The bank lent me $2m so I spent it on strippers and cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38308842 <comment><USER2> The article doesn't way why he was found not guilty, but I'll make my guess.

He did nothing to defraud the bank or mislead it. He simply had access to a large line of credit, and used it. If the bank wants it's money back, that's a civil matter, not a criminal one. It's their responsibility to ask for it back.

This reeks of incompetence on the part of the bank, followed by outright malice. They put an innocent guy in jail in order to pretend that it was his fault that they screwed up.

<comment><USER3> > He did nothing to defraud the bank or mislead it. He simply had access to a > large line of credit, and used it. If the bank wants it's money back, that's > a civil matter, not a criminal one. It's their responsibility to ask for it > back.

He was drawing on this line of credit, which he knew he was legally obligated to pay back, without ever intending to pay it back. That sure seems like fraud to me.

There is a difference between taking out a loan with the intention of paying it back, but not being able to pay it back due to some circumstance (you lost your job, had a medical emergency, business failed, or something like that), and taking out a loan without ever intending to pay it back. One is a civil breach of contract; the other (at least in the US) is criminal fraud.

<comment><USER4> > without ever intending to pay it back

How can you know that? He himself writes that he was waiting for the bank to ask for some money back and intended to deal with it when it comes.

Lack of detailed planning for something isn't the same as lack of intention to do something when it happens.

Lots of people take loans without precisely knowing where they'll find money to pay them back.

<comment><USER5> That's easy, he had no money to pay it back, ergo it's fair to conclude he had no intention of paying it back.

It's one thing to go a couple of thousand overdrawn, quite another to spend $2 million when you have no source of income.

<comment><USER6> "Have no money to pay it back" applies to many companies (including many banks) that borrowed money and to many house owners, too. Would you conclude they have no intention of paying it back, too?

Many companies also spend money they lent on frivolous stuff (end of year parties, football tables, etc) that doesn't obviously contribute to the bottom line, so buying some booze and spending some money on strippers, in itself, isn't fraud.

Back to this case: I can see how this would be _" obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime"_, just as taking money from someone's open purse would be.

<comment><USER3> > "Have no money to pay it back" applies to many companies (including many > banks) that borrowed money and to many house owners, too. Would you conclude > they have no intention of paying it back, too?

The question isn't whether the loan was paid back, it's whether there was an intent to pay it back at the time the loan was taken out. Many of those homeowners foolishly believed their house would appreciate at 20% per year indefinitely (and many lenders were telling people this to convince them to take out loans).

<comment><USER4> Maybe he foolishly believed that his life will be worth enough to pay back what he borrowed on some reasonable payment plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of something that happened back when I still had a landline.

They incorrectly billed us over $2000. We argued with them and they reversed the charges - twice.

So now my balance showed a _credit_ of $2000. I kept calling them back and they said they couldn't see anything wrong on my account.

This went on for months. A number of times the person on the phone said "Well just don't tell anyone!". I asked for that in writing and then they sighed and said "I'll put a note in for someone to look at it."

I was blown away by how many friends of mine got mad at me for trying to fix it. Does anyone really think this would go unnoticed forever?

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't the optimal (not morally) move be to just set aside the money you _might_ eventually have to pay back?

<comment><USER9> Except he'd have to set aside either two grand right away, or have to very carefully track his phone line usage and keep a separate account.

I think I would have closed the account, and either waited for them to realize what was going on before Accounting cut a $2k check.

A credit on an account is bits in a computer; a check going out to a customer is real money coming out of a bank account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised that the article isn't answering the obvious question and that nobody here is asking it either: Did he have to pay back the 2 million?

<comment><USER11> If you borrow $2k from the bank and can't pay it back, that's your problem. If you borrow $2 million from the bank and can't pay it back, that's the bank's problem.

<comment><USER12> It's actually called fraud, at least in the US, and will be investigated by the Secret Service. If you experience such a windfall in your account, seek written permission from the bank before spending any of the money.

<comment><USER13> Isn't the Secret Service supposed to protect the president?

<comment><USER14> They were a part of the Treasury Department until 2003 (now DHS) and deal with counterfeiting and other financial crimes. I don't know for sure that fraud like this would land in the Secret Service queue and not the FBI but it's certainly plausible. It mostly depends on which specific statute(s) you're being investigated for as to which agency(ies) do the investigating.

<comment><USER15> > They are a part of the Treasury Department officially

Used to be; but now they are part of Homeland Security.

<comment><USER14> You are correct, thank you. Edited to fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What a shame he was young and irresponsible when this happened. It could have been a truly epic story had he done something interesting like take out the money, invest it in something like income producing real property or a cashflow positive business, and then been able to come out ahead when judgement day inevitably came along by handing back the money owed.

<comment><USER9> I would imagine that most people who would allocate their money that way wouldn't take the risk of continually drawing on a magic line of credit.

<comment><USER17> I absolutely would. I'd probably call them to get some documentation that I'd tried to rectify the situation, but if they still want to keep giving me a line of credit I'd be buying up assets like crazy.

You'd be a fool to turn down unlimited zero-interest credit.

<comment><USER9> > _You 'd be a fool to turn down unlimited zero-interest credit._

Maybe, but this guy served half a year in jail. You could probably do better if you could show the court that you're not a hapless kid buying sports cars, but it seems rather risky.

<comment><USER17> It's not clear how much effort he went into corroborating with the bank. I'd certainly at least call them to confirm before spending the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The big story for me here is: don't rely on your lawyers. Not unless they cost enough to rely on. Form a strong idea of your own case and your own defense. Even if you're not representing yourself.

<comment><USER19> Yep this is my takeaway from the story. I will not be sad when AI automates away the majority of the legal industry. Really really terrifying that one's access to justice is dependent on their access to finances.

Luckily this guy was smart enough to actually represent himself - credit to him for that!

<comment><USER20> This has been my reason for being against the death penalty for many years. It's hard to justify when the OJ's of the world get a pass due to wealth or celebrity.

I never thought of AI being used in this capacity. Seems like we'd live in The Day The Earth Stood Still world, giving the automatons the jurisdiction to meat out justice.

<comment><USER21> Hmm. This is actually an interesting application for AI. Is anyone working on this? There is a huge amount of case law that could be entered into the corpus.

<comment><USER22> DoNotPay is a chatbot that can help people with simple legal cases like appealing parking tickets.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/chatbot- ai-lawyer-donotpay-parking-tickets-london-new-york)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Listening to it on the radio, the guy just seemed so apathetic. That it seemed almost like a Satire skit.

He bought several expensive cars, spent time in Thailand, and started buying celebrity memorabilia and art?

I wonder if people like this get caught because of their blatant disregard for consequences. And that there's lots of people who fall into similar mistakes/loop holes but are just very reserved and try to fly low.

<comment><USER24> > _He bought several expensive cars, spent time in Thailand, and started > buying celebrity memorabilia and art?_

Why not? He had a nice experience, and even avoided any long term jail sentence. What's not to like?

<comment><USER25> Morally, there are several things not to like. Of course, this is arguably no more or less morally sound than someone who legally games the financial system and buys the same lifestyle. Lots of grey areas, I suppose.

I keep wanting to compare it to tech firms that profit off chiseling away at our privacy using social and game theory, but I'm not completely convinced that the two systems are similar enough to warrant it.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure I feel comfortable talking about morality when banks are involved.

<comment><USER27> "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?" -- Bertolt Brecht

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like the bank is just incompetent.

Many years ago, I deposited a check from my business account to my personal account, where both accounts were held with the same bank, and somehow, they messed up where the check was for something like $1500, but they only deposited $500 into my personal account and deducted $500 from my business account. Called them up, and they deposited the missing $1000 into my personal account but didn't take the funds from my business account, effectively giving me $1000 for free.

Tried calling them several times and explaining what had happened, though the customer service folks were useless. Seemed like no-one really cared about resolving the issue.

Eventually, after something like 9-10 months, someone realized and one morning, my business account was suddenly debited for $1000.

<comment><USER29> This. They usually figure it out later if it's in their benefit. You've got one month to catch an error on their part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice to see the turnaround from strippers and cocaine to attending law school and helping other people out.

<comment><USER31> Well he simply switched groups he was 'helping': he used to be helping Strippers and Coke dealers (financially), now he's helping others with his newfound law insights and retelling of this story.

<comment><USER32> Those others might well be strippers and coke dealers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's hard to be sympathetic to banks when you know if you make a financial mistake they'll never compensate you.

The guy was immoral. But in the world of banking that doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER34> > My six months behind bars gave me a unique perspective on jail.

I suspect it's really not all that unique.

<comment><USER21> Well, it's unique in that most people still don't spend that time in jail, and then on top of that he was able to get out without any criminal record.

It did give him enough experience to find something worth doing with his life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > I was just unlucky I guess that it happened to me.

People like this who have no sense of personal responsibility are an evil in the world. He spends millions of dollars of other people's money, declares bankruptcy (presumably), and when his actions are deemed dishonest and immoral, though not technically illegal, he acts like that's just name-calling and gets right back up on his high horse. Remind you of any Presidents-elect?

