Any tips to help me with this website? - csm-dev Hi, I'll opened a website two weeks ago that collects donations. The idea came after i saw a website that i'm sure all of you know, highscore Money. I wondered why, with all the money collected, this money could not be used do something useful. Once it was online first donations came by word of mouth, and two people here, on YCombinator. So i'm here looking for advice and suggestions by you. Really, any suggestion is welcome. Would you change anything? There is something that seems unclear? How you would increase the credibility?
Thanks to some feedback, from users, I decided to make some changes after a few days - Reduce the percentage retained by CSM, lowered to 20% - Publish the pool right now, without waiting for the end of July
I know it can be improved in terms of design :) but I do not want to make a difference as a web designer with this website, I want to find a way to help others and to do, a little, my part. Thanks to all of you. http://charityscore.money/ <comment><AUTHOR> At a quick glance, the grammatical errors really turn me off. It immediately reminds me of a "scam" web site.

In my own personal -- and cynical/jaded -- perspective, it seems that you don't really "want to find a way to help others", as evidenced by the fact that you're taking 20% of donations.

Am I understanding this correctly? I give you $100 and you keep $20 and give the remaining $80 to some charity?

And the charity is chosen by an (easily gamed) Twitter vote?

No thanks, but good luck.

<comment> csm-dev Hi jlgaddis, thanks for your comment. Percentage is high, I know, but it is only for these first weeks of activity. Once website, i hope :), starts to be known I would reduce it to 1 or 2%, to cover just the ADV costs, I'm not looking personal gain.

About the choice method, do you have any suggestions? How would you choose charity? Thanks again for your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> If you're going to use your Twitter account to spam for publicity, I'd remove the feed from your website.

<comment> csm-dev Hi bdcravens, feed removed, you're right about it. At first I just used it to talk about website but then, as you correctly say, the messages have changed :)

So yes, I think it is time to remove the feed from homepage. Thank you for your suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Why are you disabling right-click? This is very damaging to credibility.

<comment> csm-dev Removed, you're right bdcravens. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Kombucha - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha <comment><USER2> I was on this wiki page just yesterday! Shocked to see it here and with no associated commentary. Strange.

I had solidified a date by telling her to bring kombucha, which to her was "oddly specific" but she had some, haha. Know the audience (and the competition).

<comment><USER3> Is too boring, old fashioned, and such. Should have used and/or combined with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptogen) which brings its own problems with it, as explained there. The same could be said for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir), but OMG lactose, and non-vegan!1!!</comment></comment>


What Emotions Are (and Aren't) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/what-emotions-are-and-arent.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Interesting that one of the opening premises of this piece is: "Most people, including many scientists, believe that emotions are distinct, locatable entities inside us — but they're not. Searching for emotions in this form is as misguided as looking for cerebral clarinets and oboes."

Meanwhile, this article was linked on HN a few months ago where they essentially mapped the locations of emotions: [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2013/12/30/25831311...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2013/12/30/258313116/mapping-emotions-on-the-body-love-makes-us-warm- all-over)

from the second article: "Each emotion activates a distinct set of body parts, he thinks, and the mind's recognition of those patterns helps us consciously identify that emotion."

OP does mention this, but the thesis is that emotions and responses are not universal, which is contra to the thesis of the second.

<comment><USER3> The IDL study worked with brain imaging data and tried to correlate a particular part of the brain with emotion. The NPR article relates a Finnish study where people experiencing emotion were asked to map our where they felt different emotions. Looks like apples v. oranges to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good article. But it's not an argument against essentialism. If two states are judged to share the same emotional character, then they necessarily have something identifiable in common, namely, an essential property. The author merely wants a better measuring device to find this essential property, not to abandon the search.

Darwin did update the idea of essences by giving us many more to work with. The finding of transitional forms in the fossil record helped drive this point home. He also showed that whatever their center of "essential mass" was, it definitely wasn't immutable as many had speculated before him. By explaining speciation through gradual change, Darwin showed us that every species' core is in flux.

For John Dewey (who famously wrote about the impact of Darwin on philosophy), this meant that the concept of a fixed and eternal essence in biology was then metaphysical baggage. But Dewey jumped the gun a bit because he was writing before any understanding of genes. Nowadays, genetic essentialism is an indispensable notion in biology, since it is mostly only by sharing in some genetic core of what a species is that enables two tokens of that species type to interbreed productively.

As for the article, I gather that one of the author's primary aims was to discredit the theoretical basis of practices like profiling, lie-detection, and such. She also wanted to show that localizing emotions in one part of the brain is a fool's errand, which she did to great effect. And while her point about the statistical nature of reading each other's emotions is valid, it's certainly not a stroke against the idea that all feeling states of one kind have something in common. After all, if they didn't, then we'd constantly be unsure whether it's hunger or xenophobia we feel when we smell pancakes in the morning.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Most people, including many scientists, believe that emotions are distinct, locatable entities inside us — but they're not."

Hmmm, smells like a straw-man. What kind of scientists? Biologists? Chemists? Cosmologists? And how exactly does the author know this? A recent survey of published papers? TV shows? An informal questionnaire? Maybe the author will get to it later.

"My lab analyzed over 200 published studies, covering nearly 22,000 test subjects, and found no consistent and specific fingerprints in the body for any emotion. Instead, the body acts in diverse ways that are tied to the situation."

There we go.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sadness: Well, it turns out we don't really exist. So long, nice knowing you all...

Fear: W-We're being wiped from EXISTENCE?!

Joy: Hey, it isn't that bad! Riley can still feel each of us, so we're real!

Anger: Hey! Who are you to tell us what we are and aren't? You're cruisin' for a broccoli pizza stuffed right up your--

Disgust: Relax, they're scientists. They always have to _ruin everything_.</comment>


China's Xi Vows to Defend Maritime Interests, Sovereignty in '17 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-31/china-s-xi-vows-to-defend-maritime-interests-sovereignty-in-17 <comment><USER2> Mahan ("The Influence of Sea Power upon History") argues that a nation that depends on ocean-based commerce requires control of the seas. The long term view requires China to exert such control. Apparently someone in China studies history.

This must challenge the dominant force, the U.S. Navy.

It is only a matter of time and circumstance that guarantees an attempt to shift of the balance of control and, as that shift is a fundamental power struggle, it implies war.

Building a chain of islands in the South China Sea is clever. Islands are harder to sink than carriers.

Destablizing support of forward deep water ports (the Phillipines) weakens the ability to maintain a forward presence.

Building a "great firewall" against electronic attack minimizes the problem of electronic infrastructure attacks.

Building nuclear and hydro power sources reduces the dependence on foreign coal, making blockades less effective.

Slowly, the weakest points are being reduced, area denial/area defenses are increasing.

The Navy knows this is happening. They will have alternative strategies. That won't matter, of course, because the new administration "knows more than the generals (admirals)". No doubt the new administration has a "secret plan" which will solve all of the problems.

TPP was a diplomatic attempt to align many nations in an economic coalition involving all of the end points of trade. The ability to throttle/cut off trade by economic means rather than military means would allow a diplomatic solution to the power struggle, avoiding war. "Economic coalition" is not a term of art for the new administration. Diplomacy is not even in the new dictionary.

It won't be "just a naval war over there". A power grid shutdown for a week will lead to starvation rather quickly. You can't get food without trucks. You can't get trucks without gas. You can't get gas without electicity. We can't even distribute water to Flint WITH everything working. Feeding NYC without power will be an impossible task. "Any Society is Three Square Meals away from Anarchy".

We could avoid all of this with proper diplomacy, respect, and negotiation. But we won't.

