Open Data Stack Exchange - <AUTHOR> http://opendata.stackexchange.com/

<comment><USER2> As somebody who has spent lots of time trying to find free (for academic use) data in natural language processing, I _really_ hope this becomes quite popular.

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't seem to be overly busy, but some of the questions caught my attention, and I was pleased to learn that the answers are actually friendly and helpful.

Thanks for introducing me to the site!

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of open data available, depending on what you are looking for. If I had time, I could probably spend it on this SE and earn points, count coup, or whatever. Instead I'm working with a couple of user groups helping local programmers analysts learn how to dig into it. We have a few specific data sets that we use for different types of analysis, demographic, mapping and financial.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm real glad to see this on the HN frontpage and I'm kind of surprised that I didn't submit it at some point...I joined the beta just to contribute some material/upvotes so it could be approved. I honestly don't use it that much on a day to day basis, but having had used it, and occasionally answering questions...it does fill a real niche that regular Stack Overflow doesn't.

If you were to ask me before, I'd think that the StackOverflow would be good enough because many, many data problems are programming related (how to parse one format, database optimization, etc)...but there are issues specific to data, such as denormalization...not _how_ or necessarily _when_ to do it at the database schema, but why...or rather, given a set of data (such as from the gov't) in which normalization was obviously not done...what is the most sensical compromise that you should do in organizing the data?

Anyway, hope more people get into it...I've worked in data for awhile and now, having to think about it, it's definitely a big enough field with enough questions to justify a vibrant SE board.

</comment><comment><USER6> 88 upvotes and only 3 comments. Am I missing something or Friday?

<comment><USER7> As someone who upvoted but didn't comment: I'd like the site to get exposure so it will be more useful, but I don't have anything specific to say about it.</comment></comment>


Duolingo becomes first VC-funded $1B Pittsburgh tech startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/03/google-funded-duolingo-first-1-billion-start-up-from-pittsburgh.html <comment><USER2> They have users... but the tool(app), other than being really cute and well made, is super basic... You can't expect to be fluent enough in a language JUST with Duolingo, at most you will be able to read a few sentences and spit out a few basic sentences and words.

Is that enough? Definitely not. Not for me at least. They basically give you the 'hello world' of a language.

I speak 5 languages (learned through school and life choices) but when I tried to learn a 6th on Duolingo I felt like the experience was not good enough for me. A tutor or a class would probably be mandatory and using Duolingo just for re-affirming some basic concepts would be a nice to have, like a companion app..but they have to be able to let teachers create their own lessons.

<comment><USER3> Is there a better option to reach beginner-intermediate level? I am going to have to learn French from scratch in about a month and I'm finding the prospect daunting.

<comment><USER4> Well it depends how much time you have to put into it...

Buy (or pirate, but really, you should buy them if you can afford it, they're great) the entire set of Pimsleur French tapes. There are 90, each 30 mins long. Do one tape every day. Note that this will take you longer than 90 days as you are supposed to repeat tapes when you don't remember ~80% of the content.

Concurrently, get Anki (flashcard program) and find a French vocabulary deck ordered by frequency. Learn as many new words per day as you have time for. Do all your required reviews every day.

Concurrently, spend as much time as you can every day reading or listening to appropriate material and trying to understand it. Search for "French graded reader" for some good books to buy.

<comment><USER5> This is what I did for Pimsleur Spanish. I recommend Pimsleur.

<comment><USER6> Same here. I only wish there were more Spanish levels. I have gone through all of them but now I am stuck at a still very basic level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been using Duolingo for about 7 months now and have made much more progress in it than any of the language classes I took in high school and college. I think the reason is because course based language lessons focus mostly on teaching grammar to be tested on exams. On the other hand, Duolingo focuses on repetition and practice which helps you retain what you learned and build an intuition for the language.

<comment><USER8> I used Duolingo to start learning Danish and within about 6 months had 5*'d almost down to the end of the tree. I always felt like something was missing and enrolled in actual Danish classes from the university here, taught by a native speaker.

Within 4 weeks of class I'd stopped using Duolingo, but I'm still studying and continuing with classes (lessons with a native speaker). I felt that in many places it was inaccurate, prepared me poorly for written conversations with Danes (and don't even get me started on speaking/proununciation), and didn't provide any of the cultural nuance really needed to understand the language and how Danish people construct their sentences.

I guess it's good for vocabulary, but not as good as simple flash cards.

<comment><USER9> How are you sure that the human teacher is more "right" than Duolingo ? Teachers will show you their ways of speaking Danish, which is usually very formal and a bit outdated, not necessarily how Danish people actually speak Danish (although their are still a valuable experience in your training).

I believe the idea of Duolingo is to "bootstrap" yourself enough into the language that you can read more material about it, and then start speaking with other people to improve yourself with real conversation in real situation. The teacher may be a good addition, but also costs more and may be confusing.

<comment><USER8> I have several Danish friends that I speak to.

I get that Duolingo is "basics", but it captures a lot of your time that are better spent learning with other means. Off of this, the company has a $1B valuation. They don't charge for their service and it's not really worth paying a lot for. The users who use it the most probably won't pay.

I don't know how they're ever going to justify that valuation.

<comment><USER9> Maybe you are the exact user story of their business model : at the end of the Duolingo experience, the website would become the Uber of language teachers.

Online realtime, or face-to-face course in your town with a selection of human teachers. A Platform to match teachers and students.

The platform could simply list professionals (with a fee), or take a fee per minute of course video, or a fee per booking, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would hope they spend more money in actually teaching other languages then. The current quality of their app is just gamified vocabulary flash cards at best.

<comment><USER11> The problem is that many people see Duolingo (and Duolingo partially advertises itself this way) as the first and last step needed for learning a language. On the contrary, Duolingo is a good first step, but it's only a first step. Instead, simultaneous with Duolingo, you should be using a spaced repetition system to study vocabulary, like Mnemosyne, Anki, or Memrise. After you get significantly through the Duolingo tree (or finish it, for a smaller tree), you need to start immersing yourself in the foreign language - consuming media in the language and talking with others who speak your target language, at the very least. Another good tool after Duolingo is Clozemaster, since it helps you get exposed to lots of vocabulary and sentence structures.

It depends on your language, but widely spoken languages have "easy language" media available, which is a good place to start. But also, look on YouTube for native speakers talking, listen to podcasts, read books (keep Wiktionary or WordReference at hand), and find people online! It'll be hard at first, but you'll quickly get a lot better.

In addition, Duolingo (and every other language learning tool) is significantly better for some languages than others. There is now the "story" feature for some languages, which helps a lot with reading comprehension, especially after you get past the first few easy tiers of stories.

I'd say that completing the Duolingo tree in German got me through a similar level of grammar that my four years in high school did, but what it is lacking is the many hours of listening practice and vocabulary practice.

Disclaimer: I have no connection to Duolingo or any of the other tools I mentioned; I am simply a fan.

<comment><USER12> Isn't Duolingo just spaced repetition.