I expected better of HN commenters. Remember when we had a spirited discussion about people defaulting on their student loans and blaming society for making them take huge loans they can't pay back? This situation lacks any of the nuance of that one.

<comment><USER36> A loan is a two party relationship and both parties have responsibilities. Also there are known consequences to default. Defaulting on a loan has nothin to do with morality as far as I'm concerned. If you are fine with the consequences of default then do so. It's not immoral as everyone knows the risk/consequences.

<comment><USER37> Sure -- but typically the result of defaulting on a loan is not debtor's prison unless you happen to still be living in 1820.

<comment><USER36> Yes. I was commenting to what the parent commenter wrote. He/she seems to think strategic defaults are immoral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A couple of other examples:

Gas Station owner given $10 million overdraft instead of $100,000 , transfers it all offshore and runs:

[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10829144)

Student given "unlimited" overdraft, spends $4 million on handbags and clothes:

[http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/80263909/Westpac- admit...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/80263909/Westpac-admits- simple-mistake-gave-Christine-Jia-Xin-Lee-a-5m-overdraft)

</comment><comment><USER39> and then wasted the rest

<comment><USER40> "I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted."

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's unbelievable how the bank didn't notice for that long. That goes to show the power of what a sysadmin at a bank can have, take money and cover his/her tracks. Unfortunately for this guy he was in no such position.

<comment><USER42> They definitely would have noticed, but anyone who cared at the bank was a beneficiary - more loans equals higher commissions.

I think the problem here is that the bank employees saw no reason to intervene, even though they should have, as clearly the guy needed help (responsible lending practices here in Oz ignored). I expect that is why his conviction was quashed.

<comment><USER5> I didn't see any indication in the article that the bank knew, and as there is no way this loan would pass their audit checks, I really doubt anyone got commission for it.

My guess would be a mistake in a system and a line of credit got attached to the wrong account. Should they have better checks in place, sure, but there's nothing in the article to suggest they knowingly lent him the cash.

<comment><USER42> Possibly. I still believe this issue is best looked at through a bank culture lens rather than a technical one.

Although I'll agree with you that the solution will require changes most likely to both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> they weren't charging him interest? if so, why waste money on things that don't yield a return on investment. you could day trade and just put it back in the account. and that way you probably wouldn't get arrested.

<comment><USER44> >you could day trade and just put it back in the account.

That way he would have spent just as much money, but sitting in front of a computer instead of being coked up with strippers.

<comment><USER45> Ironically, despite having all the money he could spend, he STILL ended up starting a business!

<comment><USER21> Sounded more like a front to try and explain the money/lifestyle, he didn't seem to be trying earn anything from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> So how did the bank screw up like this? They deal with so much money, you and your grandchildren could make a living from the rent they pay for a single branch office. Yet they are unable to purchase the skill set and competence to stop giving people unbalanced credit or stop international fraud at scale.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure about Austraila, but he likely wouldn't pass the bar in California. I would suggest he picks another profession.

Edit: admitting to amoral behavior, drug use, etc. Those are grounds for the bar to not let you practice.

</comment><comment><USER47> _They were all armed like they thought I might be a mad gangster._

 _A lot of the people in there need help not incarceration._

Is there any place in the world where the justice system is totally impartial, helpful, not overreaching etc?

</comment><comment><USER48> I would've put that money in the sp500. Depending on how long he could hold on to that credit he would've made a lot of profit that he could keep.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm not sure I understood the story.

Is it that he would transfer money from his account, and it always succeeded even if there was no funds???

<comment><USER50> Yes. This is called Overdraft: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdraft)

It's a form of credit granted to you by the bank. It's usually limited. You wouldn't usually get a $2m credit either. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> About a year or so from now there will be a "Hollywood-based-on-a-true- story"-Adaptation of this.

<comment><USER52> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_Check_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_Check_\(film\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Stories like these make me a disbeliever of basic income.

<comment><USER54> Hah, fair!

Admittedly, there is also some different psychology at play: this guy knew it was a temporary windfall, and wouldn't last.

Even if he was dumb enough to blow his basic income, and end up on the streets for the rest of the year, he probably wouldn't make the same mistake twice ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Apparently he had all his fun in 2 months.

<comment><USER24> 2 years. More than most people of his age (or much older ages) get to have.

<comment><USER56> From the story, the first few months were legitimate, and then the next 12 months were just mortgage payments and only the last few months were crazy partying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I don't understand how you could take out $2m and expect not to go to jail or to have any consequences for your actions. That blows my mind.

<comment><USER58> They gave it to him. It was a mistake, but you're allowed to accept a gift like that. I think he was deeply in the wrong to do so, but not in a "go to jail" sense of wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I feel like his main crime may have been tax evasion... Luckily neither the prosecutor nor the judge noticed...

<comment><USER60> Money that you borrow isn't income because you have to pay it back later. Now, if the loan gets forgiven, then he would owe taxes on it.</comment></comment>


Lessons Learned from Shutting Down My Second Startup - <AUTHOR> http://venturefizz.com/blog/lessons-learned-shutting-down-my-second-startup

<comment><USER2> Mirrors a bit of my own experience doing agency work. We actually built a site for a client Drupal, and then completely scrapped it and rebuilt in Rails because some seemingly minor interface improvements would have been impossible to complete due to the structure and interaction of a couple modules.

CMS solutions are good for only one thing: giving people a bunch of boilerplate functionality when that's all they can afford. Building a product on top of a CMS is a sure route to a mediocre product surrounded by dead-ends.

<comment><USER3> Agree, so very strongly. Got about 4 weeks into a client project with Drupal and scrapped it in favor of Django. I've been continually mystified every time I see folks singing its praises, but you bring up a fair point, it provides a lot of out of the box functionality. Extending or changing that functionality just turns out to be a nightmare.

<comment><USER4> What about hybrids like Silverstripe? Has anyone used it (or something similar) for large-ish projects? Although personally I use mostly CakePHP, I began playing with it lately and it seems to me that it has a lot of potential. Basic CMS functionality is provided out of the box, but I really like the way you can extend the core classes and integrate your own functionality into it, without losing the typical ease of use, even for non developer maintainers/users.

<comment><USER5> What differentiates Silverstripe from something like Django? It seems to me like Django offers 'Basic' CMS functionality, althought how you define that is up to you :)

<comment><USER6> I personally prefer frameworks that get out of my way over Django which forces a lot of idioms onto you. Like web.py, and if it's your taste add Jinja and SQLAlchemy and you've got a decent stack to quickly iterate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the gems in this post:

" _Self-motivation is not an ability that once you have it, you keep it. It's a reservoir of will that's filled with ambition, enjoyment, good humor, and small successes. It's drained by mundanity, difficulty, failures, and fears. If you're not refilling that reservoir on a regular basis, you will find yourself attempting to escape or avoid further drain._ "</comment>


Ireland can stop a no-deal Brexit. Here's how - <AUTHOR> https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-ireland-can-stop-a-no-deal-brexit-here-s-how-1.3972121 <comment><USER2> tl;dr Sinn Féin has seven MP's elected who do not take their seats. By resigning they could cause by-elections which likely would be won by anti brexit parties.

<comment><USER3> So the effect of resigning will be higher than actually taking the seat and voting against brexit?

(Assuming the seats are actually won by the anti-brexiters)

<comment><USER2> They won't take the seats because they refuse to pledge allegiance to the queen.</comment></comment></comment>


Creator Of Lisp, John McCarthy, Dead At 84 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/creator-of-lisp-john-mccarthy-dead-at-84/

<comment><USER2> "this months of fallen giants"

Indeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> The source of the TechCrunch article is the current highest post on this website.

<comment><USER4> The source has been updated. But yeah, it's a little redundant at this point, not that dupes on hn are uncommon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Preliminary reports indicate that McCarthy's final words were "Dennis Ritchie still lives!"

So long, John.

What a depressing month. :(</comment>


Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable release - <AUTHOR> https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/ascii-stable-announce-060818 <comment><USER2> Apparently the name 'ASCII' fits into their scheme of using minor planet names¹ for each release. Kind of a confusing name though. I wouldn't want the connotation of "limited to a few characters only" for an operating system.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3568_ASCII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3568_ASCII)

<comment><USER3> Who's going to think a fork of Debian in 2018 is "limited to a few characters only"? Don't be ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Forks are created for all sorts of crazy reasons. Perhaps someone has emoji creep via Unicode?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Endorsed by Bruce Perens: [https://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12212820&cid=5675...](https://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12212820&cid=56758364)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there a meta-init system of sorts that you could target as package developer and then have it generate sysvinit, systemd, bsd rc artifacts for you?

<comment><USER7> I am not aware of such a thing, but SystemD supports the "legacy" SysV init scripts out of the box. This feature is required for certain Debian packages, as not all of them ship with proper SystemD units, yet.

see: [https://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/debugging-systemd-sysv- ini...](https://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/debugging-systemd-sysv-init-compat) [https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/8-systemd- sysv-g...](https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/8-systemd-sysv- generator/)

<comment><USER8> Its name is systemd and Devuan does not permit lovers of init freedom to use it.

