/Merge_sort](https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Sorting_algorithms/Merge_sort)

</comment><comment> a-saleh I think Rob Pike, one of the inventors doesn't see the value of the functional style, at least that is what I gather from the readme of [https://github.com/robpike/filter](https://github.com/robpike/filter) :P

Personally, I would love if the language design was a step closer to I.e. ocaml, especiall if I see the 'this is a struct, but only one of the fields should be not-null' hack to implement sum-types, or when I see how closely select over a channel resembles pattern-matching.

But the library ecosystem is good and 'just using forloops' is fine.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is no silver bullet for any kind of problem in software engineering. And, distributed systems is no exception. Also, when designing a large system e.g. a distributed system, the fact of selecting a language for its functional, procedural or object oriented capabilities is not much important afaik.

Hence, I think the first sentence of your question has no effect on the question. For the question of >why isn't it functional? I think current state of Go is performing enough for Google's problems.

</comment><comment><USER9> It isn't purely functional, I don't think, but functions are a first-class thing in Go, aren't they?

I mean, I've returned functions from functions, and passed functions as parameters.. and there's no requirement that a function modify state anywhere.. what else is required to be purely functional?

<comment><USER10> In a purely functional language, functions apply inputs to a single expression to produce an output (though there is usually a way to add some declarations inside the function to keep the expression from getting to hairy). Side effects are possible, but they are wrapped up as values that still have to be passed around as functions and possible errors must be handled.

"Purely functional" means that pure functions are not only possible, but that they are the only kinds of functions in the language.

While it might be theoretically possible to write purely functional code in Go, it doesn't have mechanisms for treating side effects as values, and the heavy reliance on arrays and channels and things would make it unnatural. Pure functions don't contain loops because a loop is only used to generate side effects. That would be hard in Go, but it's pleasant in languages that support pure FP.

If this explanation sounds weird, learn some Haskell to get an idea of what pure FP is like. It's fun stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Go isn't functional because if it was, it wouldn't be Go; it'd be Haskell, ML or Ocaml. Google didn't want to make a clone of Ocaml or the like; they wanted something different. Hence, Go.

</comment><comment><USER12> Because it's a language build by engineers with a pragmatical mindset ?

</comment><comment><USER13> Because they wanted it to be actually usable by the vast majority of programmers developing real world solutions? Not saying that functional programming doesn't have a place but if it was as wonder as some people say it is it would take over the world because the shops that used it would way outperform those who don't but for most things that doesn't appear to happen.

<comment><USER14> That's a pretty poor argument. Functional programming isn't as popular because it's more difficult to learn, not because it's not as good. Sometimes the easier, almost as good solution is better than the technically superior option, especially if you need a ton of people to learn.

Functional programming is certainly better in a lot of ways, but Google wasn't trying to build a "good" language, they were trying to build a "good enough" language, which is why it doesn't really innovate, but merely pulls in familiar features into a simple package. Go isn't the best at anything, it's just good enough at several things, and very simple to learn, and that's exactly why Google uses it.

<comment><USER15> No, they were trying to build a good language _for their set of problems_. Their set of problems include huge numbers of engineers, and code bases in the tens of millions of lines. They wanted short compile times, and ease of reading code. They weren't going to get either of those by something in the direction of Haskell.

And the result is not "just good enough". It's actually quite good _for their problem set_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _One of the things I keep reading about functional languages is how they > make reasoning about code easier and how this is particularly useful for > distributed systems. Given that Go was built by Google specifically for the > purposes of building distributed systems, why isn 't it functional?_

1) Who said that what you "keep reading" about functional language is true?

2) Even if true, who said that what you "keep reading" about functional language is true in all cases?

3) Who said other factors don't come at play, and might be even more important?

4) Who said a language has to adopt functional principles wholesale, and isn't it enough that it has some (as languages increasingly get)?

5) Doesn't the IT industry always find some methodology to hype as the silver bullet, much akin to the diet industry? Maybe functional programming is one of them?

6) If you don't have personal experience with functional languages or can't personally appreciate whether they really do make "reasoning about code easier", why take what you read about them at face value? Perhaps they miss something?