<comment><USER13> It's definitely not "just" spaced repetition in the way that Anki is (asking you how difficult it was to recall the answer and choosing to ask you again at some time "t + now" in the future, where "t" is determined by your answer). As far as I can tell, as you're working through a tree in Duolingo, it tries to sprinkle in words that you've seen a few checkpoints ago, but it doesn't seem to do so dynamically based on demonstrated mastery or lack thereof of the words sprinkled back in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used Duolingo for about 1 month to learn Portuguese and was close to the end of the tree. I learned quite a lot, the grammar drills were useful introduction and basic vocabulary, however I stopped using it due to it requiring me to translate back into English which made it hard to think in the language. I bought other books, like side by side texts, and grammar books to continue and watch YouTube videos from Brazil to drill in the sound of the language.

I learned German at a University in a German speaking country, and the classes were completely in German from day one which I found helpful. I also bought quite a number of books and studied quite a lot before I become fluent.

So I don't think an app is a one stop solution, it takes a lot of material, I'm not sure why people think any one system is enough, especially considering you never stop learning a language. Fluent just means you know enough to continue to learn in the language on your own.

</comment><comment><USER15> Surprised Duolingo is the first out of Pittsburgh. There's a huge tech scene out there with tons of interesting stuff happening but with a reasonable cost of living. They have the top ranked CS program plus a bunch of interesting robotics stuff going on.

<comment><USER16> As someone who went to CMU, there are just so few investors in Pittsburgh. In fact, many years ago I was talking with Severin Hacker (Duolingo cofounder) about some of the challenges of running a company there. There is a lot of engineering talent...and that's it. Marketing? Business development? There just aren't (or weren't) that many people there. I also know that Anki moved to San Francisco because it was the only way they could raise money. I also left Pittsburgh because it was the only way I could raise money.

So long as the investors are in the Bay Area, it will continue to be the startup mecca of the world. That does seem to be slowly changing, but not nearly as fast as anyone promoting their city as the next startup hub is willing to admit.

<comment><USER17> I'm currently based in NC. Pittsburgh caught my eye as a potential place to move to, but it's just too far away from... everything. I also understand it's a very "sporty" city, which is something I'm not very into.

<comment><USER18> > I also understand it's a very "sporty" city, which is something I'm not very > into.

I wouldn't necessarily discount the city for this; in my time there, I realized there were really two Pittsburghs. You'll see the steel-town football-obsessed side any time you walk past a bar, but near the CMU/Pitt bubble it actually had a really intellectual vibe that I miss now that I've left. Not just the abundance of grad students, doctors and the like, but good libraries and bookstores, a fantastic symphony orchestra, a quality coffee scene, etc. Has a Portland/Seattle-like (including gray weather) vibe. And Steelers games are great times to go grocery shopping!

The travel situation isn't great though. PIT has direct flights to most east coast cities but getting to the west coast indeed sucks. (United does have a direct SFO flight, IIRC, if a bit pricy.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I went till the end of the tree on Duolingo 5 years ago on just the free tier. Installed it a few months ago for my daughter and now the free tier is useless, can't do much at all.

Memrise is more useful on free tier but quite buggy.

I was looking into building a language learning app the other day to help my spouse with their passion but the market appears over-saturated. The only niche I see is for a good game teaching English alike [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prodigygam...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prodigygame.prodigy) but that's not something I can arrange.

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pC4k3i-U8-uSAsd2qrg_EX-k...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pC4k3i-U8-uSAsd2qrg_EX-k52XsxMpIfhqx76HWQ3s/edit)

</comment><comment><USER20> For all its faults, we can't argue with the fact that thanks to the popularity of this app many people have engaged with another language, even if it fails to deliver. Overall, on a global level, this increases compassion and global understanding through cultural exposure. I can't possibly be against it for that.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great app. 151+ day streak on it. I think there are some problems with monetization (right now the free tier has just as many features as the paid tier), but it is really a great tool.

<comment><USER22> That's probably because you are in another A/B test group. In mine, I can make up to 5 mistakes a day, before I am cut off for the rest of the day (except when I pay, of course).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Duolingo isn't as simple as some of these comments make it out to be. I can only speak for Spanish as I'm 75% done through the new tree (one more group to go). They have actual written, albeit small bite sized written lessons for every lesson branch. If you compiled all the written lessons (the bulb icon next to each lesson) you would have an introductory Spanish text book.

I also take lessons on italki and my gf is a native spanish speaker. It's a great supplement tool if you're consistent.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm fluent in 2 languages, and can read French as well, but when I tried to learn Japanese through Duolingo, it was an epic fail. Beyond some very basic things, it was pretty clear that not only the developers don't use the service themselves, they also don't really listen to people who do use it in any kind of a consistent fashion.

</comment><comment><USER25> Imo all these complaints against duolingo not being good enough are not fair. Have you seen the alternatives ? I mean they did get 1 billion dollars for not nothing !

<comment><USER26> They have the most money because they got the most users. They got the most users because their courses demand the least effort.

I have used several of the alternatives, and all of them are more effective at _teaching languages_. Granted, Duolingo is better at _raising money_.

<comment><USER25> And why is that bad ? If users can learn with least effort then isn't that better:)

<comment><USER26> It's bad because it takes a very long time for a language learner to assess their own progress. Duolingo relies on its userbase making an uninformed choice. If Duolingo warned a user "it will take a you 30 years of daily 'Casual Level' use to learn the basics here" he or she would likely choose a different website or strategy.

<comment><USER25> Product market fit does not lie. There is a reason they have user base and activate users who keeps coming back.

<comment><USER26> Yes, the reason is that it takes around two years before a user realizes how ineffective the site is. That's about the maximum amount of time a user can fool themselves into thinking "I'll start to see some progress any day now!"

If Duolingo were as effective as sites that require the user to make actual effort, its popularity would be more than justified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reading so many criticisms about the quality and depth of knowledge acquired through Duolingo (deserved, by the way)... is there an alternative app?

<comment><USER28> Babbel offers much higher quality language courses (but has no free tier)

<comment><USER29> I hate that Duolingo has no grammar lessons or dictionary for vocabulary. Is that different for Babbel? How is that structured?

Duolingo also has a weird discrimination between iOS vs Web/Android. In the iPhone App you lose health with wrong answers and wait for regeneration or have to buy "hearts", this restriction is not present on Web.

<comment><USER28> Babbel does grammar, yes, as well as explanations of exceptions and idioms, and the sentences and dialogues are culturally relevant to the language

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The thread is full of "Duolingo sucks, just use XXX instead", for a wide array of XXX alternatives. Now to pick a good XXX...

</comment><comment><USER31> This company apparently has a $100mm revenue run rate. How? I read somewhere that companies pay for translations from learners. Does that make sense? These are people with very low fluency. Does anyone with more info know more about their revenue model?

