The 1863 edition of the "Dictionnaire Infernal" is the stuff of nightmares - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/demons-illustrations-dictionnaire-infernal <comment><USER2> While the trope of mixing animals with human forms to create demonic images goes back as long as we have had civilization (notable examples from Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamia) - it was Leonardo Da Vinci's notes from "Study of a Dragon" from 1513 that crystalized an important component of the concept:

      If you wish to make your imaginary animal seem natural…take
      for the head that of a mastiff or a hound, the eyes of a
      cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the
      brow of a lion, the temples of an old cock, and the neck of
      a turtle

Which is to say - if you want to make something terrifying to humans you take known (fearsome) elements and mix them into a previously unknown combination. One strikes that balance of known and unknown.

Truly terrifying things that may exist in the universe at large may not come across as terrifying to us given that we have had no exposure day to day (GRB's, anti-matter, etc).

One of my favorite (possibly apocryphal) anecdotes about this failing is when the Egyptian dynasty under the reign of Thutmose I expanded into Phoenicia (modern day Israel/Syria) they tried bringing their religion with them. During the Middle Kingdom the god of Chaos (and evil) Set was depicted by a Hippo. The Phoenicians were unfamiliar with the animal and in turn had a hard time taking the religion seriously. The religion was not adopted widely outside the Nile valley.

Anyways, here's a fun tool that let's you mix and match various animals to create your own terryfing beast: [http://www.universalleonardo.org/playActivity.php?id=525](http://www.universalleonardo.org/playActivity.php?id=525)

<comment><USER3> _" if you want to make something terrifying to humans you take known (fearsome) elements and mix them into a previously unknown combination"_

Truly, the platypus is a terrifying beast!

<comment><USER4> Did you know they're actually venomous?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_venom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_venom)

<comment><USER5> I did!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TIL: _The palindromic prime number 1000000000000066600000000000001 is known as Belphegor 's Prime, due to the significance of containing the number 666, on both sides enclosed by thirteen zeroes and a one._

</comment><comment><USER7> Fun stuff. I write novels on the side and for a series of pulp supernatural detective books I'm writing I picked up the Lesser Key of Solomon which is a compendium of demons, their ranks in hell, and their specialties. Christian mythology is pretty crazy stuff once you start digging around in it.

<comment><USER8> I don't know how much of the stuff associated with ceremonial magic can be called "christian mythology", since most of it was only attested pretty late, between the 15th and 17th centuries, at a time when Christianity was already pretty well established in Europe. Plus, it didn't enjoy widespread currency. Partially because it implied unlawful practices under both Church and local laws. But either way, it's much too restricted to be called a "mythology".

"Christian mythology" would be more along the lines of folk tales concerning the Virgin Mary and the saints, the Tetramorph, the hierarchies of angels and the Great Chain of Being.

<comment><USER9> The influence of Jewish mysticism was pretty significant, too, to the point that Christian writers would fabricate an old rabbi as the purported "author" of their document. You also got a lot of fake Hebrew scriptures with obvious tells that they were written by Christians. And, of course, sorcery is part of the whole antisemitic complex of stereotypes that was used to oppress Jews in Europe for centuries. It lasted long enough that in 19th century America you get occasional stories of fake Jewish wizards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this takes me back to my undergrad days of dabbling in the occult.

If memory serves, an actual copy of Dictionnaire Infernal is ridiculously difficult, and expensive, to track down.

If all you want are the illustrations, you can find them more easily by grabbing a copy of "The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon" for about $20 or so on Amazon.

<comment><USER11> Maybe the Internet Archive has a digital copy of Dictionnaire Infernal?

<comment><USER12> The way you do this is you say, "I doubt you can even find copies on the Internet." Then someone is going to take up your challenge :)

<comment><USER13> [https://books.google.com/books?id=bjESAAAAYAAJ&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=bjESAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Dictionnaire+Infernal&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUhoil84bVAhUO82MKHVHKBLAQ6AEIKzAA#v=onepage&q=Dictionnaire%20Infernal&f=false)

Now we just need to find a vendor who will bind an on-demand copy in human skin.

Ahem: "I doubt you can even find _that_ on the Internet."

<comment><USER14> Maybe now you can ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always find works like the Dictionarire Infernal to be a fascinating trip down a rabbit hole. It's not even a compilation of folk demons (although I'm sure some appear in here), as much as it's an earnest D&D Monster Manual, or editing Wookiepedia. It's hard to imagine if I was writing it taking it as anything more than escapism.

Of course the flip side of this book is De Coelesti Hierarchia, which defines angelology with a hierarchy and different types to closely mimic contemporary feudal society. ("How can you have a kingdom, without a minor land barons? Let's make some up!")

If it was just scholarship that something, but it's no even that, it's more pseudo-scholarship.

Religion is a hell of a drug.

<comment><USER16> To be honest, occultism is less religion and more straight superstition. Which is why it was generally shunned or outlawed even when religious authorities were in charge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I feel the author would have been in his element playing Dwarf Fortress.

<comment><USER18> The forgotten beast Asmodeus has come! A great centaur. It has a pair of dragon-like wings and it squirms and fidgets. Beware its deadly dust!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a lot of stuff in there too besides the illustrations --- interesting to read a little bit of it. I'm not any expert on this stuff --- are all the demons from folklore or of the author's creation?

(Oh, and, yes, it's in French, for those who don't speak it)

<comment><USER20> It makes me wonder if the author and artists actually believed they were documenting real-world phenomena. Did they treat this as fiction or non- fiction?

<comment><USER14> It strikes me as daemon porn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One could possibly draw some kind of conclusion about the way many of the illustrations look to be traditionally mocking Jewish caricatures.

<comment><USER22> I think it is the other way around. Many known Jewish caricatures were taken directly from this book.

<comment><USER23> I think GP shares your opinion and was noticing the similarity between the illustrations and modern anti-semetic caricatures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it my imagination or does the demon ruler Bael have the face of a Rothschild? I wonder if these drawings have some hidden political protest meaning...

Compare them to the political cartoons of the same era.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm pretty sure Andras, at least, is in Persona 5. It's interesting how the cultural influence of something like this is still with us.

<comment><USER26> As you might know, most (all?) of SMT/Persona demons are from somewhere. It's actually a pretty cool idea - the creatures may be familiar but Atlus can give them their own spin.

You might recognize this guy: [http://i.imgur.com/tonkSbq.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/tonkSbq.jpg)

<comment><USER27> The Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series just might be the "Carmen Sandiego" of demonology.

<comment><USER9> And mythology in general. Really, the only religious figures I can think of that they never put in a SMT game are ones who are (purportedly) actual people -- Jesus, Mary, Zoroaster, Buddha, etc. Otherwise, it's open season. Although in later games they've pumped the brakes a little on having the God of Abraham as the final boss and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Heh, this takes me back, due to the "Slayers" anime series. Although it looks a bit like a juvenile history (fantasy, magic, demons), the background story takes a lot from Ars Goetia, like the demons' seals and whatnot. A huge wikipedia rabbit hole :)</comment>


How to survive a Tech Conference - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/posts/how-to-survive-tech-conferences/

<comment><USER2> Good points but instead of getting a mifi get a Pepwave Surf On-The-Go -- it's the only 5Ghz capable travel router I am aware of. The 2.4GHz band will be crowded and the 5Ghz band has way, way more channels [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5.C2.A0GH...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5.C2.A0GHz_.28802.11a.2Fh.2Fj.2Fn.29)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've never been to one, but it seems like it could be overwhelming as much as it is fun and educational.

<comment><USER4> Went to railsconf for the first time this week. I've never felt so exhausted from just sitting and listening. (Not to mention I've exceeding my yearly tolerance for tiny uncomfortable conference room chairs)

<comment><USER5> Probably aren't for everyone but I don't think most of the value I get from a conference comes from the talks but the collection of like minded people.

<comment><USER4> Definitely. Your brain just gets so saturated and you feel pulled in a bunch of different directions. "I want to work on this! Oh and that! Wow that other thing will help our app here! But first this!"

<comment><USER6> isn't this from every conference in the field? (not trying to chide but, yes the burning out happen with everyone conference!)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Design and the Google brain - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fawny.org/2009/04/26/google-neuroanatomy/

<comment><USER2> Wow, talk about drinking massive hater-ade against Google engineers. I think this is little more than a poorly reasoned diatribe / ad-hominem attack against the perceived Googleplex.

Come on now -- Google has smart engineers who get design. Yes, it's probably a damn hard place to get great design done, but so is Microsoft and every large organization. To attribute the exodus of designers to an aspergian mass of engineers is insulting and does nothing to bring a together a dialogue between engineers and designers.

In my opinion, it's probably the size of the organization and NOT any Google- brainedness. Design is a difficult and massively opinionated thing to undertake. The more cooks in the kitchen, the worse the soup tastes. Everybody knows that.

<comment><USER3> (Anecdote time: I'm at Google in a team full of engineers. We spend meetings arguing about the UI. We defer to people who actually get paid to think about UI when it comes to these situations. I'm sure it varies from team to team.)

<comment><USER4> I think it's incredibly clear to anyone with half an ounce of design sense that Google has _fantastic_ design. It isn't _pretty_ design...but it is design that functions better than almost anything it competes with. GMail is a dramatically better mail client than anything else out there. Search, obviously, is the perfect example of stay out of the way design. iGoogle maybe isn't perfect, but it works as well as anything else I've tried. Google Reader is a solid effort.