God save the King.</comment>


Show HN: Big Year, my niche app for birders - <AUTHOR> http://bigyear.cloudforestconservation.org/

<comment><USER2> is 'Big Year' a common phrase? Otherwise you might get into trouble with the movie - [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1053810/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1053810/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is actually, dates back to 1934[0]

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_year](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_year)</comment></comment>


The Machine Learning Opportunity in Manufacturing, Logistics - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/02/01/machine-learning-opportunity-manufacturing-logistics/ <comment><USER2> I don't think people realize how big a trend in general manufacturing will be in the future. The life cycle of the world can best be described as new systems / software supporting new infrastructure / hardware.

We've had 40 years of massive improvements in software and code. There have absolutely been hardware improvements in that time, but we haven't seen the levels of improvement we saw from 1920 to 1960 for example. The reason for this is that software or hardware tends to dominate for 40 or so years, followed by a reverse, where the new area takes advantages of the advances laid down in the other. This dynamic tends to play out in other fields of a soft science or liberal arts supporting a hard science.

Interestingly, the 40 year pattern tends to hold for national real estate as well, where prices tend to shift back and forth between coastal areas and the "inner US".

All of this means that the mid-west, with its incredibly cheap real estate and 100+ year history of manufacturing won't be the new Silicon Valley ever, but it will be what it once was, a great place to be during a dominant era of American manufacturing supported by advances in software. Probably will also decline again at some point too though.

Also there are plenty of places in Ohio where you can get a 2500 square foot 100k house in a reasonable school district in a town of 200k+. Also means SF and NY real estate likely to revert to what it was like in the 1970's, a super cheap albeit dangerous place to live.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article basically says that there's a trend of increasing interest. Well, that's great--I'm sure there's plenty of interest from industrial firms. But there's a lot of grunt work that needs to be done before anyone can hope to make real money off ML in this space... industrial equipment is often ancient and analog, standards are all over the place, and the talent pool isn't there. GE learned this the hard way with Predix.

<comment><USER4> Yup. This is my day-to-day life. Yes, huge industrial firms might have a ton of data... but it might be spread out over 5000 hard drives from 1995-present. It's extremely hard for an outside AI/ML startup to target that type of space, because they just don't have the data. Or the knowledge that lives in the head of a 30+-year-engineer who knows everything about every piece of equipment that has ever been used on a manufacturing floor.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Do you work directly for a manufacturing company/relevant company?

I wonder if this would be a better opportunity for an outside firm in a longer-term contractual role, so that they both have some autonomy but also access to the data. At least that way they come away with field-knowledge but would obviously be restricted in terms of the proprietary data.

I don't know how real-world unrealistic I am being, but for instance:

\- Pitch the potential project, including its mass of limitations, but also its end product / projects given x is possible, y is possible, z is possible, etc

\- Present a contract that allows for years, potentially, and enough running capital to hire a staff that can handle modeling the schema, collecting arranging the data, interviewing the experts and quantifying their understanding if necessary.

I mean, if there's a perceived and expected value out of doing it, surely there could be some compromise like start with one sub-process and one type of machine and go from there?

Do you imagine it should need to be holistic?

Or, maybe design a new machine?

For instance, at a major auto sub-manufacturer they are _extremely_ critical and thorough with their quality controls. Currently, this is done 100% manually. Parts (pre- and post-assembly) every N parts or H hours are pulled off the line while the line runs, taken to the lab, welds tested, measurements tested against calibrations, and in some cases chemical tests made to ensure proper galvanization.

That data could be entered initially and measurement data accumulate pretty rapidly.

I'm sure that process could be replaced for the most part using the AI/ML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes let's do heuristics instead of first principle modeling and rigorous math programming / control.</comment>


Advantages of monolithic version control - <AUTHOR> https://danluu.com/monorepo/ <comment><USER2> > Since atomic cross-project commits are possible, the repository can always > be in a consistent state – at commit #X, all project builds should work.

At Google this regularly failed. We spent hours unable to commit changes (unless a disaster could justify ignoring build and test failures) because someone we'd never met had broken the world and the fix was still making its way through the enormous backlog of projects to retry. Every project needed people taking turns in a "build cop" role diagnosing this stuff and demanding rollbacks as quickly as possible.

It's essential to pin known-good version of your dependencies and upgrade when you can handle it. You can't expect _every commit anyone ever makes_ to be production ready.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You can't expect every commit anyone ever makes to be production ready.

Of course not — but surely that's what branches are for.

Does Perforce not have a concept of branches? It seems absurd that Google would let folks merge untested commits into master.

<comment><USER2> Generally Googlers edited and reviewed a changelist (which is like amending a commit that hasn't been pushed yet) and then submitted when it's considered ready to deploy. You're expected to run your project's test targets (which might include a few critical dependents) before you submit, but if you have a huge set of dependents there's no way to be certain none will break—their tests might be flaky or fail for reasons that aren't your fault, and there will be hundreds of new changelists submitted (including changes to your own dependencies!) while your tests were running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll actually go further than Dan here: I'm beginning to believe that the default should be one repo per company or team-of-teams, and that creating a second repo should require _extremely_ good reasons why.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how far you could get at a startup just using git as the monorepo. That is, before it became too painful.</comment>


Finding awesome developers in programming interviews - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=105 <comment><USER2> I am confused by the opening paragraph:

 _In a job interview, I once asked a very experienced embedded software developer to write a program that reverses a string and prints it on the screen. He struggled with this basic task. This man was awesome. Give him a bucket of spare parts, and he could build a robot and program it to navigate around the room. He had worked on satellites that are now in actual orbit. He could have coded circles around me. But the one thing that he had never, ever needed to do was: display something on the screen._

Okay, he "could have coded circles around the interviewer" while simultaneously he had never, ever needed to display something on the screen.

Does this mean he's an awesome developer and we should be wary of a false negative provided by applying a single, very narrow test? Or does it mean we should apply lots of tests because you never know when you're going to discover that the person you thought was awesome lacks some basic experience you deem fundamental?

<comment><USER3> Interviews are stressful and coding is not normally an exhibition sport. It is possible for people to freeze in interview situations - I didn't realize it was possible until it happened to me once in an interview for a CTO role for a fairly established company. I had aced giving the "how do you launch a new product" presentation but then the founder asked me some trivial coding questions (and I do mean trivial) and my brain was stuck in marketing mode and would _not_ context switch. A few minutes later I did come up with an answer, but by that point the founder has obviously decided that I wasn't technical enough....

I can laugh about it now - was pretty gutted at the time.

<comment><USER2> I recall the wheels coming off my bus once when asked to write a Java program that printed the first 100 primes in an interview. This was after writing a Scheme implementation in Java, being the Threadalyzer team lead, and JProbe Development Manager.

I also laugh about it now, but at the time I was bewildered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some good points in interviewing, but I think that's more useful to me for when I'm the interviewee... Seems like that info could be used to improve your resume and lead an interview from the interviewee's seat... Make them ask the questions you want to answer, etc, if they aren't already.

As for the lying on the resume, though... I disagree. Assuming everything on the resume is a lie and not being surprised about the lies is wrong. Anyone who will lie on their resume will lie afterwards, too. Anytime they tell you they can do a task, you can't trust them for it. You have to micromanage them forever after.

That's not to say you should assume it's the truth... You should investigate and make sure. But if there are lies, it should horrify you.

<comment><USER5> I wanted to echo the last part of this one. I've interviewed a lot of people and I see people "exaggerating" or outright lying about their skill levels and abilities more often than I would expect. It seems, anecdotally, to be increasing as well. If you find someone doing this - no hire. Instantly. If you're the one with the CV - please don't. For your own sake. It's poisonous, and it won't help you long term.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's not like, if you get the job, you can fake out the machine too. Either you got the skills or you don't.

I interviewed someone recently who listed C++ as his top skill. What that actually meant was a) he phyically sat near the C++ programmers at his current job and b) he ran the programs they wrote on his PC.

<comment><USER7> A colleague once had a candidate who dutifully listed PostScript on his résumé because he had been using a "print to file" feature.

