Real-time map of hack attacks around the world - <AUTHOR> http://map.ipviking.com

<comment><USER2> "Every second, Norse collects and analyzes live threat intelligence from darknets in hundreds of locations in over 40 countries. The attacks shown are based on a small subset of live flows against the Norse honeypot infrastructure, representing actual worldwide cyber attacks by bad actors. At a glance, one can see which countries are aggressors or targets at the moment, using which type of attacks (services-ports)."

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty interesting to watch. It reminds me of an RTS, especially when there are large bursts of attacks.

</comment><comment><USER4> So they're just monitoring honeypots right? I can't think of any other way to do this real-time.

<comment><USER5> They scan every single IP every second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The submitted title [1] was upworthyesque linkbait, so we cribbed the title from the previous submission of this url [2].

1\. "This Site Shows Who Is Hacking Who Right Now – And The US Is Getting Hammered"

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7943681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7943681)</comment>


After 30 years, why did the Mac never break into big business? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/after-30-years-why-did-the-mac-never-break-into-big-business-7000025743/

<comment><USER2> Another illogical Ed Bott article. Ed Bott is one of those "Windows Ecosystems" denizens/co-dependents. He's not going to say anything really critical about Windows, his livelihood depends on it.

Most of his 5 reasons don't hold water: I worked at Martin Marietta, a big defense contractor and one of the predecessors of Lockheed Martin, 1986 - 1992. By 1989, Martin was a total Mac shop, it was very hard to get a genuine PC in the place. That shoots all of his objections in the head, except maybe "Macs don't support themselves".

In the late 80s, Macs basically did support themselves. And that's were the real issue comes in. Companies that had IT departments would have totally been able to get rid of the traditional IT department. Martin had CDC (ugh)) mainframes, which were certified to run Multi-Level Secure, so their IT department was able to ignore Macs, and concentrate on making money and keeping headcount by supporting CDC and their mainframes (ugh). Anyone else, the IT department could see the axe falling if Macs came in.

MS-DOS, PCs and Windows hit this weird window: just enough of a headache to justify an IT department, just enough functionality that a user revolt could be quelled, or at least kept to a simmer.</comment>


The API-as-a-Marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://versionone.vc/api-as-a-marketplace/ <comment><USER2> We've been working on something in this space called Violet: [https://violet.io](https://violet.io). At the core we're a headless API that connects merchants looking to sell their products natively in new channels with the developers ([https://violet.dev](https://violet.dev)) who are building those channels.

<comment><USER3> I am really sorry, but looking at your website, I did not understand what's the purpose of your company. Reading up your comment, it does not make much more sense to me. Are you somehow like snipcart?

<comment><USER4> From reading through their site it seems to replace affiliate links with api calls.

Ie: I have a website (Channel), rather than place affiliate links, I can request products from an api and sell them directly to my users (audience).

Makes more sense when the channel is not a website (ie something that doesn't have links) like a instagram story, or virtual environment. You want to sell the latest console / game from Microsoft, they provide an api, you pull the trailer, screenshot (media) and a price. The user can click buy there and then, you take payment via stripe and send an order to Microsoft via the api. Microsoft then fulfils the order.

Somewhere between affiliate and retailer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of energy brokerages, which are a thing in some US states. Rough idea is energy-consumers will ask for energy from an intermediary (the brokerage), which will purchase electricity in the form of a contract from a pool of suppliers for the best available price.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm building one called Openship. Here's more about it: [https://www.openship.org/blog/2019-10-23-using-open- source-t...](https://www.openship.org/blog/2019-10-23-using-open-source-to- disrupt-marketplaces/)

<comment><USER7> Curious: how is Openship different from building your store with apps from the Shopify Apps store?

<comment><USER6> I used to manage my shops using Zapier and Google Sheets for many years. Our products were coming from many different sources and many things would fall through the cracks. Customer service would be slow since agents would have to know where orders need to be returned and the return process.

Openship started as an internal project so all this could be managed from one dashboard so we could scale to 5000+ SKUs without the system being overwhelmed. Orders can be routed to any channel that has APIs to search products and create carts.

The other benefit of Openship is that your operations are abstracted out of Shopify. If you ever want to leave Shopify or roll your own e-commerce backend, Openship and your operations won't skip a beat. Let me know if you have any other questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My girlfriend is (one of the many people) building a Blockchain-API-as-a- marketplace for commodities trading: [https://www.vakt.com](https://www.vakt.com)

It's amazing how many billions of dollars are still transacted via phone and paper records by organisations who ultimately have to rely on good faith to get oil from A to B (in possession of C and owned by Z). I can't imagine what it would take to verify a chain of actions taken a couple of years ago with the systems in place. Impossible.

I imagine other commodities are the same. I would never have guessed there's still so much efficiency to be gained in these huge, old-as-dirt markets. Technology, huh.

<comment><USER9> All well and good but blockchain doesn't invalidate the need for 'good faith', which is actually due diligence supported by rule of law.

<comment><USER10> Right, which is why "enterprise blockchain" generally means a bunch of people fumbling around with Ethereum/Solidity, failing to build anything more secure than a read-only SQL database, and inheriting all the bad characteristics of Bitcoin

<comment><USER11> Is there a word for "Creating a solution for a problem that doesn't exist?" The descriptive linguist in me thinks we can start calling that a blockchain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What does this mean? I have read this many times and it must be slow brain day. I seriously want to try and understand.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

>What is an API-as-a-marketplace?

>Just like a traditional marketplace, an API-as-a-marketplace has two sides: suppliers and buyers. But, the interface is different.

>In a traditional marketplace, discovery and purchase are done on the application layer. The transaction process is visible to the end user and is essentially a part of the platform's identity and brand.

>In an API-as-a-marketplace, the API is the UX for the transaction; that is, the transaction occurs on the infrastructure layer and is abstracted away from the end user.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was tracking with the article until this except.

>>" _But_ unlike Stripe, Twilio, and Postmates, the supply of an API-as-a- marketplace is not necessarily a commodity. That is, should they choose to, developers and businesses (or even their end users) can pick their suppliers based on whatever requirements they have. "

I'm confused. Isn't the definition of being able to swap out one vendor for another and receive the same service back in return ... the exact definition of a "commodity"?

And is he suggesting that these other API company's (stripe, twilio,postmates) are NOTa commodify?

<comment><USER14> I think you're saying the same thing.

Stripe, Twillio, etc. provide access to commodities.

The "API as a marketplace" concept postulates that there are situations in which the supply is differentiated and you care about with which supplier you get connected.

<comment><USER15> Isn't postmates, or like uber eats an example of that though... you care where you're getting your food.

<comment><USER16> Unlike restaurant delivery, grocery delivery services are right now operating mostly on non-exclusive contracts with the upstream chains (because the chains are big and have a lot of negotiating power; _and_ because the chains have a real need to partner with different delivery services in different markets, because no delivery service exists everywhere the chains are yet.) There's no real market for delivery from mom-n-pop produce markets, and so there's nobody for grocery delivery services to bully into accepting an exclusive contract with them.

If you can get the same groceries from the same store no matter which portal you order through, then the portal itself is a commodity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish OP would dive a bit more into the Stripe example as not-a-marketplace.

There's Spreedly, which at first glance might be more of a marketplace.

But then there's also an argument that Stripe itself is an API-as-a- marketplace, where they support different card providers/types, ACH, and a host of global methods.

Is one interpretation more correct than the other? (at least as it relates to an investment thesis)

\---

Another example is the Priceline API (and the GDS's before them), which I believe solidly qualify as an API-as-a-Marketplace under this definition.

<comment><USER18> > Just like a traditional marketplace, an API-as-a-marketplace has two sides: > suppliers and buyers.

When I make a payment on a site with stripe (my transaction-in-need-of- payment-processing being the "demand" side), there's not really a pool of "supply side" vendors I'm trying to be matched with... I'm just interested in knowing that my money is going to the business I'm checking out with.

To concoct this into an example that's more of a marketplace:

\- the business owner needs a payment processor for people checking out like me -- payment processing is the service

\- imagine that transaction fees varied based on the nature of the individual transaction (imagine say an individual <$1 visa transaction is different from a $<1 mc transaction is different from a $1-$10 preferred-vendor visa transaction or something hypothetical like that)

\- there's multiple payment processors that offer various fees -- Stripe, Braintree, Paypal, etc.