This article is talking about design as art, lone visionaries with exciting new ideas. Google is design as function and usability and using proven design principles to deliver products that work in obvious ways, that also happen to look good. I strongly prefer the latter, and I think the market strongly prefers the latter. There are many beautiful failures on the web (and amusingly, many of them have been celebrated on design sites). Google is a good looking (though not often beautiful) success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be interested in how the process at Apple compares. Does anyone know of credible references/interviews on the web?

<comment><USER2> My cofounder spent 6 years at Apple-- they do it by just doing it with fewer people. It's astonishing how much work gets done with such small teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This kind of mustered venom typically indicates a deep seated fear on the part of the complainant, and it isn't hard to imagine how this might be the case in this particular example. Imagine something you thought was more important than anything else was being sidelined in preference to something like the cited massive test based design? I imagine priestly castes often have the same kind of reaction to hard science which exposes the lies of their particular brand of theology. Of course they fight, this should not be a headline, but it is a foregone conclusion that they lose in the end. You can no better argue a subjective position with objective reality than you can indignantly disagree with gravity/call Newton aspergian and hope to survive a long walk off a short cliff. If a hundred thousand people like shade 35 of blue and design dogma says you should instead use shade 15 and only a thousand people prefer that shade, design dogma is simply wrong. Ah well, natural selection will kill this type, sooner or later.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the meaning of the image on main page of paulgraham.com? - <AUTHOR> The image seems random, but I'm sure there is an obvious meaning behind it.   http://www.paulgraham.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found the answer to this. Per Paul's twitter feed, it was a picture he took in Paris where he was amused by the simplest representation of the human body, and the most elaborate.

</comment><comment><USER2> What he is & what he wants to be?</comment>


Google Whores Out Users With False Privacy Claims | SEO Book.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.seobook.com/false-privacy-claims <comment><USER2> "Whores Out"? Really? Apart from the tastelessness of it, one surely "pimps out" other people, and "whores out" oneself?

Also putting the url domain in the title is redundant.

Not to mention the article's hysterical tone.

Anyway, IMO this whole thing is in fact very much to do with the EU, but not in the way the author thinks. The EU is actually far more concerned with privacy than with monopolies when it comes to the internet right now. As monopoly-like as google may be online, its not in the same ballpark as where MS was/is with windows and office. On the other hand, the EU is in the middle of lots of large-scale actions around privacy. Remember the cookie directives? That isn't the last of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> At some point someone is going to look back through google's behavior to determine if an anti-trust case can be made to break up the company into several divisions.

Decisions like this will come back to haunt them at that time. It's like the microsoft bundling of IE, it must have seemed like a very good idea at the time.

Giving those that oppose you iron-clad arguments for the implementation of Chinese walls does not seem like a good idea to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article assumes that this SSL-on-by-default change is for the only 1 reason: To prevent sites from knowing what you searched for to find them.

On the other hand, I assumed it was all the privacy and security vulnerabilities that go along with not using SSL, and they were doing it to protect the consumer. It's already been an option for a while, allowing those who truly care to test it out. This just changes it to be the default.

I don't think the author is right about Google's reasons, and I don't think it's a particularly logical leap, either.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh cry me a river. Seriously...

Google is a company that buys and sell's ad's. This funds their free services like docs, mail and search.

Without their ad's Google wouldn't exist and using their search data to help with adwords is simply Google adding value to their main revenue stream.

Google using SSL helps protect you from third parties. By using Google for search you are effectively saying you trust them. If this bother's you use Bing...

<comment><USER6> Or, DuckDuckGo <http://duckduckgo.com/>

And, quite agree.</comment></comment>


O'Reilly on  Morozov - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/annalee-i-think-you-do-a-real-disservice-to-both-open-466738177

<comment><USER3> With some strategic skimming I think I've been able to get at the point of Morozov's essay: It's a complaint about the corruption (or "pollution") of language. Given the 20th century that's a reasonable thing to worry about: in retrospect, language is often the canary in the coal mine, warning of the approach of Fascism.

The problem is that his argument doesn't really come together. He rightly makes fun of "Web 2.0" as a pointless buzzword, but that's a complaint beyond it's sell-by date. Nobody says that with a straight face anymore, except as a vague marker for a time-period of website fashion. It's not a concept anyone associates with anything of serious importance. He also makes a side-remark about '"Open," "networks," and "information"' that I don't really get: _networks_ and _information_ are mostly used in a rigorous technical sense by the tech community as far as I can tell.

His main thrust is reserved for "open", but he doesn't really make the case here either; there's a long retelling of the old free software vs. open source battle, but promoting a new, roughly descriptive term to draw a distinction between two things is hardly the stuff of Goebbels. This is apparently being extended into "Open government".

This, as far as I can tell, is the core point arrives: Morozov can put up with transparency and accountability, but extending that into "open government" that obligates government agencies to permit the public to collaborate with them is not ok. This reduces government into provider-of-services, a set of replaceable parts like the NIH or the Federal Highway Administration that either do their task or don't, and if they don't, can be changed.

This is a very sad, small box to put the government into if you've become emotionally invested in the idea of the state as the manifestation of our collective will. In this world, the "political and moral principles" of the government are of central importance and the primary goal of politics is to petition this god-state into a benevolent and not evil ruler by ensuring that it is not blind to the concerns of everyone.

This is where his point kind of falls apart, as he doesn't seem to quite distinguish the problems with the evil all-containing-god-state (Singapore, more or less) from the problems with the technocratic, apolitical, one- institution-among-many service-provider state that he claims O'Reilly is pushing for. Lumping these two opposites together makes the whole argument kind of mushy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Morozov is tapping into a current of thought that is becoming increasingly popular. It's the same sentiment that has triggered a backlash against TED talks - a backlash against attractively packaged memes that are being sold using slick conference talks or other forms of effective marketing. This sentiment is partly driven by a skepticism about what is really being marketed. Is it the idea or is it really personal influence, consulting careers and book sales?

It's easy to apply this type of skepticism to O'Reilly media which promotes endless ideas such as 'Big Data' rebranding old technology and approaches as new, invalidating any previous concerns with data privacy and the like. I think we as an industry take the memes too seriously and with too little critical thought.

<comment><USER5> I agree TED is a bit of a nexus for it. In my circles I see a sort of backlash (or maybe, better, buyer's remorse) directed at TED being fairly broad, hitting many people who wouldn't read more than a few sentences of Morozov. But then Morozov thrusts a dagger into that wound for a subset of people. For people who _never_ liked any of that stuff and just think society is going downhill with all this technological nonsense, Morozov has less appeal, because you've already got Nicholas Carr and many other people for that angle.

You mention ideas vs. packaging/motives, but I think I've gotten more skeptical about the style of idea as well. Skepticism of the marketing/book/speaking-tour angle probably plays a role in that, but the ideas increasingly seem sort of fluffy. I like to think TED was better back when I was more positive on it, but I've re-watched a few older talks I recall liking, and they seem to have aged poorly, at least for me. I don't have anything against popularizing science, but I can't find much in the TED archives anymore that reminds me of what I think of as _good_ popularized science, up to the gold standard of a Carl Sagan. It more often reminds me of motivational speakers and self-help gurus, the kinds of ideas you see on a CNN segment or something: _new science says [amazing revelation that will change your life]_. The Onion parody floating around [1] caricatures some of the rhetorical style pretty well. The style somehow seemed fresh at the time, but looking back on older TED talks now, they seem not all that different from stuff I was already familiar with earlier, a certain genre of lightly science- flavored "idea" stuff that's existed since at least the '70s. Maybe with better production values— some of the '70s stuff seems a lot more embarrassing even now.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s>

<comment><USER6> That's a really interesting point, I hadn't considered that before now. There are a couple that I still really like, but I also think many of them legitimately were more interesting than they would be now - not because their information is dated, but maybe just because people have more connected knowledge bases now...?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an article by Annalee Newitz with a reply by and ensuing discussion with Tim O'Reilly. I found this highly relevant to the recent HN post re: Evgeny Morozov's "The Meme Hustler"[1].

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5472759>

<comment><USER7> I can't imagine this kind of reactionary thinking will go down too well here on HN...

Edit: btw have you read Moldbug's recent column on Sam Altman? [1] He uses Altman as a similar example of a fake progressive, though doesn't really touch on the whole open government side of things

[1] [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/sam-a...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As I read it, Morozov's essay has two main points:

1\. Propaganda is now self referential. Especially that the selling point of "Government 2.0" is an analogy to "Web 2.0" and "Open," where neither "Open" nor "Web 2.0" has any kind of meaning to begin with.

2\. A specific consequence of this is, that the policy debate is no longer about the goals of a policy but about manipulation of meaningless symbols.

It is then quite interesting to read O'Reilly's comments, since he actually does not refute (or even criticizes ) Morozov's points, but only asserts again that 'Open Government' is a better way to archive some policy goals.

This is of course a highly subjective and somewhat unfair compression of an interesting exchange, but functional for my main point: I completely agree both with Morozov and O'Reilly, just on different levels. Morozov does indeed raise very good questions. On the other hand, open government is an important tool to archive some policy goals, at least for some definition of open.

</comment><comment><USER9> _"It's easy to forget this today, but there was no such idea as open source software before 1998; the concept's seeming contemporary coherence is the result of clever manipulation and marketing."_

Okay, even after reading and re-reading that, and the paragraphs around it for context, I still want to go "wat." She needs to clarify there was no such _term_ as "Open Source", not no such _idea_.

</comment><comment><USER10> Annalee Newitz comes across as very disingenuous here, to say the least. But then it _is_ a Gawker site. Oh well.

