Ask HN: What are the books you wish your colleagues had read? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There is a class at Georgia Tech I colloquially referred to as "making sure your coworkers don't hate you." It covered design patterns, software testing, and project management. I'd tack on a basic knowledge of databases to that. These are things you can gain a true functional knowledge of in a couple of weeks, and which not knowing might make senior engineers hate working with you.

So to mimic the class:

The Mythical Man Month

Design Patterns - Even if some of the particulars are not as relevant, it still provides a useful framework for thought.

Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach

I'd also add Harry Potter & The Methods of Rationality. A lot of engineers can think empirically, but its not their first reaction. Going through this book helped make it second nature for me. Can't remember if a certain data structure is immutable? Now I'll write a couple of lines of code to see rather than go looking for documentation. A lot of big problems start as false assumptions. Having the instinct to think to test them and knowing how to will prevent a lot of wasted effort, regardless of your role.

How to Solve It by Polya also gets an honorable mention for similar reasons.

<comment><USER3> Design patterns feel completely obsolete now.

Not only does no-one at all talk about them, most of the design patterns themselves were harmful and are now completely unnecessary due to functional language features being available in modern languages.

Design patterns are like TDD, no-one wants to come out and admit it, but they were really, really bad outside of theory.

InitiatorFactoryFactory I do not mourne thee!

<comment><USER4> Could you please elaborate that? I still see patterns like Builders, Factories, Singletons and even sometimes a Strategy in Java. Why do you think they are bad? What are the functional alternatives?

<comment><USER3> Java's not a good example as Java 8 took so long to come along. Almost took them 10 years to catch up with the rest.

In modern C# you won't see hide nor hair of Factories, Singletons, etc.

Expect modern Java to be the same in a few years.

<comment><USER5> Well, what's about the new HttpClientFactory... [https://github.com/aspnet/HttpClientFactory](https://github.com/aspnet/HttpClientFactory)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, what with the asp.net core team being such great devs, I'll definitely listen to them.

That team can't commit to anything and yet make regular sweeping changes to the framework depending on whatever the current flavour of the month is. This month it's DI, DI, DI.

They've been incredibly inconsistent since ScottGu left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.

I'm not saying my coworkers are a bunch of jerks, but it's got a lot of great advice for working alongside others and resolving differences.

\---

"How to Not Write Bad" by Ben Yagoda.

I'm not saying my coworkers are all terrible writers, but for many of them, writing just isn't their thing. But learning how to avoid the most common writing problems is important for programmers, because everybody ends up writing some degree of documentation.

\--

"Experimenting With Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid."

I'm not saying my coworkers are a bunch of babies, but I wrote the book, so I want _everybody_, not just my colleagues, to read it.

<comment><USER7> I loved experimenting with babies. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I gave my manager two copies of _The Mythical Man-Month_ so he could read it twice as fast."

<comment><USER9> Excellent!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Actually my colleagues are pretty smart!

For most _people_ , though, it's hard to beat _Jurassic Park_ , the morality tale that goes something like "Myopic optimization leads to _BEING EATEN BY DINOSAURS. "_

<comment><USER11> In terms of books to (gently) influence colleagues... I generally find myself looking for pretty-much the opposite. Something that emphasises the joy of stealing fire from heaven.

Old-school sci-fi (lots to choose from) could be pretty good in that regard. Newer stuff often leans a bit too much in the morality tale direction.

<comment><USER12> At the cost of being downvoted, I like _The Fountainhead_ for this. Trusting your own judgement, daring to create something beautiful even if nobody else appreciates it, even if everyone else hates you for it. Because it's beautiful and because your singular vision improves the world by existing in it. And because you become a better person for daring to realize the great work that is inside of you.

The love story in it is kind of weird, okay really weird, but besides that I like the book. Most of the over-the-top strawman librul bad guys, and attempts to morally justify Laissez-faire capitalism mostly came from _Atlas Shrugged_. _The Fountainhead_ is more focused on an individual who wants to realize greatness for its own sake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Storytelling with Data_ \- because so many people are bad at PowerPoint: [http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/book](http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/book)

 _R for Data Science_ \- because it is such a solid foundation for a career in business analytics: [http://r4ds.had.co.nz](http://r4ds.had.co.nz)

And for extra credit two books I hope my collegues DON'T read since they are best kept secret are Cialdini's two books on influence: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini)

<comment><USER14> Why are they best kept secret?

<comment><USER15> Ostensibly to prevent them from using the techniques on yourself, or so that they don't recognize when you are using the techniques on them.

<comment><USER14> Aren't we talking about colleagues? Shouldn't it be a collaborative environment?

<comment><USER13> I meant it somewhat tounge-and-cheek, but if I recall correctly even Cialdini quotes Uncle Ben's line to Spiderman about _" with great power comes great responsibility"_. I also should mention that I work for a large corporation, and while I strive to be collaborative, it is still a political environment I operate in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Working Effectively with legacy code ([http://amzn.to/2CazEm5](http://amzn.to/2CazEm5)) and The Design of Everyday Things ( [http://amzn.to/2H23a0R](http://amzn.to/2H23a0R) )

Both have a huge impact on how I work with code and design them. Trying to explain these concepts are hard without context. Sometimes i just copy/paste the sections i think they could benefit from.

</comment><comment><USER17> Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) by Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman.

Full text is available here: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full- text/book/book.html](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html) (or PDF at [https://github.com/sarabander/sicp- pdf](https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pdf)).

It is IMHO the most important book on programming and programming languages ever published.

<comment><USER18> If anyone is interested in SICP, I strongly recommend finding videos of the lectures (which are free online) and watching those, then going back to the book for reference and exercises. I found the SICP book very hard work until I discovered the actual lectures that it is meant to support.

<comment><USER19> Here's a link for anyone else that wants it: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8FE88AA54363BC46](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8FE88AA54363BC46)

<comment><USER20> OMG Thank you to both of you! I've seen dozens of references to SICP in lists online, but I never knew there's video of the course, no-one mentioned that. Great stuff.

After watching the first 10 minutes of the first lecture, was so good I immediately got my super-non-techy housemate to watch it, after explaining how revered among programmers the book is. She said "Thank you for showing me that!" hehe.

<comment><USER18> "After watching the first 10 minutes of the first lecture, was so good I immediately got my super-non-techy housemate to watch it, after explaining how revered among programmers the book is. She said "Thank you for showing me that!" hehe."

Yeah, the lecturers are really good, and IIRC, the videos were professionally produced (HP paid for them). The book is written like course material for a maths class, more than a commercial programming book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Snow Crash - Convincing possible future dominated by media, corporations, computers, and drugs.

The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Fascinating delve into, among other things, why Homer is boring but gets better, prehistoric art in early human cultures, schizophrenia, and perception and the points it breaks down.

(I work in VR games so take with a grain of salt)

</comment><comment><USER22> Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.

The chapter about "religious debates" in particular was hilariously accurate, about how teams of people will argue about strongly held personal beliefs about things that can't be proven.

</comment><comment><USER23> Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

I mostly wish this to my ex and future managers, but colleagues wouldn't hurt as well.

Working in Berlin I'm constantly baffled how ignorant of the "old" research people are. Time and again.

<comment><USER24> Seconded. At a couple of places I was actually thinking about leaving this book as a good-bye gift for managers when I quit. But that wiuld most likeky be effort and money wasted.

<comment><USER23> Hear hear.

I was considering the same thing. Outside of the reasons you listed you can also be viewed as smug / bitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Design patterns get obsolete. Programming languages get obsolete. Libraries get obsolete.

Mathematics doesn't. Learn CS foundations, logic, proofs to get better at understanding and gain abstraction experience.

Edit: books: How to prove it by D.Velleman, Proofs and concepts, Discrete Math by S.Epp

</comment><comment><USER26> I am a proponent for depth over breadth. To read is one thing but to understand is another. Rather than read 5 books and superficially grasp their concepts, read one closely and carefully.

The one book I wish my colleagues would read and learn from is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl [1].

"Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness."

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor- Frankl/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor- Frankl/dp/080701429X)

</comment><comment><USER27>
      - Nassim N. Taleb: Black Swan and Antifragile[0]
      - Robert Cialdini: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion[1]
      - Franklin Foer: World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech[2]
      - Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society[3]

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness- Frag...](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness- Fragility/dp/081297381X)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion- Rober...](https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert- Cialdini/dp/006124189X)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential- Threat...](https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential- Threat/dp/1101981113)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/One-Dimensional-Man-Ideology- Industri...](https://www.amazon.com/One-Dimensional-Man-Ideology-Industrial- Routledge/dp/0415289777)

<comment><USER28> Then your overall goal must be to persuade them of the black-swan collateral risks of the big tech sector in an advanced industrial society.

I'm in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> All in no particular order....

As a Unix systems _engineer_ , I would choose

        1. W.R. Stevens books on Unix and Tcp/ip.
        2. Rochkind's Advanced UNIX Programming.
        3. Most of the Unix/Linux manual pages.
        4. Bash FAQ

As a Unix systems _programmer_ I would choose

        1. Mythical Man Month
        2. Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls.
        3. K&R C and Stroustrup C++
        4. A recent Java reference and Bloch's Java Puzzlers
        5. a reference and cookbook for the language of your choice -- Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.
        6. Google's style guides

</comment><comment><USER30> Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux - [https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Organizations-Frederic- La...](https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Organizations-Frederic- Laloux/dp/2960133501)

For me it is the most influential book on how I think about "agile" , what that really means, and which factors really matter.