The marketplace solution now is the one that matches the demand side (a $1-$10 preferred-vendor visa transaction) to the payment processor that makes most sense (supply side) for each individual transaction.

Obviously payment processing works different than this. That's why Stripe is an API, not an API-as-a-marketplace.

Now, replace "payment processing" with "shipping" and "$1-$10 visa transaction" with "1-10lb package going to Somewheretown"... now you have a situation that sounds like the real world. That's the niche the article says Shippo is filling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What I'm curious is why there's not yet a marketplace for consumer-generated data. Thinking things like wearables. Is it that these wearables are too miserly over their data, or are there other considerations that make this more difficult than some of the more common ones I've seen such as e-commerce and supply chain.

I see examples for medical data in this thread, which is notoriously slow to "open," so I'm curious what the reasoning may be...

<comment><USER20> Surely privacy is a huge concern, especially for something like wearables.

<comment><USER19> I think I may be missing the point of what the article is getting at with API- as-a-marketplace versus traditional API marketplaces.

I think even after reading the article and looking at some of the examples, I'm confused at what's being talked about here, and some of the additional concerns that would arise with something like wearbles.

It seems like API-as-a-marketplace are providing services where an Instagram- like company could add the "Instagram shops" section right into their application as opposed to have to make a separate shop and checkout process?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Having run some products through these types of marketplaces I am not optimistic.

Marketplaces only work if they deliver customers, and I've simply seen almost no volume of customers searching within these systems.

<comment><USER4> These being shippo & patch? Or RapidAPI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> But what about a marketplace for APIs?

<comment><USER23> Maybe that can be implemented via an API. So I can have some code that can dynamically call this API-as-a-marketplace and decide what's the bests shipping API to use, then it would rewrite itself to use that API.

Say goodbye to vendor API lock-in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> First time I come across .vc as TLD.

<comment><USER25> I've been seeing them more and more frequently for venture capitalist firms, in twitter bios etc. Thought I'd check our ([https://host.io](https://host.io)) ranking data for .vc domains:

        => select * from hostio.rank where split_part(domain, '.', 2) = 'vc' limit 25;
            domain    |  rank
        </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>--
         bc.vc        |  55389
         8x8.vc       |  66295
         bjn.vc       |  74899
         oscar.vc     |  81721
         plus2.vc     |  89589
         kissanime.vc |  96140
         compre.vc    |  97865
         nt.vc        | 106039
         animo.vc     | 107111
         yts.vc       | 115567
         mylink.vc    | 120827
         dot.vc       | 151363
         luz.vc       | 158821
         vook.vc      | 179284
         huobi.vc     | 202050
         app.vc       | 206374
         pornhub.vc   | 248283
         imi.vc       | 270076
         sf9.vc       | 276701
         btov.vc      | 281670
         175sf.vc     | 283532
         99s.vc       | 288077
         icoc.vc      | 302644
         1776.vc      | 318693
         fenbushi.vc  | 331303
        (25 rows)

Nothing particularly popular, and not many of those are VC firms! Only 406 in the top 10 million domains:

        => select count(1) from hostio.rank where split_part(domain, '.', 2) = 'vc' and rank < 10000000;
         count
        </comment><comment>-
           406

You can download the full top 10M from [https://host.io/rankings](https://host.io/rankings) if you're interested in playing with the data yourself!

</comment><comment><USER26> Chainlink</comment>


Under 30, online and world-beating - <AUTHOR> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2020883,00.html <comment><USER2> You know your country doesn't have many role models when Alex Tew is considered the poster child for a successful Internet entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER3> 50 million pounds? That has to be a typo.

<comment><USER4> [The Grauniad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grauniad#The_Guardian_in_the_popular_imagination) is well known for it's typos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is funny. The guy has been offered access to a fund, which is $100m in total, not the full fund of $100m itself. I love how things get spun.

I blogged about it here: http://www.kulveer.co.uk/2007/02/oxford-student- offered-access-to-100m.html

Lazy journalism, for real.

</comment><comment><USER6> Still, 5 million pounds? $10m for an idea?!?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the idea is out in the open now so you can steal it and make them feel silly :) Actually it doesn't really say in the article what they've developed, if anything. Also, the VC firm could own 90% of the company now or something- it's not like they handed them a $10m check and said have fun.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does your company handle deployments? - <AUTHOR>

How does your company approach code deployments? Bonus points on dealing with multiple code bases on multiple servers over multiple data centers where up-time is critical. <comment><USER2> We've spent quite a bit of time on our deployment system at Lanyrd, based on the philosophy that deployments should be automated, fast and cheap. Being able to deploy the site quickly and without too much performance overhead encourages multiple deployments a day, which is great for supporting rapid iteration and keeping everyone productive and happy.

Currently, our deploys are managed by a combination of fabric (the Python shell automation toolkit) and puppet. Puppet ensures our servers are fully configured, fabric orchestrates everything. We also have a Jenkins CI server which can be used to deploy at the click of a button, rather than running a command-line script.

We can deploy to different environments or using different code branches using command-line arguments. For example:

        $ fab e:live deploy

Deploys our 'master' branch to our live environment.

        $ fab e:staging target:feature/new-login deploy

Deploys the feature/new-login git branch to our staging servers.

"target" can take anything Git can - a branch, a tag or even a commit hash.

We use south to manage our database migrations, which run as part of the deploy. Our static CSS/JS/etc assets are hosted on S3, and have their filenames rewritten to include the hash of the file contents before being uploaded - that way we can push new assets to S3 without overwriting the old ones, meaning that we don't have to worry about keeping our asset deploys perfectly synced with rolling out new HTML templates (which may depend on new CSS etc). We push new assets automatically at the start of the deploy.

</comment><comment><USER3> We recently moved from dedicated to cloud servers, so we have a Chef recipe that we run using a knife command to target all web servers in parallel. The recipe looks at each of our git repos, finds ones that have been updated on the appropriate production branch, reclones them, then symlinks them into place, replacing the existing symlink to the old version. As a bonus, the deployment recipe also makes sure all permissions and symlinks are correct.

It works pretty well so far; we'll almost certainly be looking at ways to make it easier as it's currently a rather lengthy knife command.

</comment><comment><USER4> We have a dedicated deployment team, consisting of mostly H1B visa folks. They write some deployment and init scripts, then hand over things over to the offshore group. This ends up costing the company a lot of money and pain due to horrid process. Usually onshore QA or development comes in to fix stuff when things go wrong. Oh, we do finance-related stuff and use insecure standard passwords all over the place. WTF am I still doing here.

</comment><comment><USER5> Combination of Fabric and Hosted Chef.

Fabric logs into the servers and issue chef-client-command.

Chef does currently only handle the deployment part, ie pulls new code from git and refresh the app-server. I'm looking into setting up a cookbook that would be able to take a bare cloudserver and put it into production with the webapp running on it. That way I could scale faster if I would get unexpected traffic.

</comment><comment><USER6> $git push heroku master -a myapp-production

<comment><USER7> What is the -a option?

<comment><USER6> Me being stupid :/

It's just:

git push heroku master

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We have an IRC bot that our sysadmin scripted. We pick the project we want deployed and issue a single command, it's amazing for low friction deployments.

</comment><comment><USER9> Puppet for server provisioning, and a self-maintained fork of Webistrano (web- based interface for Capistrano) for deploying applications.</comment>


SerenityOS: From Zero to HTML in a Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.serenityos.org/happy/1st/index.html <comment><USER2> This is the first time I hear of SerenityOS so I'm honestly amazed to see that the warm gray of the 1990s is back in style! There's definitely something to be said about the simplicity of that old school UI.

But more importantly, I really wanted to commend the author on their truly inspiring approach to criticism (valid or invalid)

I was left with this impression just by looking at his comments on this thread, but then later came across this video¹ which was posted as a response to armchair critics on OS News... and the tongue-in-cheek tone is just too nice for what I'm used to seeing on the internet these days! Congrats on this huge feat after 1 year of development but above all kudos on being such a nice person even in the face of seemingly pointless criticism

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoScn0X2DFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoScn0X2DFM)

2\. Original thread [https://www.osnews.com/story/129716/serenity-a-new-unix- like...](https://www.osnews.com/story/129716/serenity-a-new-unix-like- operating-system/#comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually brought in the warm gray after spronkey suggested it here on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19988813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19988813)

I ended up loving it so it's stuck since then!