Props to Tim O'Reilly for discussing what is basically a hit piece with good humor.

<comment><USER6> I agree - the tone of her comments is so different than that of her article that it seems like a completely different person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Morozov is sometimes worse than Steve Yegge. I like some of his critique - <USER2> if he omitted all the personal snipes he could probably compress it ten times.

He also seems to be polarizing on purpose:

 _Can Twitter build a button so that users can indicate how offensive my tweets are? I'd really love that: like "Favorites" - perhaps "Hates"?_

 _Because, at least on this end, there's some anxiety that my tweets are not offensive enough._

<https://twitter.com/evgenymorozov/status/319107461250424832>

</comment><comment><USER12> Evgeny Morozov, while a talented writer, is a curmudgeon. To me, he reads like the lovechild of Dvorak and Ann Coulter, with none of the finesse ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Also, what Morozov fears is quite reasonable, if you look at the history of > government regimes that have murdered and forcibly relocated their citizens > in the name of productivity and (yes) openness._

Really? What regimes have murdered in the name of openness? And let's not mistake what regimes claim to do with what they actually do. China's Great Leap Forward waved equality as a banner, yet I don't see the resulting horrific famine as being a reason to roll back civic rights in America

Edit:

I read this passage a couple but cannot figure out what it means -- the OP is describing how open source arose from the free software movement:

> _The problem was that companies could sell free software, but they weren't > always happy about the public mucking around in their code and changing it. > So O'Reilly helped a group of entrepreneurs come up with the alternative > term "open source" software, which described a bunch of different licenses > that people could use to release software in ways that free software would > not allow. You might say that open source allowed companies to release code > that was partly open, but partly closed._

O'Reilly already weighed in pretty effectively...but the OP must be referring to _something_ that happened in reality...right? Was there a company that got into open-source because it was tired of how the public could just go "mucking" about in their code base without reservation? What does that even mean?

<comment><USER14> > Was there a company that got into open-source because it was tired of how > the public could just go "mucking" about in their code base without > reservation? What does that even mean?

Well, there's Red Hat w/ their Enterprise Linux distributions, and Apple w/ the FreeBSD-derived iOS and OSX. You can't fork and distribute either of those products without incurring the wrath of their respective owners' very diligent lawyers.

<comment><USER15> Really? I have seen plenty of RHEL "forks", CentOS, Scientific Linux to name a few.

Apple's OSX isn't open source in any sense, sure it has components based on liberally licensed open source code, but so does almost every other proprietary software product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have seen the word "meme" enough for a while.

<comment><USER17> It is a really useful term when used in its original context, rather than the way the term is commonly used now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> O'Reilly created and led a publishing empire that educated a generation of people who created the modern Internet.

Who are these Annalee and Morozov people, and why are we wasting our time featuring their ramblings?</comment>


Ask HN: What did you do at your job 5 years ago that is now automated? - <AUTHOR> The media tends to about jobs being automated (typically by "AI") in a big way, but I want to get a sense of how the HN community senses it from the ground up.
What would be some of the examples / parts of your job 3 to 5 years back is automated.
They could be as simple as using prettier for your code, AWS certificate manager than dedicated hours to manage certificates, all the way to chatbots to handle customer queries or beyond. <comment><USER2> After in-depth data exploration and feature engineering I often spent hours or days experimenting with various sklearn models and performing hyper parameter grid search. Now I use an open source package, TPOT ([https://epistasislab.github.io/tpot/](https://epistasislab.github.io/tpot/)), that fully automates not only grid search but also selection of the learning algorithm (SVM, Random Forest, K-NN, etc). If your data set is small enough for sklearn, then you should not be writing sklearn code manually.

For those that are interested, TPOT uses evolutionary algorithms to perform its search.</comment>


Bye-Bye, Wall Street: New Flavor Of Big Data May Be More Lucrative For Quants - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidleinweber/2012/06/28/bye-bye-wall-street-new-flavor-of-big-data-may-be-more-lucrative-for-quants/

<comment><USER2> Does this article say anything?

<comment><USER3> Seriously, I saw nothing of value in here. Move along.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Our app to help nurses conduct safe deliveries in developing countries - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ROHhPvQsK0 <comment><USER2> The video doesn't have a link in the description. Found in a previous submission ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16347785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16347785)):

"We have recently released a narrow down version of our product in play store for public use. You can find it on Google PlayStore: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.janitri.war...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.janitri.wardapp.daksh). You can find more about our solution on our website: [https://janitri.in](https://janitri.in) (Product name is "Daksh" \- Hindi word for Competent)."

<comment><AUTHOR> Edited the description. Thanks for pointing this out and posting it here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great! Is it just one deployment or you guys have already deployed and tested your solution in multiple hospitals?

<comment><AUTHOR> Till date, we have deployed the solution in 38 government hospitals across India.</comment></comment>


Google faces $5B lawsuit in U.S. for tracking 'private' internet use - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-google-privacy-lawsuit/google-faces-5-billion-lawsuit-in-us-for-tracking-private-internet-use-idUSKBN23933H <comment><USER2> Discussed earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397045) (73 points, 13 hours ago, 36 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google appears to be claiming that because they warn you about 3rd party trackers this is all fine. They are just another 3rd party tracker it seems.

Maybe it's time to stop treating Google like a technology company. They don't seem to be pushing the internet forward, instead every decision makes the internet worse and has to be rallied against. There is very little research going on outside of increasing advertising effectiveness to scale up the size of the stock buybacks. Watching them continually screw up products like hangouts and chat and stadia and then just abandon them to increase stock buybacks yet again is just infuriating.

Maybe it's time to start treating Google like they are just another annoying 3rd party tracker. That seems to be what they want now.

<comment><USER4> Google are an ad company not a technology company

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> About time, but my guess is this won't go very far. Google can afford better legal counsel than the government itself. Still, this is a good step in the right direction, and the only way to push back on privacy violations is to make it unprofitable for corporations to get away with it (through fines, taxation, etc).

When privacy violations become unprofitable, "tech" companies will have to go back to making new technology.

</comment><comment><USER6> People who use WhatsApp -- are you sure it is end to end encrypted or do you think FB are saying that to save face while just reading the messages for insightful keyword trends?

It wouldn't shock me to learn this kind of lying from big tech companies is common.

If Google do it why not Facebook or other big tech companies. At least Apple have shown it in their financial interest to keep your data private. Not so for the ad companies.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could someone put that in context of how much that could actually hit them and how realistic it is for that to happen?

<comment><USER5> Google's revenue for 2019 was $161 billion, so $5b amounts to about 3.1% of their revenue.

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/financials?p=GOOG](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/financials?p=GOOG)

<comment><USER7> Doesn't sound like something that they could actually care about. How much theoretically would they have to lose in order to actually have to comply?

<comment><USER5> Assuming they had to pay the full amount, sure, it might make a dent, but it's also a one time event. It amounts to losing ~11 days of revenue, less than 2 weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the lawsuit about tracking in Chrome's "private" mode or Google tracking (or attempting to track) all browsers using "private" mode?

<comment><USER9> For what I understood, is for all browsers. It's not about chrome tracking you if you are in private, but google trying to match your incognito and regular data.

From the article:

> researchers have long raised concern that Google and rivals might augment > user profiles by tracking people's identities across different browsing > modes, combining data from private and ordinary internet surfing</comment></comment>


Has Apple Really Ever Invented Anything? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wFeC25BM9E0

<comment><USER2> I think some of the arguments in the video depend much on how tightly invention is defined.

Personally, I'd say that even if all components on a circuit board were already individually invented by someone else, as well as the process of combining them, a unique result would likely still be an invention in my eyes.

I'd also say that an improvement to an existing product very well could be novel enough to call it an invention (where that line should be drawn is quite subjective though.)

Furthermore, I'd argue that piecing together an already existing product through a novel process also could be classified as an invention. For me, it might even be enough to use an existing design in a new way or new field.

Thus, I don't think finding one preceding design is a good method in deciding that a later design isn't an invention. Which is not meant to imply that all Apple products are their inventions, just that sometimes the addition of garlic and cilantro (per the video) is novel _enough_.

</comment><comment><USER3> "By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize other's work and belittle their motivations?"

\- Steve Jobs</comment>


Apple finally announces an overhauled Mac mini - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/apple-finally-announces-an-overhauled-mac-mini/ <comment><USER2> Looking at these config prices... wow: [https://www.apple.com/shop/buy- mac/mac-mini/3.6ghz-quad-core...](https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac- mini/3.6ghz-quad-core-processor-128gb#)

128GB SSD base, +800 USD to go to 1TB? +600 USD to go from 8GB to 32GB? +300USD to go to the six core CPU? brutal. I was considering this for a moment instead of building a PC rig at home because I really like macOS, but that's just too much.

<comment><USER3> If Apple just made the parts user replaceable, it wouldn't be a problem.

I used to always just get the lowest configuration Powerbook or Macbook Pro, and place an order for a RAM upgrade simultaneously from another vendor. And eventually max out the RAM, upgrade to SSD, etc. Made the upfront purchase price less of an issue as a longer term investment.

Apple is nickle and diming customers by locking down and soldering everything on Macs, when they should look at the Mac as a gesture of goodwill to the professionals and developers who contribute to the Apple ecosystem and help drive sales of Apple's iOS cash cow.

<comment><USER4> The RAM is user serviceable on the new Mini. The drive might be soldered this time but even the 2014 still allowed you to replace it so I am cautiously optimistic that the iFixit teardown will reveal it to also be replaceable. Which makes the i7 Mac Mini with base specs quite attractive.