</comment><comment><USER31> Principles by Ray Dalio

This is a good start for crafting better mental models and thought frameworks before engaging others in meetings.

</comment><comment><USER32> Clean Code Series from Uncle Bob.

The books made me realize how horrible my codes are. No matter how long you've been programming, I think these books should be read by every single programmer out there.

<comment><USER33> CC seems to be Design Patterns meets Moral Harassment

It turns development teams into a judgemental arena, demeaning of other colleagues and a race to see who follows "the gospel" closer to the letter

Who says their code is clean? Who says that's the best way of doing things? In all cases?

It just reeks of "I'm better than the rest", which is already a problem in the industry.

<comment><USER4> While I agree that can devolve into a dogmatic belief system, I also think that that's partly a people problem.

Many of the ideas in Clean Code make code more readable (for example small methods, each containing only one level of abstraction; or good naming). It's on the coders to know how far to take these ideas and when to be pragmatic and say "good enough".

<comment><USER33> > It's on the coders to know how far to take these ideas and when to be > pragmatic and say "good enough".

Which works in theory, in practice it's not that that easy, especially since UB seems to cater for the most "religious" ones

<comment><USER4> It isn't easy, but so far I've had luck with my co-workers. If they were more dogmatic, I think I would see Clean Code more critical too. But as it stands, I still recommend the book to new colleagues, and our culture takes care that we don't follow each "law" to its letter.

<comment><USER33> Yes isn't easy, that's why I'd rather avoid it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Amusing Ourselves to Death - N. Postman

From the 80s, and talking of TV, but it's worth reading again today as it's so applicable to the current landscape. More so than its original target.

</comment><comment><USER35> Just about anything. Too many coworkers don't read any technical books at all. Some will pick up books to learn specific tools or languages, which is better, but not enough...

If you made me pick one, though...

The Practice of Programming - Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike - [http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Brian-W- Kernighan...](http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Brian-W- Kernighan/dp/020161586X)

</comment><comment><USER36> 1984 just so they don't get any crazy ideas and invent big brother. _cough cough FACEBOOK cough cough_

</comment><comment><USER37> Fascinating question. I recently went about compiling a list of books that I though our team will benefit by reading (or re-reading). It was rather tricky to find books which are of lasting value and are best read in a contemplative frame of mind. Not necessarily intended to solve immediate problems, but to help become better in some immeasurable way. This is the list we collectively came up with. Our goal was to find 50 books and we went a bit above that in the end. YMMV. Link to list of books: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QOSqT2B_2skXlyG9lKI8...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QOSqT2B_2skXlyG9lKI8O_wgPbz4eWQ7TeEJSNx3Zbk/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER38> Mythical man-month was so good you put it twice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Everything is Obvious," by MSR researcher Duncan Watts.

Imagine every time when people infer seemingly-obvious extrapolations from data. This book addresses that phenomenon to make you more self-conscious about the limitations of data and the constant need for more research.

</comment><comment><USER40> The entire "You Don't Know JavaScript" series of books by Kyle Simpson:

[https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS](https://github.com/getify/You- Dont-Know-JS)

Highly recommended because:

1/ They're up to date and you'll be able to avoid all the outdated JS tutorials on the web

2/ They're extremely well written

3/ They're thorough in a way that a lot of books and tutorials aren't. They are short, dense, incremental books and if you work through all of them you'll have a complete understanding of the language, including what's outside the so-called "Good Parts."

</comment><comment><USER41> Effective Java by Joshua Bloch

<comment><USER42> That book is awesome, should be read by every Java developer! Discussions and examples from this book is often on Stack Overflow too, where the discussions go deeper and may be clearer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Getting Things Done.

The engineers usually aren't so bad, because they have what's essentially a GTD system for 98% of their work in the form of an issue tracker (though I've also known one or two who could benefit from a system to help them track the complexity and non-code aspects of larger projects).

But the managers and the people I interface with in other departments are incapable of keeping track of what projects they have going on, what the next step are to keep those projects moving, and who's responsible for what.

</comment><comment><USER44> Personally, though, I think there are book anti-patterns, too. If you start somewhere new or get new management and they hand out Machiavelli or Sun Tzu, You should probably update your resume and start taking recruiter calls; things are about to get rough.

I mean, those are important books, and you should read them for historical/cultural reasons, but if management hands them out at work, from experience, it's indicative of an, uh, unhealthy or at least unpleasant work culture.

</comment><comment><USER45> The Mythical Man-Month - Fred Brooks

To all Project Managers & Top Management.

<comment><USER46> Another good one for project management is _The Checklist Manifesto_ by Atul Gawande. When running many large projects, there's always a common set of stuff that needs to get done before declaring a project ready for deployment. The techniques in this book are simple, effective and a lot more subtle than simply writing down a list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I would like it if my coworkers and managers read and took to heart the message behind

       • Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_Hotter_Planet

       • Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming
         http://www.drawdown.org/the-book

but sadly most are too focused on their stock options.

</comment><comment><USER48> Worm, the amazing superhero deconstruction web serial, only so I could geek out with them.

</comment><comment><USER49> Peopleware.

How about not stuffing people into open offices.

</comment><comment><USER50> " _Getting To Yes_ " [https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating- Agreement-Wit...](https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement- Without/dp/0143118757)

I've given away more copies of that book than any other. Improves all relationships.

" _Elements of Style_ " aka Strunk and White. [https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William- Strunk/...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William- Strunk/dp/020530902X)

I'd prefer they not only read Elements of Style, but work on it.

<comment><USER51> You might find this interesting regarding Elements of Style: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2015/04/21/against-strunk-whites-the-elements-of-style/)

The original article it quotes can be found here: www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf

It's quite heavy criticism of Elements of Style from the Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The Soul of a New Machine", by Tracy Kidder. Solving hard problems, dealing with (and balancing) both technical and business concerns, but with emphasis on getting things done over process and organisational concerns.

<comment><USER52> It's also extremely well written, and a great introduction to how computers work in the inside that can be understood by non technical readers. It's also the only book which succeeded in expressing both the rollercoaster I feel when programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> 1) The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas will always be a classic.

2) The Decision Maker by Dennis Bakke. This one pairs well with the more thorough Reinventing Organizations which has been mentioned in another comment.

<comment><USER54> I was disappointed with Pragmatic Programmer, but maybe I picked it up too late. It is quite obvious stuff for experienced person. If someone is 5 years in dev and content of the book is not obvious for him, then I am afraid the book will not help.

<comment><USER53> I agree insofar as any developer should probably know that stuff as a minimal baseline. Which is why it made my list of books I wish my colleagues had read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Leaders and Self Deception

Crucial Conversation

These two books will teach you and your colleagues how to communicate and maintain an open and centered dialouge while removing bad intentions and bad mindsets from your being.

<comment><USER20> Actual titles: _Leadership and Self-Deception_ and _Crucial Conversations_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Nonviolent Communication

</comment><comment><USER57> Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg. As a programmer of 30 years I have taken more quotes and found more common ground with this book than any other. Here's a small extract that caught my attention: "In order to build something, you have to have a blueprint. And we don't always have one. Then you hit unexpected problems. It's hard to know how long something is going to take until you know for sure you can build it."

</comment><comment><USER58> Anna Karenina and a selection of other classics. Anything from David Mitchell. At least a couple of the more well-known Haruki Murakami novels. Some history from the more scholarly end of the layman accessible works. Little bit of classic philosophy. More of my colleagues speak two (or more) languages than are monolingual, but if that weren't the case, I'd wish more of them read in another language.

</comment><comment><USER59> Player piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Essential reading for anyone who forgets how powerful and often out of touch engineers are as a class of professionals.

</comment><comment><USER60> The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker ([http://a.co/aGEmQBl](http://a.co/aGEmQBl))

</comment><comment><USER61> The Phoenix Project.

It's terrifying the parallels.

<comment><USER11> It's certainly an _interesting_ read. But very oriented towards big, conservative organisations.

To me, the message was just how operations-focussed and, above all, anti- individualistic big chunks of our field have become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> One of the worst managers I've had was actually well read. We read many of the same books and he also read many listed so far in this Ask HN. I often wondered how did he end up so bad if we read the same books?

<comment><USER63> I don't think reading a lot of books is a panacea that will magically make you a better person, or even a better manager. It's important to have a lot of "mental models" to make better decisions, but books won't fix a short temper or make someone more friendly. That comes from habits like reflection and meditation, or therapy. Also getting enough exercise, having a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, not working too much, and not having too much stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Ross Anderson: Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems

Matt Bishop: Computer Security: Art and Science

</comment><comment><USER65> Perl Medic is a phenomenal book about refactoring in the general case, through the lens of Perl

</comment><comment><USER66> Chris Alexander's Timeless way of building and Nature of order Robert Pirsig's Lila

</comment><comment><USER67> Crucial Conversations

</comment><comment><USER68> You Are Not So Smart && The Halo Effect.

</comment><comment><USER69> The lean startup and from zero to one.

</comment><comment><USER70> 1\. Peopleware

2\. Code Complete 2

</comment><comment><USER69> Pragmatic programmer

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> McConnell, Steve. Code Complete. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1993.

McConnell, Steve. Software Project Survival Guide. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1998.

Maguire, Steve. Writing Solid Code. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1993.

Ranade and Nash. The Elements of C Programming Style. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992.

Kernighan and Plauger. The Elements of Programming Style. New York: McGraw- Hill, 1982.