As for handling criticism.. it's something new I've been trying in the last year. I decided that I don't want to get sucked into negativity anywhere near this project, so I strive to maintain a positive outlook 100% of the time. It can be a bit taxing, but I'm convinced it's better than the alternative. :)

<comment><USER3> > _As for handling criticism.. it 's something new I've been trying in the > last year._

Well, I hope you can handle praise. :- )

I unironically love the visual stylings and choice effects of Windows NT 4.0/2000, and where CUA menu bars exist, I often prefer the Mac-style centralized ones (especially the new ones, with the global search keybinding). I feel like the obvious idea of making buttons look iconically like _buttons_ should not have been abandoned so hastily, even if it makes it harder to choose colours for dark backgrounds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks microcolonel! (Love your nickname btw, the idle task in the Serenity kernel is called the "colonel" process :))

Obviously I really dig this GUI style as well. It might seem petty, but part of what motivates me to work on a browser is wanting to build one that doesn't cede control over things like button appearance to the web. Not to mention greater invasions like allowing sites access to desktop notifications, and other things that should have ended up in a WHATWG trash can.

<comment><USER3> One thing I noticed with _Piano_ is that it relies on the keyboard layout. As a Dvorak typist, I've often wondered if there's some way to do input handling better, such that applications which are more interested in the position of a key than its associated symbol (e.g. FPS games looking for "WASD") can just get the key at that position, instead of looking for a "W". Another gripe I've had with keyboard layout systems is that there's usually no way of indicating to the OS that US Dvorak is the natural layout of a keyboard, so instead of doing nothing when a "US" layout is selected, it translates it from US Dvorak to US, and does nothing when a US Dvorak layout is selected in software.

Added clarification:

There are at least three important things about keyboards in my view of things: the symbol or intent of the key, the "position" of the key in a set of cultural contexts (e.g. typewriter-style keyboards, left hand character movement controls, etc.), and the actual physical position (relative to other keys) and form/scale (relative to the world).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. It could be neat to include key position as a field in the system keyboard events, along with the character, shift states, etc.

In fact, the keyboard scan code is basically position information :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello friends! Thanks for checking out my project, it's always fun to have visitors :)

If you would like to hear the story behind the "Serenity" name, and what led up to the creation of this OS, I spoke about it a few days ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3JkNGKZtqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3JkNGKZtqM)

Also check out this 1 minute video of the Serenity Browser in action: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu9wONA1MHc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu9wONA1MHc)

Ofc I'm happy to answer any questions about the system!

Previous HN discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19537807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19537807)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19986126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19986126)

<comment><USER4> Hey, I'm really glad to see you've continued to work on this - it's one of those projects that is just naturally fun to watch be made.

How far has the GCC port come? Is the project anywhere near self hosting being a feasible task?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey zamadatix! I'm glad too, it's been tons of fun making it.

The GCC port is pretty decent. You can build about 90% of the system inside itself but you eventually hit some kernel bug that crashes the build, ironically usually while building the kernel itself. There's debugging to be done, but that's true of the whole system.. We'll get there eventually.

The fs/disk performance is also quite terrible and, which you can really feel during builds with GCC. I need to look into what's happening there as well :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once I saw the screenshot with wallpaper, I felt like "he's done! It looks done!"

The time commitment is impressive, and there's something reassuring in an age of consolidated power to see individuals building various levels of software, particularly where many of us probably haven't ventured due to the unknowns.

Very cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks neogodless! Every now and then I start to feel something like "oh yeah, this is starting to look almost done" but before I can slow down, I find some new aspect to work on and improve.

I've finally found a project big enough that even if I'm bored of it, I still just go and work on some other part of it instead ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is incredibly interesting. How much time are you working on it?

While i'm not that interested in a full blown OS, some times i find myself really wanting to work on a new GUI stack for Linux (above X) but the time i'd need to put on it to become as i like it (which, incidentally, is very close to what you have here in your OS) makes me think that i'll need to basically do nothing else - and there are too many games i'd like to play :-P.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Crinus! As you might guess, I've spent a large percentage of my free time over the last year on this.

Early on, I was unemployed and living alone, so I was putting 8+ hours a day into it, every day of the week. Progress was very swift.

Over time I've scaled it down as I've moved to a new place, rejoined civilization and started a job. Nowadays I'd say I'm doing 3-4 hours on weekdays and 6-8 on weekends.

I regularly record screencasts of my work and post it to YouTube. I find that it works amazingly well for staying focused and serious, sometimes I end up solving something I would like to give up on, simply because I don't want to abandon a video I've started recording :)

<comment><USER7> I am curious - what motivates you and drives you to contribute so much to this?

I have been having a hard time motivating myself to do anything really

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a blend of a couple things.

First off, it's really fun(!) and I'm learning a ton of things about software, hardware and even a little bit about people from working with the contributors who want to help out.

Secondly, I'm building an operating system that I want to use. The contemporary OS'es don't really appeal to me anymore, for one reason or another. I realized that if I just focus for a long time, I could probably build a replacement that looks and works exactly the way I would like instead. So that's what I've been doing.

Thirdly, it keeps me sane. I've had some serious problems with addiction in the past, and having something meaningful to dump all of my excess time, energy and attention into, instead of drugs, has dramatically improved my life over the last year. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been following Andreas on Youtube for a few weeks now. His video on porting DOOM was my first foray into his work. His videos are very interesting if - like me - you have done plenty of web and app development, but less systems-level work.

Keep at it Andreas :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you've been enjoying the content! Porting DOOM was pleasantly straightforward yeah, here's the video if someone is curious what that looked like: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0P_bB6wjhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0P_bB6wjhY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazing progress! Something I've always wanted to do but lacked the time, so i'll have to live vicariously through your updates.

I like the VB inspired editor, I have yet to find one that matches the ease of ise and power of old VB. Does your networking stack support UDP (and multicast)? Looks like a fun thing to tinker with as a VM :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mysterydip! The networking stack supports UDP but not multicast (yet.) I'd like to think it's pretty hackable though, if you're interested in that sort of thing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is absolutely incredible!! Inspiring and awe inspiring. This is art and more. Thank you for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks like a fun project, all power too you for doing finding something that has kept you excited for an entire year!

How far have you gotten into bootstrapping Serenity OS? Is there a public "roadmap" for what feature you want to work on next?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey daxterspeed! I'm not sure what you mean by bootstrapping.. if you mean building Serenity inside itself, it's _almost_ possible. You can build most of the libraries and userspace programs but the kernel panics when trying to build the kernel itself.. I need to look into why that happens, but it's just one many many things that need looking into :)

There's no roadmap of any kind, I'm just doing whatever seems interesting and useful at the moment. I've been working on LibHTML and the Browser app for over a week now though, and I suspect that's gonna be what I'm doing in the immediate future as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> MAD PROPS to you!

Everything has been said by the other commenters but I still want to tell you that you're doing some highly inspirational work. An antidote to cynicism. It's nice to see someone doing something out of sheer love of the job.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a piece of art. I bow and take my hat off to you, sir!

</comment><comment><USER14> Great job! Can someone please make a series of DIY CPU that can have a casual performance? I know this one is hard, but would be very satisfying.

<comment><USER15> RocketChip would be the obvious choice. You can run it (somewhat slowly) on an FPGA.

[https://github.com/chipsalliance/rocket- chip](https://github.com/chipsalliance/rocket-chip)

<comment><USER14> Thank you, I also like these projects built with ttl. They sound slow but still enough to render a non-js/html4 web page I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looking at the timeline, that's some rather impressive productivity, especially with only being worked on in spare time. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER17> Hi Andreas, thanks for sharing!

Do you have a mailing list? I don't have any social media and while I've subscribed to your YouTube and starred the project, it would be easier to keep up with a monthly digest vs. searching through commits and 20+ minute videos for the salient bits.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is amazing. Truly impressive.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know you said you post the YouTube progress videos, do you ever livestream the development work on something like Twitch, Mixer, or YouTube live?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey c17r! I'm not able to stream live at the moment due to my living situation, but I do regularly post recorded development sessions to my YouTube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling](https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling)

Check out the "OS hacking" and "Browser hacking" playlists for 20-60 minute videos of random development tasks all over the system. :)</comment></comment>


A revlutionary new service that got noticed by WhatsApp and got banned - <AUTHOR> http://therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/thank-you-rodinhooders-icliniq-s-whatsapp-a-doctor-is-live

<comment><USER2> But this makes no sense to me :) Why would they go ahead and bn a service that already has a presence ?</comment>


If humans only died from 'flukes' (accidents, crime) we'd live 9,000ish years - <AUTHOR> http://polstats.com/#!/life <comment><USER2> Under the presumption that the value of killing you / not being killed by you / committing a crime punishable by death etc. remains the same.</comment>


The artic is 36 degrees F warmer than normal - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/the-arctic-is-36-degrees-f-warmer-than-normal/?utm_medium=novasocial&utm_campaign=nova_next&linkId=31327062 <comment><AUTHOR> The Washington Post has a more in-depth article [1]. The map projection is more appropriate as well. (Mercator for a representation of the polar region...)