If not you can use an external SSD since it's a desktop computer and doesn't move. An external 1TB Samsung for everything besides applications and OS isn't bad at all.

<comment><USER5> >An external 1TB Samsung for everything besides applications and OS isn't bad at all.

Yep. 4x TB3 means I don't care at all about the internal storage. I'll take the 128GB internal drive for the OS and be on my way.

<comment><USER2> So, after further consideration I think the one to buy is the base i5 model with 256GB for 1099. Buy the RAM separately. It looks like it has 2 slots. With my local vendor 2x16GB DDR 2666Mhz comes out at 300 USD or so. I already have an external 1TB SSD, but otherwise a Samsung T5 is available for around 220 USD. That's a 1600ish USD system, which is somewhat reasonable for a mac with those specs IMO. Would be nice if Apple just gave you that for around 1800, but the 2300 they want is just unreasonable IMO.

<comment><USER5> You sold me on this config. I want to be able to use this computer for a long time, and you hit the nail on the head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm typing this comment on my 2012 quad core i7 Mac Mini with 16G of RAM and two 2.5" 2TB SSD drives. This machine still works great for all of my Logic music production needs. One of the things I love about this machine is how I've been able to perform my own memory and disk upgrades over the years to keep the machine relevant.

Looking forward to reading the iFixit teardown to see to what degree folks will be able to upgrade the machine's memory and disk in the 2018 model. I'm most excited about getting four Thunderbolt 3 ports, not necessarily for the increased bandwidth (you don't need a ton of bandwidth for audio) but for the ability power external peripherals.

<comment><USER7> You can upgrade the memory, they're standard DIMMs. It's still unknown whether the storage can be upgraded.

<comment><USER8> You can plugin SSD disks over USB-C. Not the maximum speed possible, but good enough.

<comment><USER9> Thunderbolt would be even better, right?

<comment><USER6> For sure. There are external Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD enclosures out there that can read and write in excess of 2000 MB/sec, which is reasonably close to what an Apple internal soldered-on SSD can do.

Given the prices of internal storage from Apple (a $1400 upgrade for 2TB ouch!) I think this is the route I would go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong Too little, too late. The Intel NUC is far and away the better computer in this form factor - it's smaller, faster and cheaper. Also there's a better chance that it will receive an upgrade sooner than 6 years from now.

<comment><USER10> The Mac Mini is using full desktop components, not NUC laptop components. That's why it supports 4 times as much RAM, Thunderbolt 3, and a 65 watt CPU compared to the 25 watt NUCs.

<comment> brian-armstrong The NUC CPU is 45 watt, IIRC

<comment><USER11> Depends on which model. I got one earlier this year with a 7th gen core i5 processor: NUC7i5BNH with a i5-7260U, 2 cores, 4 threads, 15W TDP. Now you can get them with 8th gen core processors like these (among others):

      i5-8259U, 4 cores, 8 threads, 28W TDP
      i7-8559U, 4 cores, 8 threads, 28W TDP
      i7-8705G, 4 cores, 8 threads, 65W package TDP
      i7-8809G, 4 cores, 8 threads, 100W package TDP

The last two have fancy integrated graphics and only come in a larger form factor with a skull on the side.

edit: conciseness, formatting

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That is some serious price gouging on SSD upgrades, +$720 for 1 TB.

Best Buy price matched several 1 TB SSDs (WD Blue, SATA, 2.5") for $150 (Canadian) apiece recently. And the price difference between different consumer SSD types is minimal.

<comment><USER13> I think you are comparing SATA to NVME SSDs, which is unfair. Not saying Apple isn't pricing them way too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like $800 for an i3/8gb machine is on the expensive side. Given that it is probably the best option to run OSX smoothly, maybe, it's worth it.

<comment><USER15> [https://www.amazon.com/Kingdel-Powerful-Desktop-Computer- Blu...](https://www.amazon.com/Kingdel-Powerful-Desktop-Computer- Bluetooth/dp/B07D8Y2F7D/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1540915005&sr=1-7&keywords=kingdel&refinements=p_n_feature_fourteen_browse- bin%3A2057441011)

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Two minutes of searching and I found a box with a better CPU, 16 GiB of RAM, 512 GiB of flash, and 1 TiB of HDD for a slightly lower price. The Apple Tax is real, at least for their desktops.

(I have never seen the point of these tiny PCs. You can throw a desktop in a corner where you'll never have to see it. If I'm allowed to buy a normal case, I'm sure I could trounce that Mac for about $400.)

<comment><USER10> The computer you linked is very different than the Mac Mini. The Kingdel is a knockoff NUC, basically laptop components. Notice how it maxes out at 16 GB of RAM, no Thunderbolt, and its fastest chip is still a 25TDP U-series which is probably slower in practice than what the Mac Mini starts with (looks like a 65 watt i3 8100).

The Mac Mini is indeed expensive for its specs, but it's also _extremely_ small for those specs: desktop components in a sub-mini-ITX form factor. If you wanted to compare it to similar PCs, you're looking at the custom offerings from Zotac, etc. which also command a high premium.

<comment><USER16> Zotac is able to put a quadcore i5 with GTX1070 into a silent case of previous Mac Mini size, making it a very capable gaming machine even today.

<comment><USER10> Yes, they make some great machines, which are also priced at a premium. You're paying for the (small) size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh my, this specs are really nice. 64gb of ram and 6 cores with the SSD that it comes with is really not "mini"-like specs that we are used to.

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing this is the new Mac Pro. Just add an eGPU and max out the other specs — I have a feeling the price will be right up there with regular Mac Pro pricing.

Edit: yep, maxes out around $3900. Without an eGPU.

Edit again: I know asking about downvotes is a downvotable offense, but what's the deal? What did I say that was wrong or even inflammatory? This thing tops out in Mac Pro price territory, I would not be at all surprised if this becomes the new Mac Pro with the addition of an eGPU.

<comment><USER16> You can get a quad-core 28W NUC for $500 with TB3, so there is already a cheap precedent that is as powerfull (though limited to 32GB RAM with current SO- DIMMs).

<comment><USER18> How's macOS run on that?

<comment><USER16> Not sure about 8i5/8i7 as I haven't ordered one yet, but previous generations worked like out of the box with very small changes - perfect Hackintoshes actually. You just needed to understand how to install Clover and a few drivers properly, then after each OS update needed to re-run a script changing 4K display timings while Intel GPU was disabled during the boot (if you wanted retina-style display).

<comment><USER19> Do you have a link with this kind of knowledge for persistence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Matching the specs of my 5 year old iMac puts this at $1,900, and I'm not even sure if the new graphics card is comparable to the GTX 775M that Apple included 5 years ago.

<comment><USER21> Wouldn't the new iMac be a better comparison? The Mac mini has always been hamstrung by its small form factor.

<comment><USER20> I don't want a better comparison, I want to replace my iMac with a headless desktop for under $3,000. I have a second big monitor at my desk for my work laptop and I'd love to reclaim the real estate that the iMac is taking up.

It was Apple's choice to hamstring themselves with that form factor, not mine. Do I need to wait for Jonny Ive to retire to buy a normal $1500-$2000 Mac that I can use for programming, photo editing, casual gaming, etc?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I still have the 2011 Mac Mini powering my house... and services. We were seriously hoping this might be useful - but it fails to meet our needs.

My company buys Kingdels on Amazon, and adds HD and RAM. Same box literally ends up costing 50% of the price (CAD) compared to the equivalent Mac Mini I just tricked out on the Apple site. Given that we have no Mac specific needs (but need a Unix), I'm just sad.

</comment><comment><USER23> I know it has been too long and the price is upped.

But I am going to buy this.

For an always on server at home nothing beats the Mac mini. Excellent os, excellent build quality, modest power usage, silent.

<comment><USER24> I'm interested to know what you run on this server...plex? torrent client? file server? on-prem file backups (if so, which software you use)?

I have a small Intel NUC running windows that runs always-on and does some of these things just fine, but I'm always looking for some excuses to upgrade a gadget.

<comment><USER25> I would like to use this as a file server and a torrent client. Does anyone here have some idea about the SSD endurance or can explain with some numbers, how long it'd last for the specific SSDs Apple is using (or even generic SSDs as a comparison)? Let's assume I write 2TB of data every month on to a 512GB SSD or 256GB SSD.

I tend to use such machines for a decade or longer (for as long as it doesn't break down completely), and considering that right now using Linux on these (with access to these SSDs) is difficult, I fear I might be out of up-to-date options in the future.

<comment><USER26> That is seriously seriously over-specced for a fileserver.

2TB of data a month on to SSDs is quite a bit though: [https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-600p-nvme- end...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-600p-nvme-endurance- testing,4826.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's not for me but I'm happy that this little machine gets to continue with new iterations. I guess the only question is "who is it for" and "why is it for them"?

<comment><USER28> I don't expect this product line to be the most popular mac product line, but it does have it's users.

* A mac is required for iOS development, so it can be used as a build server for teams working in Xamarin. Possibly used in other cross platform mobile development workflows. (Who: mobile developers, Why: to run builds)

* People that need more I/O than a macbook pro can support. In addition to the I/O a MBP has this has 10GB Ethernet, 2 USB A, HDMI, and a dedicated power slot. It's also significantly cheaper than the iMac Pro, while also having 10GB Ethernet. (Who: People working in video, photography, and anyone that heavily uses a 10GB network. Why: Better connectivity)

* Groups with existing macos server applications that want a headless server with cheaper/newer hardware than the Mac Pro or old Mac Mini. (Who: companies with macos server programs running. Why: It's newer better hardware)

* People that want a very small computer. (Who: Everyday consumers. Why: Small footprint. It's the cheapest Mac for people that like MacOS but don't the need portability of a macbook or the monitor of an iMac.)