<comment><USER6> I've seen telnet listed as a skill too.

<comment><USER8> People list all the programs they've used. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, Firefox, Internet Explorer, [no, not a web programmer] Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, emacs, Visual Studio, gcc, g++, ssh, Putty, xterm, armed robbery, and emacs. (Typical start to an interview: "You listed emacs twice." "Really? Oops, sorry." "That's... not the reply I was fishing for, but 'oops' is acceptable.")

Frankly, I don't blame them. I looked through a stack of a dozen resumes on my boss's desk and noticed that every single resume listed Scrum. Somebody in HR is screening out candidates that don't list Scrum on their resume. I pointed it out to my boss and he just laughed and said he didn't think he could do anything about it. (I didn't look for other patterns, but I bet it's just as bad with particular software technologies.)

So listing every single piece of software you've ever noticed installed on your computer is a good policy unless you're personally handing your resume to the hiring manager. It makes a bad impression on technical folks, but that's better than getting your resume round-filed before anybody technical sees it.

(Note to self: next time job hunting, prepare different HR-friendly and techie-friendly versions of each resume.)

<comment><USER6> There must be some jub hunters advice book where they tell people to do this, or maybe schools careers advisers do.

We had a case where we had a stream of candidates giving the same - and wrong - answers to various questions, all had come via the same recruiter, who was debriefing them after and coaching the next one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The question must be precisely worded. "Write a function to shuffle a deck of cards" is woefully ambiguous. Provide the function header and avoid misunderstandings, which are all too common._

Nah... you need to know if the candidate can spot underspecified problems and ask for clarification.

<comment><USER9> I'd argue that ability is more important than if he can come up with a good card-shuffling or string-reversing algorithm on the spot. Algorithms can be looked up easily if you're having a mental blocj. The ability to know that you need more information is a bit more elusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Again, the interviewer doesn't distinguish between "systems programmer" and "applications programmer". His questions are ALL for systems programmers.

Its like testing bias. No surprise that white upper-middle-class males clog our colleges, if the test is written by one.

<comment><USER11> Can you elaborate on the difference between a system and an application programmer?

<comment><USER10> E.g.

Systems programmer deals with deep structures, narrow APIs and lots of persistent state.

Applications programmers deal with wide APIs and state machines.</comment></comment></comment>


I am a guy who sold his startup and I have like $20M in the bank. AMA. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/azgs6/iama_guy_who_sold_his_startup_and_i_have_like_20m/ <comment><USER2> From the comments:

 _Two quick stories for you, which I hope will give you some perspective:

1\. I knew a billionaire with cancer. Imagine having all the money in the world and being unable to eat.

2\. I knew a super millionaire with half a dozen properties all over the world who lived next to another super millionaire with half a dozen properties all over the world; they were locked into a multi-million dollar argument over 6 feet of beachfront between them._

This is actually very relevant to my life. My medical condition can seriously interfere with the ability to eat and can cost hundreds of thousands per year in medical expenses. My oldest son has the same diagnosis. So, by getting me and my kids well, I am literally saving millions of dollars over the course of our lives, even though my income is probably a lot less than most members of this forum and the quality of life aspect of it is worth way more than money to us.

That helps keep me sane in the face of serious financial issues. :-) I also like to think that if I ever do have serious money, this perspective/experience will continue to keep me grounded and keep my priorities straight.

<comment><USER3> That sounds really rough. I had some relatively minor digestive issues this year and lost 20 lbs in 1 month. I felt, for almost an entire month, as if I would get sick at any moment (yet only did twice).

It really sucked, though it's largely over and I can't imagine what someone with serious issues goes through.So good luck with getting well!

<comment><USER4> I had similar symptoms that last summer - do you know what caused it?

I was tested with no conclusive result, but it was also during a listeria outbreak which I was not tested for.

It was a rough few months.

<comment><USER3> I don't know for sure. I think it was high stress, lack of sleep, poor diet and exercise. I fixed the last three (the stress I am stuck with) and am close to normal again.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I am still mildly worried that it could pop up again at any time and I had a relatively good diet and exercise regime when it occurred. Sleep and stress are tougher to solve.

Glad to hear you have had success getting better - stay healthy.

<comment><USER5> A tip from (bad) experience is to check for bacteria infection, if that hasn't been done already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "My question for reddit: what would you do if you had $20M in the bank?"

Fight death.

\- Fight death of individuals:

Cryonic preservation: <http://www.cryonics.org/> \-- see also <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Cryonics>

Basic research on aging and fighting it: <http://mprize.org/>

\- Prevent the extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life:

Oxford Future of Humanity Institute - academic research on global catastrophic risks. <http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/>

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence - <http://singinst.org/>

\- Where to hang out with other people interested in rational philanthropy with maximum utilitarian impact per marginal dollar: <http://lesswrong.com/> and <http://felicifia.com/>

<comment><USER7> _Where to hang out with other people interested in rational philanthropy with maximum utilitarian impact per marginal dollar_

As far as the human race is concerned, pretty much everything you listed (cryonics, anti-aging, preparing for AI that may never be invented, etc) has the least amount of utility per dollar spent.

<comment><USER8> Do you have stats showing anti-aging research has low benefit per dollar spent? Or do you just have some kind of prejudice against life? Aubrey de Grey says it's cheap, as these things go.

<comment><USER7> Just an intuitive understanding that if we decrease infant mortality we will net the human race many more years of life than anti-aging research. Spare a few cents for a vaccine anyone? As opposed to dumping a bunch of money into theoretical anti-aging efforts.

Now you might argue that one additional year for an adult is more valuable to society than one additional year for a child, but I'd rather not quibble over the exact value of a year of life. There are counterarguments; how many genius do you think we lose in Africa because of inadequate medicine and education?

EDIT: If it's cheaper than optimizing on the low end, then of course I would support optimizing on the high end. But given the large number of human beings that die young for stupid reasons, I can't imagine that the high end is cheaper. Thanks for pointing out Aubrey de Grey, though. I'll do some reading.

<comment><USER9> > Just an intuitive understanding that if we decrease infant mortality we will > net the human race many more years of life than anti-aging research.

If we accept that there's no reason why we couldn't defeat aging (mostly with periodical repair of the molecular damage that accumulates as a by-product of metabolism -- not need to understand how everything work, just keep damage under a certain threshold) and that we will some day do it, we should do everything to bring that day closer;

100-200k deaths per day. All those that die won't come back. Lifes saved by curing aging are actually saved for real, we don't just delay their death by a few years/decades.

This would be one of the most important things that humanity ever did, and once we do, we'll look back at our current lack of enthusiasm in curing aging as a great sin of omission (we could have did it sooner, but just took our time).

I'm all for vaccines, but right now it's not anti-aging research that is taking money away from vaccines. There are a billion other places to cut first.

If you're looking for a very important field that is dramatically under- funded, it's hard to get more marginal utility than in curing human senescence.

<comment><USER7> _100-200k deaths per day. All those that die won't come back. Lifes saved by curing aging are actually saved for real, we don't just delay their death by a few years/decades._

So you're talking about immortality? I'm not sure we're capable of devising a governmental system capable of surviving such an invention.

When I read anti-aging, I assume the extension of lifespan, not immortality.

I really like your posts on this issue though, I'm going to check out the links you provided.

<comment><USER10> _I'm not sure we're capable of devising a governmental system..._

From the perspective of our ancestors, birth control is just as weird, arguably weirder.

Human beings are strongy predisposed to believe that the way we do things right now is the only correct/justifiable way they could be done:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias>

<comment><USER7> As an educated person, obviously I'm aware of this. I'm not rejecting the possibility of designing a government that can handle immortality; I'm merely remarking on what I perceive to be great difficulty in designing such a system. I haven't said anything regarding the correctness, justifiability, or longevity of our current systems of government.