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/2016/11/17/the-north-pole-is-an-insane-36-degrees-warmer-than- normal-as-winter-descends/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.44245e4b4b13)

<comment><USER2> Discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12981650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12981650)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> And what about the -36F drops in siberia!

<comment><USER4> It's just as bad. It's not about _warming_ itself, but drastic climate _changes_. Both changes are really really bad for the environment and ecosystem.

<comment><USER5> Tell that to the sun, which is 99.9% of the mass of the solar system.

<comment><USER6> What do you mean? Maybe I need another cup of coffee.

<comment><USER5> Haha probably me too. :)

I agree that drastic changes are bad for the environment, but the sun doesn't care and it's basically our entire universe.

From the article's intro: "As the Arctic settles into polar night, scientists are noticing that something has gone horribly wrong."

What's horribly wrong? Would scientists say a volcano is horribly wrong because it's rumbling? The climate is always changing and we have a very short history of data.

I just keep seeing these types of articles which are supposed to be scientific. Scientists are making observations but that's it. It's always the first step. These scientists are glorified weathermen. I don't see anything about what's going on with the sun or the moon which I find disturbing.

<comment><USER7> > The climate is always changing and we have a very short history of data.

> These scientists are glorified weathermen

> I don't see anything about what's going on with the sun or the moon which I > find disturbing.

Three of the most wrong arguments done by deniers

<comment><USER5> I'm not denying the climate changes.

Please show me the reports that include data on solar and lunar activity. Extremely few and far between and you know it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very worrying, I hope we're not heading for runaway warming: one freak winter with less ice cover -> more solar radiation absorbed -> more melting -> even less ice cover next winter...</comment>


A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mss/misc/A%20Mathematician%27s%20Apology.pdf <comment><USER2> In case the title is confusing, this is the older meaning of "Apology." Not, "I'm sorry," but "defense." This is a defense and justification for the field of mathematics.

<comment><USER3> so that's where Christian "Apologetics" comes from

<comment><USER4> Yeah, interesting that the meanings shifted over time. EG, look at Google Translate (E>L) where apology (E) becomes excusatione (L) with a back translation (L>E) of 'excuse'. Today an apology may or may not come with an excuse but back then an apology must have been a rationalization for some action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of > numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many > years.

Poor guy, if he had just heard about gps and about modern cryptography!

<comment><USER6> > _or relativity_

Which was used for the atomic bomb.

<comment><USER5> How come? I never heard about that.

<comment><USER6> Relativity is essential for nuclear physics, because of the high energy densities.

<comment><USER7> Special relativity, not general, just to be clear.

<comment><USER8> You'd need general if you wanted to divert asteroids and crash them with pinpoint accuracy on your enemy's cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a favorite of mine and got me through some tough days in undergrad. I'm no longer a young man and I don't really pursue mathematics anymore, but it was a good reminder of a good days.

Thanks for posting :)

<comment><USER5> I also loved reading this book (and the prologue by C.P. Snow on the two cultures). Yet, it is amazing to see that this is not the only possible world view among mathematicians. For example, Vladimir Arnold has essentially the opposite view [1]: "Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap".

[1] [https://www.uni- muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html](https://www.uni- muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a bit of irony that for all the "maths for maths' sake" argument of this apology, one of Hardy's most lasting achievements was a basic principle of genetics -- the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_princip...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_principle)

</comment><comment><USER11> Hardy's idea that math is a young man's game is wrong & discriminatory against those that lack opportunities to education early in their life. Or for whatever reason pursued math at a later age.

See people like: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang) that produced good math at a later stage.

<comment><USER12> It's an observation, not a prescription. Is it "discriminatory" to suggest that gymnastics is a young person's game?

<comment><USER13> Yes

edit:

just to clarify, it would be an observation to say "Most Mathematicians produce their best work when they're young" or "Most gymnasts who make it to the olympics are young"

But to say that X is a young mans game is inherently discriminatory.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that a bit strict? It seems that "x is a young man's game" can be read either in an empirical ("historically, only young men do x") or normative ("only young men should do x") sense, the former of which might be slightly inaccurate because there are exceptions, but otherwise seems fine.

A view held by some seems to be that since even the empirical observation may "perpetuate" the situation, stating it is "problematic" in itself, but I don't suppose this is what you mean here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The current version (in print) includes a sizeable forward by Snow, which is at least as interesting.

And the irony of this entire writeup is that number theory is now beyond "useful", as the underpinning for cryptography and security in our modern systems.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have heard of this "apology", but never got around to reading it. On p. 12 right now. The author makes certain statements about age of people in math which are basically statistics arguments from a few famous examples and his "limited experience".

Also, a lot is different since the days of Hardy.

At least, now I see where some mathematicians get their pretentiousness :)

<comment><USER17> idk why people are getting so hung up on this point. it is obviously true that more great mathematics has been produced by young people. obviously there are exceptions, but they add credence to the general case

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've heard similar arguments about age and physics. I've always theorized that as time progresses the body of work one must be familiar with in order to make new contributions grows as well. We should therefore expect that in modern times, major contributions should come from more experienced individuals.

<comment><USER19> > I've always theorized that as time progresses the body of work one must be > familiar with in order to make new contributions grows as well.

As I see it, this is not too big a problem. Usually people get on a very narrow path and specialize in a tiny part of a larger discipline. There's a lot of new research being done in algebra, analysis, geometry, statistics, whatever; but as a researcher you are expected to choose a very narrow sub-sub -...-sub-discipline and ignore everything else. That's very much doable. An analyst who can't read number theory papers is not a rarity. Likely a rule.</comment></comment>


5 Tips to Lose Weight for Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://healthydeveloper.com/5-tips-to-lose-weight-for-programmers/ <comment><USER2> For the most part, if you get your minimum protein (80-120g depending on lean mass) and stay under 100g sugars a day, calories are calories. You should take in an appropriate amount for your lean body weight on average.

All of that said, it isn't easy, but there are many calorie tracker apps you can use to help. Once you start tracking everything it becomes pretty easy to be mindful of what you're taking in... it's not always easy to think in terms of how many calories certain meals have. It's okay to have a 1200 calorie meal once in a while, but it's not okay to have a 1200 calorie meal twice a day, with a few snacks, soda/sugar-coffee, etc. It all adds up.

That and sugar is one of the most inflammatory things you can take into your body, especially refined sugars. Refined oils aren't much better though.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are some examples of refined oil?

<comment><USER2> Corn, Canola, Soybean ("Vegetable Oil"). basically, if it isn't from animal fat or cold pressed, the more processing it needs, the less likely I am to use it. That includes perfuming, dying and other processing.

I tend to use Avocado, Olive, Walnut, Coconut and Rice Bran oils as well as Butter and Lard. I don't often use lard, but if I'm making something that would traditionally use it, I will. I'm not too big on the flavor of Olive oil and will usually use Avocado oil instead. Walnut I use sparingly but love the flavor it adds when cooking. For mayonaise I'll tend to use rice bran, walnut and avocado oils. I will cook with coconut oil more often than the others. It depends on the specific use case.

There are many other options, but for the most part, I avoid "Vegetable Oil" and the composing parts.</comment></comment></comment>


It's harder to get into YC if you've been through another accelerator - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/getting-into-y-combinator <comment><USER2> This still confuses me.

The expectation that a company should be "accelerated" reflects more on the accelerator than the company.

(A cynical person would say that this philosophy is merely to incentivize companies to apply to only YC. I don't think that's the case and take Sam at his word.)

But if the company is indeed the independent variable, then e.g. AirBnb and Dropbox succeeded because they were great companies, not because they went through YC.

How do you claim on one hand that YC can materially improve your company, and on the other judge the _company_ for not being improved after going through another accelerator?

<comment><USER3> My guess is the companies that have been through other accelerators have improved polish that makes it harder for YC to pick the truely better companies.