Caner, Cem, et al. Testing Computer Software, Second Edition. New York: Wiley Computer Publishing, 1999.

Hunt, Andrew, et al. The Pragmatic Programmer. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000.

Holub, Allen. Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.

</comment><comment><USER71> The bible

</comment><comment><USER72> Any, really.</comment>


5G, the Long Road Ahead - <AUTHOR> http://cellularinsights.com/5g/ <comment><USER2> One of the major things not really addressed in the article is backhaul for each 4.5G/5G cell site or small cell site. More air spectrum and better radio modulation/MIMO for the cell-to-handset is very important, but that's only a piece of the puzzle...

There's still a lot of locations out there without fiber, or that are currently fed by a 250-400Mbps capacity PTP microwave link. Cellular carriers are aggressively spending money to bring dark fiber to tower sites, of course, with the minimum connectivity for a new site being a single 10GbE circuit. This is one of the things driving the growth of outside-plant fiber construction and dedicated-purpose dark fiber network operators (example: Zayo's ongoing new builds spending $$$$$ in major metro areas in Texas).

The other part of the puzzle is much higher capacity new PTP microwave to feed sites, some of which will be logically downstream of newly fiber-fed sites. These new links will be at 1 Gbps to 5Gbps+ capacity.

<comment><USER3> Walrus01, you brought a very interesting topic. In NYC market for instance, operators provision their cell sites between 100 and 400Mbps. Verizon for instance has 45MHz of aggregate downlink radio capacity, which in today's 2x2 MIMO configuration means 337.5Mbps potential throughput per sector, times three sectors per site and you're at 1Gbps requirement. Yet, their sites are mostly provisioned at 150 or 200Mbps PER SITE, and then shared between three sectors. Most of their sites have 1Gbps capable cards too...

It's been an opex saving trend for all operators which will allows them to "control" incremental capacity gain at their discretion, without a truck roll.

I definitely plan on addressing that in the future posts, it's an annoying issue from the consumer perspective, that's for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As much as I like progress, one of the big hurdles 5G has is that 4G is mostly good enough.

The improvement from 3G to 4G was significant, but even then most people didn't care much. You got sub 20ms latency (my non-scientific tests show 14-19ms), much less jitter than 3G and sufficient bandwidth for most applications.

Why would people upgrade to 5G if they don't get any perceptible performance improvement?

4G is already good enough you can simply run remote desktop over it and get near local performance.

When the remote end is connected with an 1 Gbps+ link, who cares how much packet data bandwidth you got?</comment>


Where Does My Main Battery Go? - <AUTHOR> https://acoup.blog/2019/11/29/collections-where-does-my-main-battery-go/ <comment><USER2> Battery of _guns_ on a fictional spaceship.

I thought it would be about electrical batteries, so I quit reading after I realized.

<comment><USER3> Odd take. I found this article extremely interesting. Perhaps give it a chance?

<comment><USER4> Yea this is way more interesting than... electric batteries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoyed the diagrams of actual ships showing how they're maximizing the available space for propulsion and firepower. Seeing them from the outside it had always been a mystery to me how they were organized.</comment>


Why I just bought 90 B2X (Bitcoin SegWit2X futures) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bartjellema/why-i-just-bought-90-b2x-bitcoin-segwit2x-futures-f94d0ee13eb9 <comment><USER2> Could this type of scenario happen in the current financial markets? Could someone buy futures on a product/financial instrument that doesn't even exist?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some questions come to mind:

When was the final decision made to cancel Segwit2X?

Who was involved in the decision making process?

Who knew about the discussions regarding the decision?

Were the futures being marketed and sold with prior knowledge of the possibility of cancellation?

<comment><USER3> That really sucks for this guy now that it is canceled. Any chance of getting his investment of $1000/coin back I wonder? I know they [segwit2x peeps] spooled up B2X rigs a couple months ago and had been "mining" [correct me if I'm off] but it seemed like a very quiet group working on it. That post on the linuxfoundation site states that they did not want to risk dividing the bitcoin network when fewer than 30% were for the fork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ouch.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Is Speedtest Upload Test Disrupting Pings? - <AUTHOR> We have been recently blessed with Gigabit Fiber connection from AT&T. In my unscientific attempt to gauge connection stability I usually run 100 DNS pings and SpeedTest - all via latest Win 10 connected directly to router by short Cat 6 (gigabit) ethernet cable.
Today I noticed serious slowdowns in Ping but ONLY during Upload portion of the Speedtest, which itself reported 700mb/s. While 940 mb/s Download test has almost no impact on ping timing. Any idea what may explain this?
Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=53 Reply from 184.108.40.206: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=53 Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=53 Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=53 Reply from 18.104.22.168: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=53 Reply from 18.104.22.168: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=53 Reply from 188.8.131.52: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=53 Reply from 126.96.36.199: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=53 Reply from 220.127.116.11: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=53 Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=82ms TTL=53 Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=165ms TTL=53 Reply from 184.108.40.206: bytes=32 time=222ms TTL=53 Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=266ms TTL=53 Reply from 22.214.171.124: bytes=32 time=285ms TTL=53 Reply from 126.96.36.199: bytes=32 time=303ms TTL=53 Reply from 220.127.116.11: bytes=32 time=321ms TTL=53 Reply from 18.104.22.168: bytes=32 time=337ms TTL=53 Reply from 220.127.116.11: bytes=32 time=352ms TTL=53 Reply from 188.8.131.52: bytes=32 time=368ms TTL=53 Reply from 220.127.116.11: bytes=32 time=379ms TTL=53 Reply from 126.96.36.199: bytes=32 time=389ms TTL=53 Reply from 188.8.131.52: bytes=32 time=282ms TTL=53 Reply from 126.96.36.199: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=53 Reply from 18.104.22.168: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=53 Reply from 220.127.116.11: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=53 Reply from 126.96.36.199: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=53
It starts around same time as speedtest started, and at the end you can see "normal" results when speedtest is finished. You can see that download test reported higher speed and had barely any impact on ping test timings. <comment><USER2> The most likely cause is bufferbloat: [https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Introduction...](https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Introduction/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point, I have read about it in the past - mostly in the context of cable networks though.

<comment><USER2> That may be simply the result of those who were initially investigating the effect having cable internet connections.

But there is nothing about bufferbloat that is exclusive to "cable internet". The effect will happen anywhere that a too large buffer exists in a device with differing speed input and output links that tries too hard to never, ever, drop a TCP packet.

The effect you describe, ping latency skyrockets during upload phase of the speedtest, is exactly what happens when some device in the path of your packets and pings has an overlarge buffer that has filled. The most likely culprit is the device installed by AT&T that interfaces between your local network and their fiber network (i.e., the fiber "modem" or "router" box).</comment></comment></comment>


Google Launching Its Cloud Service Tomorrow, Without Big Music's Approval - <AUTHOR> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20110509/google-launching-its-cloud-service-tomorrow-without-big-musics-approval/ <comment><USER2> I patiently await the day when artists are able to cut better deals with AAPL, GOOG and AMZN to market and sell their content directly - probably at a 70/30 split like the apps and the books.

<comment><USER3> Magnatune isn't a big label, but it's DRM-free and splits 50/50 with the artists. It's also non-exclusive, so the artists can make deals with others as well, if they like. Their "end-user" license lets each subscriber give 3 friends a copy of the music.

<comment><USER4> I'm not familiar with the industry, but is 50/50 split considered good?

<comment><USER5> IIRC, the major label deal goes like this:

      * Major label gives artist a loan for $X to cover the costs of
        producing the album.
      * Artists earn back something like 12% on album sales (though I
        believe 12% is on the high end).
      * That 12% goes directly towards paying back the loan for the
        production of the album.
      * Artists don't retain the copyrights to their works (at least the
        recordings, they may retain copyright to the lyrics, depending on
        the contract/studio).
      * Artists don't give a cut of merchandise sales, or ticket sales for
        live shows.
      * Artists retain the copyrights to recordings of live performances,
        which is how bands like Grateful Dead or Dave Matthews can allow
        'bootleg' recordings of their live shows.
      * The studio retains rights to copyrights of live shows that are
        professionally recorded for the purposes of putting out a 'live'
        album though.
      * Most artists are never able to pay back the initial loan to create
        the album.

<comment><USER6> The other side:

* Major label advances an unknown artist a bunch of money.

* Album sells poorly.

* Artist never pays back advance.

* Major label would have been better not making the deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No one seems to be respecting/fearing the music companies any more, not even big companies.

<comment><USER8> Seems a bit premature. You still can't..

* listen to Pandora outside the US

* or Amazon Cloud Player outside the US

* or Spotify outside Europe

* buy music from Apple's iTunes Music Store US catalog in Japan

<comment><USER9>
        or Spotify outside Europe

It's frustrating to keep hearing this come up as someone living in Germany. Europe is a big place, and Spotify is available in only a handful of countries; namely France, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, UK.

<comment><USER8> That's true, I should've said Spotify outside a few European countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's worth remembering that Page & Brin could probably buy the major labels outright, and personally dismiss any lawsuits against Google.

<comment><USER7> At some stage isn't that likely to happen? All the tech companies will start eyeing the music and movies studios, wondering what it would mean if Apple owned them all, and they'll start snapping them up.

<comment><USER11> Sony is perhaps the front runner in this, given its large movie studio and music label, but it's not clear that owning these businesses has been a great boon for Sony's electronics or software.