Having a degree of skepticism is a far cry from supporting the status quo; I want to be clear that I do not support it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "My question for reddit: what would you do if you had $20M in the bank?"

Thats a hard question, with that kind of money I can't think of any obvious ideas that would have a big impact on humanity.

If he had said I have $20 billion heres my ideas:

\- Make Creative Commons text books. Hire a group of editors and staff that over see super star teachers who write the books. Release them under the CC licence.

\- Startup Apartment Complex in San Fransisco. Build a large building in San Fransisco with small apartments. Small on size big on quality. Some floors would be modular office space. Subsidize the rent for equity in Startups that move in.

\- Rethink college: Start a college a new college. It would be like a start up but instead of starting a business your creating a new college.

\- Create an ethical version of Best Buy. An consumer electronics store that actually puts the customer first and treats it's employees well. The same for an ethical version of Kmart.

<comment><USER12> > _\- Make Creative Commons text books. Hire a group of editors and staff that > over see super star teachers who write the books. Release them under the CC > licence._

The problem being that no one will use them. There was an article a while back about how _all_ the textbooks' content is basically controlled by some Christian 'watchdog' group in Texas.

<comment><USER13> I think you mean this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598523>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Note: the gold star next to the post means that the reddit moderators have verified the claims/identity of the interviewee.

</comment><comment><USER15> A comment I liked, that a reddit user asked:

Question: _Do your kids know how much money you have?_

His answer: _My oldest is 11, and I think she is figuring it out. It's hilarious, because over the last couple of years she comes home and says "My friend is totally rich - can we be rich someday? They live in a mansion!"_

<comment><USER16> You cut out the best part, which is that those friends are actually in debt and just _look_ much richer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I saw this early, and it was killed. Not sure why...this is right up HN's alley. Not many people talk about this stuff publicly, so it's pretty interesting to hear someone talk honestly and openly about it.

<comment><USER18> have any idea what the startup was?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. He said that it was sold between 1 year ago and 4 years ago. In addition, his company is still going.

2\. He said that before taxes he had 30 million dollars, so the startup was sold for >=30 million dollars.

3\. He is married and has an 11 year old daughter (and at least one more kid). Him and his wife are at least 30 years old.

4\. At least one newspaper reported on him selling his startup.

I tried using CrunchBase to search for his startup but the list of companies sold in the last 5 years is huge...

<comment><USER19> >so the startup was sold for >=30 million dollars

 _He_ got 30M. That means that startup was sold for much more than that (2-300M?)

<comment><USER20> Maybe not. Derek Sivers, for example, sold *Baby for that range but owned 100% of the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If he wanted people to know who he is, he wouldn't have used a throwaway account.

Give the guy some privacy.

<comment> brown9-2 If he didn't want people to read his "ask me anything" post, he would not have made one on reddit.

<comment><USER7> Right so let's violate the privacy of every interesting person who posts things online. Oh wait, that's what was done with _why. Seemed to work out well, didn't it? I don't even want to think about how many interesting Ruby innovations were lost as a result.

Bottom line: the information is meant to be read but decency and common sense should prevent you from probing deeper. If you don't follow these guidelines, interesting people will stop posting online. Unrestrained curiosity in these situations leads to everyone losing.

<comment><USER22> You know, AMA stands for "Ask Me Anything", which generally implies that any question is fair game (with obvious caveats for off-topic privacy-invasive questions).

People who don't want to answer any question should probably write "AMAA" ("Ask Me Almost Anything").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I particularly liked this heart-felt comment/feedback in the original thread

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/azgs6/iama_guy_who_sol...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/azgs6/iama_guy_who_sold_his_startup_and_i_have_like_20m/c0k72z1)

</comment><comment><USER24> Would it be possible to have AMAs and AMAAs here?

<comment><USER25> Go for it

<comment><USER26> I like reddit. In fact, it is in my rotation of sites I check at least once daily.

I visit HN mainly for the technical/startup articles. I would prefer, personally, for general interest items to remain on reddit, since I check both. It's not good vs. evil! We can have both.

<comment><USER27> I'm a redditor too; but don't you think that the questions here would be a different nature than the ones you see on reddit? Especially if it was someone like the author of this AMA; I get the feeling there would be a lot more advice seeking questions here (and far less begging for money).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I must say the comments on this reddit thread amuse me more than most. Nothing like a guy with a good sense of humor.

</comment><comment><USER29> If it where me, I would rebuild a 74 ford Bronco from the frame up, with my son. Then, I would rebuild a 44 ft. Sportfisher and start competition sport fishing in the Florida Keys.

More importantly though, when my kids where a little older, I would disappear for a year, roaming as a drifter, I would find individuals and families in need, not broke people, but people who have a tragic life story to tell. I would personally help them one by one to overcome their adversity by becoming their true friend as well as helping them financially and psychologically repair their and their families life.

When I returned from my travels I would use my journal to write a novel and then produce a film titled "the man who purchased friends" or "buying friends" I can't decide. Obviously I would change my friends names as well as my own so that it could be construed as potentially fictitious accounts, leaving people to wonder always makes for a better tale.

</comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, I think this kind of thing is interesting, but it's totally for the benefit of the ego of the poster. And I think it's fine to speculate about his identity too. That's part of the ego stroking.

</comment><comment><USER30> basically you have 3 choices.

\- try to help others(less fortunate). Setup/contribute to charities, teach, cure, feed...

\- try to change the world. promote democracy in russia, try to figure out how gravity works, actively support/participate on a team that does something visionary such as new energy initiatives or space exploration.

\- defer the question for some time. Try to turn 20 into 200.

<comment><USER31> \- have a bunch of fun

You should probably do this, plus one of the other three.

<comment><USER32> That's a given, though. I don't know what kind of fun you're after, but everything I can think of won't put much of a dent into a large sum of money.

<comment><USER33> I can think of a few things that will =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "My question for reddit: what would you do if you had $20M in the bank?"

Well, you could deploy 1mm or so in angel investments.

</comment><comment><USER35> So you are Stewart Butterfield.

</comment><comment><USER36> Weird. This was killed earlier today, not sure how it came back.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109895>

</comment><comment><USER37> _Like_ $20m? So he might actually have 5 million boxes of Twinkies in safety deposit boxes or something..</comment>


GitHub Private is Free: Use GitHub as Your Most Powerful Note Taking System - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/haojianzong/blog/issues/10 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I am happy to see so many awesome ideas from hacker news on note taking: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18837345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18837345)

Would you let me know whether using Github is a good idea for you to manage your notes? Thanks.

<comment><USER2> I've been using Github for notes recently after trying some other alternatives from your AskHN question, and GH has been good so far, particularly for easily writing notes in markdown, and grouping notes in subfolders within repos.

My main criticism is that it's not convenient to use Github on mobile and there's no official app. I just request desktop site in mobile Safari, but the UX is a struggle when creating and editing files.

<comment><AUTHOR> Feels great to connect with you again!

Github on mobile is a pain for me as well, that's why I need to IM-myself for thoughts on the go and even thinking about writing a lightweight app for myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am using Bear app to do note taking and blogging. Github is awesome for personal project management through.</comment>


Cool Features & Shortcuts in FireFox 3 - <AUTHOR> http://i-stuff.blogspot.com/2008/06/cool-features-in-firefox-3.html

<comment><USER2> The feature I want most in Firefox 3 is "don't crash every 15 minutes". Is there a plugin for that?</comment>


Google Titan security key now available to buy – $50 (Currently US only) - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/08/30/googles-hardware-2fa-titan-security-keys-available-starting-today-50-google-store/ <comment><USER2> $50 for a U2F-only Google-branded Feitian key? What's their markup on it, 400%?