The more cynical view would be founders going through multiple accelerators are more focused on appearance and "playing the startup game" than actually building a real business.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that is cynical. :)

Cargo culting seems very prevalent in the current startup culture -- especially in those that are "playing startup".

These founders see all of these external things that startups do and assume they must be necessary for success -- or that they will at least will help cover up any problems they have.

Unfortunately this is just like carving wood into the shape of a radio and expecting it to work. It might look the same but it has none of the things that make it a radio. You can even attach a real antenna to it, but it is still just a block of wood.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you are just more cynical than me :)

Actually I think cargo cult thinking is more of a problem at the accelerator/angel/VC level than at the startup level. We have all these funders copying the YC model and relatively few trying to do things differently. We need much more diversity in funding and acceleration models. All roads might lead to rome, but we don't all need to travel there on the same bus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do love YC and what they've done to the startup world, but at the risk of sounding like a YC hater, the initial part of the post seems like bad advice (boiled down to: if you want to be in YC don't join another accelerator before hand). The second portion in which to evaluate an accelerator is great advice.

But some startup founders may want to get into YC, as it is the best. Yet, they may hesitate to join a strong accelerator that can give them a few more months of runway and advice they desperately need, because of this post. Startup founders may take years to figure out the right direction for the co., as the market size or solution may not be obvious at first. And I feel as though this post, and YCs thinking discourages that and discourages competition.

But from what I've seen externally, some startups that go through (a bad) accelerator, don't accelerate, can come out multi-million dollar cos. Based solely on founders persistence on solving the problem.

<comment><USER6> We're all for companies doing what they need to do to survive.

However, we've seen an increasing number of accelerators getting startups to join them by saying "we can help you get into YC", and then subsequently hurting the company with bad advice or onerous terms.

Companies should never do an accelerator to help them get into YC. Companies should do an accelerator if they need the money to survive or think that they resources of the accelerator will help them be more successful.

<comment><USER5> I 100% agree with that message, but I didn't feel your post conveyed that. My impressions of the post was a broad painting that all other accelerators are bad, even though I know that's not your intent.

I think a lesser emphasis on getting into YC and making the post more of "how to judge an accelerator" would have been better.

<comment><USER6> Fair point; I updated the post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> YC only helps ~3% of the startups that request help and now they're discouraging people from seeking help elsewhere.

There's gotta be a better way of handling this.

<comment><USER8> I agree. This is part of the reason that we are making more of our advice freely available online (e.g. [http://startupclass.samaltman.com/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/) and [http://playbook.samaltman.com/](http://playbook.samaltman.com/)).

The problem with a bad accelerator is that they can actually harm your company with bad advice and unnecessary distractions.

<comment><USER3> Paul when you are building a startup are there any necessary distractions (HN excluded).

You really should name and shame the bad accelerators. I know no one likes to be negative, but if there are accelerators out there messing up companies and leading founders astray then it would be best to make this information public. You will take some heat for doing this, but you guys should be able to handle it.

<comment><USER8> There are hundreds of accelerators with more appearing all of the time (plus significant management turnover in many of the programs). Evaluating them all would be a full-time job for several people. I'd rather put that effort into finding more ways to help more startups.

<comment><USER3> I would hope the fact that a problem is hard is not a reason to not do it :)

More seriously, it depends on how serious the bad accelerator problem is and you guys are one of the few that have the data on this. If it is a minor problem then I agree there are better ways to help, but if it is a major problem then it needs to be addressed.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't it be super weird for the leading accelerator to start formally rating its competitors? There's a difference between having good data and being in a position to help people by publishing it.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be super weird for the leading experts in <professional field> to start formally rating their competitors, i.e. other more-junior professionals in that field?

Y'know, the way it's done by all professions worthy of the name?

No, it would not be weird at all, and more importantly, it'd be good for consumers of that industry.

<comment><USER9> What's an example of a profession where the leading firm publishes ratings of all its competitors?

<comment><USER10> I cannot think of an example exactly like that. But in many professions, senior members are the ones who certify junior members. Law, medicine, all the reputable parts of finance.

I mean, to make my actual argument, instead of just alluding to it, it seems to me that:

1) it's good for consumers of an industry to have ratings of the providers in that industry

2) I can think of three sources for such ratings: crowd-sourced ex-customer ratings, ratings by a purported expert-at-rating, ratings by peers. I think these each have their merits.

3) If ratings-by-peers is indeed useful, then in a given industry, it has to start somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is interesting.

I wonder what you feel companies should do in the event of a strong pivot: reincorporate or retain their cap table?

Based solely on this post, it seems beneficial to reincorporate in order to retain an undiluted cap table.

However, that seems contradictory to YC's thesis of investing in teams instead of ideas. If a team's first idea isn't successful, I imagine YC would want to retain its stake in whatever their new venture is.

Also - is there any chance you've previously used pre-accelerators as a positive indication? "Letting up" on your standard assessment of a team simply because they had gone through a pre-accelerator could also explain this trend.

<comment><USER6> My thinking has changed on this. I think investors shouldn't get a free option on every idea a founder ever has; after a few pivots and rounds I think a clean start is often a good idea.

<comment><USER12> There's a lotta grumbles about Sam and YC taking this stance at VCs these days. FWIW I think it's about right but SO hard to judge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A simple way of thinking about this is that acceleration only helps if you are pointed in the right direction!

One of the common problems with many accelerator programs is that they are run by people who are not themselves experienced founders. Not surprisingly, their advice is often counterproductive.

<comment><USER9> For example...?

(I 100% believe you)

<comment><USER8> Most common is just wasting their time with low-ROI things such as meeting with a large number of low-value mentors. We try to keep startups focused on talking to customers and building product.

A crazy one I remember was telling a pre-product startup that they needed to focus on defining their brand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FWIW if anyone is evaluating doing a Techstars program, I'm more than happy to talk about my experience or help you find someone from the program you're considering - just reach out!

tommy at alloy dot co

<comment><USER13> Good guy here ^

Maybe you could write about it?

<comment><USER12> Plan on it! There are definitely some nuances to TS specifically that it is very appropriate to discuss on an individualized basis. I've had friends go through all the major and a few minor accelerators now, so I think I have a pretty good view on it and am always happy to discuss. It's a huge decision!

TL;DR on TS for us it was a homerun, I don't believe it is for everybody. I believe there are times it a particular TS program is a better situation for a company than YC, but that there are MORE situations where it is better to do YC if you can. That's my 2 cents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hummm.... we have customers, we have revenue, we are working with some amazing brands (7-Eleven, pizza hut, Chili's) we have access to more than 500k candidates, we applied to YC and we didn't made even the interview...

I'm starting to think that it was because we did participate in other accelerator before, and that doesn't make much sense to me.

<comment><USER15> Those brands are big, and had a very strong upward trajectory at one time, but are they amazing? They remind me of _sugar water_. Especially 7/11\. [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2813-do-you-want-to-sell- suga...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2813-do-you-want-to-sell-sugar-water- for)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Heh, I feel like this is a _direct_ shot at 500:

(Fairly so. They seem to offer a blurry line on what they consider "portfolio" sometimes, not going out of their way to differentiate accelerator vs later stage investments)

>>(it's important to distinguish between companies that went through the accelerator and cases where the investment firm made a small late-stage investment in the company)

<comment><USER17> Also a shot at Techstars, who have been known to lump in late-stage fund investments with their accelerator returns. Writing a tiny check into Uber's B-round has nothing to do with their accelerator program, for example, and it's disingenuous when they conflate the two.

I should mention that they have been doing a better job distinguishing this lately.

<comment><USER18> Actually, David Cohen wrote a check in Uber's angel round - [http://davidgcohen.com/2014/07/14/the-ponys-lucky- horseshoe/](http://davidgcohen.com/2014/07/14/the-ponys-lucky-horseshoe/)

And the list of Techstars companies shows _only_ the stats of companies that went through a Techstars accelerator - [http://www.techstars.com/companies/](http://www.techstars.com/companies/) Non-accelerator company investments (Uber, Twilio, etc) only appear on the Techstars fund page - [http://www.techstars.com/venture-capital- fund/](http://www.techstars.com/venture-capital-fund/)

Disclosure - I work for Techstars

<comment><USER17> Ah, thanks for clarifying what round that was, and kudos to David! Like I said, you guys have been doing a better job distinguishing between your accelerator and venture portfolio, although that hasn't always been the case.