<comment><USER32> There is also a monthly subscription plan. Dunno what their conversion rate is, but recently (maybe sometime this year?) they added a game-style resource mechanic where any mistake makes you lose a heart, which you gain back either by waiting a few hours or by being a premium user.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Duolingo is super frustrating if you're learning Spain-Spanish, there are lots of complaints of them not adding Spanish variants of words and Duolingo hasn't moved on it at all in 5+ years.

The premium version is not worth it at all.

</comment><comment><USER34> I stopped using Duolingo when they added my native language and there was no way to change the "base language" back to English. Thankfully Anki will never do me dirty like this.

</comment><comment><USER35> Also, notably, Luis von Ahn is the first Guatemalan unicorn founder.

</comment><comment><USER36> After some people here said DL isn't good to learn a language, what are really useful alternatives?

<comment><USER37> If you truly want to learn a language, no singular app will work.

You need to find a good curriculum for your language for grammar. Typically this means taking a class or buying a good textbook. Sometimes you get lucky and find a comprehensive website.

For audio / speaking practice, I recommend glossika. It's like a modern version of pimsleur.

For vocabulary I recommend Anki. I have used that for the last two years and written about it. Generally you can start with a premade deck and eventually make your own once you're a little bit more advanced in the language.

For talking to people, try HelloTalk. You can make posts and natives can correct them, and you can have conversations with native speakers.

Once you are intermediate or advanced+, you need to start consuming native material. Try searching on YouTube, or look for graded readers.

Searching reddit about recommended textbooks / etc is usually useful, depending on how popular your language is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> first VC-funded $1 billion Pittsburgh tech start-up? wow that's unique.

</comment><comment><USER39> Just for comparison there are 95 unicorns in the Bay Area. The gap is just mind boggling

<comment><USER40> The Bay Area is an outlier on pretty much every scale. It's not a valuable comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Language-learning app Duolingo is valued at $1.5 billion after a $30 million > investment by Alphabet's CapitalG.

Erm, so Alphabet threw in $30 million for 3% in a _Series F_ that has already taken $138 million (I wonder what kind of preferences they got on that, LOL) and magically Duolingo is a unicorn.

Uh, yeah, sure.

Basically, Alphabet paid $30 million for a lot of user information to throw into the voracious Google maw.

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure how you get there from the investment. The $30mil doesn't get Google access to Duolingo's data.

<comment><USER41> Google paid $30 million for 3%. Even the most optimistic unicorn projection isn't going to return much of a multiplier on that. Pearson is a _behemoth_ in the space, and it's, what, about a $5 billion company?

The financials simply don't add up.

So there is some very important aspect of the deal that can't be publicly announced. The only thing Google would want from Duolingo that would have to be kept on the down low would be lots of user data.

<comment><USER42> Or they think the project has legitimate worth and this team is the right one to execute (people having more language knowledge makes it easier to make the world's information universally accessible). Or it's a favor to a high-value ex-Googler. Google's been known to pay big numbers to keep key people happy; maybe they're making a long-term investment in Luis von Ahn under the assumption he may come back some day.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Adventures in Autorouting (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://wp.josh.com/2017/10/23/adventures-in-autorouting/ <comment><USER2> These are the type of articles that makes HN worth looking in to every once in while :). The circuit routing is indeed worth $100M problem. And it's going to remain unsolved in classical sense because its NP-Hard.

The reason this is very interesting problem is that basic version of the problem is fairly easy to specify: You are given bunch of polygons, each with few fixed points on it. You are also given series of sets, each containing list of points that must be connected together. Can you come up with connections that has minimum crossing with each other (see Wikipedia [1] for more formal statement of routing problem).

The more practical version of the problem will include more constraints to make sure the design meets timing, has no crosstalk problems, meets any metal density requirements, does not suffer from antenna effects, and so on.

Recently Travelling Salesman Problem was attacked using reinforcement learning[2] and that could be a good start to attack routing problem. I'll be definitely looking in to this!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routing_(electronic_design_aut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Routing_\(electronic_design_automation\))

[2] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09940](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09940)

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, for small boards, autorouting just isn't worth the time. Once you do a few layouts, it's very easy to see how everything can fit together.

Also, for some sensitive designs (boost, buck, high speed clock, memory interface etc) you definitely don't want and autorouter doing it, at least the ones that are available to hobbyists.

Would it be a time saver, sure. But for a board like that, we're talking ~15 minutes of saved time. There are much better optimizations to be made (standardized parts libraries) that would save way more time.

<comment><USER4> Nobody cares about autorouting trivial boards, but there are serious economic incentives to turn 8+ layer boards into 6+ layer boards.

The author makes a strong point in comparing the autorouting problem to the milestone achieved by Alpha Go in defeating some of the strongest human players. These problems are similar enough that the same insights are likely applicable to both.

The first time I ever heard the phrase "Monte Carlo tree search," it took me about five seconds for me to start wondering if it might be applicable to PCB routing.

<comment><USER5> No, comparison to Alpha Go was utterly naive. Where do you get the training set? From thousands of proprietary boards you have full documentation of? The physics rules for the aforementioned difficult tasks, EMI, stripline, race, not to mention all the thermal and mechanical constraints for analog boards is a PhD thesis or four to get the AI auto router to "play itself."

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't it be enough to come up with a scoring function for the final routing solution? E.g. number of violations in DRC/ERC + total number of vias + absolute trace length.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Autorouting will not work for most things due to the requirement to meet EMC standards. That board you created will not have any chance to pass EMC (at least if it were an automotive product - I guess CE would fly).

</comment><comment><USER8> For these simple designs (and more complicated ones), my experience shows me that the problem has been solved with Eagle and a decent design rule file. I have autorouted tens of 2-layer designs with between 5 and 200 components with Eagle's autorouter and the seeedstudio .drc file as constraints. It's good and quick, give it a try (would take a few sec <50 parts, couple of minutes > 100parts)!

BTW nobody professional uses curved traces (except very rare cases), have a look at any electronics PCB

<comment><USER9> Is there a good reason that people don't use curved traces anymore, except that it easier for CAD software?

When traces where done by hand, they used to be curved and flowing, and frequently looked very elegant. And occasionally you see a super high speed design that's a bit curvy today.

<comment><USER10> I think the answer is the discontinuity you get from a sharp bend is smaller than the highest frequency/wavelength in the signal. So you don't get any reflections off it. The way I think is the length of the wave front heading down the trace is much longer than the size of the bend. I think very high speed stuff can start having trouble with via's.

I think curved traces were used make layout easier when running tape. Bending the tape is easier than doing a cut to shift the trace over.

And safer, a problem with old tape layouts is it's easy enough to knock off a small section of tape. Old draftsman I worked with would check the layout against a blue print on a light table to make sure nothing was amiss before making mods. He also got really antsy if anyone was rummaging around in the drawers holding PCB layouts.

<comment><USER6> High speed designs definitely do not like corners, especially fast serial interconnects are often problematic (they tend to have really high clocks), think PCIe, USB3,...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If it was going to take them 10 hours to manually route that small board, I think the real problem is just that they are really bad at pcb design.

</comment><comment><USER12> Autorouting has been getting a bad rap because the autorouter in Altium is total crap. It creates design rule errors while failing to route the board.