One can also look at the not-that-long-ago "merger" of AOL with Time Warner as another example of a media/tech marriage where the supposed synergy was vastly exaggerated.

I'm not sure I see any reason for another major tech company to leap in to buying huge legacy businesses given the lessons learned by their competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Big Music is fucked. There have been so many times when they could have taken a graceful way out, and switched to a new realistic and reasonable business plan.

<comment><USER13> Don't underestimate their $$$ influence on the US political machine. Perhaps Canadian, too.

<comment><USER14> It seems very likely they will get their way with draconian copyright legislation in Canada in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't doubt they are launching this but I'm surprised Google is launching such a consumer-facing product at a developer conference. Perhaps there is a developer/API angle but I doubt it.

It would be like Steve Jobs launching a new version of iWork at WWDC. Sure, it's great, but it doesn't have any impact on developers.

<comment><USER16> I don't know about Google I/O, but WWDC has always had announcements of consumer products: iPhone 4, FaceTime, iMovie for iPhone, upgraded MacBooks, MobileMe,...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I certainly hope that it's not a rushed product that's aimed at beating Apple to the market.

<comment><USER18> Fat chance. It launches as "an invite-only beta", so I wouldn't get my hopes up.

<comment><USER19> "It's Wave for bands! It's invite only, so first all the bass players will get their parts up for download. They'll be able to invite 5 other bass players or drummers each. We'll add guitars, keys, and vocals once we've gained traction as the worlds best bass line download site! If we don't get enough users downloading bass lines, we'll close the project down and have the engineers behind it defect to Facebook..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder whether a service like this is actually better off without 'big music's approval'?

It all comes down to whether you see a cloud music service to be a purchase orientated service or a playback/consumption service.

If the latter, then at a conceptual level what does it have to do with the record labels. I don't need to get Warner's permission to play Dr Dre back on WinAmp.

<comment><USER20> The details are a bit murky at the moment but if Google is going to launch a music service that does not offer any method of purchasing or subscribing to music it will probably alienate a lot of users. Music sales may be down but they're not nonexistent. Lots of people don't pirate music for whatever reason. The whole experience will have to be pretty seamless in the way it scans and updates any music you bought from other services. For Google that's problem because you're probably buying that music from Amazon or Apple. Why not just use their cloud music services instead? It makes things a bit too complex. Amazon is in a better position but it'd be kind of shocking if the labels don't retaliate against them. It seems to me both Google and Amazon are forcing the labels back into Apple's camp here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really hope it's not going to be US-only :(

edit: FTFA: "Google Music to roll out to all U.S. google users within weeks of launch."

The wording doesn't say "U.S-only" so there might be a glimmer of hope.</comment>


How to test your app or product with a real people? - <AUTHOR> http://www.testingtime.com

<comment><USER2> Apple's Deep Insight Into User Interface Design

[http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays/jump-the- shark.html](http://www.warplife.com/mdc/essays/jump-the-shark.html)</comment>


Best Web Frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestwebframeworks.com/

<comment><USER2> The Django required Python version is very outdated. Current Django requires Python 2.6 or higher. This site says 2.3.

Given this, I am very doubtful of any other information.

</comment><comment><USER3> For Javascript, at least, the comparison chart essentially useless. AngularJS isn't included? jQuery and Underscore and Backbone are comparable libraries?

</comment><comment><USER4> The fact that Angular, Ember and Meteor are all missing from this list is inexcusable. How the hell does someone put this shit out?

</comment><comment><USER5> Node.JS isn't a web framework. Express, Meteor, Derby, Sails and the like are.

</comment><comment><USER6> Web2py does not have an ORM, it has a DAL.</comment>


NIST Samate – Source Code Security Analyzers - <AUTHOR> https://samate.nist.gov/index.php/Source_Code_Security_Analyzers.html <comment><USER2> Some other lists of these sort of things:

[https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/static- analysis](https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/static-analysis) [https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/dynamic- analysis](https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/dynamic-analysis) [https://github.com/collab-qa/check-all-the- things/tree/maste...](https://github.com/collab-qa/check-all-the- things/tree/master/data) [https://github.com/collab-qa/check-all-the- things/blob/maste...](https://github.com/collab-qa/check-all-the- things/blob/master/doc/TODO)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's missing KLEE: [https://klee.github.io/](https://klee.github.io/). KLEE is a symbolic execution engine, which is effectively just a fancy (and useful) approach to static analysis. KLEE is perennially a few releases behind LLVM, but still going strong, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER4> Additional lists of static analysis, dynamic analysis, SAST, DAST, and other source code analysis tools:

OWAP > Source Code Analysis Tools: [https://owasp.org/www- community/Source_Code_Analysis_Tools](https://owasp.org/www- community/Source_Code_Analysis_Tools)

[https://analysis-tools.dev/](https://analysis-tools.dev/) (supports upvotes and downvotes)

analysis-tools-dev/static-analysis: [https://github.com/analysis-tools- dev/static-analysis](https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/static-analysis)

analysis-tools-dev/dynamic-analysis: [https://github.com/analysis-tools- dev/dynamic-analysis](https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/dynamic-analysis)

devsecops/awesome-devsecops: [https://github.com/devsecops/awesome- devsecops](https://github.com/devsecops/awesome-devsecops) , [https://github.com/TaptuIT/awesome- devsecops](https://github.com/TaptuIT/awesome-devsecops)

kai5263499/awesome-container-security: [https://github.com/kai5263499/awesome- container-security](https://github.com/kai5263499/awesome-container-security)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps#DevSecOps,_Shifting_Sec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps#DevSecOps,_Shifting_Security_Left) :

> _DevSecOps is an augmentation of DevOps to allow for security practices to > be integrated into the DevOps approach. The traditional centralised security > team model must adopt a federated model allowing each delivery team the > ability to factor in the correct security controls into their DevOps > practices._

awesome-safety-critical: [https://awesome-safety- critical.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://awesome-safety- critical.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Missing unicornator! [https://github.com/mimoo/unicornator](https://github.com/mimoo/unicornator)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a good list but as was mentioned in another post today about SAST tools, it's very important to know that the tool supports your language and framework version as many of these tools lag far behind the latest releases of popular languages.

</comment><comment><USER7> Would love to see a meta-analysis of all the analyzers targeting the same languages.

</comment><comment><USER8> The links to additional tools (other than this NIST collection) are very handy, indeed.

A quick copypasta, sort, and count shows only 6 tools from that initial NIST site are annotated as having been updated in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER9> The list of products is definitely more expansive than I realized. This space is ripe for a disruption too. So much potential remains in static code analysis.

<comment><USER6> It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft and Github end up integrating a SAST tool into Github and Azure DevOps. I believe Github has a rudimentary scanning tool but something more extensive would give Microsoft and its platforms an advantage.

<comment><USER10> Haha, you're predicting the .. now. GitHub Advanced Security brings in code scanning (CodeQL), secret scanning, and more.

[https://github.blog/changelog/2020-05-06-github-advanced- sec...](https://github.blog/changelog/2020-05-06-github-advanced-security- code-scanning-now-available-in-limited-public-beta/)

Have spent some time with the beta, definitely worth a look.</comment></comment></comment>


Fixing a bug in "Airwolf" code from 1984 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1K-CRi_yZ0 <comment><USER2> Huh. Cool to see this get some space on the HN front page. I created the Tumblr [https://moviecode.tumblr.com/](https://moviecode.tumblr.com/) a few years ago and I've started this channel to go a little deeper into some of the examples. Hope people like it.

Next up: two episodes of Knight Rider, Westworld (1973) and Swordfish.

<comment><USER3> Did you take a look at the 6502 assembler in "The Terminator". Maybe you can find the bug that stopped AHnold from killing Sarah Connor.

<comment><USER4> They really should have used the code that controlled the ghosts in Pac-Man.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone, like me, is wondering if the bug solution is correct, here's the original documentation for the RND() function in Applesoft BASIC language (page 102):

[https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20P...](https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Software/Languages/Applesoft%20BASIC/Manuals/Applesoft%20II%20BASIC%20Programming%20Reference%20Manual.pdf)

Which says:

        RND(aexpr)
        Returns a random real number greater than or equal to 0 and less than 1.

Which is pretty much the standard for a random function in many other computer languages through history, ie. Python's random.random(), JS Math.random(), ... There are other, more creative versions of the function, like Perl's and Ruby's rand(max), which differ slightly by allowing the user to set the max number.

But this other reference link, which presumably takes its information from the back of another book could have led the Airwolf programmer to make the mistake:

[http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref.htm](http://www.landsnail.com/a2ref.htm)

It says the generated number is _between 0 and 1_ , without mention to 1 being exclusive. I believe this a common confusion when it comes to RND() usage.

<comment><USER6> Another way to fix the bug would've been

      INT(RND(1) * 15 + .5)

which is equivalent to rounding to the nearest integer* instead of truncating.

*If positive, which RND's return value must be.

<comment><USER7> The labyrinth-printing example for the C64 also uses this: [https://10print.org/](https://10print.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Airwolf + Nightrider filled my young mind in the 80s. Ahh, how I used to love watching them!

<comment><USER7> Street Hawk, anyone?

<comment><USER9> Absolutely! As a kid that rode dirt bikes all the time, and loved technology, I was totally into it. That and Knight Rider spurred a lot of ideas when I was young, and I was excited when I came across a set of Street Hawk DVDs a few years back. Brought back great memories.