7) To argue on the other side, who said that when a large company builds something, they get it right? Often it's the inverse.

8) Who said Go was built "by Google" in the strong sense? Go was a rogue project from a small team AT Google. It wasn't an official Google effort (the way Java was for Sun, .NET for MS, and so on) to make an official Google language. It's just that that group was concerned with "what language features would be a good fit for the work with do here at Google" \-- but the inverse is not true, Google as a company/management/etc wasn't concerned with building such a language. They just went ahead with people devoting time to the project.

9) Who said the Go team has kept with the times (or even with older but still relevant PL research)?

What I write above are not answers and are not meant to be "the truth", they're meant to make one see the situation more critically.

<comment><USER15> Re 1: Who said? Those who wrote the stuff being read, of course. (You're muttering "self referential" like that's some kind of a problem... /s)

Re 2 and 3: I think this is the big one. Functional language are great _in some situations_. Non-functional languages are great _in some other situations_. The problem is, someone who doesn't know functional languages gets into a situation where they're good, finds out about functional languages, starts using them, and a large number of their problems go away. They _experience_ functional languages being wonderful. But they conclude "functional languages are wonderful" rather than "functional languages are wonderful _in that situation_ ", and they proceed to try to sell the world on how wonderful functional languages are. (Not just functional - ditto for other language styles and development techniques.)

The trick is, given the problem, to pick the right languages, tools, and techniques, rather than to have One Right Answer.

Re 9: I'd say, given Pike's background, that he almost certainly knew at least the older PL research. Ditto Kernighan (who didn't design the language, but did write the book).</comment></comment>


What 'Lean In' Misunderstands About Gender Differences - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-in-misunderstands-about-gender-differences/274138/

<comment><USER2> This logic that boys should play with dolls in order to help equalise genders always bugs me as stupid – assuming that having played with dolls is the reason women are oppressed (which they obviously aren't), avoid technology and stay at home, why exactly would you want a larger part of the population to engage in such an outright dangerous activity?

<comment><USER3> I would hesitate to call the mere act of playing with dolls a dangerous activity, I think you're making too big a leap...

In my opinion, the image boys playing with dolls is just a way of translating the importance of a paradigm shift to us adults that already have these pre- determined notions of what dolls are for. Boys and girls develop in very different ways, each individual will find something to play with that brings them happiness and meaning. What really needs to change is the undercurrent of the parents'/guardians'biases (or the biases of any role models in these kids lives for that matter) that tell the kids what dolls/tonka trucks represent. Then playing with dolls becomes more about exploring than conforming.

<comment><USER2> > I would hesitate to call the mere act of playing with dolls a dangerous > activity, I think you're making too big a leap...

Silly me would call that sarcasm, but, sure, 'making too big a leap' works, too :)

<comment><USER3> :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The internet's fifth man (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590765-louis-pouzin-helped-create-internet-now-he-campaigning-ensure-its <comment><USER2> This was one of the best articles I've read lately, it's not filled with empty prose as is the style today, it's just filled with the history of a man who was one of several who founded the internet and no more.

I agree with him that we need to keep iterating the foundations of the internet and keep it open and protect against the corporate takeover. I'm not sure how best to do that so I guess all I can do is work on my small areas of influence at work and in my personal projects.

<comment><USER3> > This was one of the best articles I've read lately, it's not filled with > empty prose as is the style today.

Agreed! Why is that the style today?

I've heard it has something to do with SEO but I'm unsure how, or if there are other reasons.

This trend makes my skimming habit so much worse, because it actually justifies skipping ahead to meaningful words.

<comment><USER4> Writing concise prose is harder than the stream-of-consciousness style; while the former may start off as the latter, it takes a lot of editing to hone it into a sharp implement.

<comment><USER5> > Writing concise prose is harder than the stream-of-consciousness style...