But there are good autorouters. Back in the 90s I had a license to PADS, so I had access to Specctra and then Blaze. I still use the version of Blaze I bought then (originally for Windows-98) today. It used for my relay computer:

[http://relaysbc.sourceforge.net/](http://relaysbc.sourceforge.net/)

It routes the entire board in about two minutes.

Unfortunately these tools are now very expensive ($6000).

</comment><comment><USER13> Topor is my go-to tool for small boards. I just start with manually tracing power nets, the rest is autorouted.

Comparing to other routers, Topor gives results almost instantaneously. This is really useful when placing parts: you try something, autoroute (no more than tens of seconds), see result, tweak here and there then repeat.

idk about seriously big boards, but they have examples with mammoth BGA on their site, so at least it is capable of routing those boards.

<comment><USER13> P.S.: near the end of article author lists what autorouter should do and what info (and freedom) we should give to the tool.

I think, the first show-stopper for 100% autorouted designs are power nets (of course, not only power, there are a lot of other corner cases, like thermals, but power is what you encounter right out of the door).

Router should know which nets handle (somewhat)high currents. And which direction the current flows. You do not want your power amp supply rail routed sequentially. And on the other side, not all power nets should be routed as stars (sometimes there is only small power draw, and sometimes it is only voltage sensing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I understand the frustration, but I can't relate. For me, routing the board is the most fun part. It's like a large puzzle that you have to solve, the result of which is useful to boot!

I keep wanting to design PCBs pretty much just so I can do the routing! That's for small, two-layer PCBs, though. If you had to do eight layers on a huge PCB, I can see how you wouldn't want to be bothered.

</comment><comment><USER15> I used to use freerouting a lot -- it's 'semi automatic' to be fair, you can hint at stuff, and you need to configure it pretty carefully for it to do a good job...

I used it as a 'first pass' routing, imported the result, deleted anything I didn't like and manually did the rest. Still saves a bundle of time!

</comment><comment><USER16> I've never worked with a board with curvy traces like that before, but I don't think I'd like them. They look a lot harder to debug than straight traces with 90 and 45 degree angles.

<comment><USER17> Some autorouters have options to only use 45 or 90 degree traces where possible (in fact some of the examples in the link show this behaviour). In a similar vein, I'd like to see an autorouter that also cares about ground plane impedance and continuity: attempting to avoid ground plane islands or regions where clearances prevent ground planes from separating tracks, and even trying to keep ground planes associated with tracks in certain classes (e.g. high speed vs power lines) separated, joining only at the external power supply jack.

But, given the autorouting problem's NP hardness, especially when there are extra constraints like above, I expect that manual routing for anything beyond trivial layouts will continue to be the norm.

<comment><USER18> Can humans magically solve NP hard problems that computers can't? I don't think so...

<comment><USER19> Humans make use of the fact that the optimal solution is not necessary (or probably even desirable, given the multitude of parameters to optimize for). By heuristics we can find a good solution that is also understandable to others.

<comment><USER20> A computer can understand that an optimal solution is not always needed. There is nothing about the problem being NP complete that means the computer HAS to find the optimal solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If anyone is interested in working on a fan-out autorouter (and has been before they saw this article), please shoot me an email! <username>@gmail.com</comment>


Danielle Morrill is mostly right about VC deal sourcing; here's how she's wrong - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rlucas.net/vc/danielle-morrill-is-mostly-right-about-vc-deal-sourcing-heres-how-shes-wrong/

<comment><USER2> Nice to see Randall Lucas back in business.

<comment><USER3> And nice to see Seattle's own Danielle M. prompting replies in blog-land ;)</comment></comment>


Personal info of 6M Israelis leaked after Likud uploads voter info - <AUTHOR> https://www.jpost.com/Israel-Elections/Personal-info-of-6m-Israelis-leaked-after-Likud-uploads-voter-info-617048 <comment><USER3> Technical details can be found here (in Hebrew) [0]

The gist is that, amazingly, the url "/get-admin-users" would return a list of all admin users with their plaintext passwords... And that this url appeared in the html source of the site's landing page.

[0] [https://internet- israel.com/%d7%97%d7%93%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%aa-%...](https://internet- israel.com/%d7%97%d7%93%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%90%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%98%d7%a8%d7%a0%d7%98/%d7%94%d7%9b%d7%a9%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%a9%d7%94%d7%99%d7%95-%d7%91%d7%90%d7%a4%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%aa-%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%a7%d7%98%d7%95%d7%a8/)

<comment><USER4> Wow! It's difficult here to invoke Hanlon: do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

<comment><USER5> Stupidity might be the symptom, but the root cause is almost always malice - in this case systemic corruption and malicious negligence.

<comment><USER6> This. I have started to think of this rejoinder to Hanlon after the Iowa app fiasco.

Stupidity may be a great cover for uncoordinated malice leading to widespread negligence. A bit like "chaos monkey" but by those who'd like to rearrange the pieces.

<comment><USER7> I'd describe it as a vicious cycle of incompetence and misunderstanding risk. They exacerbate each other. It all begins with someone trying to get something done as cheaply as possible in an area about which they are ignorant.

Whether they are a "corrupt cowboy" or "cost-efficient genius" mostly depends on whether the project is a success, and that depends on luck.

<comment><USER5> We don't have the exact details here yet but I'm willing to bet that a rather fat contract was given to someone affiliated with a Likud center member (equivalent to a US party boss) who _then_ sought the cheapest provider while pocketing the difference or maybe handed it to their relative.

<comment><USER6> Private ownership of contractor businesses means decisions are made by a few at the top :)

Relevant comment I wrote on how to solve that:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22289943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22289943)

<comment><USER5> Except in this case the decisions were probably made by an underqualified codeling at the bottom who possibly could not even been expected to know better and not take the assignment, that's the immediate stupidity part - <USER2> malice is what led to this situation in the first place and saw the result rolled to production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Haaretz restrained from investigating the matter too deeply in order to avoid breaking the law_

Of all of the crazy in this story, this is possibly the most worrying bit - journalists can't do journalism without facing prosecution.

<comment><USER9> Remember, "journalists" have the rights of ordinary people. They aren't an elite class. Anyone who speaks about the world to another person is a journalist.

<comment><USER10> That's like saying "anyone who learns about the world is a scientist". Journalism is not only made of information or opinions, at least it shouldn't be.

<comment><USER11> > That's like saying "anyone who learns about the world is a scientist".

That's exactly what a scientist is? At least if they're using the scientific method to learn about the world.

<comment><USER12> Although all you need to be a scientist is to use the scientific method properly, most people believe that you also need to have a PhD or a job that requires a lab coat

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always wondered if israel tech wasn't half genius half crook. They come up with fantastic technologies sometimes, but i feel like a lot of people there are just using this image of the "tech nation" to build scam or just lousy products.

As an example, i was extremely surprised when an israeli airline company sent me my existing password in clear text via mail. For a country that's at the forefront of fighting terrorism and always assessing airplanes security, it seemed like an incredible mistake.