* [https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=sys...](https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=systemd-sysv&release=ascii)

* [https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=na...](https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=names&keywords=systemd-sysv)

And in any case, the unit files that it auto-generates are (alas! from necessity) too generic to be completely useful, because they have a one size fits all approach that does not really work fully for anything.

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233581/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233581/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394191/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394191/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/387314/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/387314/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/386876/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/386876/5132)

<comment><USER9> > Its name is systemd and Devuan does not permit lovers of init freedom to use > it.

I don't understand your tone here. The Devuan project is ~150 packages on top of Debian that aim _specifically_ to remove the systemd dependencies. "Init freedom lovers", as you put it, can still use Debian, no?

<comment><USER8> When you read the headlined article and other announcements you will understand that it is not how _I_ put it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dated the 18th of August 2006, I see. (-:

Also, the WWW site announced in the release defaults to the previous release in its listbox.

Devuan compared to Debian:

* [https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=run...](https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=runit&release=ascii)

* [https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=na...](https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=names&keywords=runit)

</comment><comment><USER10> My day job is to build a custom operating system with systemd. Here are my thoughts about this:

\- The amount of stuff systemd is doing for you is insane. For example, I just learned the other day how the systemctl stop command works; first you can send any signal you want to the process from a script (ExecStop=), then if that fails and the process is still running, systemd takes over, sends SIGTERM, waits for a bit (TimeoutStopSec=) then sends a SIGKILL, optionally handling child processes. I wonder if every single of your shell "init script" handle shutdown that nicely...

\- I hear this complaint over and over, but systemd is NOT a monolith, you don't need to use every component. I have a system only with systemd as init, systemd-timesyncd (because I prefer it over ntpd) and that's it.

\- It has bugs, yes, every software has bugs. We even hit multiple of them, and some of them was fairly unpleasant and hard to find, but it can be known after a bit of digging, because development is on GitHub. Also I'm fairly sure your shell scripts don't have any bugs in them...

\- Shared knowledge. I never heard this argument, but you can jump to any other system and understand what's going on immediately if everyone uses the same init system. This is a huge advantage. Fragmenting the landscape with programs which inherently do the same thing just a bit differently is just a bad idea. I also hate split of talent and split of energy. Also, why on earth would you change to another init system ever? Or why would you ever change to an init system you don't know?

\- Boot time is way better with systemd. With sysvinit, there is no parallelization. You have runlevels and that's it. I never used more than three, but I use multiple targets (own custom target also) with systemd, because it's easy and you can finally name them and debug them and see the dependency chain for every target.

\- Sometimes we need to dig in to old sysvinit scripts and it is a terrible experience. It has still a lot of stanza-like parameters IN COMMENTS (LSB headers). Great idea...

\- Systemd DOES NOT break backward compatibility. It can use existing sysvinit scripts. Actually it even default to those if there is both a .service file and init script.

\- "One of the critical reasons against systemd concerns the lack of portability to other Unices, and the associated risk to see Linux-based systems detach from the UNIX world."

Anyone seeing the irony here? :D

\- Man pages of systemd are quite nice! It's easy to learn from them. You don't even have to google, just check out the relevant man page.

I never understood systemd hate, but I guess it comes from ignorance and lack of willingness to learn about modern system design. The people who made the fork are just a bunch of hissy kids or stuck in stone age who are lazy to learn a new system IMO.

<comment><USER11> > Also, why on earth would you change to another init system ever? Or why > would you ever change to an init system you don't know?

My sentiment exactly, but weren't you building up an argument in favour of SystemD?

> \- Systemd DOES NOT break backward compatibility.

No, sometimes it just breaks and leaves you staring at a black screen. If the magical fix appears to be chrooting into you installation from a liveCD and reverting to sysvinit every time, at some point you are going to want to do that upfront.

I don't blame SystemD for existing, or people for using it and being happy with it, but I do blame Debian for defaulting to it when there was no reason to do so at that time other than "mainstream appeal".

>\- The amount of stuff systemd is doing for you is insane.

Yes.

<comment><USER10> > My sentiment exactly, but weren't you building up an argument in favour of > SystemD?

Fair point LOL :D

> >\- The amount of stuff systemd is doing for you is insane. > Yes.

The emphasis is on FOR YOU, so you don't have to do it, which is a good thing IMO.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any HN alternative for entrepreneurs and ideas? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/](http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/) is a good forum for bootstrappers (people launching products without outside investment) and [http://bootstrappers.io](http://bootstrappers.io) is more Hacker News- like in its style, basically upvoted links with comments.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.producthunt.com/](http://www.producthunt.com/)

may or may not be what you were looking for

</comment><comment><USER4> /r/startups

/r/entrepreneur

</comment><comment><USER5> youngstartups.io</comment>


Ask HN: small office network - <AUTHOR>

We just moved offices and we're thinking of revamping our network setup.
We've got an internal server, an external server. A router, wireless router, 24 port switch and 8 workstations.
What we're thinking is:
Internet into the wireless router. One DMZ hard wired port on the wireless router will be for our external server. Another hard wired port will connect to our switch. From our switch we'll connect all our workstations and our internal server.
I'm so novice with network setup it's not even funny so I have no idea how ip's and such will work out. My guess is the wireless router will give 192.168.0.* and the switch will give off something like 192.168.1.*.
Will this make our external server in the DMZ unreachable from our workstations? Will the clients connecting via wireless not have access to our network behind the switch?
If you guys have any simple enough resources please feel free to post links. Diagrams are my best friend. <comment><USER2> There is a lot in this post to digest.

Some questions: What kind of equipment do you have here? Home stuff? Commercial Grade?

What does your external server do?

To be honest, I'd keep it dead simple, especially if you are using home grade stuff like linksys. Switches don't do DHCP, but routers can. Think of switches basically as giant line splitters.

Your front door is the wireless router - firewall on (assuming it's a full router, not just an AP), DCHP with your DMZ behind that, use 192.168.1.1 or whatever, and then your internal router is 192.168.1.2 on this network.

Second firewall/router to your internal network, DHCP on. You can actually use the same addys as the other network, but it may make sense to use different ranges. Switch behind here if you need it.

Ports open on both firewalls as required. That's how you see your DMZ server. (Don't use the "DMZ host" crap on the routers if it has such a thing, you're setting up a real DMZ manually.)

All wireless access should receive a different (untrusted in your DMZ) range from the first DHCP.

If you can't see the internal server from a laptop with wireless, you're doing thing right. If you can, you are open.

Under no circumstances should you allow wireless internet access to be granted access to your internal network without VPN.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The really simple way though is just to use the wired router with every port closed and expose as required. Throw the Wireless router outside of that with the internet attached to it. It depends though on what that external server is doing. I wouldn't do this for web, but if it's just mail I might.

</comment><comment><USER3> "192.168.0.* and the switch will give off something like 192.168.1. _."

i think you mean wired-router instead of switch, because afaik switch & hub don't assign ips

but if u use switch, then the workstations & int_serv are 192.168.0._</comment>


Handshake: An experimental peer-to-peer root DNS - <AUTHOR> https://handshake.org <comment><USER2> Duplicates [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17673922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17673922)

<comment><USER3> We moved the comments to that thread since it was posted a bit earlier. Since this post had the URL we ended up using, I'm sorry not to be able to share karma between the two submissions—it's sort of random which post of an equivalence class ends up winning out. We've got some ideas for fixing that.</comment></comment>


YouTube Strikes Now Being Used as Scammers' Extortion Tool - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-strikes-now-being-used-as-scammers-extortion-tool/ <comment><USER2> This is fing crazy youtube is allowing this behavior. We all know that the youtube copyright strikes is bs, but this goes to a whole new level of insanity!</comment>


Loulan Kingdom - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loulan_Kingdom <comment><USER2> This seems like a fascinating place.

It's remarkable to google historical places like this and see just how little there is available on the internet, which we usually attribute with holding most of the world's information (the top results for 'Loulan Kingdom' are for tours).

After naively believing for years that I could find all information worth knowing on the web, I've started reading more books, which seem to hold so much knowledge with purely offline sources, gathered by interested academics over decades. Hopefully there are some on this kingdom.

<comment><USER3> As soon as I get beyond surface-level info on almost anything, I find a lot of the good stuff is locked away in academic books and papers. Papers aren't as big a problem these days (ahem) but books remain difficult. You don't even have to go that far off the beaten path, depending on the topic, to end up at "You need this book. There are four copies in libraries. All are in Europe. It hasn't been digitized. Good luck. Oh BTW hope you can read German."

<comment><USER4> It's a real tragedy that more old books haven't been digitized. I wonder to what extent US copyright law has had a chilling effect on digitization.

<comment><USER5> this[0] has been on HN some time ago, discussing google's effort to digitize a ton of books.

"Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them."

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the- tragedy-of-google-books/523320/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am curious why this article pops up in Hacker News.