Totally true, but I think that's not what's happening. Yesterday an HN post was made about this [https://lithub.com/the-wolves-of-stanislav-an-improbably- tru...](https://lithub.com/the-wolves-of-stanislav-an-improbably-true-parable- for-the-pandemic-age/) It's carefully written to be like that, it's verbose by design, and I started skimming then closed it. I don't know why these timewaster articles are produced either, but it's not accident or laziness. Plenty irritating though.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps there's a generation that has seen little else, and takes this to be the best or only way to write? Are we teaching people to write this way, with examinations having a time limit and where, in practice, the score correlates strongly with length? (Though that has been the case for a long time.) Is concise writing taken to be difficult-textbook style, and undesirable anywhere else?

Print media editors necessarily have to constrain length, and authors learned to write accordingly. Nowadays, a lot of writing is unconstrained either by physical limits or editors.

The specific example you give appears to be intentionally literary in intent, and so conciseness is not necessarily a prime virtue. When authors were paid by the word, prolixity was effectively encouraged, and this is obvious in some of Poe's work.

<comment><USER3> It's more than expressing a thought with more words than necessary: so many articles start with something along the likes of

"it was a sunny May afternoon in the office of Dr. Whoever, where the cobblestones in the entrance glinted the fading sunlight. When Dr. Whoever was a boy, his father would take him out fishing..." ... and rambles on with meaningless details, containing perhaps a handful of passages in the article that are actually relevant to what the title promised me.

Perhaps a clearer example is when you find a recipe online. You will find pages of how the recipe has been in the family for ages, and how the author's family is delighted with it, and the innumerous and unproven health benefits it has, and how it's so easy to make, etc. The actual recipe is half a page.

<comment><USER6> While that style personally annoys me, I feel as though a decent chunk of the American populace find the topic of an article more interesting if they understand the human context behind it. The recipe example is a perfect distillation of that point; while some (or most) people come for just the recipe, there is a subset that are interested in how the recipe came to be. Meanwhile, adding that context doesn't dissuade most people from scrolling to the bottom to get the actual recipe. At the end of the day, most (not all) of the population is either interested in the descriptive language and human aspect of a topic, or is interested enough in the topic to ignore the descriptive language and human interest parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This guy invented the datagram?!

How in the world is this not recognized earlier? He got awarded in 2003, but that is still way too late.

I think we should have a list in which all stories of underdeserved computer scientists should be displayed. Alan Turing's example is a well-known one. I still can't believe how he was treated. But apparently he isn't the only example of being underdeserved.

</comment><comment><USER8> A significantly underrated progenitor. Not always recognised, and certainly not reflected adequately in the official historia recited often by Americans.

<comment><USER9> While I don't disagree, there is always a tendency to elevate a few people even when inventions are the collective works of many. Pouzin's contributions were important and he did coin the datagram term. At the same time, he built on earlier packet switching work by Paul Baran at RAND and Donald Davies at the UK National Physical Laboratory.

<comment><USER10> I've always wondered: who _actually wrote the software_ for IMPs and such? Who debugged the lower-level (but still essential) operational issues? Was it the people we've heard of, or others whose contributions we've forgotten? I'm guessing the latter, but it's hard to be sure this much later.

<comment><USER9> RFC 1 lists a few of the people who were involved: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The term 'fifth man', especially in a British publication, tends to suggest cold-war spying (Anthony Blunt was number 4. As it happens, he also received royal honors, in a time when his unmasking was a closely held secret within British intelligence.)

<comment><USER11> I thought the Beatles lots of people were said to be the "fifth" Beatle.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this article via Wikipedia as a result of wondering why unix shells are named so.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_\(computing\))

<comment><USER12> Was your question answered?

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

> That program, which he described as a "shell" around the computer's whirring > innards, gave inspiration—and a name—to an entire class of software tools, > called command-line shells, that still lurk below the surface of modern > operating systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is the website [http://www.pouzinsociety.org](http://www.pouzinsociety.org) that covers new network architectures, also John Day quoted in the article has written a good book about networking history and future paths in "patterns in network architecture"

</comment><comment><USER14> unsurprisingly, he suffered politcal headwinds from the connection-oriented telco people. i wonder how visible that religious war is through the mists of time.

how much duplication of effort and fighting at cross purposes .. I guess up until the failure of ATM and eventual submission to voice over ip.

pretty sad how much effort was expended on things like gossip, and how many standards were warped in an attempt at reconciliation.