<comment><USER14> "Israeli tech" is tens of thousands of engineering+IT people, and thousands of managers and entrepreneurs. They don't do anything altogether. So they're not half-X-and-half-Y, they're a relatively typical distribution of people and organizations.

<comment><USER15> I believe this can even be generalized to all relatively large sample of X'ish Y. Forgetting this is one of the main reason of systemic bias on many topics, including the usual suspects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is classic israeli tech. If you're not aware, some people like to say that the israeli tech industry is divided into two - There's a lot of good talent working for the big multinational companies/startups that are targeting US/EU/Asia, and the local market gets the scraps that remain. This is how we end up with really shitty local apps and services, but export really good product to everyone else. It sucks - the local market is too small to have real competition, so shitty apps gain a monopoly easily and never budge from their spot. This is just another example of the talent working for local stuff being bad, it's not new and it's not surprising, although this time it's much bigger obviously.

<comment><USER5> This is classic market distribution in any country, including the US, in any profession, including highly regulated ones.

<comment><USER17> It's more extreme because the domestic market size is a fraction of the US' domestic market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The response from the company was hilarious:

> The firm that developed the application, Feed-b, commented that the > vulnerability was a "one-off incident that was immediately dealt with"

Yeah... after a screw-up of that magnitude you don't even need a second vulnerability.

<comment><USER19> Or even trust their ability to audit for other issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am pretty disgusted by this. First of all they basically leaked every single citizens who is of voting age PII. It sounds like the admin username and password was visible for all to see inside the HTML source.

Although I should be, I am not actually surprised by the lack of security in a political parties application.

What I don't understand is why the interior ministry is providing political parties with the entire voter registry, which includes PII. I never gave my consent for this. It probably explains why I am getting spam SMS's from different parties on a daily basis(which is extremely annoying), but worse than that, soon we will all be forced to join the biometric database and I have zero confidence in the ability of the interior ministry to protect that.

Personally I am no fan of GDPR, but I am starting to see why it's necessary.

<comment><USER21> In much of the US, voter registrations are considered public record by state law. For example: [https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=29A.08.710](https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=29A.08.710)

Israel may have a similar law but I don't speak Hebrew and I suspect any searches I do for this will get buried by the news of the leak, so I don't think I'll be successful in finding it.

<comment><USER20> That's pretty bad IMO. What information is available?

In this case the information included first name, last name, ID number, phone number, address and parents names

<comment><USER21> > name, address, political jurisdiction, gender, date of birth, voting record, > date of registration, and registration number

Voting record in this case means which elections you voted in, not who you voted for.

It is explicitly illegal to use these records to send advertisements, but who knows how well that works

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not that I'm excusing any of the developers or users of this Elector app...

I find it's sometimes an illuminating point of view, to see these sorts of egregious failures from the point of view that there is a range of possible outcomes of any effort, from complete entropic chaos to a perfect expression of the intent and specifications.

Efforts like these simply fail to approach the ideal closely enough to avoid the costs of the inherent chaos.

I don't think so much about trying to herd people toward the light of perfect code and process. I do think about ways to mitigate the cost of the chaos.

And then occasionally I get this vision of people who fail to consider the effects of breaches getting doxxed themselves, but that also seems vindictive, and as Tim Ferriss rightly pointed out just this week, can involve permanent damage to others.

We humans are a tough bunch to sort out.

</comment><comment><USER23> am i correct in my understanding: in their attempt to intentionally leak voter PII to their canvassers they inadvertently leaked it to the whole internet?

EDIT: "Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Likud supporters to download the application in order to help draft more supporters and voters."

<comment><USER24> Has the power company "intentionally leaked" PII if they mail their customers bills, and by so doing give their customers' names and addresses to the USPS?

Personally I would have said that is normal, legitimate processing; and any definition of "data leak" that included that would be so broad as to be meaningless.

Of course, the leak of the full register by a negligently designed website is another matter...

<comment><USER23> except addresses are effectively owned by the postal service. they are the primary users of it. the power company is merely using the postal service's addressing system

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the US voter registrations are already public. How did Likud get a copy if that's not the same in Israel?

<comment><USER17> It's available to political parties under restrictions that they do not make it public and delete it after the campaign is over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> On a log enough time scale, all information will either become public or bitrot into non-existence.

</comment><comment><USER27> Similar thing happened at Turkey. Voter data got leaked by one of opposition parties.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone have a link to the dump?

<comment><USER28> Because it doesn't seem anyone actually saved that page. If so it was just a scare...</comment></comment>


So What If New York Is Unaffordable? That Helps the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-22/so-what-if-new-york-is-unaffordable-that-helps-the-u-s <comment><AUTHOR> It might benefit the rest of the U.S., but the rate of job expansion outside the Bay Area is excruciatingly slow compared to the rate of rent and house price increases.</comment>


Google Coder Analyzes a Billion Files to Find a Winner in Tabs vs. Spaces Debate - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/google-coder-analyzes-a-billion-files-to-find-a-winner-1786016648 <comment><USER2> >> Should you use the tab button or five spaces when you're indenting source code?

Five? What sort of freak uses five?

And you should use the tab button, with your editor set up to insert _four_ spaces instead of tab characters. This way display is consistent across editors, platforms etc etc

I must say I'm surprised at the result for 'C' on there, as I've never worked with a C programmer that used tabs.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, except s/four/two/ :)

And except for those few language where strangely tabs are required, like makefiles :(

<comment><USER2> LOL. Always found two a little too dense personally.

And yeah, meaningful tab characters in Makefiles are a real sod...

<comment><USER4> I guess that would depend on the density of the language - I prefer 2 for clojure / common lisp and 4 for C and python.

At the end, we're trying to optimize for readability, and the horizontal indentation needs to be more or less in harmony with how tight the code is vertically... for example, see this completely random and subjective selection from two of my projects:

        void consumeInput(gap * sudoku, inputQueue * q){
            unsigned short int x, y, i, data;
            input * ptr = q->head;
            q->head = ptr->next;
            x = ptr->x;
            y = ptr->y;
            data = ptr->data;
            free(ptr);
            if(!q->head)
                q->tail=NULL;

            if(DEBUG)
                fprintf(stdout, "%d %d %d:\n", x, y, data);
            x--;y--;

        (defn username-from-req [ring-request]
          (when-let [identity (:cemerick.friend/identity (:session ring-request))]
            (let [[[:authentications auths]
                   [:current curr]] (vec identity)]
              (when (and auths curr)
                (str (:identity (auths curr)))))))

(My) C functions tend to be longer but with shorter lines, whereas with clojure, I end up writing denser functions with fewer lines with more meat, both in term of characters and semantics. Thus (again, for me), clojure looks better if lines are more "tight", and C needs more breathing space.

<comment><USER5> Off topic, but could you explain the destructuring form you've used in your Clojure function? I've not seen destructuring with keywords in first position (in vectors, no less) before: is this something new for 1.9? I can't get it to work under 1.8.