Grew up in China, some of my childhood stories are related to Loulan, a mysterious place. Glad to read about it here.</comment>


Off-heap direct-memory data stores - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/patents/US20120222005

<comment><USER2> It would be nice if posts that are direct links to patents were marked as such. I don't want to read patents even accidentally

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://code.google.com/p/jmalloc/](https://code.google.com/p/jmalloc/)

<comment><USER4> Also, since jmalloc claims it's "inspired by BigMemory from Terracotta", Terracotta open sourced their offheap store under Apache v2: [https://github.com/Terracotta-OSS/offheap- store](https://github.com/Terracotta-OSS/offheap-store) since

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> can someone please change the title to indicate this is a deep link to a patent? I clicked through on a work computer.

<comment><USER6> Is that a bad thing?

<comment><USER7> It can be. If internet history is subpoenaed during the discovery process of a patent case it could be used against you.

I also am slightly annoyed that it was a direct link to a patent since there's really nothing good that can come from browsing patent applications on the legal side.

<comment><USER6> Infinging because you could be proven to have seen something (even by acceident!) feels like thoughtcrime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this like pinned memory in managed languages ? Pinned memory has existed in .NET for a long time. Moreover, in C++ people have been writing custom allocators for reasons stated in the patent. Can someone shed some light on what is innovative in this patent?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not quite following. Isn't that just mmap?</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we form a union? - <AUTHOR> It seems like a union could help work conditions (open office, long unpaid hours) and many unions don't have an effect on compensation (we're already well paid).<p>Why do software engineers not form a union? How could we form a union? <comment><USER2> We certainly could form a union, and I'm generally supportive of unions. But we've got it pretty good. We're doing interesting work and we get paid well for it. I can tell people I don't work more than 32 hours a week, and they're fine with it. The few that aren't, I can afford to ignore. I already have the negotiating power that unions should provide.

And if we don't like it, we can easily start our own business. More easily than the vast majority of other people.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13564440)

"Ask HN: Is it time for software developers/engineers to unionize?": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8384641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8384641)

tl;dr: because first-world developers are paid way above the median income and have employment choices (# of employers, location flexibility/remote, startups), and thus working-condition choices, that people in any other field would kill for.</comment>


Competing with Platforms That Ignore the Law - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/03/competing-with-platforms-that-ignore-the-law <comment><USER2> Taxi companies were using GPS-enabled electronic dispatch systems that were designed before people carried internet-connected mobile computers. They work fairly well, but became obsolete.</comment>


Build a JSON API with Hugo's Custom Output Formats - <AUTHOR> https://forestry.io/blog/build-a-json-api-with-hugo/ <comment><USER2> This is a really great example of how powerful, and useful, static site technology is for the web.

Open-data is a huge talking point right now, especially with the [GDPR]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation)) regulations coming out this year, the discussion around social media and other factors effecting our electoral process, and much more.

Static site generators like Hugo make it trivial for almost anyone to author and share data in open-formats, applying powerful filtering and control over what pieces of your datasets are made available.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hugo's custom output formats are powerful. It ships with just inbuild RSS xml generation (in addition to HTML of course). But it is very easy to add ATOM xml too.

And another custom output format to dump search index in JSON for the whole site (to be used by sorts of fuse.js, lunr.js, etc.)

<comment><USER4> True. We use it for our Algolia search index too (documented here: [https://forestry.io/blog/search-with-algolia-in- hugo/](https://forestry.io/blog/search-with-algolia-in-hugo/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're new to Hugo's custom output formats, this is a great example of what you can do with it. [https://gohugo.io/templates/output-formats#output- formats](https://gohugo.io/templates/output-formats#output-formats)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a creative and approachable solution for developers who don't want to fall down a back-end rabbit hole. No pun intended.

</comment><comment><USER6> A cool way to do something 'dynamic'-esque w/ a static site. I wonder if it might make sense for some applications to use json-ld in the static html (and have half the number of static files - which could get big...)

</comment><comment><USER7> There is no scrollbar, it's not possible to view the article on my machine with the latest Chrome.

<comment><USER8> Don't know why you were downvoted, the problem is present for me as well (latest Chrome/Linux).

Disabling JavaScript fixes the problem — I can't be bothered to debug the problem specifically right now.

If you're not in the habit of browsing with JavaScript disabled, and you want to disable JavaScript quickly, open the Chrome dev tools, open the dev tools settings, scroll to the bottom of the options, check "Disable JavaScript" and reload the web page.

You can leave the dev tools panel open and re-enable JavaScript when you've finished reading the article.

(If you already know this, forgive me — I meant no offence, just being helpful).

EDIT: okay, so being the curious person I am, I did a little digging and uncovered the problem.

Basically, there is an _aside_ element which, from its class name _' search- results'_ and id _' search'_, is most probably used to display search results (using ajax to load results into a panel which is supposed to appear above content like a modal window, saving the user a page load, bla bla bla).

Anyway, the interesting part is how this modal panel is made. Here is the CSS for said element (comments are added by me):

        .search-results {
          background: #fff;
          bottom: 0;
          left: 0;
          overflow: scroll;
          position: fixed;    /* Possibly problematic */
          right: 0;
          top: 0;
          visibility: hidden; /* Possibly problematic */
          z-index: -99;       /* Possibly problematic */
        }

This element is being treated as being on top of the main body of the web page, and since it is sized to fit the full window (absolutely-positioned and fixed-positioned elements are treated as filling the viewport if the containing element is statically-positioned, and if their top/left/right/bottom properties are set to 0), the browser does not pick up any scrolling of the actual article.

Now, I'm guessing that one of two things is going on. Either:

• latest Chrome either has some kind of bug regarding layer compositing (note the _z-index: -99_ property which should tuck the _aside_ element behind the rest of the content i.e. preventing the _aside_ element from interfering with scrolling of the article); or

• _visibility: hidden_ and _z-index: -99_ aren't enough and either the element needs to be sized when the results are displayed or the element needs to be _display: none_ until the results are displayed.

If it's the former, you and I just need to wait for a version of Chrome that has this bug fixed. Given that others aren't experiencing the problem, it's either Chrome specific or even specific to our build.

It may of course not be a bug — Chrome may be functioning _correctly_ and other browsers may have an oversight regarding layer compositing. I'd need to check the _position_ property of the parent _body_ element.

EDIT AGAIN: okay, so actually I've just picked up on the fact that this troublesome _aside_ element is set to _position: fixed_ by default, which is the real cause of the problem. Whether Chrome specifically treats elements with _position: fixed_ as being always on top, regardless of the presence of an explicit _z-index_ property, is unclear. I think Chrome allows fixed- position elements to be given a layer order if they are within another fixed- position element or an absolutely-positioned element, but not a default i.e. statically-positioned or relatively-positioned element.

Also, to clarify one thing about how _visibility: hidden_ works — it does indeed make an element invisible, but it doesn't prevent interactions with said element. This is the intended behaviour for this CSS property.

Anyway I'm rambling on now. This property probably ought to be set to _position: fixed_ ONLY when the element is actually shown, and should be _position: absolute_ until then for the z-index -99 to actually work. That said, I don't honestly know what the intended behaviour in browsers should be...

* * *

This problem goes away if JavaScript is turned off presumably because this search functionality is intended to use ajax to load results in the _aside_ element results panel, i.e. without a full page load, and thus without JS enabled it just defaults to the old fashioned behaviour of triggering a page load to a results page. I guess.

So, the solution for you and I and anyone else affected is to either browse the page with JS disabled or you can go into the Chrome dev tools, find the _aside_ element (id "search"), right click it and delete it.

This can also be done with a trivial bit of vanilla JavaScript in the browser console:

        document.getElementById('search').parentNode.removeChild(document.getElementById('search'));

* * *

To the developers of this website, if you are here: I recommend you apply either:

• _transform: scale(0)_ ; or

• _position: absolute_ ; or

• _display: none_ ;

to this _aside_ element until it is meant to be visible, at which point the property can be changed to the value you want, i.e. _transform: scale(1)_ , _position: fixed_ , or _display: block_.

The transform is probably the best way, as messing with positioning and display properties might mess with any animation effects you might have for the search panel.

I mean, that's just so that it wouldn't get in the way for some of your users (though we may be a minority).

I'm interested to know if it's a Chrome bug or if all browsers _should_ treat fixed-position elements like this with no absolutely-positioned or fixed- positioned parent elements.

And yes, sadly _position: relative_ on the html or body elements would be insufficient — at least, I tried it and it didn't work in my Chrome version.

<comment><USER9> We made the `transform: scale(0)` change to the CSS. I hope this resolved the issue for those affected. Big thank you to Wanda for investigating.

<comment><USER8> Can confirm that everything works normally on my end now.

Hopefully the user simlevesque will report the same.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clever non-computer-related hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.skforlee.com/independent_work/lunch_bag.html <comment><USER2> Quote:

 _Anti-Theft Lunch Bags are regular sandwich bags that have green splotches printed on both sides. After your sandwich is placed inside, no one will want to touch it._

How about anti-theft Halloween corpse props to keep cars from getting stolen?