<comment><USER29> Put me down under number 1.

I'm dreading buying anything from Apple, but I need to compile my React Native app.

I keep waiting for old generation macs to enter the used market to drive down prices. Hopefully I can snag a used one, compile once, and forget about the experience.

<comment><USER30> Have you considered hosted options?

[https://macminicolo.net/pricing.html](https://macminicolo.net/pricing.html)

<comment><USER31> That's $70/month for 2014 hardware (dual core no ssd), or $120 if you need a quad core or ssd. Prices for the new hardware haven't yet been announced.

Either way, if they keep their same pricing, there's a 12 month break even of buying your own hardware if you don't need to be on a data center backbone.

<comment><USER30> Good points. Do you know anyone who offers a Digital Ocean type of service where you can quickly spin up a machine and pay by the hour? May be useful for people who only need a machine occasionally to compile an app for iOS.

<comment><USER32> There's [https://portal.macincloud.com/select/#/plans](https://portal.macincloud.com/select/#/plans)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If the SSD is user expandable, then its damn near perfect, but I get the feeling they pointed out the DIMM and not the SSD as replaceable.

<comment><USER34> Because of the way the T2 works, storage will never be replaceable/expandable in those Macs.

<comment><USER35> How so?

<comment><USER36> Normally an SSD has an on-board flash controller that communicates something like NVME or SATA to the host and a protocol like CFI to the actual NAND chips, it will also map from disk blocks (OS unit of storage) to NAND columns and cells using an internally stored table. These chips do a lot of other mundane things like wear leveling for NAND, clearing written cells, etc. If the T2 is taking the place of this controller and communicating directly with the NAND chips it would be at best duplicative of an external SSD controller and at worst completely incompatible.

<comment><USER35> Thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I used to be a big Apple fan but with the prices the way they are, I can't do it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER38> Big changes:

\- 8th gen 4 core CPU in the base model, upgradable to 6 core

\- 16 - 64 GB SO-DIMM RAM

\- Upgradable to 10 gig ethernet

\- 4 thunderbolt 3 ports

<comment><USER39> The 64GB of RAM is the interesting part. Competing mini-desktops from HP (EliteDesk 800 mini) and Dell (Optiplex 70x0) already have a 6 core CPU option but are limited to 32GB of RAM.

<comment><USER40> Most likely they all support 64GB of RAM. What has allowed Apple to offer 64GB is that Samsung released 32GB SO-DIMM modules this summer based on their new 10nm process. It's still almost impossible to find them aftermarket though.

<comment><USER41> They are based on the new 16Gbit DDR4 chips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Who remembers when the Mac Mini was $499?

<comment><USER43> That was in 2005. Inflation already takes that up to equivalent $650 in 2018.

<comment><USER44> As I was watching the presentation I went to the mac mini page, it said "starting at $499"

<comment><USER45> The 3 year old Mac Mini, now for significantly less than a new model!

<comment><USER44> No that was the price before the update, now it says "from $799"

Three years ago (until about 5 hours ago) you could get a new mac mini for $499.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm kinda disappointed that there's only a single SSD option and no way to add another cheaper drive in it. That could've allowed someone to go with the lowest internal SSD drive. I understand Apple wanted to make and keep this one small, but the ability to an internal hard drive could've helped a lot on the cost front and also helped on the speed front (compared to an external drive).

In the past, I've replaced the DVD drive with another internal hard drive (though that was at a slightly lower speed).

</comment><comment><USER46> I've been waiting for a 2018 Mac desktop of some kind. I have a stock (as in, bought off the shelf, no cpu/memory upgrades) 2018 MBP15 that works for now (as my 2011 had another fan failure, its repaired but not reliable enough for work) but I'm getting tired of small screens/fewer cores etc.

I thought it was going to be an iMac, but maybe this is the ticket.

If I can just find a decent monitor to pair with it here (Thailand) it might be a good option.

</comment><comment><USER47> Did anyone see if they said whether these machines are user-upgradable? I have two late-2012 models that I've been very happpy with (one at home, one at work). Compared to the 2014 "update" the best part is being able to put in memory & drives yourself.

(Couldn't watch the keynote and haven't seen this said explicitly anywhere...)

<comment><USER48> It seem that the RAM is user-upgradeable, the SSD not. But as it has 4 thunderbolt ports, EGPU and external storage are possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can anyone make a guess at whether you lose one of the Thunderbolt ports to have the 10gbE port? Alternatively, would you hit a bottleneck if you somehow managed to max out all three Thunderbolt ports?

</comment><comment><USER49> Is it possible / does it make sense to use this as a Debian machine?

<comment><USER50> Wouldn't the T2 security chip mean an end to putting non-MacOS operating systems on Apples hardware? Honest question .. I don't know the answer .. but it seems like this is going to be a hurdle for Linux on Apple hardware going forward.

EDIT: from another thread discussing Apples release today:

>You can install Linux, if you can accept that a lot of functionality does not work. Even on most MacBook Pro 2016 models audio, suspend/hibernate, and WiFi don't work.

[https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux](https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux)

<comment><USER7> You can install Linux. Hardware not working is not a result of the T2 chip, since the 2016 MacBook Pro doesn't have one.

<comment><USER51> A result of the T2 chip is, that you can't access the SSD under Linux yet, which makes running Linux on it pretty pointless.

<comment><USER7> The fundamental issue, that of Apple allowing you to boot alternative operating systems, is solved. The other problem of figuring out how to talk to the SSD is more of a technical (if important) issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is using a 8th generation chip. Since the 9th gen chips are drop-in compatible, does this mean you can hack your way to a Mac Mini with an i9-9900k 8-core/12-thread monster?

<comment><USER13> They are probably laptop CPUs, 45 watt version, different socket.

<comment><USER46> I believe he said expressly that they're higher-power desktop CPUS (reference that the older model used mobile ones).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 8th gen = Kaby Lake = H.265 hardware acceleration correct?

<comment><USER54> yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> My guess is that it's going to overheat before you can effectively use the six core i7 option.

Also, I'm assuming their pricing is based on market research. So by pricing the 2TB version at +$1400 (which you could put into a non-macOS desktop build for like $300), they're implying you're either quite rich, ignorant, or you're spending corporate or academic money.

As a desktop option, why does this seem more expensive than the Macbook Pro?

<comment><USER56> The SSDs they use are almost an order of magnitude faster than regular consumer grade ones you can get for just over $300, and I was surprised last time I priced up something with decent performance that it cost about the same whether buying from Apple or not.

<comment><USER55> They have almost 6GB/s write speeds? Also, you can get a 2TB PCIE SSD that writes at 2000MB/s for $600.

[https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/501128/Samsung- SSD-9...](https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/501128/Samsung- SSD-970-EVO-2TB)

<comment><USER56> Most drives I've looked at get around 400mb a second (I also use [https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/](https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/)), and the SSDs Apple use are 2500mb/s, so 6.25x faster.

I priced up the high performance 2TB SSD setup about a year ago, so I'll concede that data point is out of date.

<comment><USER55> I agree $1400 seems more reasonable when compared to PCIE SSD prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Too bad that with Mojave's release they already dropped official support for some other Mac Minis, like my 2010 unibody one. I realize you can still get it to work by rolling the dice with a 3rd party binary patch, but jeez, the thing is only 8 years old.

<comment><USER58> Honest question: how many other pieces of electronics do you have that are still getting support after 8 years of use? I could understand appliances and cars, where the maintenance is mechanical wear & tear and not software, but anything with software generally has a 3-5 year EOL at this point.

<comment><USER57> I could go out and buy Windows or download Linux, and run them on this and even older computers, which is unfortunately probably what I'll end up doing at some point. I like Apple, and am pretty bought in to their ecosystem. Their blacklisting of older hardware is one of my few complaints with them, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> What a wasted potential! The pricing is a huge show stopper!

</comment><comment><USER60> If not for the fact you need Apple hardware to develop iOS apps and that my older mac mini is excruciatingly slow with the newer macOS, I wouldn't even consider this.

</comment><comment><USER61> It looks like the RAM is user-upgradable.

</comment><comment><USER62> I started reading article hoping for something interesting from Apple, but then I compare Mac Mini specs to the mini-itx system I've built back in February.

\- AMD Ryzen 2400g (4cores 8 threads)

\- 16 GB DDR4 Ram

\- 256GB M.2 Nvme

\- 1TB 2.5" HDD

\- I can add more memory, internal storage, and still have a spare 16xPCI slot.

This runs linux and cost less than $800 Canadian dollars all in. Not impressed. Everything is upgradable and in a case that 3 times as big as mac one.

<comment><USER18> >case 3x as big

I don't think you are getting the whole "Mini' concept here.

<comment><USER63> 3 times as big is still a comfortable size for a small pc and a small price to pay for using commodity/replaceable parts.

Most of the people who might buy a mini would probably buy a mini that was 3x as big. At least for me, what I really don't want to pay for is a screen and keyboard (as I would have to pay for with an imac/macbook/etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I still use a 2006 mac mini for headless server stuff, and a 2011 model to make use of macOS.