What does it offer over the standard associative destructuring form:

        (let [{auths :authentications, curr :current} identity]
          ...

<comment><USER4> Well it seems to work with 1.7. Try:

        (let [[[:a a]
               [:b b]] (vec {:a 1
                             :b 2})]
          (println a b))

But yeah, it's just an old and ugly hack from when I knew no better. It should look like your version.

<comment><USER5> You're right, it works under 1.7. But not under 1.8: I get an "Unsupported binding form" exception.

A bit of digging suggests it was an unwanted side effect of allowing destructuring of name-spaced keywords in maps, introduced in 1.5:

> CLJ-1318 ("Support destructuring maps with namespaced keywords") introduced > two potentially undesired behaviours:

> [snip]

> 2\. Keywords were allowed in any binding key positions. Keywords are > converted to symbols (retaining namespace) and treated according to the > rules of symbols in the rest of the destructuring logic. From what I > understand the idea was to allow keywords only in map destructuring, but > again the change change was effected for any binding key.

\-- [http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-1778](http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-1778)

1.8 removed keyword-first destructuring forms for vectors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish more projects would start using this : [http://editorconfig.org/](http://editorconfig.org/)

I don't care whatever the original author of a project used, as long as my editor does the same automatically when I contribute.

</comment><comment><USER7> C++ Developer - must admit I used to use spaces, then switched to tabs.

This was for several reasons - firstly - makefiles will not be parsed correctly if you start using spaces rather than tabs, so it's a good habit to get into to use them elsewhere to save headaches. Secondly, almost every developer I've met will want to use a different amount of spaces for indentation. When using tabs they can set whatever they want using the text editor or IDE of their choice.

This is my line of thinking anyway.

<comment><USER8> This is 2016 calling, we have much better build tools than Gnu Make. Let's start with pretty popular Cmake, which has no problems with whitespace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only reason I accept why spaces should be used is that people are unable to configure their editors apparently.

<comment><USER8> Tabs get munged by quite a few tools, including clipboard managers, webpage forms and more...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's strange, that the white space in languages without "meaningful white space" has any impact after all.

Of course I like a blank line between blocks of more related functions, but I wonder why there is no standard for such things. Many text editors do the right step and auto-convert to your preferred spacing, but it's still strange there is no standard for it.

</comment><comment><USER11> It would be interesting to see if there is a trend on the spaces / tabs per language statistics, and I would also be interested by the numbers of spaces per language.

e.g. I always use two spaces, but I mostly code in Ruby / JS / CoffeeScript. And that may influence my preference.

</comment><comment><USER12> And let's assume most programmers don't changes their editors auto-indent default. How does this affect the result?

<comment><USER13> I just checked Webstorm which converts tabs to spaces so all my code is spaces but I only tabs. Go figure.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Faster Image Loading on Android is now a one-liner - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nextopio/nextop-client/blob/master/docs/03.02.2015_FAST_IMAGE_LOADING_EASY_INTEGRATION.md

<comment><USER2> Very cool! Two questions:

1) How do you ensure that the images are not cached to compare the load times in the demo?

2) Do you expect the load to ever be significant enough that dropping messages will become necessary? If so, how are you planning to handle that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Really great questions. Thank you.

1- Both apps do the same client-side caching, with no server-side caching. The Nextop protocol is able to get bytes down faster from raw requests than direct HTTP (limited to 2 concurrent connections). An update to the proxy will be coming out soon that does caching like a proper CDN, which will be a big win. Look out for other performance improvements this week too (I can discuss more if you want).

The bottom line is that Nextop ImageView loads your images >=HTTP/2 with zero changes to your backend. This is a huge win for developers wanting to make the switch now.

2-The client supports prioritization+multiplexing to handle that. More important messages will always be sent at the head of the line, regardless of the backlog. The important thing to remember is that the connection is a bunch of pipelines (Nextop calls them groups), where messages in each pipeline get sent in order, and pipelines get merged into a single stream out/in.

Now a lot of messages that drive views like GETs aren't necessary when the view goes off the screen. Nextop handles that case for you with some nice integrations between view and requests, which can help the backlog. If your app needs to cancel/merge messages like, for example, an app sending a stream of geo updates, Nextop supports canceling a message which will remove from the queue if present. "canelSend(p); send(p = current);" one pattern to manage the backlog for messages that can be replaced with newer versions.

We're rolling out some prefetching/offline stuff in the next couple weeks that will really highlight this.

Now the memory impact of the backlog is important. I think letting Nextop abstract that and improve is better than pushing memory issues into the rest of the app. In general the Nextop philosophy is a simple API that does the right thing with a broad range of input/output values. All the special cases will go into the library to save developers' headaches. Nextop eventually reaches zero memory use and gives you the tools to manage memory/bandwidth use by crafting how your app sends messages. For example, downsampling a camera photo for upload is a one-liner in Nextop.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Developer here. Love to discuss performance and mobile. Building a network library from the ground up for mobile.</comment>


Autistic teens master social cues, find friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/print170053709.html

<comment><USER2> I wish they had listed all the rules :-( I'm not autistic but I'd love to just have a list of rules to follow in social situations.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.autismawarenesscentre.org/book-review/the- hidden-...](http://www.autismawarenesscentre.org/book-review/the-hidden- curriculum-practical-solutions-for-understanding-unstated-rules-in-social- situations.html) is apparently a book on exactly this. <http://www.parenting.org/behavior/socialskills/> is going to be the level they're talking about, though.

I don't know if I'd be diagnosed autistic -- Taking the test retrospectively, I would have scored 39/50 on <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html> as a kid and teenager, but score 25 now. I also do not have the classic difficulty deciphering faces, but do not know if that was always true or if I've learned.

My trick? I ended up in an intense, somewhat abusive religious group that had a focus on evangelism. It was an environment where people were forced to interact positively, and I ended up learning hordes. While I had to completely relearn social interaction after leaving the group, I at least had a set of heuristics to follow.

I've struggled to figure out a way to bring this without the religious system, and haven't quite figured it out yet.

<comment><USER4> "Excuse me, sir, have you heard the good news about Emacs?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe this kind of training is known as "social pragmatics", and may be useful for some non-autism-spectrum children as well.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure I would have benefitted from that as a kid... It took me a long time to learn to stop talking (or monologuing) about books and computer games and start instead listening to others and talk about what they liked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _An estimated 1 in 150 American children has some form of autism. There's no known cure._

I'm a little insulted that people still consider it a disease. It's like saying people that don't like a particular food have a disease because most people like the food. It's quite simply not the case.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's that simple. Take, for instance, this gentleman [1] on YouTube with Aspergers and Tourettes lapsing into a state similar to low- functioning autism. Take note of his own description of his state: "I lose the ability to control my body, I cannot express my desires, and I can't walk without falling." That's not at all akin to a culinary preference.