It could be worth that much if they would guarantee 100% of the components and supply-chain to be secure and verified, but I doubt that's the case (especially after seeing their Pixel 2XL Q&A fiasco). If I remember right from their announcement they mostly just used their own firmware on Feitian's hardware, so hardware backdoors could still be a possibility.</comment>


Ask HN: Best *BSD Laptops - <AUTHOR>

Recently I've been looking into BSD, and was wondering if HN had any good pics for a laptop to run *BSD. Doesn't have to come preinstalled by the way. <comment><USER2> [http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/laptop/article.html](http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/laptop/article.html)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bsd+laptop](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bsd+laptop)

A number of reviews and bsd forum threads in the second link. I got the impression skimming through that Intel is better supported than AMD on (some?) BSDs, but that may be as of 2010-ish.

<comment><AUTHOR> after using duck duck go per your suggestion I found this link. [http://www.pcbsd.org/store/?cat=16](http://www.pcbsd.org/store/?cat=16)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> OpenBSD runs fine on my Lenovos, a T420 and an X220, both running Intel graphics.

</comment><comment><USER4> OS X is BSD based. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to close that loophole! Dang

<comment><USER5> Why? It and Solaris are the only even somewhat known OSs that are 100% POSIX complaint...

All that aside, I understand completely not wanting a Mac. I don't know about the BSDs, but Thinkpads are wonderful with Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha I actually own a mac and love it. However I have no experience with freebsd or its kin (pc-bsd, and dragon fly bsd) and I'd like to get familiar with its structure and its workings.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Looks at Turning Sears, J.C. Penney Stores into Fulfillment Centers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-and-giant-mall-operator-look-at-turning-sears-j-c-penney-stores-into-fulfillment-centers-11596992863 <comment><USER2> How about Bezos gives us a break to catch our breath... it's not like he ever calms down or feels fulfilled by a "fulfillment center" or anything else.</comment>


Libsass – C implementation of a Sass compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass

<comment><USER2> Wow, didn't expect to see this at the top of HN. Thanks kudo for promoting the project!

Aaron Leung and I have been working on this for a while. I'm the original creator of Sass and Aaron is a badass computer linguist. Hoping to announce some big new features around the end of the year.

Official site is at: [http://libsass.org](http://libsass.org) Or, follow us on Twitter for more updates: @hcatlin & @akhleung

<comment><USER3> a bit of optimization in $src/libsass/copy_c_str.cpp

            char* copy_c_str(const char* orig)
            {
                    size_t len =  strlen(orig) + 1 ;
                    char* copy = (char*) malloc(sizeof(char) * len );
                    memcpy(copy, orig, len);
                    return copy;
            }

<comment><USER4> Uh, okay. I didn't read the original, sounds somewhat scary.

Anyway, please don't cast the return value of malloc() in C ([http://stackoverflow.com/a/605858/28169](http://stackoverflow.com/a/605858/28169)).

Also, of course len should be const and sizeof (char) should be removed. Also testing whether malloc() succeeded before relying on the result being valid is a good idea (but perhaps there's machinery in place to abort on error), as is deciding what to do if the input string is NULL.

<comment><USER5> _Anyway, please don 't cast the return value of malloc() in C ([http://stackoverflow.com/a/605858/28169](http://stackoverflow.com/a/605858/28169))._

It's C++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great as compilation in ruby really is painfully slow for anything substantial, but I wonder about the choice of an independent project vs. forking the ruby compiler and optimizing the bottlenecks with C extensions. Might that allow you to fix the most serious issues without having to worry about maintaining feature parity in a completely separate code base?

In any case, nice work. I look forward to trying it out in my next project.

<comment><USER7> One benefit of being a separate project is that it can be used with non-Ruby wrappers. See node-sass [https://github.com/andrew/node- sass](https://github.com/andrew/node-sass) as an example.

<comment><USER8> And consequently from that project: [https://npmjs.org/package/grunt- sass](https://npmjs.org/package/grunt-sass)

Since I'd guess most people interested in the node version will want the grunt one.

<comment><USER9> I have been all too pleased to move away from the ruby based compiler and just use a pure grunt workflow. It is vastly faster and lighter weight.

From what I understand there are some limitations to the implementation, but I haven't encountered any so far.

<comment><USER10> The few issues I've run into are that I can't use Compass and I can't have Source Maps (yet).

Instead of Compass, I've switched to using Bourbon (bourbon.io) but may consider just using Auto Prefixer in future dev efforts.

Source maps I can live without since I haven't gotten used to them. I know it's in the works or at least being thought about: [https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass/issues/122](https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass/issues/122).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm periodically updating a PHP binding to libsass on my companies github account here: [https://github.com/sensational/sassphp](https://github.com/sensational/sassphp)

It was my intention of keeping up with releases, but it looks like updating it periodically to git HEAD of libsass might be what's needed. I'll look into getting the submodule updated to a later release today.

That said: last summer when I started maintaining this fork of an earlier binding, I noticed that libsass (even tag RELEASE-1.0) was in a bit an early state of development: HEAD was flat-out segfaulting and RELEASE-1.0 was producing miscompilations.

I've reported a few bugs but in the end, we've settled back with ruby sass for the time being. The speed up is nice, but only if the library is actually producing valid output without crashing.

Maybe by now this is better and I should give it another go :-)

Also, I'm certainly no C++ programmer and thus this might be common, but their template based parser with a lot of implementation code in a header file kind of scares me ([https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass/blob/master/prelexer.hpp](https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass/blob/master/prelexer.hpp))

<comment><USER12> We did a lot of development during the summer (including a rewrite that was long overdue), so there were a few segfaults back then. The library should be pretty stable now though -- we've embedded it into our SDK and build system, and it's been working fine.

As for the parser -- that started out as an experiment of sorts. I wanted to do something like parser combinators (but for scanning), and I decided to templatize the whole thing so that all of the scanning code would be generated at compile-time. If I were to redo it, I'd probably use expression templates (which I didn't know about at the time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For all the Go fans out there, I built a sass watcher/compiler using Go + libsass, I'd love to get some feedback. [https://github.com/mfkp/gassy](https://github.com/mfkp/gassy)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not a web guy, but isn't sass a CSS generator, as in something you run once before deploying anything? What's the advantage of speed for something like this?

<comment><USER2> So, when big companies like Linkedin generate their Sass projects, it can take hours on a single machine. Tons of programmers all working in Sass.

At Moovweb, some of our customer's projects can take 30 seconds just for the Sass to compile for fairly straightforward sites.

<comment><USER15> Seriously? I believe you, but if it's taking hours then it seems like the problem isn't as much with SASS but rather the way they write CSS or their build process. If they only recompiled changed files, there's no way it could take "hours".

Even if they recompile everything... all CSS needs to be interpreted by the browser at some point. How much CSS do they have?

That being said, what are the speed comparisons like?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I'd love to hear more from Hampton on the hours thing. What actually takes so long? Why does the number of developers matter? I've worked on some substantial (though not LinkedIn-sized) projects that used SASS and I've never clear _seconds_ in compilation time.

Though I completely get the portability aspect.

<comment><USER2> They use [https://github.com/linkedin/archetype](https://github.com/linkedin/archetype) which is an extension on top of Compass. Including all those libraries can mean a TON of memory and processing is required. Mixins calling mixins calling mixins. Plus, custom ruby extensions, etc. The needs of organizing hundreds of developers logically and making sure the code is optimized can be a hauss.

<comment><USER16> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been maintaining a Perl binding to libsass.

CPAN page here: [http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?CSS%3A%3ASass](http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?CSS%3A%3ASass)

Github here: [https://github.com/caldwell/CSS- Sass](https://github.com/caldwell/CSS-Sass)

</comment><comment><USER18> Let's get down to brass tacks—is there a ruby gem which can use this and drop into the Rails asset pipeline to speed it up? If not, what would be the best way to get that started?

Edit: found this: [https://github.com/hcatlin/sassruby](https://github.com/hcatlin/sassruby) \-- Looks like it's not quite mature enough, but promising!