<http://images.google.com/images?q=halloween%20corpse>

Bicyclists use rust-colored paint to deter thieves:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=bicycle+%22rust+colored+paint...](http://www.google.com/search?q=bicycle+%22rust+colored+paint%22)</comment>


Ask HN:  How many YC companies have African American founders? - <AUTHOR> I am curious of how many YC companies have been founded by African Americans, I am trying to encourage some teens in my neighborhood to learn about programming and startups.  I want to show them examples of companies that were started by African americans, which companies can I use as an example? <comment><USER2> I'm black and I've worked with black youth to get them involved with tech and here's what I've found:

Black youth don't necessarily need to find other black idols to look up to. They - much like any other youth - need to feel like they have access to the same tools that everyone else does to succeed. Tools = access, technology, opportunity, mentors, funds, etc...

Typically, these youths assume that others that look like them had access to the same tools that they have/had hence why they "need" to see successful people that look like them. As a result, if you truly want help them succeed in the long run, rather than simply show/tell them about successful black people (who may/may not have had a similar upbringing), help them gain access to those same tools.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those wondering why this is important, see:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat)

> _" If negative stereotypes are present regarding a specific group, group > members are likely to become anxious about their performance, which may > hinder their ability to perform at their maximum level. For example, > stereotype threat can lower the intellectual performance of African- > Americans taking the SAT reasoning test used for college entrance in the > United States, due to the stereotype that African-Americans are less > intelligent than other groups. Importantly, the individual does not need to > subscribe to the stereotype for it to be activated. Moreover, the specific > mechanism through which anxiety (induced by the activation of the > stereotype) decreases performance is by depleting working memory (especially > the phonological aspects of the working memory system)._

<comment><USER4> Doesn't that support the other view, that race shouldn't be brought into play?

<comment><USER5> Only if you can make a plausible argument that there are no existing stereotypes.

<comment><USER4> The theory is that people perform worse when a negative stereotype they identify with is presented to them. Saying "oh, but unfortunately there are no successful black entrepreneurs" in an entrepreneurship class to black kids seems to be exactly that.

<comment><USER5> ...thats why the op is asking for examples of actual black entrepreneurs, so that what will actually happen is, when presenting a list of entrepreneurs as examples, at least some of them are black, and the kids are not explicitly or implicitly told that there are no black entrepreneurs. You seem to be arguing that presenting a list of white examples would not prompt stereotypes in itself, and I think you really need to show that instead of simply assume it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that makes sense. I was thinking along 'companies started by african- americans' as the presentation context, which carries the subtext of blacks as the exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's hard to say for sure because we don't ask people what race they identify as, and we don't know offhand which people are citizens and which aren't. But Michael Seibel seems a good bet if you want an example to encourage kids.

<comment><USER7> Respectfully, I think you ask should at least ask, as an optional question. Even on your application, it might be nice to know who's applying and how people of different ethnicities/racial identities perform in the process. The fact that you have provided just one example of a black YC founder, out of who knows how many, speaks to the fact, for whatever reason, black folks are not getting in the door. Even if this is simply the result of a whole bunch of things that happened before the application, it seems like something your organization should be able to speak intelligently about, as the clear leaders in the space. That's my opinion at least.

<comment><USER8> There were at least 3 african-americans in my batch (which was large so I'm probably missing some). But I am not sure whether they'd want to be identified as anything else other than as hackers/founders. Feels weird to even try and count in my head, as I see my batchmates as simply batchmates.

I don't think explicitly adding ethnicity to the YC app would be good for anyone .. for one, these are (mostly) teams of 2 or more. Accepting or not accepting a team/idea/application doesn't reflect judgement of the individuals within the team, regardless of their background(s).

Since there is only 1 application per team, it may also introduce unnecessary and awkward questions between the founders even prior to YC's evaluation.

<comment><USER7> That's good to know that there have been more black folks than just the one lone guy PG mentioned. I was worried for a minute.

Every black person is an individual obviously, but I think it's safe to say that most of us don't have the luxury of thinking of ourselves as "just another person", as much as we may like to. You tend to notice when you're the only black person in a mostly non-black room (just as the average white person would probably feel out of place in a mostly black event). That's been my experience in the vast majority of my life, and even though many of the most important people in my life are not black, the feeling of being the lone black representative in these situations is never really far away. All this to say that "colorblindness" sounds great in theory, but in reality, it's a privilege that not everyone has.

I think you're right that there are practical issues of when and how to collect voluntary ethnic information...but seriously, how awkward is that discussion between founders really, compared to things like equity split and job titles? It could just as well be left to the individual team members to identify or not.

But my overall point is that even if YC decides it shouldn't actively do anything about its minority imbalance (if it, in fact, exists), it would be nice to do some from an informed position, rather than a blind assumption that meritocracy is working as hoped.

<comment><USER8> > It could just as well be left to the individual team members to identify or > not.

This is not possible the way it works now (one HN user submits the application for the whole team). Asking isn't any more awkward, but it is _unnecessarily_ so, in the sense it does no benefit _to the team_ (vs the equity question, which forces a discussion thats likely been put off too long). I'm not white myself, but I'm more concerned about people with ambiguous ethnicity (mixed, adopted, immigrant etc) who may not like such questions (particularly as many applicants are quite young). Nonetheless, I agree that's a minor quibble.

But I just don't see YC as having much of a role in solving such social problems other than how it already does so (by funding startups and (now) non- profits to "make things people want"). YC may have an outsized influence in tech, but it's really a tiny, quirky little band of ~20 people (>(1/2) of which are part-time).

Clearly YC would benefit if more underrepresented minorities learned to code and started companies, but it seems the best way to do that is to make those things easier _for everyone_. I.e. fund startups that improve education (clever, code academy etc) and startups that make it easier to start startups (fundersclub, wefunders etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not a YC company, but Lonnie Johnson is an excellent example. Inventor of the supersoaker and now developing thin-film lithium air batteries and working with MIT on solid state thermoelectric engines.

[http://www.johnsonems.com/](http://www.johnsonems.com/)

[http://www.excellatron.com/](http://www.excellatron.com/)

[http://www.johnsonrd.com/ie/lj/ljprofile.html](http://www.johnsonrd.com/ie/lj/ljprofile.html)

[http://www.parc.com/event/713/high-efficiency-solid-state- en...](http://www.parc.com/event/713/high-efficiency-solid-state-engine.html)

<comment><USER10> Lonnie is one hell of a guy. He should be a role model for everyone.

<comment><USER9> They should build giant benevolent statues of him wherever children gather with the intention of soaking each other for fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure if this has changed since 2011, but according to this article:

[http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/11/technology/diversity_acceler...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/11/technology/diversity_accelerators/)

 _Another Y Combinator representative told CNNMoney: "We've never collected any stats about people's race or ethnicity. It's not a big factor when we're judging applications."_

Maybe the founders (if any) can identify themselves

<comment><USER12> And if it were a big factor, it would show in the statistics. Case closed, please move on everyone!

<comment><USER2> LOL @ "It's not a big factor when we're judging applications". Because, it is a factor ... but, not a big one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That seems like an odd strategy to me; like "no really, you can do it look these other black people did it"\--as i would expect the merits/benefits of programming itself to be the main motivating factors. Perhaps I am underestimating the amount of self-imposed race-based limiting factors; which makes me sad and surprised. On the one hand I want to say, "please focus on the fact that they can do anything they want; and this is a great thing to do"\--and on the other, if showing them African American's doing it will be significant toward getting some of them into programming; then by all means.

I have no idea about yc; but you might find this answer on quora useful: [http://www.quora.com/Who-are-some-notable-African- American-f...](http://www.quora.com/Who-are-some-notable-African-American- founders-entrepreneurs-and-executives-in-Silicon-Valley)

<comment><USER14> For a white kid in America, race doesn't matter, in this, or almost any other context.

For a black kid, seeing black people in leadership roles _does_ matter. It's a reality that for many poor black kids in America, the only obvious path out of poverty is sports or drugs, neither of which are very good options...especially for nerdy black kids living in poverty. That's not to say entrepreneurship is an obvious path out of poverty for anyone (white or black), but being technically savvy is extremely good for your value in the employment market, no matter what you choose to do.

Anyway, I believe you are underestimating the amount of self-imposed race- based limiting factors. I think we're all probably also underestimating the external society-imposed limiting factors on people of color in America, as well (because most of the people on HN are white, grew up in a middle class household, and male).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tristan Walker is a very successful African American deep in the startup scene. He was director of BD for FourSquare and was EIR at Andreessen Horowitz for a spell.

He just announced his newest venture, Bevel, a health and beauty 'brand' for people of color.

I don't know him personally, but his public persona seems very welcoming if you wanted to reach out depending on what you're trying to achieve.

[1] - [http://www.crunchbase.com/person/tristan- walker](http://www.crunchbase.com/person/tristan-walker)

[2] - [http://allthingsd.com/20131218/tristan-walkers-next-act- buil...](http://allthingsd.com/20131218/tristan-walkers-next-act-building-a- proctor-gamble-for-people-of-color/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why should race (or gender) matter?