[1]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt1tLnwVpG4>

<comment><USER6> I was referring to high-functioning autism. Similarly, if one dislikes a particular food, they do not have a disease. If one dislikes _all_ foods and refuses to eat, they have a disease.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Opinions on proper business structure for sale? - <AUTHOR>

I am posting outside my regular account to get an opinion on a sensitive matter.  Short background:  I started with a small web app for fun 8 years ago as a side project.  It has grown into a pretty nice sized business that I run full-time and it's till growing rapidly (and spinning off other related web apps).
I finally decided that it was time to become a "real" company and ended up creating an S-Corp as the operating company and an LLC to hold all the intellectual property (trademarks and copyrights to source code mainly).
In finishing up the paperwork, I had to meet a new attorney and when I looked at my situation, he thought there was a good chance that somewhere down the road, I would have the opportunity to sell the entire business for a big payday.  I currently own 100% of the company and don't need angel/venture investors as it's generating good cash flow on it's own....but I might want to exit someday.
He tried to explain to me that I would want to structure things so that a "Stock Sale" would be attractive and so that I could avoid trying to need to do an "Asset Sale"  He also wondered what Business structure would offer the best tax situation if a sale came to pass.
I'm sorry to ramble on but here are the questions:
1. Does anyone with more experience in these matters understand if a different business model would be advantages tax wise in selling the whole company for stock?
2.  Would a different business model make a stock sale more attractive?
Thanks for ANY guidance/help you can provide.
PS - I've asked my CPA and HE can't imagine why anything other than an LLC or S-Corp would have any advantages, but admitted he's not put a lot of business sale deals together.  Also - the business could easily "merge" at any point into a single entity by having the S-corp purchase the LLC (to create one s-corp) OR by disbanding the S-corp and having the LLC take over all operations (to have 1 LLC)
Thanks again <comment><USER2> A business owned by a corporation can be sold via asset sale, stock sale, or merger.

A C-corp runs into trouble in selling all or substantially of its assets because this can trigger a severe double tax if those assets carry with them a low basis (as IP usually does).

The way to avoid the double-tax problem is to structure the deal as a stock sale instead, in which case the shareholders get a one-time capital gain on the sale. The problem is that your buyer normally won't want to do this, or at least will demand a severe price discount for doing a stock sale in that scenario.

An S-corp avoids the double-tax problem, however, eliminating the need for a stock sale in this case. Since this is what you have, an asset sale would work fine, in all likelihood.

Similarly with the sale of assets from an LLC (at least any LLC that is taxed as a partnership). This too is a tax flow-through entity and no double tax issue would arise.

This is likely the perspective your CPA is taking and why he can't imagine why you would want to alter your structure.

What your attorney likely has in mind is positioning for the possibility of an "A," "B," or "C" reorganization under Internal Revenue Code 368(a)(1)(A), 368(a)(1)(B), or 368(a)(1)(C).

In an A reorganization, the target corporation merges into an acquiring corporation with the former shareholders in the target corporation receiving the merger consideration in exchange for their stock.

In a B reorganization, an acquiring corporation acquires stock of the target corporation directly from the shareholders solely in exchange for voting stock of the acquiring corporation.

In a C reorganization, an acquiring corporation acquires substantially all the assets of the target corporation solely in exchange for voting stock of the acquiring corporation transferred to the target corporation.

Each of these, if properly done, is _tax-free_.

In most cases, such a deal would make sense for someone selling your type of business if the acquiring corporation were a public company.

I can only guess but, I believe, such a deal would likely not be clean if the great part of the value being transferred consisted of IP owned by a separate LLC. In other words, its tax-free aspect would be compromised or destroyed.

The issue would seem to be whether you should be keeping your IP in a separate LLC or bringing it into the S-Corp now as a positioning move for potential future acquisition options.

Can't give legal advice in this type of forum but I would think this should point you in the general direction of issues needing to be explored. Check with your tax professionals for particulars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the advice that does help.

The scenario the attorney was actually thinking about was someone handing me a "big check" for all of it - ie all cash deal. I'm not sure from what you wrote, but you seem to indicate that in a cash deal a C-Corp would make a stock sale more attractive and S-corp/LLC would likely be the same and end up with the buyer pushing for an asset sale.

BTW - the IP assets are being kept out of the S-corp intentionally to avoid a possible tax bill later if the S-corp needs to be disbanded. (But there are tax advantages in the PRESENT for operating as an S-Corp).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Drafting site terms of service – any advice? - <AUTHOR> Hello! Curious if anyone has recommendations for service providers that can help early stage startups with drafting terms of service? Or any other advice about best way to go about that - my budget and time are limited, so no fancy lawyers in my immediate future. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Shopify has free terms of service generator [1]. We used it and then modified to fit our needs. Even though it is designed for e-commerce we found it was not big problem to modify it for SaaS.

There are other services, but they are quite a bit more expensive.

[1] [https://www.shopify.com/tools/policy-generator/terms-and- con...](https://www.shopify.com/tools/policy-generator/terms-and-conditions)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much, @skolos! That's very helpful. Looking into it now!</comment></comment>


HN, what's bothering you?  - <AUTHOR>

We're a community of builders. But we are also busy individuals with lots of problems (that need a simple or complex solution).<p>So HN, what's bothering you? What do you want to get solved for you? For what product/service would you pay if it existed today? <comment><USER4> My mother in law just lost her job as a school librarian at the same time as my father in law is getting dicked around by workman's comp for an on-the-job injury. They need financial help but are too proud to take it - they don't like the thought of their son in law bailing them out even though I make far more than they do. This bothers me.

<comment><USER5> There are several options here - their pride and wariness are probably natural human responses.

1) Pose the financial assistance as a loan or other arrangement that has reasonable terms.

2) Claim you're investing money with them or trust them (if they are savvy) to invest it for you. My sister did this for my parents a while back - <USER2> claimed that she was giving money for my father to invest, and I'm sure she's never expecting the money back.

There are numerous ways in which you can "ask them to help you" while in reality you are helping them. This can also bring you closer, but it requires a good deal of time and energy to set up (not to mention the money).

Keep in mind, this kind of arrangement is fraught with downsides too - <USER3> is a reason most folks recommend against loaning to, or going in business with your family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm drowning in email. It's hard to tell which email is important, and it's hard to tell which important emails haven't been dealt with. Gmail's priority inbox thing is useless for me. If you solved this problem, actually solved it, I'd pay whatever you asked. $25, $50, $100/month? A bargain.

<comment><USER7> Just curious, what kind of emails do you get?

> It's hard to tell which email is important, and it's hard to tell which > important emails haven't been dealt with.

Does it mean that you get way more unimportant emails than important ones? Can't you just filter them away to tags/trash?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I second this. I don't get many emails because I've taken myself off the all lists. Can't the OP do the same? No twitter notifications, no FB notifications, remove yourself from all RSS feeds that you never look at, all mailing lists. Maybe its not email's problem but a problem with your organization abilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh, you know what's bothering me?