</comment><comment><USER15> >Louis Pouzin helped create the internet

Bing part of creating such a main element in the world it's just crazy

</comment><comment><USER16> > Based in California and very loosely accountable to America's Department of > Commerce

Is this still true?</comment>


The thinking and dollars behind The New York Times' new digital strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/10/newsonomics-the-thinking-and-dollars-behind-the-new-york-times-new-digital-strategy/ <comment><USER2> I have involved in several news media attempts to go into digital and worked on the launch of two paper newspapers that tried to make it in the early 2000's both failed spectacularly.

One of them a high quality, amazing journalists high ambitions for quality content newspaper.

The other a free omnibus newspaper to be delivered to almost the entire country (Denmark)

I learned something very different from both of them but I draw the same conclusion.

News is the reporting of events. Newspapers whether digital or print is in the business of using these events to sell newspapers so they can sell adds.

But there are several problems with omnibus news media.

\- Most traditional news media simply have too many employees.

\- So called "Quality Journalism" isn't going to save any newspapers.

\- There are too many newspapers and too many other ways to hear about the actual event. The internet is one big news source.

\- Making money on advertising require an amount of visitors that are simply not possible for most.

There is still room for news but it has to be either much smaller, focused and specialized or have to be one of a few multinational news-source providers that others can use.

The omnibus paper is dead.

<comment><USER3> I would pay a subscription for high quality local investigative journalism (that I can read online) but I fear that it's a model that won't work until people realize what they're missing and how much corruption can flourish if it goes unchecked by journalists.

<comment><USER2> Sure so would I, but not enough people are like you and me. But thats just part of the problem.

1) You are depending on something to actually happen. 2) You are depending on it to be actually interesting 3) With time it will be solved with more transparent processes in the public sphere. 4) Most of the really interesting areas that journalists could cover today they don't have any knowledge of. It's simply too complex and so instead you see people who are experts in their fields report and explain.

Newspapers as a seller of events that gets interpreted by journalists and sold to people is a dying industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I subscribe to the NY Times even though I am in Missouri. The actual weekend subscription with digital was cheaper than digital alone.

I've been a subscriber for over a year and enjoy the morning and evening wrap- ups delivered to my phone.

What I don't enjoy are the constant, 3 a week, emails trying to get me to add something to the subscription. In fact, they change the offerings often enough I have trouble differentiating what they want me to buy. lol

<comment><USER3> I get why it happens but the drive to turn every subscription and transaction with a customer into an opportunity to "upsell" is getting tiresome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am appalled that the combination of Digital + Print costs as much or less than the digital subscription alone.

NYTimes, WSJ all seem to forget the basic principles of economics which dictate a certain amount of price elasticity is essential to bring in more customers. It seems almost punitive that digital customers pay at par with print customers when the incremental costs for the latter are relatively so minor.

If NYTimes is really serious about boosting it's pure digital subscriptions, scaling back the height of the paywall is key - not to a trivial non-zero sum, but to an amount where the pure digital customer doesn't feel ripped off.

<comment><USER6> The thing is the paper makes so much money from print advertising that to them it is cheaper to print and deliver papers. It's the old trope people like to recite about social media companies that "you're the product being sold to advertisers." For a variety of reasons your eyeballs are far less valuable online.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. It's why local papers deliver papers to households that don't even subscribe. It ups the "readership" (which in many cases is really the "throwawayership"), and they can con ad buyers into higher prices.

Similar is phone books. I used to live in an apartment building where phone books would be dropped in front of your door at least annually (maybe more, there are more than one phone book company). Residents would passive- aggressively leave them out there on the walk, and maintenance would eventually pick them up. I hadn't had a land line for years, and I got one like all the other residents.

But the phone book company can then claim "readership" and sell ads.