I would love to buy this for its form factor, but at those prices I'd be better off buying myself a tricked-out desktop. I could probably go threadripper + DDR4 and a 2080 Ti for those prices.</comment>


The Key to Electric Cars Is Batteries. One Chinese Firm, CATL, Dominates - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-positioned-itself-to-dominate-the-future-of-electric-cars-11572804489?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> How do they compare with Tesla's batteries? What metrics do people use to compare them?</comment>


Ask HN: Was coronavirus known before wuhan? - <AUTHOR> I've seen several articles and photos showing disinfectants like dettol back label saying it can kill coronavirus.
Now scientists say that's not true.
The dates from the labels though are from 2019.
Now I know a lot of scientists browse through yc and since I can't find any info on if the virus existed previously and if the wuhan's one is just a new evolved generation of the virus, I'd like to ask if the virus was known previously and we are currently dealing with an evolved version of it. <comment><USER2> From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus)

> _Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause diseases in mammals and > birds. In humans, the viruses cause respiratory infections which are > typically mild, including the common cold; however, rarer forms such as > SARS, MERS and the novel coronavirus causing the current outbreak can be > lethal._

Look at the history page [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coronavirus&actio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coronavirus&action=history) It has like 800 changes. The oldest one is from March 2003 [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coronavirus&oldid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coronavirus&oldid=779606)

> _we are currently dealing with an evolved version of it_

This is true in the technical sense, but my guess is that you are using "evolved" in the not technical sense that is closer to "upgraded".

There are many strains of coronavirus. I can find the number, but Wikipedia list like 10 potentially deadly version for humans and like 10 potentially deadly version for domestic animals. There are more versions for wild animals. And there are all the non deadly versions that give you a common cold, and you pass the version to your friends, and it get's cured in a week. I can't find a good number, and it looks like a too deep rabbit hole to go into, so let me guess a few thousands of versions.

Each version is specialized in a different animal, or family of animals. (Probably to detect the best spot in the nose to reproduce and be contagious, perhaps some small adaptations to the temperature and humidity of that spot.)

The current outbreak of coronavirus is a virus that was specialized in some animal (bats? snakes?) and probably was infecting them for centuries and now is infecting humans. Perhaps nobody meet an ill animal before. Perhaps a mutation of the virus was helpful to avoid the inmune system of the animal, and the same mutation make it by chance more contagious or deadly in humans.

</comment><comment><USER3> the only reason it 's still called coronavirus is nobody has come up with a creative name, and everyone insists on not calling it "wuhan virus".

Anybody want to give it a name?

<comment><USER4> It has a name. Do your homework.

It is called coronavirus (a familynof virii) because of the shape of the organism.

<comment><USER3> sars and mers and thousands of others are also coronaviruses. this one is currently designated "2019 novel coronavirus" which is not very practical</comment></comment></comment>


900-MPH Supersonic Ping-Pong Bazooka - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/gonzo/behold-the-900-mph-supersonic-ping-pong-bazooka-15097897

<comment><USER2> Subsonic, but more ping pong wreckage since it's on topic:

<http://danwolff.net/archive/pingpong/>

<comment><USER3> No, it's quite clearly supersonic. This is a different design than the tube they talk about first.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I9zBGgpzl0I)

<comment><USER2> The colon at the end of the first line was intended to map the first text string to the last text string of my original post. So, you're right, and sorry for the confusing grammar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Don't miss the impressive video.

<comment><USER4> When I loaded the page, the video link wasn't working. Here's the video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I9zBGgpzl0I)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a more detailed video about the project. The shorter video from PopularMechanics is here: <http://bcove.me/pbzl94cm>

<comment><USER5> Holy crap. That's quite a service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh C-D nozzles. Hands-down the most useful thing I learned in undergrad.</comment>


12 Bizarre Programming Languages You Never Heard Of - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixel77.com/12-bizarre-programing-languages-heard/

<comment><USER2> This looks like a rehost page that missed half the content when they copy- pasted the original.

Parts of the content is missing, and plain text saying "click here" without being a link.</comment>


After Orlando, Senate bill seeks to allow FBI Web searches without court order - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/22/after-orlando-senate-bill-seeks-to-allow-fbi-web-searches-without-court-order/ <comment><USER2> Of course it does. Every act of terrorism leads to more and more attacks on the rights of law abiding citizens. It's like the government doesn't view terrorism as a crisis, but an opportunity.

<comment><USER3> To the government, the number one enemy of security is freedom.

<comment><USER4> To the government _and their handlers_ , the number one enemy of _their_ security is _your_ freedom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think everyone here agrees that this is a terrible correlation for people to make. Just because these tragedies occur does not mean that our liberty is no longer sacred. We need to figure out a way to translate that value to the average American - They need to understand what's really at stake and we have not done a good job explaining that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems as though the GOP Senate are equally steadfast against any discussion on limiting access to guns as they are to eroding what little privacy US citizens retain. How can one amendment be so untouchable that it actually harms another?

<comment><USER7> That's strange to me too. People on the terrorist watch list can't fly but they can buy guns. That doesn't really make sense.

<comment><USER8> > People on the terrorist watch list can't fly but they can buy guns.

On the one hand, people who have been found to be a legitimate danger of terrorism by a reasonable process including due process of law arguably shouldn't be able to buy guns. Or fly on commercial airliners.

OTOH, I can also see a reasonable argument to be made that the various terrorist watch lists (including the no-fly list) do not meet the appropriate standard of due process for either or both of those consequences.

<comment><USER7> I am in total agreement that the watch lists do not meet standards of due process. I was only pointing out the inconsistency of not being able to fly but being able to buy guns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If they need a panic inducing tragedy to pass legislation it's not legislation worth passing.

<comment><USER10> They don't really need anything. These are all wedge issues, not real issues they are interested in solving. As long as there is debate and people are unsatisfied, they will continue to get elected in order to fix the broken system.

Just looking at the recent past, the Democrats had both houses of Congress and the Presidency. They were fully capable of passing every single piece of legislation that they have historically wanted. However, all they passed were a couple of measures on which the electorate were hugely split. Then they chose to sit on the floor, because the Republicans didn't let them vote on a gun measure. The Republicans have also acted this way when in power.

These are politicians playing politics - 535 people who all believe they should be President. They are all willing to string the people along to further their political careers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank god this crap was defeated... for now at least.</comment>


Quadrotor Wheel Can Fly, Float, and Roll - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/iros-2013-quadrotor-wheel-can-fly-float-and-roll#.UnhE0kNvyjQ.hackernews <comment><USER2> the precision of control on this thing is wild</comment>


Fractal globules make up the human genome - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/10/12/what-is-the-difference-between-the-human-genome-and-a-pair-of-headphones/

<comment><USER2> So it's a space-filling curve with self-similarity across scales, but which one? Either showing the curve or defining the recurrence relation (or both) would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect that we still have tons to learn about how our genetic information works. For example, we're already challenging the notion that a gene = a protein.

<comment><USER4> or even if it is only one protein. gene also probably has role other than just encoding proteins.</comment></comment>


Introducing LastPass for iOS 8 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lastpass.com/2014/09/introducing-lastpass-for-ios-8.html

<comment><USER2> I can't quite figure out their UX team - you can use TouchID to secure your vault except not as a replacement for the PIN screen. But sometimes it'll offer TouchID when you resume. Sometimes it won't and you'll get the PIN. Which you still have to have despite setting up TouchID. Whuh.

(And the browser integration might be "more streamlined" but only in the sense that a brick is "more streamlined" than a donkey. It's still clunky as hell.)</comment>


The Cruel Economy of the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://latenitesoft.blogspot.com/2008/09/cruel-economy-of-app-store.html

<comment><USER2> Is this that different from the videogames market? Out there, you have two weeks to sell, and after that, you're basically done.</comment>


XML to JSONP converter for consuming APIs - <AUTHOR> http://xml2json.heroku.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> motivation was to be able to consume the pivotal tracker api, which is XML only with a url like:

        http://xml2json.heroku.com/?callback=jsonp&url=https://www.pivotaltracker.com/services/v3/projects/27482/iterations/current?token=YOURPIVOTALTRACKERTOKEN

</comment><comment><USER2> Last year I made a service that converts data from spreadsheets or spreadsheet-like text files to XML. <http://elev.at/>

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you call methods other than GET? Maybe you should add a method parameter, since JSONP is GET-only.

<comment><AUTHOR> I only currently need the read-only APIs, but adding other methods shouldn't be too difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, just added support for other methods, although I haven't had the chance to properly test it yet. Just send a POST/PUT/DELETE, with the url parameter and the rest of the parameters will be passed on - probably won't work with a multipart post.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good Sci-Fi involving CS/InfoTheory? - <AUTHOR>

Recently been enjoying books by Vernor Vinge (ex CS prof at SDSU) and Charles Stross. <comment><USER2> Have you read Cryptonomicon? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon>

<comment><USER3> I was going to suggest Snow Crash but I'm really unsure after all. Cyberpunk almost always requires you to adopt some kind of esoteric thinking, which is not a bad thing per se but makes it harder to immerse yourself in the story if you are looking for real science. Also Neuromancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has some good CS-related moments.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anathem by Neal Stephenson is tangentially related to Information Theory. More abstract/concepual math and general philosophy than CS/InfoTheory.

An excellent novel, highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER6> Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Suarez>)

Rudy Rucker (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Rucker>)

Cory Doctorow has some good stuff and most of it is available free from his site (<http://craphound.com/>).