In a similar vein, what are your thoughts on Techstars calling themselves "the #1 startup accelerator in the world" and claiming "the best results" for their program? Given that YC's performance is roughly ~12X yours, this does seem to be somewhat of a misstatement. That is, unless you're claiming to be #1 for some arbitrary metric that isn't actually the benchmark for your industry (which to be clear, is the market cap of the companies you fund).

I think Techstars is clearly a great program, but stuff like that just strikes me as disingenuous. :)

<comment><USER18> I personally (speaking for myself) never cared for "the #1 startup accelerator" wording, and now that Techstars has built a small marketing team you'll have noticed that we talk about Techstars a lot differently - [http://www.techstars.com/](http://www.techstars.com/) :)

BTW, the #1 thing came from the first ranking of accelerators back in 2011 - [http://tech.co/top-15-us-startup-accelerators- ranked-2011-05](http://tech.co/top-15-us-startup-accelerators-ranked-2011-05) (I believe they used a mixture of financial results and founder ratings, but I'm not sure.)

Yep, YC companies have raised a lot more money and have a higher total valuation, but YC also has a two-year head start! Based on any reasonable metric, Techstars has better results than any other accelerator - [http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators](http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators)

PS - my favorite story about how Techstars directly helped to change the course of one company is here - [http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how- bb-8a-rolling-robot-in-a-ga...](http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how- bb-8a-rolling-robot-in-a-galaxy-far-far-awaychanged-everything-for-sphero/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems to unfairly penalize startups who've pivoted since after the accelerator.

We've been to one. It was early stage, and within our geography. When we spoke to YC/500startups in 2013, it was all about having traction or earning revenue and breaking even. We didn't have that. We were academia dropouts with some patents and an idea.

Going through the 1st accelerator helped us because we didn't even know how to put together a pitch deck. We've since pivoted because ideas change, become more focused and polished. Our idea, business model and pitch is completely different.

YC would not have accepted us in 2013, someone else did. Now if we want to apply to YC post-pivot, we get penalized? That seems incredibly unfair.

<comment><USER20> Why not shutter the pre-pivot startup and apply as a fresh startup to YC? If the idea, business model, and pitch are completely different, is it actually the same company?

<comment><USER19> We've already taken investment pre-pivot from angels, screwing investors over to be a 'fresh startup' seems to be a type of fraud.

It's different pitch, but a natural and logical progression. Most of the time ideas need refining, especially with user feedback. It doesn't make sense to start with a new company since the technology that powers is still the same.

<comment><USER21> Sam's relevant comment upthread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10941276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10941276)

So I guess it can be a judgment call. In your case it sounds like you're doing the right thing, though.

<comment><USER19> one of the things that really struck me when fundraising:

"...that 25k he just gave you, could've gone to his kids' college fund or investing in blue chip stocks instead. It's amazing that you can raise money at all."

Angels give less money than VCs, some angels give low amounts (15-25k) especially in an early seed round. They're doing it for _you_. Screwing them over for more equity or YC makes you a shitty irresponsible human being and imho, should be considered a type of fraud.

Honestly I'm surprised at Sam's stance. Unless it's really justifiable, this seems like bad advice.

<comment><USER22> On the flip side, an investor puts money into funding an idea which they (ought to) know has a 90% chance of not working out. I don't see anything morally or ethically wrong with saying "I/we gave it our best, but the idea didn't pan out" and returning any leftover funds, if any, before completely flushing that idea (discarding all assets associated with it), putting your thinking cap on, and looking for the next opportunity. I generally don't see a problem with starting over if you're going from an "Uber for Drones" idea to a "Custom CNC Furniture" idea, for example.

Of course, that's a completely different scenario from simply evolving the idea in a different direction but still keeping the core; in that case, I agree with your point of view. For example, I do see a problem if you're going from a "Custom CNC Furniture" idea to a "Custom CNC Cycling Parts" idea. It would be pretty shady to screw over your initial investors in that scenario. It also might be actionable by the original investors if you reuse any assets you developed using their funds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > we like funding very early-stage companies

Is this still true? Aren't you supposed to show good traction in order to have a good chance to get into YC?

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if there is any kind of selection effect in this. YC attracts a lot of attention and helps steer opinions about what are attractive investment opportunities. If YC (for whatever reason) tends not to like companies that pass through multiple accelerators, maybe that has a side effect of making other people also not like them (just because YC doesn't) and eventually to build up some biases or (potentially unjustified) extra skepticism about them, and over time it means a more difficult funding landscape once you've attended multiple accelerators, regardless of the quality of the company.

The post says that YC's reasoning is that _conditioned on knowledge that the company attended multiple accelerators, YC expects to see more significant progress._ I think this eliminates any usefulness of doing a randomized experiment on YC applications, where the property of previous accelerator attendance is hidden and we just observe whether YC would accept them or not (meaning, their fundamentals are good enough to be accepted). Instead, YC is saying that fundamentals that look good enough to be accepted are actually not good enough if you've been through an accelerator.

On one hand I understand what they are saying, but on the other hand I also think that however an application comes to be sitting in front of your eyeballs shouldn't necessarily matter. It seems odd to me that the criteria for entry would be path dependent and the goalposts could move back or forth depending not on what the current state of your company is, but on how it arrived at that current state.

Please note this is not a criticism. I am not a successful start-up accelerator. Just observations about this seeming counter-intuitive to me.

</comment><comment><USER24> I just turned down a program yesterday because of this concern. They were surprised to hear it, but good to have this post out there to back me up on it.

<comment><USER3> Given that YC has less than a 3% acceptance rate is it wise to turn down a program because it might affect your chance of getting into YC?

<comment><USER25> It depends on how "even" you think that 3% is distributed. If you believe that 90% of teams that apply have a 0.0001% chance, 10% have a 30-ish% chance, and you have good reason to think you're in the 10% case, probably.

I don't know if that's the exact math, but it's probably a lot closer to that than to evenly distributed.

<comment><USER3> This is true, but unfortunately few founders know what pool they are in.

My guess is it is like VC funding where all the VCs want to fund companies that don't need the funds - the companies that don't need to be in YC are the ones they want to choose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sam is there a common theme underlying the poorer track record of companies that have been through other accelerators (brakes in this case)?

<comment><USER26> The obvious explanation is that companies that truly accelerated raised VC, removing the need for added acceleration.

<comment><USER3> I can think of half a dozen plausible reasons for this effect, but only YC has the data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > A smaller issue is the extra dilution on the cap table

Let's be honest here. This is the primary issue not the "smaller issue"?

Let's call a spade a spade. Or have I missed the joke?

<comment><USER28> I don't see any reason not to take what was said at face value. There's no reason to automatically pass on what seems to be a great opportunity just because you're not first in line. The reason to pass is that the data supports a lower success rate.

<comment><USER27> It just seems backward to me. I understand that YC are in the business of jump-starting startups with potential. A handful of those startups might succeed. Their entire business model seems to focus on the returns from that small handful of successes. If I were them, my primary reason for taking these companies onboard and helping them to succeed, is purely to see a profit at the end of the line.

Hence, dilution is very bad. That would be my primary issue.I just don't understand why it was stated as a minor side point to the whole discussion. Surely it is absolutely important?

<comment><USER29> The dilution isn't normally that severe. A 900x return at a 7% success rate would be better than a 1000x return at a 5% success rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> IMHO, accelerators early on in your startup life are to give you marketing boost to get customers when nobody gives a shit about you. More than anything. These days you can get a product ready with little or no money. As for advice, there is so much written out there if you just spend some time reading, thinking and doing things you can accelerate your startup growth.

If you are going to go through accelerator, why not go with the one that carries the most social capital.

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope the taint attains to the company, not to the founders. (I think that's how it works).

</comment><comment><USER32> Curious if there are other signals you can talk about? Working on the business part-time only because of job? having a young family? Age? Most of SV seems to feel if your over 40 and aren't at least VP of something your mediocre. ambitiousness of the idea versus being able to show progress? How about paying a contractor to do some sales versus finding a co-founder? in this case I'm technical but have a full-time job so don't have the time to talk to customers.

</comment><comment><USER33> > _You don't need to "prepare" to apply to YC in any way._

While you don't need to, I would think the chances of being accepted are considerably better if you are prepared. Especially if you have factors working against you that YC doesn't like.