<comment><USER19> > is there a ruby gem which can use this and drop into the Rails asset > pipeline to speed it up?

Often the source of slowness in the asset pipeline is not the compilation but the asset pipeline itself. It does some weird stuff.

I'd imagine dropping a libsass based SASS compiler into a Rails app wouldn't actually translate into much of a performance improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Any contribution to the project are seen as copyright assigned to Hampton Catlin, a human on the planet earth. Your contribution warrants that you have the right to assign copyright on your work. The intention here is to ensure that the project remains totally free (liberal, like)._

That's a curious setup. The license is MIT so you're not getting the "if you distribute it you have to use the same license" that you get with GPL. So as long as the contributions use the same MIT license why does the author need copyright assignment? The MIT license is simple and standard enough that relicensing doesn't seem like a likely need.

<comment><USER2> Good question. I've gotten conflicting legal advice. Some say I need full signed contributor agreements for everything, no matter the license, and some say that's not needed at all. I opted for something in-between. Just a notice that _could_ cover our ass in the future. Several big companies are working on submitting code, and so licensing there can get tricky... hence, just go overkill and never worry about it. ;)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the reply. That makes sense. I don't see why saying "anything that's contributed is MIT licensed" wouldn't cut it but I'm no lawyer... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately it only implements the curly-brace SCSS syntax, not the indented SASS syntax [1] (which is weird considering it's called Libsass, not Libscss), and there are no plans to support both syntaxes.

The companies I have worked for all use the indented syntax, since it meshes very well with HAML and CoffeeScript. But it looks like more people use the brace syntax (roughly 980k SCSS files on Github, vs. 85k SASS files).

[1] [https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass/issues/16](https://github.com/hcatlin/libsass/issues/16)

<comment><USER22> I agree about fitting in well with HAML and CoffeeScript. You might also consider Slim as a less noisy HTML shortcut language.

This covers why I like Slim over HAML

[http://me.phillipoertel.com/articles/2013/02/03/why-i- like-t...](http://me.phillipoertel.com/articles/2013/02/03/why-i-like-the- slim-template-engine)

<comment><USER21> I don't know. I wish developers could stop reinventing/tweaking stuff that isn't particularly broken (the differences between HAML and Slim, for example, are marginal and not really interesting) and start standardizing on something. Node, meanwhile, seems to have standardized on Jade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know this is completely juvenile of me, but I can't help but see "libs ass".

It's kind of like "xbone". I'm sure it's not intentional, but people will see it nonetheless.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Given that this is a C++ implementation, why the incorrect article and repo title?

Was it rewritten in C++ later on?

Otherwise, it seems interesting. I'll look into it.

<comment><USER24> > While libsass is primarily implemented in C++, it provides a simple C > interface that is defined in [sass_inteface.h].

<comment><USER25> To be fair, that argument can be applied to most scripting languages:

A C header for a C++ library that integrates V8 and runs JS code can, according to your logic, count as a C implementation.

<comment><USER26> No, because it can't be used in straight up C, while C++ libraries that expose their functionality with valid C can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, three months ago they started using Travis CI and, as far as I can tell from looking at the results ([https://travis- ci.org/hcatlin/libsass/builds](https://travis-ci.org/hcatlin/libsass/builds)), _not once have the tests actually passed_. (Builds 1 and 2 failed silently and build 8 didn't test anything. The rest were all detected as failing.)

<comment><USER12> Ah, that's because Travis is running all of the "to-do" tests as well. Reorganizing the tests and making Travis happy is ... well, it's on the to-do list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It looks like C++ to me.

</comment><comment><USER29> Do wanted to note that this does not work with Compass currently as Compass extends SASS with Ruby.

<comment><USER30> Are you aware of any plans for Compass to remove the Ruby dependency?

<comment><USER29> I don't know, but I suspect it doesn't looks positive. Compass haven't had any new releases for a year now.

<comment><USER31> Not true--there have been a series of alpha and now RC releases of 0.13. Chris and Nathan and the others are working on both Sass and Compass in parallel.

<comment><USER29> Thanks!

I just tried the pre-release version of 0.13. I found it was installing something with native binding? I believe it was one of the dependencies on Compass. I don't think this works well for us as our build process relies on Maven with JRuby to power Compass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really want a pure js impl.

<comment><USER33> Write one :)</comment></comment>


The Next Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://joshwhiton.com/?p=2554

<comment><USER2> Maybe the greatest part of the article: _The first thing you need to know is that Silicon Valley exists because the most important industry in recent history was born there. The commercial perfection of the semiconductor gave rise to the computer industry, which made hundreds of billionaires and thousands of millionaires out of tech-savvy people living in close proximity, which in turn attracted even more of the world's smartest and most ambitious people to the epicenter of all that tech and money and influence._

<comment><USER3> That statement conflates several things and is hyperbolic.

The "computer industry" isn't some amorphous industry that has been going strong since the days of semiconductors.

There have been many iterations of technology-- mobile, web, PC, etc-- and while it turned out that way, it should not have be a forgone conclusion that all would have been essentially centered in Silicon Valley. Other areas trying to be the "next Silicon Valley" had many opportunities to unseat it, especially during the busts that have occured in the Valley's boom-bust history.

Even his numbers are incorrect. There are not "hundreds of billionares" in Silicon Valley even today. There are not even 100 in the entire state of California. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_numb...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_the_number_of_billionaires)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can You Log into HN with Firefox on Android? - <AUTHOR> This morning, I've been unable to log into HN from my Android on Firefox. Anyone else experiencing this? I click 'login' at the top of the page, paste in my username and password, click the login button, the page re-loads to the front page of HN and I continue to be logged out. This might be the first time attempting to log in since I installed the latest Android update. Not sure if that is related.<p>Firefox 68.2.1, Pixel 2, Android 10 <comment><USER2> Yes this has been happening intermittently to me for the past 3 weeks. Haven't determined the pattern yet but sometimes I will notice I AM logged in.

<comment><AUTHOR> So it is NOT just me! Whew.

@dang, not sure if this is your territory or not. I'm not sure of how to file a bug report :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: turned out I could not log into any website! I cleared cookies, deleted all private data, turned on tracking, ensured cookies were enabled. Not worked. After reinstalling Firefox, I'm back in business. Fwiw, I also have had Firefox lock up twice this week on my laptop. I'm thinking that Firefox just is not as stable as Chrome :(

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm on Fennec running Firefox 68.2.0 esr on Android 9. No extensions installed.

Tried logging in. No issues faced. Working find for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> This has been happening me for about a week on Firefox Android too. When I restart Firefox it somehow works.

</comment><comment><USER5> No issue at all with Firefox 68.2.1, OnePlus7, Android 10. Maybe you have some extension that is messing with your login?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. No add ons / extensions. Just one theme that changes the color scheme called "Default 1.0 - A theme with the operating system color scheme" which I think is just a normal default.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Read HN, Read Hacker News with Instapaper (Meta) - <AUTHOR> https://www.read.hn/ <comment><AUTHOR> *Disclaimer: I am not the maker. I hunted this on Product Hunt for the maker here: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/read-hn](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/read-hn).</comment>


Statement from Mozilla on US Immigration Ban - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/01/28/us-immigration-ban/ <comment><USER2> The immigration ban covers 7 specific countries by halting entry for 90 days (they are already subject to I think 120 day wait period) while the White House reviews the procedures for screening immigrants from those specific countries.

The US did not ban immigration. I wish people would stop saying that. It's factually incorrect whether we are for or against this specific measure.

<comment><USER3> What would you suggest calling it that is 3 words or less?

<comment><USER4> "Terror filter."

<comment><USER5> Despite not including any country that has actually exported terrorism to American soil in the past couple decades?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > the ban will create a barrier to innovation, economic development and global > impact. Immigrants bring world class skills and expertise to build advanced > technology that can improve the lives of people everywhere.