Whenever others submit "Show HN" stories they get upvoted to the front page and I give them feedback, sometimes spending 30 minutes on helping them fix some of their design problems. But when I submit my "Show HN" site, which I've tried 3 times now, it never makes it anywhere and I don't get feedback. So I give and I don't get anything back.

I put in more than I get out. When this happens I leave the community permanently and never look back. I'm thinking of leaving HN. This will be the 4th time I'm leaving a community because I'm putting in more than what I'm getting out of it. HN has turned into TechCrunch, a place for nothing but tech news so wanna be entrepreneurs that don't do anything but dick around on the internet can read about other people's tech success and live in someone else's glory.

How the hell does the "Facebook Acquires Instagram" story help any of us? How has that information enriched your life or helped you create something? We're suppose to be a community that helps each other out, because startups and websites are hard, and occasionally talk about some tech news. Now it's just tech news 24/7.

I've got a few more Show HN submitions, if those don't go anywhere I'm out.

Edit: Here's what I wanted to show. Thanks for your guy's support. <http://www.timeforzen.com>

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I have submitted some Show HN's and they never get upvoted. I see other Show HN's that are just crummy landing pages. I don't get it. I spend a lot of time working on my projects and try to make something at least some people find useful. It's at least more useful than a landing page. But nope.

<comment><USER11> Also I think sometimes it depends quite a lot on how you word your post.

It's quite tempting to think - "I spent a lot of time on this, it speaks for itself" where as you need to pique the interest of the crowd.

Even go as so far to give a run down of how and why you built it and what you learned! We're suckers for a great backstory and a few data points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly, I'm lonely as hell lately. I'm starting to question how it's possible I don't have a nice ladyfriend by now. It's really starting to crush me. I even considered posting this as an ASK HN since I think this place has some of the smartest comments I've ever read, so I thought surely someone could help, but then I thought "well it's not exactly hacker-related, maybe I'll go check what else is on Ask HN right now and see if there's anything else not really hacker-related", and I seen this thread.

<comment><USER13> If you are the kind of guy who likes HN, reading [http://lesswrong.com/lw/6pf/new_post_version_1_please_read_t...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/6pf/new_post_version_1_please_read_this_only_if_your/) and following up on its references may not be the worst idea. (This is empathically not a recommendation or endorsement.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would pay to have my laundry done. Not dry cleaning, just plain, old, toss- it-in-the-washer laundry. I would pay a significant amount for this service. I wouldn't bat an eye at $30-40/load.

I don't care if someone comes and picks it up, or if I go somewhere to drop it off. I don't care if it's done by a professional service or by a 12 year old neighbor kid. I would pay you, and the whoever does my laundry, if you could connect me with someone.

<comment><USER15> Most laundries already do this. Don't they? Pick-up service, 24h, delivery.

<comment><USER14> Probably, but not in the Minneapolis area as far as I can tell. I found one place, but it's a 20 minute drive from where I live, which nullifies a lot of the benefit. This yelp add sums up the situation quite well:

<http://www.yelp.com/topic/minneapolis-laundry-service-2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Today? Allergies.

Overall? I hate crowded subways. Why so many useless people who exist?

</comment><comment><USER17> PG said it - Email/Todo's I need a really kick ass web based todo manager and I need it to work like email (so I can exchange todo's with other people). I started building one but... not enough time, too much todo.

<comment><USER18> Have you looked at Asana? <http://asana.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like I'm wasting my time in my college classes. I love being at college and would never give it up, but classes don't challenge me and aren't interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have tried umpteen billion times to install Apache. I have wasted several full days trying and failing. I have a Mac. I must be retarded.

</comment><comment><USER21> My real estate broker is a pain in the ass.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm dying one second at a time and I'm in the way of all of my personal aspirations and the only way out is to blindly hope for salvation.

AND MY COFFEE MUG BROKE</comment>


Why I No Longer Do .NET Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.sarajchipps.com/2011/10/this-blog-post-has-been-a-long-time-coming-i-started-my-career-within-the-net-community-and-my-posts-of-late-have-been-d.html

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised to see the tools listed as one of the grievances. Except for a few true dogs like Visual Source Safe, you usually hear nothing but praise for Visual Studio as an IDE or the tooling that goes into SQLServer. Those two environments comprise about 90% of my development experience with the rest being Firebug or some other DOM viewer/javascript debugger.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well I read it - but I don't understand it. Must have missed the key point.

I think JavaScript is cool as well - and I use it a lot (and some) but surely you use the development tools that make sense in a given situation. You can't do it all in one language and without a platform. Can you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do only JavaScript, and I have been for almost 2 years now.</comment></comment>


Let's build a circuit that displays an image on a VGA monitor - Part 2 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqY3FMuMuRo <comment><AUTHOR> Discussion for part 1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375702)</comment>


For the Record: Spotify Can Go Fuck Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://techrotica.tumblr.com/post/79212740983/for-the-record-spotify-can-go-fuck-themselves

<comment><USER2> "First of all we didn't board for _twenty minutes_ , and then we got on the plane and they made us sit there, on the runway, for _forty minutes_... we had to sit there."

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a Pro level above #firstworldproblems? Because this would go one level above that.

<comment><USER4> One-percent problems is the pro level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think it's fair to berate the whole company (and to stop using their products) for failed logistics at a single event.

</comment><comment><USER6> I hate to be reductive, but this article deserves such treatment. I feel like the article can really be summed up with this one quote:

> "[At SXSW] this year the Spotify House was completely 100% corporate."

</comment><comment><USER7> Apparently author is mad because after awesome last year Spotify house is way more popular and you need to get in early.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wait.. a hangout paid for by a company is all corporate and shit... NOOOOO!</comment>


Ask HN: Average Screen Resolution? - <AUTHOR>

I'm designing a Facebook app, and wanted to know - is 1024x768 still the standard to design for? Is there somewhere with stats on this? <comment><USER2> And here's the javascript trick:

[http://forums.devshed.com/html-programming-1/how-to- obtain-t...](http://forums.devshed.com/html-programming-1/how-to-obtain-the- current-browser-resolution-867.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> You probably won't have much space if you're going to be a little widget on someone's page. 1024x768 is a safe bet, but most laptops have higher- resolution; low-end macbooks have 1280x800 default.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anecdotally --- a number of my non-hacker friends have bought netbooks recently, and use them for quickly checking Facebook and their e-mail without having to sit at a desktop or carry a bigger heavier laptop across the room. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if your users are disproportionately likely to have 1024x600.

</comment><comment><USER2> In a nice table through the years:

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp></comment>


Ask HN: "postgres.biz" domain name - Anyone want it? - <AUTHOR> I've been holding on to the "postgres.biz" domain for several years, mainly to keep it from sleazy domain squatters, and as a "TODO" list item for myself.
But, realistically... I'm probably not going to get around to doing anything useful with it. :(
Does anyone on HN have a (PG Community enhancing) use for it?
If so, happy to transfer it to you. :) <comment><USER2> SaaS postgres "biz"ness

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's the most obvious kind of thing.

Seems like a definite lack of interest, so I'll probably let the domain expire.</comment></comment>