Obviously joining an accelerator prior to YC doesn't count as preparation (more like making your startup radioactive), but it does seem prudent to have a solid YC application while being ready to nail the interviews if it gets that far.

</comment><comment><USER34> what is the purpose of ycombinator in layman's terms? Serious answers please.

<comment><USER35> It's a rare entry point into the world of venture capital, a world that, for decades, was completely dominated by the old-boy network.

<comment><USER36> "was"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'd be curious to see counter examples to this. Is anyone aware of YC companies that previously went through a different accelerator?

Even more interesting would be companies that were rejected by YC but went through a different accelerator, either before or after applying to YC.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting that they have enough data, since I doubt even 1000 companies have gone through YC and counting the few hundred that have, probably only a small fraction of them have exited or died.

</comment><comment><USER39> From TFA: "exploding offer"

What's an exploding offer?

<comment><USER40> Exploding offers are an exploitation tactic intended to pressure you to commit to doing what the offering party wants ASAP, or else what you want will go away. It's OK for something like a firesale at your favorite retailer, but definitely not good on a more intimate scale, like a job or investment. If they actually want you, they'll let you take your time regardless of what their offer says, and an exploding offer is a big signal that you probably don't really want to work with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> As an unrelated question - what are some of the other well known accelerators, that are at par (or better) than YC?

</comment><comment><USER42> Why is this a bad thing even if it were the case?

</comment><comment><USER43> Looks like YC is sending a signal of dominance to other accelerators.

Classy.</comment>


French tax on startups - <AUTHOR> http://flirtatiouslabs.com/post/33951039177/french-tax-on-startups-eternal-bullshit-of-the-clueless

<comment><USER3> I'm tired of this BS being spread by ppl who didn't even read the finances law in question (at least bullet points). It's not true, the 60% tax rate comes from the creation of a new bracket in the income tax and the treatment of selling your startup as income. To attain 60% you 1) need to sell for more than 150k 2) count all the acquisition money as instant revenue 3) do not intend to invest. And in fact, you have decreasing income tax if you sell assets you were bound to for 2 years (5%) and increasing up to 40% (on the 45% income tax...) for 12 years and more. If you invest 80% or more of the amount you earn, you don't have this tax, the same if you sell to retire... And don't even get me started on the "auto-entrepreneur" status which is a joke (that needs to end).

<comment><USER4> VCs make nearly all their returns off a few big hits. So on the big hit, they will certainly:

1) make > 150k.

2) Sell out instantly, or at the very least in chunks considerably bigger than 150k. Even if they do sell out in 150k chunks, that will drastically reduce their returns - returns = log(outcome/investment)/t, so increasing t will lower returns.

3) Return the funds to investors.

Sounds like this law will, in fact, cut returns by roughly 50%. Or maybe 30% if the exit takes a long time.

<comment><USER5> VC are companies, not people, so what they earn is counted as benefits, not revenue. Moreover, in their P&L, they can subtract the L from their P, and average their money streams over several years.

There are legitimate issues with this law:

* it creates a lot of gratuitous bureaucracy and complexities, where you need to apply to some byzantine exceptions to the exception to the common law to keep a decent share of the wealth you produced; this kind of unproductive BS drives genuine entrepreneurs crazy and disincentivize them, probably more than the tax bracket in which they fall;

* it creates a very legitimate sense of insecurity among small businesses;

* it sends an overall message that France is not a startup-friendly environment, and that if you can help it, you should rather incorporate in another European country.

This last message is, unfortunately, very true: both the corporate and political French elites come from the same few schools, mostly ENA; so politicians have many executive friends in the private sector, but they all only worked in huge companies. They wish that the next Google would appear in France, but they can't realize that Google-like wealth creation never comes from dinosaurs on the scale of AT&T or GM (or Orange, or Peugeot). Moreover, this cluelessness is shared by conservatives and liberals equally.

<comment><USER6> There is no conservative/liberals differenciation in France. All French senior politicians and civil servants have exactly the same life trajectory, are educated in the same school, ENA, and share the same values. There is a lot of opportunist movement from a party to another, showing that party ideology has zero weight.

PS: you may bring Nicolas Sarkozy as a counter-example. He, indeed, did not go to ENA because he failed to graduate from IEP Paris, which is a prerequisite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> France is doing us foreigners a big favor by taking on an experience in wealth redistribution through extreme taxation. It takes some balls to do something that may destroy your economy to this extent.

We should all thank the French voters who took on the risk to put this government in control.

(I think it'll end in tears, but it will serve to deter the voters in other countries the next time they think of starting a class warfare against their entrepreneurs)

<comment><USER8> Yeah the new 75% income tax bracket in France really is putting the Laffer curve theory to the test. Will be very interesting to see how it pans out. I'm sure socialist governments elsewhere in Europe is following this grand experiment closely.

<comment><USER9> US had a 92% tax rate for a few years and 70%+ during our great economic expansion after WWII, which was highest GDP grow in our history.

[http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213)

<comment><USER10> How you dare questioning the sacred idea that an income tax bracket of 70%+ would destroy the economy?

<comment><USER7> What should be considered is not the maximal tax rate but the effective tax rate (after deductions, evasions and so forth).

Do you have any doubt that with the paper accounting of the 50's it was significantly easier to evade paying taxes? Do you really think anyone actually paid 70%?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those who may have no idea what the author is actually talking about:

[http://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/explainin...](http://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/explaining- geonpi-to-non-french-entrepreneurs/)

[http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/10/01/the-pigeon- movement-f...](http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/10/01/the-pigeon-movement- frances-last-hope-for-startups/)

The latter, posted/discussed previously on HN

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595869>

</comment><comment><USER12> > Talking about what other measures the government put in place, or what > tweaks the government made to lower taxes for entrepreneurs is besides the > point, as NO FUNDING MEANS THERE WILL NO LONGER BE SUCCESSFUL FUNDED > STARTUPS from which to exit.

It doesn't matter because you cannot show a start-up that never came into existence on TV, so there is no way to hold politicians responsible for that. Nothing has changed since Frédéric Bastiat wrote "What is Seen and What is Unseen"[1].

[1] <http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html>

</comment><comment><USER13> Instead of whining, use your valuable time to make start-ups that solves big pains, bring value to users and customers, with a good UX, which will then make $millions revenues and valuated $billions. Then your voice will have power and audience to make things change if you want so, and you'll become politician from the do-ers side. I'll even vote for you, but lot of work before... I'm a french startup entrepreneur and I approve this message. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> so if the money is reinvested, as it presumably would be by vcs, this doesn't apply?

<comment><AUTHOR> VCs have funds with limited timespan. They can't reinvest endlessly. And either way, an investor needs to have a decent measure of liquidity in order for said investment to be attractive, so locking it down even more than it already is would be counterproductive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's worth noting that equity sales taxes don't concern French companies that have the "JEI" label, i.e. young innovative companies.

There is an issue in the State's definition of "innovative", though. JEIs are companies that spend at least 15% of their resources on R&D, so we're talking about technological innovation. It seems to me that most people agree that other sorts of innovation need to be accounted — either with the same label, or a new one.

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems to affect VC's and people here are acting like you can't have startups without VC's. There are these things called banks...

<comment><AUTHOR> At least in France, banks never invest in startups. And I mean absolutely never.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've lived in France 12 years and run a web consultancy in Paris. The government is completely out to lunch - and I feel the international media has not covered this story sufficiently. Unemployment is going to rise, investment will drop and extreme political movements are going to become even more popular.

</comment><comment><USER18> France is destroying its future wealth and its destroying it fast.

It's already one of the country with the most obstacles when you want to create a business: there are laws at basically every "level of power" and because it's one of the most socialist country of the planet (despite them always saying neo-liberal are supposedly in power) there are a great many level of powers. It's mad. Consider yourself lucky if you want to start a technology startup: it's relatively "easy" compared to, say, wanting to create a factory.

Why are there no french Google, FaceBook, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, etc.?

And the people defending these socialists are intellectually dishonest: we're assisting at the utter failure of the nanny-state (think socialist Greece and socialist Spain that skyrocketed the debt and drove the country into the wall) and yet the socialist manage (by propaganda, being basically in control of both written and televisualized press) to make believe it's all the fault of the liberals.

This is sick. Just sick.

Now I'm fighting teeth and nails to get my point across: if you're a french entrepreneur, do like me: leave your country. We're in a world where, thankfully, people are still free to move. So move while you can. Incorporate your startup in Luxembourg (like Skype did). Incorporate in Switzerland.