And now we block ads on the last place where ads can reach us. Ads may survive as a revenue source, but it's going to have to change in some way that most of us can't even imagine. And it's going to have to change for "our" benefit, because we've gotten very used to controlling that stream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude I am surprised there is no mention of Blendle:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/new-york-times- dutc...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/new-york-times-dutch- startup-newspaper-paywall_n_6053224.html)</comment>


Looking for founders for three startup ideas - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@henrysward/carta-ventures-looking-for-founders-d22b2baf7f75 <comment><USER2> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the intent of this post, but I'm reminded of a hilarious Facebook group I used to be in called "I'll handle the business side".

Example of the types of posts screenshotted and shared in said group: "hi i have an excellent idea for a startup, easily compete with Facebook/Google, i need a lead programmer you need to have 10+ years experience in javascript and C. i cannot pay you but if you build a model platform I will look at it and if i like it i will use it for my idea and you will get equity in my company. cannot offer salary. please respond immediately"

<comment><USER3> No you don't get it. THESE guys are different!

<comment><USER4> Carta needs these services to thrive as a private equity marketplace/"book entry" recordkeeper, while anyone building a startup for these services would be better served getting funding and an acqui-hire from Wall Street and other traditional financial services orgs with incredibly deep pockets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Carta is a fun company because the more problems we solve, the more problems > we get to solve.

So, you're like every other company? I used to work as a Soft. Eng. for a particular Fortune 500 company in the outdoor/pool luxury industry. They've been around ~40 years. Technologically though, woefully immature. Every e-commerce problem we solved was answered with another "fun" problem to solve. What makes you different?

Let's look at the "ideas"

\- Total compensation, "problem": Ah, so data mining and monetization.

\- Portfolio analytics, "problem": ...you want data analysis?

\- Sell-side Research Firm: "There will be a market for sell-side research." ...umm, why? Why would those private venture-backed companies WANT to be associated with you? Then you're differentiating factor is...marketing?

Finally, why are you posting this here? On HN? At best, it's misguided. At worst, it's tone-deaf or shady. If your ideas and motivations are legit then keep building. Put your own hours and sleepless nights behind it. Prove yourself. Show there is actually market demand for what you claim. Then come back. Offer value before asking for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> So you want people to apply with what a v1 of the product should look like and a vision ? Why should people do that for free and what guarantees do they have you won't Profit off the suggestions ?

IMO this is very shady.

<comment><USER7> I've heard the story that the idea doesn't matter. It's the team that matters, with a good idea. I'm not saying this is true or not. Probably depends.

In this case, they are presenting their "ideas" as a "shell" of an idea and soliciting anyone who is willing to match their expectations in "good team". They talk about a product by a Sell-Side Research Firm which enables a "robust research industry to help investors make better trading decisions". That's not a product. It's a meme. They even say it:

Think Morningstar for private markets.

A better idea is an AI crawler just for me, which only crawls what is relevant and deletes the rest from the search index.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks super shady.

If you believe these are fields of potential massive growth, then why you don't develop them in situ?

And if someone else is working on that already... why you don't acqui-hire them?

<comment><USER9> > If you believe these are fields of potential massive growth, then why you > don't develop them in situ?

Because they have a list of three problems, not of three solutions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On one side, I think it's nice that a company decides to explore/fund new ideas and products by giving someone an entrepreneurial-like offer.

At the same time, a great founder shouldn't need to do this via Carta, and I'd be worried a lot about Carta's real intention.

Not sure how Carta could defuse these concerns, though. Perhaps they're well intentioned but it's hard for them to prove it.

<comment><USER11> >At the same time, a great founder shouldn't need to do this via Carta, and I'd be worried a lot about Carta's real intention.

Would you say the same holds true for ycombinator's seed accelerator program?

<comment><USER10> It might sound arrogant, but yes, it should apply to everything, to a degree.

I'd say that YC is probably the highest value among the "seed" things that exist out there, and therefore it would apply to it less than this Carta initiative.

Would you agree?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> @Carta: What's the benefit to this model vs hiring and directing the products development internally? Besides a possible seed round, the other benefits (public API/infra, office space, access to Carta folks) appear to be of limited value for these endeavors.

<comment><USER12> Probably sharing risk (and upside) and attracting a different profile

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The funny thing about this is one of their product idea is quantitative analysis for VCs... And then they say send us a pitch, we don't care about numbers at all!</comment>