As a south-american, the term african-american irks me. It reeks of political correctness, not respect. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism_treadmill#Evolution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism_treadmill#Evolution)

EDIT: eh, what did I get myself into... over here we're just plain white/black/latin/asian/etc, despite some media usage of the term 'afro- descendant'. I do support affirmative action policies in general, it's just my personal opinion that teaching kids to be self-conscious about race in this context is not necessarily positive.

<comment><USER16> I think it's respectful to call people what they wish to be called. If someone prefers to be called "African-American," calling them that has nothing to do with political correctness, it has to do with the person standing in front of you.

<comment><USER17> The problem is when people use it as a synonym for black. For example, a Jamaican immigrant would not be African-American, and a white South African would be.

No one considers black an offensive term, and in many cases "African-American" is clunky and imprecise, for example this thread. OP is really asking about black founders.

<comment><USER16> That's just a mistake. I'm pretty sure that there aren't many black non- Americans asking to be called African-American.

>white South African would be.

The "African" in "African-American" has nothing to do with where you were born or where your parents were born, just like the "Free" in "Free Software" has nothing to do with beer. It has to do with the origin of the features that make you distinct (in a historically particular way) from white Americans.

Of course, if white Africans who move to America identify as African- Americans, it's certainly their right, and I'd gladly refer to them as that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I gave a talk at an informal event for YC cos a month or so ago, and the audience was both large and diverse. There were definitely African Americans in attendance.

Youth seems like the more troublesome homogeneity here. For whatever that's worth.

</comment><comment><USER19> Michael Seibel founded two YC companies: Justin.tv and Socialcam

<comment><USER20> My understanding was SocialCam and Twitch.TV were both built under Justin.TV. Only later was Twitch.TV spun out. Not sure SocialCam was ever a separate company. Anyone with better knowledge can chime in

<comment><USER21> Social Cam was spun out as a separate company and participated in the same batch of YC as me (W12) They also sold it to Autodesk for about $60MM if I recall correctly only a month or two after the batch.

Michael was a super nice guy and should be considered a great example here. I always appreciated him bringing beer to the dinners personally though I remember the group office hours with him and his great insights into problems or struggles we were having just as fondly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Garrett Johnson co-founded SendHub.

</comment><comment><USER23> You could also compile a list of black "geeks" (yours truely) online and perhaps set them up for mentoring...

</comment><comment><USER24> Not to be incisive, but I think startup founders are extremely poor role models. Of those I've met, most have been very narcissistic and self-serving (successful ones and failures alike). Plus, I'd wager that those who aspire to be 'startup founders' are putting the cart before the horse.

If black highly intelligent role models are who you're after - Neil Tyson exhibits all of qualities that a kid of any race/creed/religion should aspire to have.

source: I'm a jew and I love Neil.

<comment><USER25> that's funny, because i'm a scientist and I don't like him at all; to me he seems to use science as a source of authority and power, which is antithetical to the entire philosophy of science.

<comment><USER26> I'm also a scientist and I find Neil deGrasse Tyson extremely grating. I find something about his snarky/condescending tone to be poor qualities for his role as "science communicator."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> \- I think NewMe Accelerator will be a better option. Here is their link ~> [http://www.newmeaccelerator.com/](http://www.newmeaccelerator.com/) . It is like the YC for African American people. There's alot that you'll find.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this link. This is a great resource.

<comment><USER10> Paul Judge is also a very prominent and successful entrepreneur in Atlanta. He's had a number of security related businesses. He's currently working as chairman of Pindrop Security and probably doing other things of top of that. Link:[http://www.pindropsecurity.com/about-pindrop- security/](http://www.pindropsecurity.com/about-pindrop-security/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How many are founded by Native Americans?

<comment><USER29> You mean by indians?

<comment><USER9> Sorry to break it to you, but Columbus was a bit wrong about that. You see there's this thing called the Pacific...</comment></comment></comment>


Apple forces users to pay full price to redownload already bought ebooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.baekdal.com/publishing/apple-pay-full-price-for-an-ebook-you-already-bought/ <comment><USER2> As much as I'd love to give Apple a hard time over this, I'm going to put it out there that this is likely just capitulation to publishing companies. You have to pay to re-download MP3s and eBooks, but not apps from the app store. I may not like Apple's philosophy regarding a lot of things, but they're generous by comparison to record labels and publishing companies.

<comment><USER3> If that's the case why is it that the kindle will sync all my books to my k1, k2, iPhone 3G/3GS and iPad with zero fuss and no repurchases required?

<comment><USER4> Amazon is better at negotiating with publishers or has more bargaining chips?

I don't really know whether Apple's heart is in all this book stuff (Steve Jobs famously said that Americans don't read anymore), they might not care all that much at the moment. iBooks might just be a fallback solution in case Amazon tries funny stuff (or some other competitor emerges which doesn't want to play ball with Apple).

<comment><USER5> I was under the impression that he said that because he didn't have a book reading application yet and was downplaying the kindle until the iPad was out. Similar to how he downplayed the netbooks until the iPad came out. (Yes iPad and the netbooks are different but they are in the same field. I think it's harder to reinvent books compared to small portable computers. Hence why iBook is pretty much the same as all the ebook software).

<comment><USER6> I think looking at something (netbooks), then turning around and selling 3 million units of a vastly more expensive and higher margin product in a few months, shows that he was right to downplay it and that the iPad does actually offer something fundamentally different that consumers really want.

<comment><USER7> > [T]he iPad does actually offer something fundamentally different that > consumers really want.

Prestige?

"Your laptop's so small! How do you type on that keyboard?"

"Woah, dude! The screen on your iPod's enormous! That must've cost a mint!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I remember correctly, music on the iTunes store works similarly. They charge you at download and you had better back up your files. The operational concept is that the user downloads the content once and then syncs that content among devices (iPhone, iPad, whatever) using their desktop computer.

From <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4059>:

"Can I copy my books onto other computers or devices?

Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you've authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to all iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches you own.1 Audiobooks, PDF files, and ePub files you've added to iTunes will appear in Books under Library. To sync Books to your device, connect it to your computer using the cable it came with. In iTunes, select your device then click the Books tab. Choose the books you would like to read on your device then press Sync. Books will sync to iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch even if iBooks is not installed; to read synced books, download iBooks from the App Store."

"1Requires iPhone and iPod touch with iOS 4 or later. iBooks is not compatible with original iPhone or iPod touch (1st generation)."

<comment><USER9> But why? What's the difference to them between redownloading it on your new phone and syncing with your computer to get your books? The bandwidth costs?

And it works fine for apps. I can buy an app over the air, delete it, and redownload it for free, all without my computer ever being involved.

<comment><USER10> I think they are trying to make it hard for 100 people to share one iTunes account and "redownload" the purchased content onto their respective iPods.

<comment><USER5> except they have limitations on the amount of devices which can be authorized. And this is the rip mix burn company who didn't care in the past. Why would they care now, most users will just make a cd out of the music anyway to pass it to friends.

<comment><USER11> Contracts with publishers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just tested. Downloaded a book on the phone that I'd bought on the iPad, and it gave me the "you have already purchased this book; press to downloaded it again" message you get from the App Store. If you go into the "purchases" tab it offers to redownload any books you've purchased elsewhere.

What the OP is seeing has to be a bug; after all iBooks does syncing between iPad and iPhone -- they can't expect you to repurchase each time.

<comment><USER13> The message says:

"You have already purchased this but _it isn't available for redownload._ To purchase it _again at full price_ , tap OK"

Given the exact phrasing of the parts I highlighted, I don't think it is a bug. I cannot see in the picture what book it is, but since this does not happen to you for your books, it could be something related to copyright/distribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Personally, I'd never buy an eBook, ePub, or whatever. I either invest in a dead tree, get a unDRMed PDF, the web copy, or just check it out from the library.

There are far too many options available today for me to buy into a format that can do less than what I was able to do 5 years ago.

<comment><USER15> I really hope you change your mind eventually. Dead-tree books are probably on the decline, and if nobody is willing to pay for electronic books because of the prevailing attitude (electronic things are free!) that's going to mess things up.

Don't get me wrong, dead-tree books have their place. In addition to ebooks, I own something like 200lbs of reference books. I'm not blind to the pros of paper. (though you can bet I'll be excited when a real textbook replacement comes along, and I don't have to lug 200lbs around)

<comment><USER16> What does "mess things up" really mean though? Do you think people would stop writing books if it was harder to make money from them? I don't.

<comment><USER15> Not entirely; books would still be written, that's for certain. Except, the books that are written with no expectation of money whatsoever or as a personal project are either statements for political reasons, or often not worth reading. Most of the popular books and series are written by career authors. Would anyone be a career author if it didn't pay? I don't think anyone tries to be an author for riches, but if it can't pay for food you can hardly do that for a living.

It seems like you presume all the authors will simply continue to write out of passion for writing. Some will, but I feel that's an incredibly narrow-minded and self-interested view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The main point I took away from this:

Syncing to iTunes sucks. It's been broken for a long time and it's becoming more apparent with the release of the iPad.