</comment><comment><USER7> some of the older greg egan stuff (he was a programmer). i can't remember any titles, but a look at the summaries should make things clear (or his site - <http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/>)

[edit: ok, so after looking there (ow my eyeballs!) permutation city is one i remember, and there was also a collection of short stories...]

</comment><comment><USER8> The Vernor Vinge books are excellent...

</comment><comment><USER9> _His Master's Voice_ by Stanislaw Lem is about trying to decipher an alien radio transmission, and focuses a lot on the mathematics and information theory involved as far as I remember.

</comment><comment><USER10> william gibson...</comment>


YouTube to relaunch livestreaming service with focus on esports and gaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/esports/youtube-google-esports-livestreaming/

<comment><USER2> Twitch got competition.</comment>


This is how you re-kindle a lost relationship with a former user (DynDNS) - <AUTHOR> http://stuff.alonswartz.org/this-is-how-you-re-kindle-a-lost-relationship

<comment><USER2> This story needs context. Unless we know why the user quit using DynDNS, there's no real way to determine whether an appeal like this effective or even appropriate.

For example, I used to use DynDNS all the time because I was running a small personal site off my home broadband connection. Then, thanks to an improvement in fortunes, I was able to afford a hosting service and a "real" DNS. So I switched. If DynDNS sent me an e-mail like this, it wouldn't really matter, because I've already got everything set up, and I'm not really looking to change.

</comment><comment><USER3> He had me until the misplaced apostrophe in "client's".</comment>


The CIA Will Use Its New Dark Web Site to Collect Anonymous Tips - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwnyew/the-cia-will-use-its-new-dark-web-site-to-collect-anonymous-tips <comment><AUTHOR> I'm still not sure this isn't really an Onion article...

<comment><USER2> Why? There are people who would report something they know about if it didn't entail using the phone, email or whatever other trivially-traced technology.</comment></comment>


Amazon to collect Conn. sales tax, ending dispute - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Amazon-to-collect-Conn-sales-tax-ending-dispute-4248901.php <comment><USER2> I don't think Amazon's 'edge' is sales tax, I think it's a wide variety of goods, and me buying things on my couch.

Because of tax, time, and gas, it's more expensive to drive to a store 20 minutes away, get 'hassled' by employees, and purchase something (with sales tax) than it is for me to roll out of bed, type in 'Amazon', find the thing I want, add it to my cart, login with my password, and buy it. I get to track it too, like a predatory animal waiting for my prey to arrive in the mail.

Amazon has hit a convenience point that no one else can touch. They bought 'Small Parts', now I can do almost all my Home Depot shopping on Amazon too (although my purchases at Home Depot are almost always ones that can't wait for shipping).

The tax will be a small bump in the road that people try to make a huge deal out of, but it's the convenience they'll follow.

<comment><USER3> Very true. And it's even worse to drive to a store 20 minutes away and not find what you're looking for (either the store doesn't carry it, or it's out of stock, or nobody can tell you what aisle it's in). My usage of Amazon didn't decrease at all when they started charging sales tax in my state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Amazon also promised to spend $50 million to build a facility at an > unspecified site and create hundreds of jobs.

With their tax advantage disappearing, Farhad Manjoo's comment about Amazon's strategy to open same-day delivery centers in these settled states comes to mind.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/small_business/2012/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/small_business/2012/07/amazon_same_day_delivery_how_the_e_commerce_giant_will_destroy_local_retail_.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> With amazon ceding to demands on collecting state sales taxes for interstate commerce, they have opened the door to a competitor.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that states aren't seeing the sales tax revenue from out of state purchases and have become increasingly insistent that they receive said revenue. They've tried collecting it on income taxes (who really files that anyway?) but it doesn't work.

Facing increased budget pressure, the states aren't likely to give up. More than likely, any competitor who isn't at least Amazon-sized (and let's be serious, other than maybe Walmart, who is?) is going to get leaned on hard by the state's legal department if the competitor doesn't roll over on the Amazon tax.

I don't foresee any competition taking over Amazon's market share over a 6.5% sales tax.

<comment><USER5> > _The problem is that states aren't seeing the sales tax revenue from out of > state purchases and have become increasingly insistent that they receive > said revenue._

That's not a problem: It's a use-case covered explicitly by the US constitution. The real problem is that the states have been slow to change and adapt to a world where interstate commerce is edging out intrastate commerce. Trying to overrule the constitution is just waiting for someone with deep pockets to make a federal case out of it.

Already amazon is losing biz on electronics to the folks that aren't collecting.

<comment><USER7> _Trying to overrule the constitution is just waiting for someone with deep pockets to make a federal case out of it._

Already happened, in the famous _Quill_ case. Consequently, is permissible to impose a sales tax on out-of-state retailers if they have a "substantial nexus" with the taxing state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this trend continues, ultimately all 50 states will be collecting sales tax from Amazon. In that case, what is amazon's edge going forward, especially if the retails stores can come close on price while offering immediate gratification?

<comment><USER9> Immediate gratification is the ONLY advantage local chain stores have over Amazon for me. Every other aspect of shopping with them is inferior. With Amazon having to pay sales tax, they have no reason to NOT build local warehouses, and then the local box stores will have to learn to provide decent service or, more likely, go out of business.

<comment><USER8> So in the scenario (read my post) amazon has to charge sales tax.

Have you been to Costco? I daresay their customer service blows away amazon

<comment><USER10> I've been to Costco. It's a madhouse, and quite unnerving for an introvert like myself.

But that's not even the main reason I like Amazon -- it's for the product ratings. How do I know what I'm getting at Costco is the best quality for the price? I can get a very good idea of that at Amazon. Not to mention Costco can't even being to compete with the product selection at Amazon.

<comment><USER11> Not being able to compete with Amazon's product selection is a feature, not a bug. Amazon's answer to the question of "how do I know I'm getting something that is high quality at a good price?" is to give you a wide range of options and give you all the data to make an informed decision. Costco's answer is to give you only one or two choices after building up an underlying sense of trust that (a) their prices are fair (everything is priced at a flat percentage over cost, rather than varying profit margins based on the item), and that (b) the products they choose to sell are generally very high quality. There are a lot of groceries and household goods that I buy at Costco rather than anywhere else because Costco's house brand is better than luxury-brand competitors and costs half as much.

As someone who likes to fuss over every single purchasing decision and compare a dozen nearly-identical models of something before buying, I agree that Amazon's model is preferable. On the whole, I buy more things from Amazon than Costco. But that doesn't mean that Costco's model doesn't have merit for a lot of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting that no one is calling this an "Amazon tax", as was done when California did the same thing</comment>


How To Fire A Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2013/01/how-to-fire-co-founder.html <comment><USER2> I think oftentimes "firing" is the wrong way to look at this.

I founded my startup with two cofounders. We all agreed, with the benefit of hindsight about eight months in, that we were the wrong guys to be working on this together and that we should step back and look at the situation. I started that process but they could see it too.

We analysed the problem (their skills were more ephemeral than executional… networking/introductions/ideas) and it led to us occasionally overindulging in "taking the idea for a walk". I was frustrated because I felt very strongly that we should be building and dedicating all our time to shipping software and speaking to our users.

The conversations were entirely amicable. They had both invested cash and time, and had received equity + founder's round equity as a result. They kept their bought equity and we reduced the founder's round equity by 50% each, and I reallocated it later on to two fantastic directors who have been, for near enough a year, surrogate cofounders. Both of my original cofounders dip in with advice as we need it and have since been really helpful.

Nobody was fired and I appreciate that sometimes it's necessary to have a sterner conversation (and indeed sometimes it's probably appealing in the heat of the moment). The thing to remember is that everyone has an emotional attachment to the company, and that makes it a very tricky conversation to have.

<comment><USER3> >they had both invested cash and time

I have a question - when calculating % of shares for founders, do you calculate the time put in on top of cash, or only the cash being put in?

Say you have three founders, one who puts up a larger portion of cash but doesn't do any work, and two others who actually do consistent work and put in some cash. Should the ownership be divided by cash alone?

<comment><USER2> Work it out this way: founder's round is the first round. That's before any cash goes in. Who is going to be quitting their job is usually the best indicator. If everyone is quitting their job, and everyone has technical skills to offer, and everyone is 100% focused then presumably it's a 33/33/33 split. After that has been done, money goes in either as a loan or for equity at a price agreed by the company. So if a founder put in $100,000 for 10% of the company, all the founder's round equity would be diluted (33*0.9=29.7%).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _A. Is this something you can work out?_

Stop right here and define "this" and think about it from many different perspectives. One of the biggest challenges with founder issues from my personal experience and from talking with other founders is lack of clarity people have in their heads about the objective position. They immediately want to jump to solutions or to fixing the problem without even being able to elaborate the precise problem beyond "he sucks" or "he can't do x" etc. The problem with stopping there and not critically thinking further is that you risk not trying hard enough and smart enough to make conflicts between founders work out. For every tragic founder story, there are plenty of successful stories where if you dig deeper, you will find the successful founders who at one point were at significant disagreement but instead of moving on, they took the time to deliberately make things work out. This may require Founder A to coach Founder B in a specific area or for Founder B to rapidly change certain behavior etc.

From the outset, be willing to invest time and brain to making things work out before deciding to split. This itself is a huge ask. If a founder isn't willing to engage in good faith difficult conversations on a _daily_ basis(about any topic), that is a bigger grounds for splitting for me than any specific issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> Partnership is harder than marriage.

People are often quick to rush in and slow to leave. We should be slow to enter, and quicker to leave once we know how to recognize, and see the writing on the wall.