Perhaps this will happen on its own, but if companies are really worried about this, they should have more remote offices (I know Mozilla is remote-friendly, I'm talking in general).

Those are the optics that Trump cares about, job numbers. If tech can get the narrative that job growth will be outside the US w/o skilled immigrants, perhaps that will resonate?

</comment><comment><USER7> Too soft, too passive. Trump wont listen to predictions (it _will_ create ...). You need declarations. It _creates_ obstructions to business. And if you really want to cut at him, call it a "regulation" impacting daily business decisions. Tell him how this is costing businesses money. That he cares about.</comment>


Show HN: Vecta.io-Automate diagramming by running JS on your SVG editor - <AUTHOR> https://vecta.io/blog/supercharge-vectas-functionality-with-javascript-based-plugins <comment><AUTHOR> Run JavaScript on Vecta editor to do cool stuffs like this: [https://imgur.com/FggGYSV](https://imgur.com/FggGYSV)</comment>


Google, in Post-Obama Era, Aggressively Woos Republicans - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/technology/google-in-post-obama-era-aggressively-woos-republicans.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER2> I'm not optimistic, but I hope that the Trump era finally puts an end to the illusions people had about tech giants as a vehicle for social progress. We're stepping into an era of extreme inequality, authoritarianism, and intolerance, all borne on the back of their rise. They may not be the origin of these trends, but they certainly rode them to tremendous wealth without anything besides the most superficial concerns for their social consequences.

<comment><USER3> You're blaming tech giants for the rise in inequality, authoritarianism and intolerance?

It's like blaming Apple or Spotify that your favorite artists aren't as good as they used to be.

Fine, be happy the veil is off (tech giants are corporations and when push comes to shove are about money), but honestly you need to look at the petroleum industry, security & prison industrial complexes and their bought politicians to see the worst.

<comment><USER4> > Fine, be happy the veil is off (tech giants are corporations and when push > comes to shove are about money), but honestly you need to look at the > petroleum industry, security & prison industrial complexes and their bought > politicians to see the worst.

I must admit, the difference is hard for me to see. Though the tech companies may not be getting rich directly off the backs of the poor, they are just as destructive in funneling large sums of money to a subset of society.

Guess who actually clicks on ads? Guess who allows for advertising loans up to 35% APR? That definitely falls within usury/payday/predatory loan range. The 36% restriction would only exist because people actively fall for those scams, and it also indicates Google is ok with people falling for the 35% rate.

I also remember them recommending a payday loan company, but I can't find the link.

TL;DR Google is rich off people who can't tell they're being scammed.

<comment><USER5> Google actually banned payday loan ads from their network [1]. I couldn't take your anger seriously after reading that line.

[1] [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the- switch/wp/2016/05/11/google-to-ban-payday-loan-advertisements/)

<comment><USER6> As it happens, you did not read the article. If you did, you'd see that "Google will not display ads from lenders who charge annual interest rates of 36 percent or more in the United States."

And the parent post is talking about loans with 35% APR still being quite predatory.

[1]Non-AMP link: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2016/05/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2016/05/11/google-to-ban-payday-loan- advertisements/?utm_term=.3714c76ffbef)

<comment><USER7> Hi, it looks there is a factual dispute about the linked article. I think I might be able to add some value to this conversation (but that's of course for you to decide).

It appears the parent poster is arguing Google did ban [all payday loans] while you are arguing that the article says Google did not ban [all payday loans], but instead only banned [loans with interest rates >=36%].

My viewpoint: The article says both points, i.e. Google banned [all payday loans] and Google also banned [all loans (i.e. of the non-payday variety) with interest rates >=36%]

Evidence / Recitation from article:

"...In addition to the broad payday loan ad ban, Google will not display ads from lenders who charge annual interest rates of 36 percent or more in the United States. The same standards will apply to sites that serve as middlemen who connect distressed borrowers to those lenders..."

"...Google announced Wednesday that it will ban all payday loan ads from its site..."

As seen from the first above recitation, the words "in addition to" appears to mean that two separate bans have been enacted: The first ban is for any loan classified as a payday loan. That means a payday loan of any interest rate (i.e. 35%, 25%, even 3%) will be banned. The second ban is for a loan of any type where the interest rate is >= 36%.

Hope that helps, thanks for your time : )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is probably going to be a hard problem for a lot of companies. Spending quite a lot of money on Democrats and little on Republicans looked like a good strategy given the polling, but now they have to deal with a office holder that is not the least concerned with building bridges and has a bit of vengeful streak.

Not to mention all the contacts they have built up in the permanent staff might not be there as long as normal[1]. The typical _hire former government workers to lobby current government_ might also be in danger if the President goes through with his anti-lobbyist rule changes. This is actually a big deal for a lot of people, because these permanent employees are a lot of organization's touchstones that cross administrations and party lines.

I would advice Google to have a small talk with their doodle team to not rock the boat this year. That might be a signal on how aggressive they really are.

1) [http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/top-state- department-...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/top-state-department- officials-asked-to-leave-by-trump-administration/index.html)

<comment><USER9> Google as a company gives equally between the 2 parties[0] (via it's PAC(s)). Google employees that donated to candidates or various government entities definitely leans towards the democrat side[1]. So the company knows to hedge its bets and give equally both ways. (Most large companies do this, like Comcast[2]).

[0] [https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pac2pac.php?cycle=2016&cmte...](https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pac2pac.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00428623)

[1] [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000067823&c...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000067823&cycle=2016)

[2] [https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pac2pac.php?cycle=2016&cmte...](https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pac2pac.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00248716)

<comment><USER10> The problem is this shouldn't even be a thing.

It shouldn't be "Google" that _gives money to politicians_. It should be individuals. And the sums should be capped at $200 (local/Congress elections) to $500 (presidential elections).

Even "lobbying" shouldn't exist. There should only be public hearings. I don't want some other party to whisper secret stuff to my politician. I want it all on the record.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I can't count how many Googlers have argued with me based on the claim that OpenSecrets is highlighting donations of individual employees, and that the company itself isn't buying these politicians... but that's what Google NetPAC is for. Google gives to their own PAC, which gives to their paid-for Congresscritters. Just a (thin) layer of obfuscation.

<comment><USER11> Just to be clear, even though Google decides how to distribute it, the money in their PAC comes from individual donations, not the company.

<comment><USER6> But Google both provided that cash (presumably, to it's employees as pay) and then got to decide how to spend it on political favors. And the lion's share of the donations are likely from high-level executives who have at least some stake in the company.

So, I guess, you could clarify that it's still somehow routed through an individual at some stage in the process. But that's the sort of technical trickery that is used for this corrupt behavior in the first place... which is why individual donors are required to disclose their employer. As I said, thin level of obfuscation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's January. Mark this as "least surprising story of 2017" and it will still be true at the end of the year.

Political parties sell themselves to voters as "be on our team". The other team wants to rape women or murder babies, don't vote for them.

Corporations vote with money instead of with votes. When you vote with votes and the other guy wins, you lose. When you vote with money and you pay both sides, you always win.

Google doesn't pay Republicans because they hate women or want to Build A Wall, they pay Republicans because Republicans are now in a position to destroy network neutrality, they don't want that to happen, and politicians don't listen to corporations who don't pay them.

Parties constrained by a system do what you would expect them to. If you don't like it you have to change the system.

<comment><USER8> > The other team wants to rape women or murder babies, don't vote for them.

quite literally in the election of 1800 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI)

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash The internet as we know it was born in a very unique time in history. Two ideologies feuded for most of a century, and one collapsed at the same time that the other created the internet. The side that created the internet believed that their way of life, government, business, and so on would become the standard around the world, the "end of history." We believed that the world would stitch itself together and become gradually more liberal and tolerant of the many cultures on this planet. The internet and the collapse of the Soviet Union made that narrative believable, even perhaps inevitable.