<comment><USER7> I liked both series, but the music of Street Hawk feels a lot better. Knight Rider has a very dark and heavy mood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This a delight. I've been stumbling upon them since 2014, more examples here:

[https://moviecode.tumblr.com](https://moviecode.tumblr.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a gratuitous digression, but the _retreating blade stall_ is a key reason we don't have supersonic helicopters.

The Helicopter Speed Limit - Helicopter Physics Series - #7 - Smarter Every Day 51 -- starts at 2m46s [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pbdwueqGp4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pbdwueqGp4)

<comment><USER12> That's a neat video.

I was surprised to learn that Chinooks are faster than sportier-looking helicopters because of that factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Slightly off topic but this may be the only time that it's semi relevant to get this onto HN:

Edwin Van Santen - Airwolf (Mix) Commodore 64 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15oujjzU1lM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15oujjzU1lM)

<comment><USER14> R.I.P. EVS [https://8bitlegends.com/edwin-van- santen](https://8bitlegends.com/edwin-van-santen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just saw the name and started humming the theme song. This show and game made me want to become a helicopter pilot.

<comment><USER16> Did you become a helicopter pilot?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The whole channel seems interesting [https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindtheScreens](https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindtheScreens) Based on This Tumblr: [https://moviecode.tumblr.com/](https://moviecode.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> There's got to be plenty of code to enjoy in Whiz Kids ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDdVbOcUlTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDdVbOcUlTo)). (Why "whiz" and not "wiz?")

</comment><comment><USER19> Hands down, greatest TV show ever made. You're free to disagree, but your opinion is wrong.

<comment><USER20> We need more Jan Michael Vincents!

Though if you actually follow @AirWolf4Life for any length of time you may disagree with that previous statement.

<comment><USER21> Anyone curious about this, don't use your work computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> they hit one of the two major problems in informatics... :D the number 3 in particular :D</comment>


A boolean value interview question - <AUTHOR> http://pixelstech.net/article/index.php?id=1335793772

<comment><USER2> The solutions

       return  a ^  b ? c : a
       return  a == b ? a : c

Are expressing exactly the same idea- When A and B are identical, they will xor to 0, and otherwise something nonzero. Thus, xor can be thought of in general as a "!=" operator, provided booleans work like you'd expect in C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your remind. We have corrected the error. Yes, you are right, these two solutions have the same logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3>
        (defn at_least_2 [a b c]
              (>= (count (filter true? [a b c])) 2))</comment>


Ask HN: Deploying a web app to a VPS in 2017 - <AUTHOR> I am a looking to deploy a small web application to a VPS that I bought.
I was hoping to learn a bit about devops in the process (instead of relying on a PaaS like Heroku) but the ecosystem seems overwhelming. There seems to be a large number of moving parts - Docker, Kubernetes etc.
What are some of the simpler options to deploy web apps to a VPS? <comment><USER2> My site, [https://pocketgophers.com](https://pocketgophers.com), is written in Go and deployed on a single VPS. I described my setup at [https://forum.golangbridge.org/t/best-go-dev-deployment- envi...](https://forum.golangbridge.org/t/best-go-dev-deployment- environment/4978/2?u=nathankerr)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you should use dokku[1], which is the simplest if you want to deploy on a VPS. Kubernetes, ECS are multi-node solutions and may not be ideal for you now.

[1]: [https://github.com/dokku/dokku](https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

</comment><comment><USER4> It really depends on what the webapp is developed in.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is written in Go (Golang).

<comment><USER4> stick the executible on the server with nginx in front of it for the easiest setup.</comment></comment></comment>


Instapaper - like Delicious, but with Tumblr simplicity - <AUTHOR> http://www.instapaper.com/

<comment><USER2> Ironically, I just added this to my del.icio.us account.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is simply a private read-it-later list and aside from saving a link, nothing like del.icio.us. Crappy title on the post announcing it but not a bad service for some.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish more web developers took a moment to state what their site needs up front. I tried to log in a few times with no success, then decided to try different browser settings. Enabling cookies fixed things. The "login failed" page should clearly tell you to enable cookies.

<comment><USER5> You're in the minority.

<comment><USER4> I'm from the bay area. I'm used to that :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds a bit like <http://l8tr.org>, except l8tr doesn't make you register and will email later when a dead link (e.g. slashdotted) comes back on line.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pretty slick, but everytime I click the bookmarklet it freezes up my browser for a while.

Suggestion: pop up the window immediately, then use setTimeout to have it perform the action. That'll actually make it seem _more_ responsive, because people can switch back to the main window and continue doing what they were doing.

(Assuming I diagnosed the javascript problem right..)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wish it didn't force me to register/login.

<comment><AUTHOR> Registering is surprisingly easy. "If you didn't set a password, you don't have one."

<comment><USER9> Good idea....

But if it is that easy I suggest you move the register field to the front page. Just seeing a link that says register will lose you a lot of potential customers because a link that says "register" is normally associated with a form field that goes on for pages and people will not bother clicking. I know I didn't until I read you comment.

I think you will up your conversion ratio about 25% by doing this.

<comment><USER10> Probably higher than 25%-- it's why I navigated away.

<comment><USER9> Yeah you might be right.

People should be doing much more A/B split testing of their sites, especially the important parts such as sign-ups and buying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Jeez. Sometimes it feels like I'm a subletter. Every few months I "pack up" and move to a different service online. Wouldn't it make more sense to leverage delicious and use a common tag like "toread"? I've been doing that for a while and it works pretty well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. But I think Instapaper is interesting for its interface alone.

Ideally, cooler interfaces should be implemented over existing APIs. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

<comment><USER11> Right. It would be killer if you used the bookmarklet as normal, but it would save to your delicious account with toread. And then when you've read it, you could write a summary and tag it as normal.

<comment><USER7> I use the same keyboardlets to access my bookmarks or add to them. The URL/javascript may keep changing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would make Google Analytics better? - <AUTHOR>

I am a long time HNer (posting with a throwaway) and I am building a tool to compete with Google Analytics.  I strongly value the opinion of this community and would love to get your feedback.
What do you think would make Google Analytics better?
Some of the things I've personally struggled with -
- Arbitrary restrictions on how data can be compared.  Want to see which products are being purchased on an iPad vs Desktop? Not possible.
- No access to raw data.
- Events and funnels are awful.
Why not Mixpanel?
- I find myself often using the Data Export API for information that should be accessible on the web.
- Doesn't integrate with online marketing.
Any thoughts appreciated. <comment><USER2> Why not Piwik[1]?

[1]: [http://www.piwik.org](http://www.piwik.org)

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the same frustrations with Piwik as I do in GA. In addition, my goal is to build something with an integration time under 5 minutes.</comment></comment>


Tmobile is scanning traffic and sending Tethering Warnings - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/zQbQR.png

<comment><USER2> You can thank AT&T for that one</comment>


Review: The 10.5-inch iPad Pro is much more "pro" than what it replaces - happy-go-lucky https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/06/review-10-5-inch-ipad-pro-is-pro-hardware-patiently-waiting-for-pro-software/ <comment><AUTHOR> The 120Mhz refresh rate is welcome. I had to hunt for a IPS 100Mhz+ display this spring and boy, was it a pain. I hope markets will move into this direction - the difference in all applications that have any movement on the screen between 60 Hz and 100+ Hz is noticeable.</comment>


Show HN: Are you lonely at work? Let's work together - <AUTHOR> http://1kmake.com <comment><USER2> shouldn't the community have some input into whom the community lets in though? It appears to be very top down and exclusionary rather than inclusive, im not sure how well that will work in building a social network.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.loom.com/share/e192e3131b38496c8d1bac28ee82d17f](https://www.loom.com/share/e192e3131b38496c8d1bac28ee82d17f)

<comment><USER2> fascinating reply format. i guess i feel like there should be some set standard of min qualification and if a person meets it, access should be considered granted. An 'interview' is someone anxiety inducing for some remote folks. We may want more interaction, but not necessarily to the level you are at. Good luck with it all though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks great to me. I think there aren't enough active communities like this.

To the point of how to launch/grow a targeted community like this, consider this from the organizer's POV. There's got to be a starting point, with starting requirements. I've set up or helped organized groups before (a mastermind group, a local 501c3 networking group, a chapter of a national org) and there's always a bootstrap point where you as the organizer just have to do things to get it going.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Tom! I haven't done this before so definitely don't know all the best practices around posting, getting feedback, etc. Just thought maybe there are some other people out there who could benefit from something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea, I don't like the process, seems too much like interviewing for a position imo, but I appreciate what you're trying to accomplish.

My 2 cents, why a form and not simply request an introductory email? For the kind of people you seem to want to attract, independent developers, an application could be a turn off, I know it is for me anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> My idea is morphing after getting feedback. I need to update the webpage.

I think 100 is too big for what people seem to want. People get their questions answered and learn from others' successes and failures on sites like IH and HN. What they don't get is a personal connection and the sense that they are working together with others.

In order to provide this connection, the group or groups need to be small (probably less than 30 people). That way everyone can get to know each other and develop a deep understanding of the skill sets and projects of the other members. I think context is key.

In time, I hope this leads to trust and friendship. People start working together on projects and aren't afraid to hop on video calls and help one another.

If the groups are going to be small yet useful, members need to be carefully selected. They need to be smart and generous and bring a variety of skills. There has to be a filtering process. Interviews are scary, but they serve a purpose. Forms are useful for directing people to give relevant information.