You will learn more from business partnership and making one succeed will make it that much easier to succeed in other relationships including love, and marriage.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty interesting article in the way that you explain some really diplomatic way to handle these kind of situation. But I really think the best way to avoid these kind of problem is to set each founder role in the company. I just wrote an article about that as a reaction to your article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5029029>

</comment><comment><USER7> So basically, talk to the other founders, investors and lawyers first and hope the guy you want to fire doesn't realize what you're doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the first step is having a series of frank conversations about the issues.

If nothing changes / get fixed, then I think you need to move to a mode where you take action.

In some cases, your co-founder will decide to part ways or resign as they will know things are not working and may be quite unhappy themselves.

If it gets to the point where you are actually firing someone, it should not be a surprise to them that there are large, unresolved issues. These should have been discussed a bunch of times before.

Either way, you will need to consult with various parties on both sides.

<comment><USER8> It helps if before there is a problem you accuse them of mental instability and create a culture of bias and ostracism and lighten their workload. Prevent them from participating in any way with the running of the company. Send them on wild goose chases. Assign them things that do very little and will never see the light of day. This has the double effect of giving them more time to worry about the immense workload that is being neglected and making them look useless. If they weren't crazy before they sure will be in a few months when the pressure to meet deadlines builds and they are unable to do anything about it.

<comment><USER9> IANAL but that would make it even worse, and likely lead to a lawsuit. Hostile work environment, or discrimination based on medical condition would be actionable.

<comment><USER8> lolwut?

<comment><USER10> Please don't make comments like that here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole concept of co-founder as a "title" is a bit ridiculous. In the beginning, when companies are small and things are literally getting built from the ground up, when customer relations are KEY, every single employee who contributes is, for all practical purposes, a founder. Things get dicey when the people with "founder" in their title start getting big egos, start getting cocky, and think that they have the sole authority to go around getting rid of people they don't "like" in order to intentionally screw them out of their equity and thus keep their positions of power intact.

This is a long-running problem in management science: CEOs surround themselves with "yes men" (or "yes women") -- people who worship the ground the CEO walks on, people who tell the the CEO how "great" he is, etc. The CEO assures that these "yes men" are paid handsomely to keep the CEO in his role. See also: [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57533674/the-evils- of...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57533674/the-evils-of-yes-men- and-groupthink/)

Early-stage employees who _don't_ have the "founder" word in their title, but who still contribute(d) pivotally to the team are oftentimes "let go" right before their stock vests. These early stage employees are often paid _far_ below market rate for their experience and education, but promised equity with a slightly accelerated vesting period. Early stage employees work themselves to the bone, and right before they are able to realize their ROI, they are "let go." This is a slimy, insidious thing that anybody working for a startup should be keenly attuned to.

I convey this knowledge from firsthand experience. I am absolutely certain that the CEO who manufactured falsehoods in order to screw me out of my fair pay and equity is an unethical scumbag who lacks the maturity and the moral fortitude to be running a company.

If you're an early-stage employee in such situation, here's what I did, glad I did:

(A) Don't sign _anything_. If you are an employee of an early stage company, think of yourself as an employee founder, even if you don't have the word "founder" in your title. You built or helped build the company where it is today; you have a legal stake in the company

(B) Request an extension of time to review your "termination" paperwork. They usually try to make you sign something within 7 days. Ask for 30 - 45 -- or just ignore the deadline. Especially if the severance they offer you is insultingly low and doesn't contain any equity

(C) File for unemployment insurance IMMEDIATELY. If they're firing you without due cause ( almost always the case when their motivation behind firing you is to screw you out of your equity ) you are entitled to collect UI -- you paid for it, you deserve it. File for unpaid overtime as well. <http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_overtime.htm> Think about it like overtime is OK, as accumulates in stock, if they screw you out of your stock, they're screwing you out of your overtime, which is illegal

(D) Don't worry about what people think. If you were fired because the company is trying to screw you out of your equity, there is no reason to be ashamed that you were fired. It happens WAY more than people realize -- the slimy underbelly of greedy people and shoddy ethics

(E) Don't give up hope! There ARE good people and good companies in the Valley -- there are companies that hold on to their early stage employees and let them realize the fruits of their hard work, companies and execs who don't try to screw the worker bees out of their efforts. I've interviewed with a couple of them, and am not giving up. When I first started working at the company that I used to work at, I would arrive at ~7 AM sometimes. Another employee (@mjallday) would also, and I remember telling him: "I'd still want to be working, even if I was a millionaire." This is _so_ true, and why I haven't and won't let one bad experience ruin my faith in humanity

<comment><USER12> _Early-stage employees who _don't_ have the "founder" word in their title, but who still contribute(d) pivotally to the team are oftentimes "let go" right before their stock vests. These early stage employees are often paid _far_ below market rate for their experience and education, but promised equity with a slightly accelerated vesting period. Early stage employees work themselves to the bone, and right before they are able to realize their ROI, they are "let go." This is a slimy, insidious thing that anybody working for a startup should be keenly attuned to._

I know this has happened in the past, but I find the idea that it's a common practice to be dubious. You used the word "oftentimes". I take issue. I don't think this happens often. How many data points do you have to share on this?

<comment><USER13> I was let go by a startup on the very same case. They hit it big , I hit Skid Row. Bummer

<comment><USER12> You were let go before your cliff, that is, at the end of year one, for no reason other than to deny you one year's vested options that you'd have to pay to exercise?

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it seems odd that there are startups who know enough to do 4/1 vesting with a cliff, but also don't know enough to not abuse it this way.

The most unpleasant "founder disputes" I've ever seen have been in partnerships, not silicon valley style startups with vesting, and usually result from not having anything documented.

I'd be willing to say most "valley style" startups don't do this cliff- fighting options thing, which is why it's so astounding when it happens. Even what Zynga and Skype are said to have done wasn't outright "take stock away from someone right before a cliff since it has appreciated".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Quick question. Let's say you both own equity on a 35-35 basis (with the investors owning the remaining 30%). I don't know if this is the exact right number. Anyway, your cofounder decides to can you and the board is on his side. You still own 35% of the company, right? Is there any way for the other founder to screw you out of that without screwing himself too?

<comment><USER16> That depends on vesting. You own whatever portion of the 35% that has vested based on your contract and have legal rights to it, although your contract could have repurchase clauses that allow the company to buy back shares at a price you may not like. Vesting clauses are common for cofounders as well as employees, and this is usually a good thing to avoid the possibility of a cofounder working for a couple of months and then leaving with full ownership.

<comment><USER15> Sure, I guess the circumstance that would concern me is if I worked for years.

<comment><USER17> Then there's nothing to worry about (if proper vesting clauses are in place), since you'll have vested (and thus, would keep on your way out) the proper amount of your 35%.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I'll never provision another database user - <AUTHOR> http://borgified.github.io/strongdm/2017/06/20/user-account-creation.html <comment><USER2> > Others embraced it quickly, recognizing the simplicity of being able to > connect to localhost:3306 and have instant access to production data.

Well that seems like a huge production outage just waiting to happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> or use an OSS solution: [https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/databases/index.htm...](https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/databases/index.html) and it conveniently does a lot more than just DB auth.

<comment><USER4> Or LDAP?

[https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/pam-pluggable- authen...](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/pam-pluggable- authentication.html#pam-authentication-ldap-without-proxy)

<comment><USER3> True, a valid option for MySQL. Not every database handles LDAP, and Vault gives you dynamically created credentials to your DB, so the accounts are created and deleted _AS NEEDED_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Submission title doesn't seem to have anything to do with the content? The post is mostly about semiautomated user account management, from the title I was expecting some kind of postmortem where provisioning a database user caused some kind of disaster.

</comment><comment><USER6> Or, if you use Google Apps (aka G Suite now), use Google Identity-Aware Proxy [1]

Basically, all it does is adding couple of headers, like user-id, to every single HTTP request. And as soon as you delete user's account in your Google Apps console -- they will lose access to your corporate services.

Drawbacks are:

1\. This require cooperation from the services. E.g. you have Jenkins -- it needs to check those headers. I don't know if Jenkins has a plugin for that yet.

2\. The service must run on GCP, so Google can proxy requests to it.

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/iap/](https://cloud.google.com/iap/)

<comment><USER6> Correction: the accounts for the proxy are managed in GCP IAM, not in Google Apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How's this different from [https://www.onelogin.com/](https://www.onelogin.com/)?

</comment><comment><USER8> strongDM looks like an alternative to Vault for this one use case. Does anyone have any idea what strongDM's pricing is like?

<comment><USER9> I can't help but notice that the script link to GitHub (seriously?) in the OP topic contains something involving NRPE and NSCLIENT++ - that's part of a bloody monitoring system.

There are APIs, connectors and the good $DEITY knows what in so many languages it isn't funny anymore that you decide to re-purpose a monitoring agent to delete an account? I'm no programmer but even I could whip up a link between MySQL/MariaDB and say AD with PHP, Python or Perl

Actually the more I bother clicking on the links in the GH repo and idly browsing the more I wonder what is going on.

Soz: What's Vault?

<comment><USER3> [https://www.vaultproject.io](https://www.vaultproject.io)

It's like a one-stop shop for most your security needs. They label it as "A Tool for Managing Secrets" which it does, but it does a lot more than that too. One of the things it does (and what applies here) is dynamically create DB accounts _AS NEEDED_ with random usernames and passwords, which auto-expire and are deleted as soon as they are not needed anymore. which is more than strongDM seems to do.</comment></comment></comment>