As a result, we have a very skewed idea of what the internet is or should be. It is no coincidence that the domain for 99% of sites we use is ".com."

The truth is, corporations for decades have become more powerful and detached from their geopolitical circumstances. The subtleties of how the world works is of little relevance to McDonald's as long as they can sell more hamburgers. Corporations want to protect themselves from risk so they can continue to amass profits.

Therefore, the newfound genuflecting to the GOP should be of no surprise. Google ultimately has a mission to itself and its shareholders first. For a company whose product is its ability to amass information, there is little to be gained in promoting social or economic causes that do not benefit the corporation.

Yes, it does suck that the utopian dreams of Silicon Valley have divorced themselves from the liberal idealism of Northern California's Vietnam-era glory days, but that is why I left.

If you consider yourself liberal and you work for any of these companies that are aggressively courting Republicans, I would be very interested in hearing your perspective.

<comment><USER13> > It is no coincidence that the domain for 99% of sites we use is ".com."

I sort of agree. Actually getting a .gov, .mil, .edu was pretty tough. I vaguely remember people being quite prickly about .net, and a little fussy about.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Depending on how Protectionist Trump actually becomes, global companies like Google and Facebook may have huge challenges.

Russia and China already had the idea of local alternatives and the EU was pushing for data protection for a while.

Governments might decide that it is not good idea give that much information about their population to the USA and maybe we will see the end of truly global companies.

It might be good for Apple though, as with it's strict data collection limitations.

<comment><USER15> I think you mean, "the end of truly global companies in the U.S." I firmly believe a protectionist stance here is hurting the US as much as anyone else.

<comment><USER14> The end of the truly global companies in the US or anywhere. Especially the companies relying on mass adoption and data collection will probably be forced to scale back and if feasible run separate Data centres in individual countries and be strictly regulated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gross. I thought a Google in bed with the Obama administration was unsettling. One in bed with the GOP and Trump is terrifying. Google has the keys to the muslim registry, and every other kind of registry you could imagine in every country it operates.

<comment><USER17> I doubt Google or any other SV corporation would ever agree to help with a Muslim registry. Even if somehow the top leadership of such a company were to agree (which I doubt), you'd see defections, sabotage, and heavy leaks almost immediately.

<comment><USER18> [http://neveragain.tech/](http://neveragain.tech/) has a ton of Googlers on there. I'm among them.

<comment><USER19> Your replacement won't care. You even gave Alphabet mgmt a nice list of who to downsize.

<comment><USER18> I can't speak to anyone else's experiences here, but your cynicism seems unwarranted based on mine.

<comment><USER20> We'll its not like google had any problems creating a registry for Hillary who was the actual threat to democracy as the Podesta emails verified.

[https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup- workin...](https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for- hillary-clinton-campaign/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Shocked? It's called lobbying--it's been around for decades.

<comment><USER10> So has bribery. It doesn't mean people shouldn't still be outraged when it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thank goodness the Republicans and Trump believe in the free market and not government interference in business.

</comment><comment><USER23> I know of at least one subset of a top-tier federal agency that uses Google's .gov services, this[0] I would assume. I wonder what the size of .gov business is for Google and to what extent (vs anti-trust concerns) it factors-in to making nice with the new regime?

[0] [https://gsuite.google.com/industries/government/](https://gsuite.google.com/industries/government/)

<comment><USER24> You may be interested in the FedRAMP marketplace: [https://marketplace.fedramp.gov/#/products?status=FedRAMP%20...](https://marketplace.fedramp.gov/#/products?status=FedRAMP%20Ready&sort=productName)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is weird to begin with that Google would put all their eggs into one basket. Silicon Valley would have looked all idiotic but for Mr. Thiel who invested in Trump.

</comment><comment><USER26> They need to get out in front of Oracle, which is probably the Silcon Valley company least associated with the hippie liberal stereotype and thus most likely to get Trump's ear if they want to make life hard for their competitors.

<comment><USER27> Pretty sure any company with Thiel on its board is sitting pretty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So long as the government contracts and regulatory favoritism are such a big part of picking winners and losers you can bet this sort of thing will happen. Now we have a President who knows he won in spite of many of these big money interests (who overwhelmingly backed Clinton). That people here are complaining about the companies for now acting in their own self preservation, while also condemning money in politics is just... well it's the sort of double think that is best explained by political tribalism.

</comment><comment><USER29> This isn't an "about face" \- google is continuing to work with the White House, just as it has so far.

</comment><comment><USER30> So much for 'don't be evil,' although that was always more of an ideal than an actual policy guide.

</comment><comment><USER31> I can't believe they're stupid enough to think that Trump is a Republican. He's neither. Both parties shat all over him during his entire campaign, so he owes them not just nothing, but less than nothing, hence the promise to institute the congressional term limits and anti-lobbying laws. And as everyone discovered over the last week (much to everyone's surprise), Trump is the first politician in history that will actually fulfill his campaign promises. There are a lot of really old geezers in Congress, especially on the Republican side, which won't like term limits one bit, so it'll require some negotiating skill to shove it down their throats. I hope Trump actually manages to pull this off in a way that's not easy to undo for president Michelle Obama in 2024.

<comment><USER32> _> Both parties shat all over him during his entire campaign, so he owes them not just nothing, but less than nothing, hence the promise to institute the congressional term limits and anti-lobbying laws._

How will he pass laws without the support of at least 50% of Congress?

<comment><USER31> He will get the support through amazing feats of negotiation.

<comment><USER32> Then how can you say "he owes them nothing"? If he wants to get any laws passed, he'll need to give them something.

<comment><USER31> He can play them against Democrats. In fact I bet he will have to. He owes no allegiance to anyone but people who can re-elect him in 2020 if they think he did a good job. He understands that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm going to very amused as Google's "don't be evil" facade comes crumbling down, having lost their revolving door with the US government and protection from antitrust enforcement.

Google has a very small business, search & ads, that basically prints money. They then spend almost all of that money on unprofitable operations that crush competition by 1) setting the price-point for many services at free, 2) intercepting customers (e.g. Google Flight and Hotel bookings at the top of search results), and 3) poaching all of the best talent and wasting it away on these terrible side businesses.

</comment><comment><USER34> Turncoats.

</comment><comment><USER35> the very same Google that was funded with CIA money? I think they are more in line with the deep state than either of the two parties

</comment><comment><USER36> There arent a lot of republican engineers so this is probably not a big problem for google.

</comment><comment><USER37> Democrats have been on an incredible losing streak in the past 8 years. Lost the Presidency, House, Senate, Supreme Court, most Governor seats....As a CEO, you'd have to be pretty crazy to continue supporting the losing side, right?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? - <AUTHOR>

Curious as to how other hackers solve this problem... <comment><USER2> Keeping track of something that hasn't yet happened (at least in terms of blogging) sounds a little frivolous. Maybe you just don't have anything to say? Try approaching it as PG does, post an extrapolated anecdote. (aka an essay, see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369141>) Otherwise start from square one, pick up a good book on the writing process and don't even worry about blogging, and instead focus on writing as a craft in it's own.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use MarsEdit (<http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/>), though I'm probably not a good reference as I haven't updated my blog in awhile and I have over 20 draft blog posts (some have been sitting around for more than 10 months).

</comment><comment><USER4> I write them as email drafts, since I know its the only thing I'll usually always have access to.

</comment><comment><USER5> I struggled with this too and I still don't have a proper solution. Text Docs for very early stage idea, Wordpress Drafts/Private Posts (in older version it would put them at the top of the page).

</comment><comment><USER6> I've tried lots of ways (Excel, text docs, google docs) but I settled on using OneNote for it today.

</comment><comment><USER7> in what context? personal blogs or professional/company?

i stopped personally blogging since i didn't have enough consistent ideas or drive to write instead of other stuff. with a company blog, i'd use something shared, maybe something in dropbox.</comment>