It's easily the most frustrating experience I've had managing my iDevices mainly because it's archaic to have to constantly sync to your desktop in 2010.

Google was right: "We discovered something really cool...it's called the Internet."

Real opportunity for Google here to improve on this with Android/Chrome OS devices.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yet another reason for people to wake up and see how closed and restricted apple is and always will be. I'm actually getting tired of reading about apple screwing people over the same way again and again.

<comment><USER19> While I hate a lot of the restrictions that Apple places on things, you have to entertain the possibility that the content industries (music,movies,books,etc) heavily push these types of these things when negotiating distribution deals with Apple. As others have mentioned, the things that Apple does control (e.g. Apps) don't have the 'rebuy to redownload' restriction.

<comment><USER20> but nothing except profits prohibits Apple to stand up for the interests of it's users the way Amazon and Google do, yet Apple seems to always choose it's own short-term interest ahead of it's users' long-term interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how long before everyone gets the message: Just say no to DRM.

<comment><USER22> What does this have to do with DRM?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This sounds more like a series of first-release bugs than an evil policy.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like a bug to me. I redownloaded eBooks I had purchased on my iPad just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The solution is called Stanza (owned by Amazon now I believe) and ePub books. I agree that the legitimate selection possilby isn't as good, but I see no advantage to buying books, _books_ for chrissakes, that have DRM.

I actually use Apple's book software a bit here and there, it works fairly nicely, and when they add PDF support I'll probably use it a bit more. But I'm not buying a page from Apple's book store until the DRM situation has changed.

I waited them out on DRMed music, never bought a note before they offered DRM free files. Now I spend money there regularly, among other non-DRMed places. Its a shame the "powers" have to learn this lesson over and over and over and over...

<comment><USER26> I think iBooks is a better app than Stanza (notes, bookmarks, PDF capability) and you can get your EPUBs in there via iTunes (even ones bought from other stores such as the one my startup runs, fifobooks.com).

<comment><USER25> Both readers have their strengths and weaknesses, which is why I'm still playing with both. iBooks is certainly the younger of the two and I expect it to pass ahead, especially since the Stanza folks seem to be under the sway of Amazon, which has a vested interest in the fight. PDF capability will certainly be a big plus for iBooks when it comes to the iPad. I'm running the new version on my iPod Touch, but PDFs on such a small screen aren't that useful, at least to me.

Frankly, all the readers I've used fall short when it comes to library management. I want something like iTunes (only better!) both to manage my library and create and manage reading lists. Right now everything just goes into one big pile that takes _forever_ to scroll through (I've around 800 titles in iBooks and several hundred in Stanza). iBook on iPad actually has crashed (!) a couple of times as I've gone scrolling from the top of the alphabet to the bottom. I'll admit I'm pushing iBooks harder, but that's because I expect so much more from Apple ;)

The best desktop solution I've found for PDFs (and cbr/cbz comic files) is a comic book reading program called Comicbook Lover. I use it for PDF management (okay, I manage my digital comic book collection with it too...) It works very much like itunes. If they would add ePub support to it, and change the name, they could rule the world, at least for a while. Unfortunately their iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch app is woefully lacking in the very features that make it work so well on the desktop.

Edit: And I do a slow burn every time I go to add documents to my iPod Touch or iPad. Syncing through iTunes is just _stupid_. I understand this is a problem with _many_ apps on the iOS platform, and that there are political and commercials issues involved, but I don't care. Apple needs to work this out, post-haste...

<comment><USER26> "I've around 800 titles in iBooks and several hundred in Stanza"

Are these mostly for reference, or are they on your to-read list?

<comment><USER25> A lot of Gutenberg books, a lot of science fiction from Feedbooks. I've also been playing with ePub convert software and have been making ePub "books" from various plain text sources. I also went on a late 19th and early 20th century math and geometry book binge a while ago and downloaded a _ton_ of titles from Google books. A lot of them were available in both ePub and PDF format.

Most of the reference titles I have are in PDF format, though. I've been using a couple of different PDF readers on the iPad, none of which do everything that I would like. When the new iBooks comes out for the iPad, I'll give it a go as a PDF reader as well.

The amazing thing is that _all_ the books on the iPad, all 1000+ spread across several programs, take up less than a Gig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This must be publisher specific. I purchased a book on my first iPad and when I bought a second (with 3g), I re-downloaded it without having to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Plug iPhone into computer. Select the iPhone in the sidebar on iTunes. Click the books tab. Check the box to sync books. Sync.

Your purchased books are then on your iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yet another reason amazon has won the eBook battle....

<comment><USER30> Yet another reason to avoid DRM...

Try to get your DRM'ed Kindle books to any non-Kindle platform.

<comment><USER31> I can read my Kindle books on my iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Mac, and Windows computer (and soon Android). It's still Amazon's software (which, for the desktop computers, sucks), and it's still DRM'd, but you don't have to have a Kindle to enjoy the Kindle library.

<comment><USER26> Amazon has the power, and have used it, to _remove_ books from your home that you have already bought. That's insane!

<comment><USER29> And they learned that's a very very bad idea and aren't going to do it again.

<comment><USER30> And we should trust them completely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on business models - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at creating an online, part-time service business to fund my graduate math studies, possibly involving some colleagues.
The idea is a "virtual research assistant" service, i.e. you hire someone smart, highly-educated and comparatively cheap who can do the intellectual ground work for you. This would include things like background research/reading, preparing a decision with evaluation of products/technologies, on- and offline research for possible solutions the client is not aware of, discovering existing experts, report writing, ... The smallest unit you can buy is a single hour of research, for trial.
I can cover Software tech, CS, EE & Mathematics and hope to add more subjects with collaborators. I realise that traditional consultancies fill this market, but they are usually quite expensive and invasive, so I suspect there might be room for a lower-cost, no-frills service like mine.
What do you think? <comment><USER3> I think such a business may succeed. Your biggest challenge will be what I'll call the "verification problem": How can a customer verify that you've provided them with a "good" product for their money?

Consider selling programming services. The client can request an application or website with certain functionality, and you use your superior expertise to create that functionality. Even though the client can't code, their experience from using the application/website can tell them that you delivered the goods.

Knowledge that is used to support strategic business decisions is not so easy to verify, mainly because it doesn't have consequences that can be directly experienced by non-experts.

So how do people get around this? Large consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc.) spend considerable resources building their reputations, alumni networks (= potential clients), etc.

Small consulting firms usually build their reputations in local business and social circles, relying on repeat business and referrals.

Concretely, I'd suggest thinking about one or more of: (i) specific, rare domain expertise, (ii) finding one or a small handful of clients who can become comfortable hiring you repeatedly, (iii) research services that can be delivered in the form of data or code such that someone less expert than you can verify the quality.

</comment><comment><USER4> What would an example project be? Be a little more specific on the services you would be providing.

I don't see why there shouldn't be a market for such a thing, but you need to be quite clear about what you can provide (your idea is a little fuzzy at the moment - possibly because you can offer a variety of things, but clarity and specificity are better for marketing)

<comment><AUTHOR> True, I'm still working on sharpening the idea. Here's a specific example task, and at the upper end of the size/price spectrum:

Let's say you want to write a Twitter search engine and adopt existing FLOSS software as far as possible (my position a few years back). You could ask us to find, research, evaluate, possibly test components and fit them together according to your requirements. You receive an overview of existing projects, ranked by criteria such as maturity and completeness, all caveats for your project and a draft architecture using the best parts (crawler, indexer, front-end). This you can then hand to the implementation crew to get them started in the right direction.

Or you just want us to find out if anyone knows how to reliably capture all tweets from the system and try and get the information. I knew that back then, but finding it out took a mixture of ingenuity and perseverance - <USER2> skills :)

Here are a few rough ideas for a more specific service offering:

\- software intelligence service: as above, plus similar tasks

\- the scientific computing service: fixing bugs, improving display of results/export functions, writing a module, all the way to creating an entire solution (in Matlab, Mathematica, et. al.) In some sense this is an low-end IT consultancy with experience in scientific computing.

\- "math-backup" service (for non-mathematicians in science and technology): have us search for a result, apply it to your domain/conventions, check for proper rigour in your work, find "bugs" in reasoning etc.

As RAs do a range of tasks in their positions, so could a VRA.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a decent idea to me. Virtual research assistants work in a lot of areas, and I don't see why this should be an exception. I could imagine myself finding your services useful in the future. Some thoughts:

(1) If you're doing a lot of smallish jobs for people, the setting up of each job could add to quite a lot of your work time.

(2) (1) suggests you'll need to bill high per-hour to cover for the time you'll spend setting up, or try to do fewer, longer jobs (or ongoing series of jobs with the same clients). Another advantage of doing more work for the same person is that you will spend less time getting up to speed in a new area.

(3) This leads me to think the best way for you to structure it would be to take on a small number of clients, each of whom is likely to give you work fairly regularly. Not quite one-off, not quite employee. Freelance intelligence-gathering etc.