If I was part of a group of this nature, I would prefer the others are qualified and engaging. Quality of experience and knowledge will make the groups all the more valuable.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, 100 is too big and yes, I completely understand the need to tightly select the people that are gonna come in, even more so if the group is smaller, but maybe the process could be a little more organic, or informal?

Maybe having some kind of intermediate level of membership/trust for the new comers? A little bit like motorcycle clubs, who have "friends of the club", "prospect" etc, not the best example but I hope you get the idea, which is to develop those relationship over a longer period of time than a simple application with a yes/no answer at the end like with a job application.

Food for thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > a group of 100 friendly, skilled, independent developers

> Application Process > Submit the Developer Application > Phone Call (30 > minutes) > Technical Interview (1 hour)

All of this for some reason looks sketchy and suspiciously to me, domain name, website content made in 3 minutes, looks like "clever" attempt to collect recruitment data/profiles

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.loom.com/share/a01102a62c0c45ad8a5372585142db3f](https://www.loom.com/share/a01102a62c0c45ad8a5372585142db3f)

<comment><USER6> Awesome response!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like an interesting push to build up a new community. Based upon the general tone of the pitch it seems to be directed more at freelancers, though I imagine that could change. I'm not personally a fan of slack, so I'll pass, though best of luck with the experiment.

</comment><comment><USER8> I appreciate effort and people showing us things. That said ...

I don't want to login with a Google account to _Submit the Developer Application_. The HN account is not 24hrs old yet, there is no comment with this Show submission, only a link, the title appeals to a negative, yadda, yadda.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.loom.com/share/2a3a8d3b4a79484d9f00db86ba08c925](https://www.loom.com/share/2a3a8d3b4a79484d9f00db86ba08c925)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the follow-up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you 're looking for a more generic community of remote workers consider joining [https://reworkin.com](https://reworkin.com) , the social network for remote workers

</comment><comment><USER10> "This site is blocked due to a security threat that was discovered by the Cisco Umbrella security researchers."</comment>


Stick Them With The Pointy End: Apple Files 'Active Stylus' Patent - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/02/stick-them-with-the-pointy-end-apple-files-active-stylus-patent/

<comment><USER2> Of course they did.</comment>


Helping Veterans Transition into the Private Sector - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/helping-veterans-transition-into-the-private-sector-jocko-willink-and-mike-sarraille/ <comment><USER2> Good episode, and not just because my question was asked heh.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you charge for proof of concept? - <AUTHOR>

Say you are a SaaS, prospect says, we want to see a proof of concept before we become a customer but we are comparing with other vendors as well.<p>How would you respond? What if the proof of concept takes labor and extra configuration to meet their requirements as to what constitutes a PoC? Should you charge for that? <comment><USER2> Window shoppers don't make good clients. If you need convincing, we don't want your business. Please go to one of our competitors, preferably the biggest one.

In general, doers do and talkers talk. If you really need the service, you're going to buy it and figure out things yourself. Plus, paying customers always get support and help no matter what. If you start talking hypothetical scenarios and custom requirements, it's mostly bullshit you don't really care about. And it will never amount to anything.

In the words of Ray Liotta: _" The place burned down? Fuck you, pay me. Lightning struck? Fuck you, pay me. Slow business? Fuck you, pay me."_ We work for money. Not to make your life easier out of the goodness of our hearts. Money talks and bullshit walks. Anything else and you're just wasting both of out times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We deal with worldwide geographical data. It's usual to request sample data. If it's custom then often enough creating the sample data is 50% of the work (especially if you do test-driven development). It doesn't lead to more sales. One hour or two days of work didn't matter. Once we were even told that since we have the feature now the customer doesn't understand why it would cost extra. And more than once the sample data was used to find flaws and to negotiate the price down.

My suggestion is to ask for $10 pre-payment. Or have them sign up to your basic plan first. You will see a lot of prospects won't even reply to your email.

I've seen web development agencies even charge for meetings for Skype calls with prospective customers. I guess that's one way to filter out clients with small pockets.

<comment><AUTHOR> in a very similar position, dealing with a tool that produces data. they also ask for the sample data. most of the time it is relatively quick but then of course always something extra that needs to be configured and customer doesn't like to pay extra for the labor.

I find it interesting that NONE of these people that have requested sample data ended up as customers. It was almost always a wasted effort. In fact, almost all the customers bought immediately and then worked with to figure out what needed to be done and in most cases quite okay with waiting.

I will have to agree that filtering might be good here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Charge a fair price for your work, discount that price from the final bill.</comment>


Show HN: Talk to website visitors right from Slack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.drift.com/drift-for-slack <comment><USER2> This is awesome. I've been waiting for something like this. Slack should be the centre of everything I swear. and this looks better than what else I've seen that is suppose to do chat through slack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Totally agree. It's where our team and customers spend their entire day. Excited to be building on top of Slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How are you differentiating from [https://chatlio.com/](https://chatlio.com/)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basic functionality is similar. We differentiate with messaging types/triggers, in-app and email, NPS, also enrich new contacts with Clearbit data in Slack so you can see name, face, company, social info, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a huge Intercom fan, though it does get expensive for small startups. Besides the chat's going to Slack, what is the biggest differentiator between Drift and Intercom?

<comment><AUTHOR> Biggest thing is our focus on sales/conversion in addition to the in-app messages. Other stuff like in-app NPS, mobile and a few other things we have in the works.

We're only a few months into this space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have seen companies try numerous channels of communication with customers, and to me this is the most open, accessible and transparent way of doing it. As consumers we saw a huge shift in communication in the past decade, from human to human to all digital, and I feel strongly that consumers are looking for a more open human experience again. Slack is doing that and Drift is doing it the right way!

<comment><USER6> You know you just created this account to praise this product, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've had problems with Intercom's price, maybe we'll try this - it looks good!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah bummer. Yeah check us out - 100% free to get it on your site. Holler if you have any questions on our site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Intercom is getting cost prohibitive for us, so this could be a good alternative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know how I can help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> this is great!</comment>


Docker at DjangoCon US 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.docker.io/2013/09/docker-at-djangocon-us-2013/ <comment><USER2> If I have two Docker instances, with a common base image containing e.g. libc.so, then will those two instances share libc's memory? When Docker moves from AUFS to BtrFS, will it share the memory there also?

Edit: I ask because the idea of getting 100-1000 instances on a single machine is attractive, but seems like it might be difficult to achieve in reality...

<comment><USER3> Would docker be well suited for a testing platform? Thinking about maybe using docker to stand up a database instance that can be instantiated quickly and blown away after test cases are executed, seems like it would be a perfect use case for something like docker since manually restoring a db backup for testing can take several minutes.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it would be perfect for that. In fact people are using it for that today.

Here are some slides showing how eBay does this today with Docker. [https://speakerdeck.com/teddziuba/docker-at- ebay](https://speakerdeck.com/teddziuba/docker-at-ebay) there is also a video available of the talk he gave explaining it at one of the docker hack days. I don't have the link handy, but I'm sure you could find it.

<comment><USER5> The video is here: [http://blog.docker.io/2013/08/docker-hack-day-6-lightning- ta...](http://blog.docker.io/2013/08/docker-hack-day-6-lightning-talks/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you have plans for a 32 bit docker? I would like to try with my django applications but I have to reinstall my Linux because it's only 32 bit.</comment>


How to deliver your static images through a CDN in Ruby on Rails - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/how_to_deliver_your_static_images_through_a_cdn_in_ruby_on_rails

<comment><AUTHOR> This blog post describes how to use Cloudinary to automatically deliver all static images of your Ruby on Rails web application through a CDN. Allowing you to improve site's performance without any code changes. It also explains how to perform image transformations using your CSS or Sass files, e.g., for displaying Responsive Images for different devices.</comment>


Skype offering live transcriptions from today, PowerPoint from January 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2018/12/03/skype-transcriptions/ <comment><USER2> Anyone know if we can access these transcriptions after the call. This would be super useful for say meeting minutes.</comment>


$340b of $454b Mnuchin was to turn over to the fed is unaccounted for - <AUTHOR> https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/06/340-billion-of-the-454-billion-that-mnuchin-was-to-turn-over-to-the-fed-is-unaccounted-for/ <comment><USER2> The article links to this "FEDERAL RESERVE statistical release": [https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/)

I would expect investors and analysis firms pay attention to these reports. For civic-minded hackers, there may be an opportunity to contextualize these reports to a broader audience.

Some context about me: I used to work for the Sunlight Labs (part of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, DC) that advocated for financial transparency. At the time, Sunlight had considerable bipartisan support. To the extent I can, I would be happy to connect interested people to organizations that have interest in investigative journalism around such financial statements.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have not seen this web site before. The about page says:

> Mission: Wall Street On Parade hopes to level the playing field between Wall > Street and the 99 percent. Wall Street is a jungle of devices to effect an > institutionalized wealth transfer system. The goal of this web site is to > provide the jungle guide to the 99 percent in the hope of bringing about > citizen-inspired change.

> Wall Street On Parade ® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark > Office. WallStreetOnParade.com is a public interest web site operated by > Russ and Pam Martens to help the investing public better understand systemic > corruption on Wall Street. Ms. Martens is a former Wall Street veteran with > a background in journalism. Mr. Martens' career spanned four decades in > printing and publishing management.

</comment><comment><USER2> For background, the National Law Review offers a legal summary of the 2020 CARES Act:

[https://www.natlawreview.com/article/summary-cares- act](https://www.natlawreview.com/article/summary-cares-act)

From what I can tell, it does a nice job of summarizing the different mechanisms of the act.

</comment><comment><USER3> By unaccounted, they mean it hasn't been used.

Remember, these funds are only needed to the extent the Fed expects potential losses from loans. If they're making safe loans, it's not needed.

<comment><USER2> Would you please share some additional background and/or support for your comments?

<comment><USER3> [https://www.wsj.com/articles/mnuchin-says-u-s-not-aiming- to-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/mnuchin-says-u-s-not-aiming-to-lose- money-on-fed-lending-facilities-11588178749)

>Congress last month appropriated $454 billion to absorb possible losses on the Fed programs, which will provide trillions of dollars in loans to businesses and municipalities. The money from the Treasury serves as a buffer to protect the Fed against losses. Some of Fed's investments may end up being profitable, while others will lose money, Mr. Mnuchin said on a conference call with reporters. All told, he said, the U.S. aims to at least come out even.

>The Treasury has pledged $185 billion so far from the funds Congress provided to support roughly $2.3 trillion in lending by the central bank, including loans for states and municipalities and midsize businesses. Mr. Mnuchin said he's holding some money in reserve while he monitors the economy and the effectiveness of the programs.

[https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11327](https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11327)

>Although there were no losses from these facilities after the 2008 financial crisis, some of the 2020 facilities pose greater risk, and assets from Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) have been pledged to backstop losses on several of the facilities today. To date, $215 billion has been pledged to these programs (see Table 1)

OP isn't even accurate on its own terms. $215 billion has been pledged, not the $114 billion OP claims.

<comment><USER4> It says right in this article that of the money allocated, the Fed has not met it's commitment to disclose the lender, sum, and interest rate of about 3/4 of the loans they have given. It is a fair assumption by the author that we cannot have any expectation that the rest of the disbursements will be reported appropriately.

<comment><USER3> Note that the three facilities that have disbursed funds but are not releasing transaction level data were all established _before_ the CARES act was enacted and have nothing to do with the $454 billion in funding there. Those are safe facilities lending to banks or other bank-like companies and didn't require any support from Congress. There was never any commitment to disclose transaction data there. OP is just misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> See also this article from June 18, 2020:

[https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/06/administration- continu...](https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/06/administration-continuing- to-limit-transparency-and-oversight-of-cares-act-funds/)

> It's been almost three months since President Donald Trump signed the > Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act into law. While > the executive branch has already spent much of the emergency aid > appropriated by the bill, it has not approached the bill's oversight and > transparency provisions with the same fervor. Without transparency and > oversight of the spending, American taxpayers cannot have full confidence > that the government is acting in their best interests, or that those who > most need the economic assistance are the ones who got it.</comment>


NASA demos new model moon buggy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/automobiles/30MOON.html

<comment><USER2> > ... its top speed is a pokey 15 miles an hour.

Hey now. That's not the hot rod the original was, but that's way faster than I thought this thing went.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did anyone else see that picture and wonder if NASA's pick up some spinners and ground-lights to go with that gold paint job?</comment>


CleverScale, the 1st CDN PaaS - <AUTHOR> http://foundershowcase.strutta.com/entry/197901

<comment><USER2> I have access to the beta, and i could CDNize my site in a few clicks. And the best is that it federates many different CDN providers, so that wherever my users are in the world, they have realtime metrics to connect them to the fastest CDN providers from their location. I have already seen 3 different CDN from my web server logs

</comment><comment><USER3> interesting, this is a more like a better thought version of 3crowd XDN, diversity of partners they have benefits the end user and small emerging providers. if this type of company exists for every service we purchase we won't pay these huge amounts for basic services like CDN... You got my vote guys.</comment>


Heuristics for deciding on meetings - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/farnamstreet/status/1019601416804020225 <comment><AUTHOR> (Thread) Heuristics for deciding on meetings. Please feel free to add yours / challenge mine.

1\. If you wouldn't do it right now, say no.

2\. Say no to everything outside of work hours you wouldn't call your partner and bail on dinner for.

3\. Say no to all recurring meetings with the exception of ones from your boss if you have one. Tell people you'll opt-in on a per-agenda basis.

4\. Cut all meetings in 1/2

5\. If you're in a meeting and it's clearly pointless, politely excuse yourself.

6\. Keep an internal calculation of what your time is worth. Raise this every year.

7\. If you're going for the drink, don't go.

8\. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong meeting.

9\. Even if you can't get out of a meeting, rather than sit there an be bored or make a grocery list, become a detective and see what you can learn from/about everyone else in the meeting.

10\. If everyone is on their phone or laptop at the meeting, leave. The decision has already been made.

11\. If you're talking to signal how smart you are just shut up.

12\. If you're going to "add value" to someone else's idea, just skip the meeting. That type of stuff is best-done one-on-one and not in a group setting where you reduce the motivation of the other person. (See signally how smart you are (11) and shut up.)</comment>


Louisiana is drowning, quickly - <AUTHOR> http://projects.propublica.org/louisiana

<comment><AUTHOR> _This land being swallowed by the Gulf is home to half of the country's oil refineries, a matrix of pipelines that serve 90 percent of the nation's offshore energy production and 30 percent of its total oil and gas supply, a port vital to 31 states, and 2 million people who would need to find other places to live.

The landscape on which all that is built is washing away at a rate of a football field every hour, 16 square miles per year._</comment>


Orbital angular momentum states may vastly increase fiber's bandwidth - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/orbital-angular-momentum-states-may-vastly-increase-fibers-bandwidth/ <comment><USER2> Good news, this should help to decrease the physical size of some of the larger lines, maybe lower the cost to lay high speed fiber.</comment>


Sentimeter.ai - <AUTHOR> http://sentimeter.ai <comment><AUTHOR> Sentimeter.ai is a free online tool that uses open source AI tools to analyze online sentiment on US presidential candidates. It produces a chart of change in online sentiment over time, with optional filters on various topics (e.g economy, COVID-19).</comment>


How Heap's 5-line MVP evolved into a 30,000 TPS beast - <AUTHOR> http://codeinsider.us/i/2.html <comment><USER2> It looks like Heap is making some progress with their UI which I'm glad to see.

That said, I'd love to see Heap pull in the rest of the web analytics picture. Event data is interesting, and they seem to have a decent solution for the issue of setting up a massive amount of event tracking (and losing all the data you haven't set events for yet). However event data in a silo without the context of things like referral URLs, search query data, campaign metrics, etc. are critical for gaining the full picture.

Perhaps I didn't tinker with the demo enough, but I didn't see those pieces of the puzzle present. For any online marketer serious about analytics, you need the complete picture under one roof.

That said, this is a great step forward in a space where this pain point around setting up event tracking has been largely unsolved for some time. I wouldn't be sad at all to see them acquired by someone like MixPanel, KissMetrics, or Google.

<comment><USER3> We automatically annotate each event with referrer, search keyword, and all UTM properties. Full list of properties here: [https://heapanalytics.com/docs#events](https://heapanalytics.com/docs#events)

Would love to know if there's other important context we're missing.

<comment><USER2> Awesome, clearly a miss on my part. Would love to see more interface elements designed around exploring the web analytics piece of it though. Google Analytics does a fantastic job of making this data intuitive (well, for someone knowledgeable of the space) and explorable. Things like cross-channel tracking and other items are also critical.

I'm playing around with the demo in our test environment right now and really love your Event Visualizer tool. I need to play a bit more, but I'm hoping that your ability to check/uncheck the components that define the event will let us work around issues of dynamic selectors generated by YUI which was our team's concern for why Heap might not work with our setup.

 _EDIT:_

Looks like YUI is still a major issue. If you're curious, you can look up my HN username in your email list to find my account and see what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the heads-up. As mentioned over email: if the Event Visualizer isn't providing quite the right precision, keep in mind that you can manually specify hierarchical CSS selectors within the dashboard itself. It'll work as expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> Are you still on MongoDB?_

 _> Oh god no._

Pretty damning condemnation of MongoDB, no?

<comment><USER5> Humm... No

They also outgrew PostgreSQL, and gave up on Redshift, is that a condemnation of them as well?

<comment><USER6> Looks like they are still using PostgreSQL, just not a single instance. It looks like they are using Citus Data to handling sharding and merging responses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So is the "massive custom data store" using Postgres or is it something totally different? Dan's answer sounds like Postgres + Citus DB is the current setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's in the interview, like halfway down. They're using Citus over Postgres.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 30k TPS is pretty damn low. That's less than the throughput of a single Cassandra node...

</comment><comment><USER9> I am wondering what the 5 lines for MVP were. Anyone mind taking a shot?

<comment><USER3> This is referring to the integration code itself. It was something like:

      var DOMEvents = ['click', 'submit', 'change'];
      for (var i = 0; i < DOMEvents.length; i++) {
        window.addEventListener(DOMEvents[i], function(e){
          $.post('/collector', {type: e.type, target_id: e.target.id, target_class: e.target.className});
        });
      }

<comment><USER10> That's interesting and immediately obvious how it could both be useful and valuable in the right domain. Logging what people are doing on modern event- driven websites definitely is a problem worth solving. My let's-made-a- complicated-version-first mindset would have extended jQuery's .bind or .on prototype in case the site is using event.stopPropagation(), and that's why I never finish anything. Thanks for sharing.</comment></comment></comment>


Hey, You Startup Monkeys: Will Quickbooks Be Enough? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I can't recommend ledger, <http://newartisans.com/ledger.html> highly enough. It is definitely a hacker class tool: command line based with tons of options, transactions stored in simple text files, and very flexible. That said it provides full double-entry accounting and every report you could want including output suitable for gnuplot. Oh and of course it's free and open source.