(4) Think about who exactly will be your clients. Academics, probably not. They have full time research assistants, if for no other reason than that's how departmental finances work most of the time. Large companies, probably not - they probably have interns and other such cheap sources of work-time. I think the one-man/small startup scene might be your market. Think of Patrick McKenzie (Bingo Card Creator - patio11 on HN) - he developed a relationship with a woman somewhere to write his bingo cards, simply because it's a better use of his time to pay her to do it. And he can trust her to do it consistently well - so it's like I said, not an employee, but not one-off work either (i.e. he will go to her, not look around for anyone).

(5) Perhaps you could frame your services in terms of competitor analysis ("Write me a report on all companies working on group microblogging"), which can range from business details to technical implementations, and so on; and also, as you suggest, possible relevant architectures for a project or feature a client may be interested in.

It might be hard to pull it off, but I think it could be useful to some people / teams. My somewhat HN-intoxicated suggestion would be to write up some example reports, whip up a website, and come back and offer your services. You might be worth the money to some very busy small teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It won't work. Do the calculation on the SIZE of your market, then do the calculation on how you will REACH your market.

You'll discover that there is a problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to elaborate? I'm not sure of the size, but there are 100.000+ related monthly searches on Google (under $.20 per click), which is how I hope to reach customers.

<comment><USER5> Searches for What?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that depends on the specialisation (see other thread in this post). Maybe something like "software decision help", "scientific research service", "professional math help", "software evaluation", "Matlab debugging"...

<comment><USER5> It's a pretty bad and unscalable idea. Don't follow it. It won't work. 100.000 searches is nothing, start breaking it down to how many are willing to pay, and you see how small the market is. Unless you have an extra-ordinary passion for this area, find something more immediately lucrative.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Official Twitter Account for Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

What is Hacker News (YC) official twitter account and how often is it updated ? Thank you. <comment><USER2> I don't think there is an official Hacker News twitter account. Y Combinator has one at [https://twitter.com/ycombinator](https://twitter.com/ycombinator) but that's it. There are tons of unofficial Hacker News ones though.

<comment><USER3> one of the non official being [http://twitter.com/yugdom](http://twitter.com/yugdom)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> yeah both of this is not updated often enough :) But thanks! Might have to code my own rss to twitter script after all.</comment>


Apple is trying to kill the laptop - <AUTHOR> https://theweek.com/articles/804670/apple-trying-kill-laptop <comment><USER2> good thing we still have HP Zbooks and Thinkpad Ps + Dell Latitudes VB/VMs. Probably also good FOSS laptops at somepoint if this sort of self defeating behavior continues

its better/more correct to say Apple is killing their own laptop brand. sort of like how IBM killed the old thinkpads. it annoyed us, we moved on.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you saw the latest MacBooks you can certainly say they are trying.

</comment><comment><USER4> (for those who don't need one)</comment>


Stitch Connect – Embed data integration in your application - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stitchdata.com/introducing-stitch-connect-816ef451784e <comment><USER2> Hey Hacker News! Jenna here, product manager for Stitch Connect. Let me know if I can answer any questions about Connect or Stitch in general, or take a look at our website for more info: [https://www.stitchdata.com/connect/](https://www.stitchdata.com/connect/)

<comment><USER3> > _Hey Product Hunt!_

At least copy-paste the right snippet to the right site...

<comment><USER2> Total copy-paste mishap on my end! All fixed :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Postman – A command-line utility for batch-sending email - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zachlatta/postman <comment><USER2> Name collision with [http://www.getpostman.com/](http://www.getpostman.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, didn't realize. Any new name suggestions?

<comment><USER3> I prefer simple names like postal or mailer.

<comment><USER2> gopostal!

<comment><USER3> What about postalgusta as in megusta?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd change the example to reflect a more realistic use case: mails sent by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_The_Hitchhiker%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_characters#Wowbagger.2C_the_Infinitely_Prolonged), with name/insult pairs.

</comment><comment><USER5> And for the purists among us, the GNU Mailutils package.

[http://mailutils.org/](http://mailutils.org/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks really, really useful, and easy to use.

One feature-request: a flag to include an attachment. It's probably an edge- case, but I've recently taken over running an account that needs to send out a PDF of the organisations new programme about once per quarter. This would be the ideal tool for that, if I could include an attachment.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool! For a slightly different scenario, do you think there's a clean way to use postman to manage larger bulk emails with similar and different paragraphs other than trying to edit paragraphs in CSV? Sometimes I use my small project ([https://github.com/bamos/yaml-mailer](https://github.com/bamos/yaml-mailer)) to bulk email 10s of people with more personalization in each message, and I'd be happy to switch if a cleaner solution exists.

Example scenario: I applied to PhD programs ~5-6 month ago and liked to send emails to faculty members at each school I applied to telling them I was interested in their work by sending nearly the same email to everybody with a slightly different portion for their work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, what if you could specify file names as a field in a row and have them automatically read and injected as the field?

\--

Example:

I have the following CSV:

        Name,Email,Message
        Jane Doe,email@example.com,janedoe.txt
        John Doe,firstname.lastname@example.com,Hello!

And the following template:

        Hello {{.Name}}! {{.Message}}

`janedoe.txt` reads:

        The weather is nice outside!

Generated output:

        Hello Jane Doe! The weather is nice outside!

        Hello John Doe! Hello!

\--

Would that satisfy your use case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat! Shamelessly, I'd like to mention that you may also consider using the email ([https://github.com/jordan-wright/email](https://github.com/jordan- wright/email)) package I wrote to serve your backend. I've worked to make it as simple and robust as possible. However, if you're happy with gophermail, by all means use it! Both are great packages, imo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendation! I've updated postman to use your package.

Edit: Hmm, I ran into an issue with the MIME type in my mail client (sup). I'll look into it, but have reverted the commit in the meantime.

<comment><USER8> I appreciate you giving it a shot. If the issue is with my package, please don't hesitate to let me know and I'll jump on it ASAP. Happy to help any way I can!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So a friend and I built something very similar that hooked up to Mailgun and had a GUI interface. Spinning up instances of these for clients proved very lucrative for their, ahem, legitimate email purposes. The cool thing about integrating with Mailgun is easy setup and you get analytics that are useful for a/b testing and other things.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome! I'm loving all the new services/software that allow programmatic handling of email, I feel like that's one place where abstraction really helps.

</comment><comment><USER11> why this over a cat | sed | sendmail < bcc distro_list?

<comment><AUTHOR> * Both text and HTML parts

* All of the power of templates in Go (conditionals, etc)

* Some SMTP providers will complain if there are too many emails in BCC (generally >1000)

* Sends emails concurrently

<comment><USER12> Can you put this in your README?

Side question: says the tool is meant to send "html emails"; can it not also just do string replacement in any composed mail message, like a multiple MIME- part mail message that's composed by some other tool?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now it only explicitly supports HTML and text emails because it composes the multipart MIME message itself. Pull requests are welcome!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Easy(and free) CouchDB Hosting - <AUTHOR> http://www.iriscouch.com/

<comment><USER2> This is Couchbase's (Couchone, Couchio) hosting service that has been spun off. It has the same platform, same servers, same employees running Iris Couch, but separate from Couchbase.

Link: <http://blog.couchbase.com/easy-couchdb-with-iris-couch>

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice to see some details on where this is hosted on their site, so hosting for an accompanying app can be chosen to minimise latency. Seems to be on EC2, but which region/zone? Are there plans to move to other EC2 regions or even hosters?

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I'll add a FAQ about location, latency, etc. after some sleep.

It's EC2 us-east at this time although we'll probably be evaluating alternatives soon. But moving off EC2 is a big step because so many people are there.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't suggesting moving _away_ from EC2, but you might consider also going to places like rackspace, joyent or local/regional providers to offer their customers low-latency connections

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get an error:

        {"error":"not_found","reason":"no_db_file"}

when trying to sign up. Too bad, this seems very interesting!

<comment><USER4> We moved the site from the old domain. Possibly there is a bug. Feel free to contact me, but I'll be double-checking with all the browsers again.

<comment><USER6> I'm getting a "Host not found" error. Tried refreshing for a few minutes but nothing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> its not clear how long its free and what the conditions would be if you need more or what happens if you go over the not publicly listed quota.

<comment><USER4> I will update the site then to clarify! But for now it's only a big-picture thing pending a more detailed fee announcement.

<comment><USER4> Updated the FAQ. Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there a writeup on how to set up auth?

</comment><comment><USER9> what's the quota?</comment>


Elon Musk: The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity ... (TED interview video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IgKWPdJWuBQ

<comment><USER2> Mod should change title to mention this is a TED interview.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or the submitter. Which I did. Thanks.</comment></comment>


College is Over - <AUTHOR> http://educationoutrage.blogspot.com/2017/01/college-is-over.html <comment><USER2> > When the President of the U.S. says everyone needs to go to college, all he > is really saying is that the high schools have failed and college is the > only way you will learn to think at all. When he says "everyone needs to > learn to code" I start to wonder. Can Mr Obama code? Why does he care?

This line really resonates with my experience. I went to college because I didn't know what else to do. The degree is a rather expensive piece of paper.</comment>