I've been tracking both my personal and business finances in ledger for years and couldn't be happier.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a startup quickbooks is enough. In my last venture the other founder's father was a retired CPA and did our books with quickbooks (gratis!). I would qualify that as an endorsement because if a CPA thinks it is good enough it probably is.

</comment><comment><USER4> here is an idea for a new startup, webbased quickbooks clone

<comment><USER5> Or better, an open platform - ala Sugar CRM

<comment><USER6> SugarCRM is kicking ass these days. DFJ invested in it recently. And name recognition is really picking up. We had lots of people asking for us to add support for SugarCRM to our automated script installation module...we finally added it a couple of revisions back...would have added it sooner, if it weren't such a god-awful bear to install. It's really cool, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Those of you living The Dream and running a startup and having to do the books: what are you using? Is it enough to just use Quickbooks, or do you have to hire an accountant?

Help out those of us still in the planning stages/stealth mode.

<comment><USER7> Do both: use QB to keep the books, and have an account check it over quarterly (monthly, yearly, whatever works best for you) to make sure you're not doing anything that will really cost you down the road.

That's what my start-up did.

btw, I would recommend that you don't buy the premier edition: go for the online version. All the bells and whistles can be done by you with other programs, even excel.</comment></comment>


Avatar still only #26 when box office receipts are adjusted for inflation - <AUTHOR> http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

<comment><USER2> I've always wondered, even after adjusting for inflation wouldn't it make sense to adjust for population as well?

In 1939 the population of the US was only 130millon, and a large portion was rural, which meant they had poorer access to theaters. This makes the returns of Gone with the Wind that much more impressive (although of course TVs/misc. entertainment devices didn't exist, which compete against movies.)

Perhaps a good way to measure the success a of a movie would be the percentage of the population that has seen it.

<comment><USER3> If you're the movie studio, revenue is your concern, so then it only really makes sense to adjust for inflation.

But yeah, if you want to gauge the popularity of the movie, the best measure is probably something along the lines of tickets sold per capita.

<comment><USER4> > if you want to gauge the popularity of the movie, the best measure is > probably something along the lines of tickets sold per capita.

Not really. 1946 tickets per capita in the US: 34. 2004: 5.

There's no way to do this right. Box office "records" don't mean anything, no matter how many variables you take into account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't account for the fact that Avatar on 3D IMAX costs more than an average movie. They're using $7.35 as the ticket price, not the $17 I've seen as the actual price. From the article: "Inflation-adjustment is mostly done by multiplying estimated admissions by the latest average ticket price."

<comment><USER6> How many 3D IMAXes are out there, though? My bet is that a majority of viewers are watching it in 2D _in the U.S. alone._ This list doesn't account for international sales, which probably attributes for a smaller overall percentage of 3D ticket sales.

<comment><USER7> >* This list doesn't account for international sales, which probably attributes for a smaller overall percentage of 3D ticket sales.*

Why? Everybody I know here in Taipei who saw it saw it in 3D. Is 3D exceptionally popular in the US or something?

<comment><USER8> Here in Uruguay too... it was the main selling point for 3D cinemas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its a little weird that the top estimate, when derived via their dropdown for its actual year, is off by 4x:

      Gone with the Wind: unadjusted in 1939:  $198,676,459
                          "adjusted" for 1939: $ 46,470,300

Makes me not trust their "adjusted" for 2010.

<comment><USER5> That's because they have to reduce the price of any ticket sales beyond 1939. Note that the year has a carat next to it, indicating "documented multiple theatrical releases. Most of the pre-1980 movies listed on this chart had multiple undocumentented releases over the years. The year shown is the first year of release."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that this is only domestic US grosses.

As a matter of personal preference I'm more interested in worldwide grosses.

(Not a US citizen)

<comment><USER11> Worldwide it became (as of today) the highest-grossing movie of all time:

<http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/>

However, inflation-adjustment is harder for the worldwide figure since inflation varies by country and you'd need to know the individual grosses for each one. [Edit: actually, is that true if the figures are in USD?]

<comment><USER12> Depends on how the conversion is done. If they take the numbers in all countries in a particular year, convert them to USD at the rate applicable in that year, inflation adjust that number, then add them together, the result you get is roughly good for inflation adjusted worldwide gross. Other methods may be less valid.

<comment><USER13> Taking the top movies in adjusted domestic gross, dividing by their non- adjusted domestic gross, and then multiplying that ratio by their worldwide gross, you get:

1\. Gone with the Wind - $3.04 billion 2\. Titanic - $2.34 billion 3\. A New Hope - $2.24 billion 4\. E.T. - $1.93 billion 5\. The Sound of Music - $1.92 billion 6\. Jaws - $1.73 billion

As of this post, Avatar is 2.05 billion and climbing. Will it be the most watched movie of all time worldwide (in theaters), or will Gone with the Wind retain its dominance? *Data taken from boxofficemojo.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Keep in mind this list is only for domestic. While many films on this list came out before international distribution, Avatar has been particularly successful internationally.

</comment><comment><USER15> These sorts of comparisons are kind of silly, because there is no way to adequately put all these movies on equal ground (the movie market is radically different today than it was in the 1930s). Even if one could, what exactly are they trying to show? Relative popularity? There are better measures that do not include grosses.

The biggest issue though with comparing a movie that came out a month ago with a movie that came out 80 years ago is that movie has had 80 years of releases and re-releases in which to make that sum. It would be much more fair to compare everything to how it did in the first month of availability (though even then you have problems with judging how widely distributed a movie was initially). Also, the site doesn't make clear if, when taking into account re- releases, they adjust everything at the price level of the original release or if they judge each re-release at the new price level.

In the end, though, any sort of historical comparison is a silly exercise that tells us little.

<comment><USER16> The site makes it very clear, actually, that they adjust ticket sales in each year independently, based on the year that the tickets were sold. <http://boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm> goes into all of the details.

That being said, I don't know how much their calculations should be trusted, as they claim to use $7.35 as the ticket price for 2009 as well as 2010, but show Avatar's 562MM as adjusted up from 555MM starting in 2009 dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thank you. I've been trying to convince people that inflation really makes the current ranking quite useless; plus that Titanic was released at a time when people didn't go to the cinema as much as today.

But of course, many people won't believe something just because it's not in print.

<comment><USER18> "plus that Titanic was released at a time when people didn't go to the cinema as much as today."

My guess is that the opposite is true. Large LCD and plasma screens with 5.1 Surround Sound and DVD/Bluray make cinema less attractive than what it was 12 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A billion dollars of profit is still a billion dollars of profit. Adjust all ya want.

<comment><USER20> the film studios only see part of (I've heard ~50%) gross box office when taking theater operator's share out (+ cost to manufacture and distribute film reels, etc). Plus Avatar cost >300 million to produce + >100 million marketing + James Cameron's share, etc. Film studios make most of the profit from accounting/tax tricks, dvd revenue, tv deals, etc.

<comment><USER19> It's a sliding scale of box office gross that goes to the studios. Believe it or not, each film has its own deal, and there isn't really a standard amount. Bigger films can negotiate more for the distributor (studio) and less for the exhibitor (theater). The typical pattern is that the first weekend or two is very heavily slanted towards the distributor (as much as a 85/15 split, though 70/30 is more normal). Then the distributor's share goes down each weekend.

The rule of thumb is that over the course of a typical film, the distributor will receive about 55% of box office gross. Foreign deals can differ a fair amount.

Each deal is different, and it's hard to say what any one film gets without some insider info.

Then there's the cost of the film. There's not been a firm number on Avatar's production costs. High 200s is a good guess, but it's a guess.

P&A (prints and advertising) can be a huge cost on something like Avatar, though it had fewer prints than a typical blockbuster. Advertising was certainly substantial, though. I suspect 100 million is actually low.

Cameron's share is likely defined to come after some sort of breakeven point, some minimum number the studio beancounters said had to come back to the studio. There's really no standard whatsoever for someone like Cameron though, so who knows.

It's also important to remember that a lot of a film's production cost is really just the studio paying itself. Soundstage rental. Grip trucks, costuming, blah blah blah. Money moving from one column to another.

Avatar probably didn't qualify for any tax credits, though some films get really amazing deals. Some come close to having half their budgets in transferable tax credits, depending on the state or locale they shoot in. Those tax credits can be sold for cash and can considerably lower the cost to a studio.

The traditional hope for an average film has been to break even on box office, profit on the ancillaries - dvd, tv, etc. But with DVD sales dropping, that model will need some adjustment.

Avatar, though, is probably pretty close to some definition of profit in theatrical release.

And all that billion plus dollars is cash flow. Which is king, as much in Hollywood as it is anywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Useless indicator without counting in international returns. Money is money, no matter which country it comes in from.

Still, it has to do about 30% better than Titanic (which did well overseas), so it has a ways to go.</comment>


Georgia Tech to Dismantle Pervasive Cyberattacks in 10 Seconds or Less - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.gatech.edu/2016/05/03/georgia-tech-dismantle-pervasive-cyberattacks-10-seconds-or-less <comment><USER2> The problem description [1] seems to leave open the question of whether they are talking about Level 4, Level 7 or both types of DDoS attacks.

> First deliverables are expected in approximately 18 months

Hell of a sprint cycle.</comment>