Flee France. That country doesn't deserves you nor the future wealth you're going to create.

<comment><USER19> Don't the Nordic countries have a lot of taxes? They seem to do ok in the startup scene. My wild guess - I don't know how things are 'on the ground' in either France or the Nordic countries - is that France tends to have more _bureaucracy_ like here in Italy. So that it's not just a matter of "make some money, pay X in taxes" which is pretty easy to reason about, and somewhat "fair" (even if we all have different opinions) if you're paying taxes on profits, but rather feeling like the system is full of obstacles and people who are either indifferent or actively hostile towards the idea of someone opening a business.

<comment><USER4> _Don't the Nordic countries have a lot of taxes?_

Not on corporations. They do tend to have rather high taxes on middle class individuals, however.

[http://blogs- images.forbes.com/kenrapoza/files/2011/09/Corpo...](http://blogs- images.forbes.com/kenrapoza/files/2011/09/CorporateIncomeTaxRates.jpg)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/09/09/a-cross- cou...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/09/09/a-cross-country- comparison-of-corporate-income-taxes/)

<comment><USER20> Ah, I live in one of these countries with low corporate income tax (it's 19% here), and yet right wing here wants to make it even lower to increase entrepreneurship, and everybody complains how hard it is to do business here, because taxes and insurance contribute additional ~13-15% cost to base salary, so that they have to use law loopholes to escape that (which is very widespread, and recent attempts by government to fixed it resulted in an public outcry).

Hearing all that, one could imagine that in countries like France, with >30% corporate tax and high employment cost, no business can take place at all, and it must have fallen in a deep economic depression a long time ago.

<comment><USER4> _Hearing all that, one could imagine that in countries like France, with >30% corporate tax and high employment cost, no business can take place at all, and it must have fallen in a deep economic depression a long time ago._

That is generally the case. Unemployment rates in the 8-12 neighborhood are considered a disaster in the US. In France they are normal.

France is as poor as Arkansas and Idaho, two of the poorest US states. If the US in general fell to this level, we'd definitely be calling it a deep depression.

[http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/01/paul-krugman-extols- euro...](http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/01/paul-krugman-extols-europes- economic.html)

The only reason France isn't described as being in a recession is because it's always been this way, so they are used to it.

<comment><USER21> France is not (much) different from other comparable countries in Europe on the quoted measure (i.e. Germany, UK and Italy are equally "as poor" as Arkansas and Idaho, using GDP-PPP/inhabitant). So it most likely doesn't have much to do with the original statement, given that Germany has e.g. a much lower unemployment. I am not sure per-state comparison of GDP-PPP per capita are really that meaningful: you would most likely need to adjust parity within the US. This is a weak argument, but I can't really see how France would be significantly poorer than Louisiana.

Describing France as perpetually in recession is rather nonsensical: I can't see any measure by which it would not be true for nearly every country if true for France.

<comment><USER22> Start with a very rich country - a former superpower that fought with its rival for world domination. I'm not talking about USA and USSR but France and England.

The #1 spots comes with lot of advantages like accumulated wealth, educated workforce, etc.

Now start to introduce socialist reforms - little by little, and watch the country bleed itself out while its voters supports this self destructive streak being proud of the equality they are achieving.

This "equality" makes me think of thermodynamics. Yes they are increasing entropy, destroying the country.

It can be achieved in a small amount of time (Zimbabwe managed to turn itself from very rich to very poor in a record amount of time!) or a long time - <USER2> France is showing.

At the moment, France can only take advantage of the size of its economy as a refuge in the eurozone for those who don't want to put all their eggs in Germany

If France keep destroying its economy that way (or if say the UK gets in the eurozone) the end of the ride is near.

[I wonder if it will need food help to fight famine, like Zimbabwe, after after being a net food exporter]

<comment><USER21> What makes you think France is destroying its economy ? And what makes you think UK or Germany is that much better ? When you scratch behind the superficial discourses around european economy, some underlying issues are systemic and shared across all big European economies. One of them is the very weak capitalization of banks, and high asset/gdp of the private banking system [1]. This by itself explains a large part of the current European policies (for example, those countries don't/can't recognize that they will need to re- capitalize their banks at taxpayer-expense).

This is much, much more critical than changes in taxes which effects are at best very disputed, and mostly explained by political biases of each side.

[1] (asset / gdp is > 6x GDP for switzerland, > 3x GDP for UK and France, to compare to 0.6 x GDP for the US: [http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2012/03/20120322_eu1.png))</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf <comment><USER2> To paraphrase the green box from the post:

        Distinctive Features of Contemporary Propaganda

        1.  High-volume and multichannel
        2.  Rapid, continuous, and repetitive
        3.  Lacks commitment to objective reality
        4.  Lacks commitment to consistency

This just strikes me as modern. It's not only Russia that does this. There are online movements that use the exact same technique.

<comment><USER3> This doesn't strike me as modern. I don't see what is in there that doesn't already exist in partisan news broadcasts.

<comment><USER2> It builds on earlier propaganda techniques, of course, in much the same way that web design builds on typography. What makes it modern, is the "social" element and the even more multifarious "multichannel."

</comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- I think I might take what the RAND Corporation puts out with a grain of salt, given their ties to the military industrial complex.</comment>


Restaurant fable explains everything wrong with San Francisco housing right now - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/07/this-restaurant-fable-explains-everything-wrong-with-san-francisco-right-now/ <comment><USER2> The food metaphor definitely overcomplicates this. Translation:

1\. The citizens of the Bay Area for years have limited new housing development, complaining they could change the "character" of their neighborhoods, for the worse.The limitation is baked into the democratic process at the local level.

2\. There arent enough homes to accomodate the job growth and influx of people (both renting and buying)

3\. Jobs are growing and workers are moving in, competing with longtime citizens and each other for a limited amount of housing (and groceries, and parking, and public transportation, and city services etc).

So it gets more expensive. We protest buses, but long after the buses are paid for, homes will still be expensive.

Whatever we do, we need more homes.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely true that more homes are needed no matter what, but as far as I can tell, just allowing more development isn't going to solve the problem for anybody who's already priced out of the market. For-profit developers who invest now will be building the current unit prices into their model (and starting with current/future building costs, which are higher than past/amortized building costs).

I think this is basically why when I've looked, I can't seem to find any examples where housing supply buildouts alone have dropped prices -- seems there's always a drop in demand based on changes in regional fundamentals that has to happen first.

<comment><USER4> _For-profit developers who invest now will be building the current unit prices into their model_

I struggle to follow this. For profit developers will build if they can do so for a profit. The only thing that will matter is whether the cost of construction is less than the PV of the future cashflows of a constructed building.

An apartment building that costs $50M to put up costs the same $50M whether a 1BR apartment rents for $1,000/month or $5,000/month (for the most part ... if you get a lot of development in response to price increases, you can end up with a shortage of labor and labor costs can increase the total build cost ... but that will be on the margins).

Furthermore, the cost to put up a building may be coming down. Here's a story about reducing construction costs by prefabricating buildings.

[http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/broad-sustainable- buildi...](http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/broad-sustainable-building- instant-skyscraper/all/)

I don't know what it costs to construct and apartment building in SF, but if the rest of the world is a guide, there are plenty of projects that would have a positive NPV even at lower rent levels. So development would contain prices and could even bring prices down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think the food metaphor makes any of the issues easier to understand.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the most confusing thing I've read in a while.

<comment><USER7> This downright absurd metaphor confused the hell out of me. If you want to craft an explanation of a problem, reason from 1st principles, not an analogy. This analogy REALLY complicated understanding the situation for me, as I'm without a huge body of knowledge about the problem. Fucking birdcage makers and burgers. What the fuck did I just read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> amurmann: You're apparently dead.

I agree with your comment. Granted I only visit SF now and then, but it seems very strange that things don't just go vertical. That's the obvious solution, isn't it? Build huge retail+office+residential towers like those proposed over half a century (or more?) ago.

At first evaluation, it seems that people who own space must be extremely opposed to this and that works its way into local politics. I can't imagine people are voluntarily height-capping these little buildings I see going up.

<comment><USER9> I too would like to see SF go the way of other world class cities like Vancouver and build up. The challenge is the city is insanely proud of it's "small" city character and anything that makes it feel more like New York would be out of character. Even when developing in downtown, you run into issues with people protesting the loss of sunlight and the shadows cast by skyscrapers.

<comment><USER8> Then get innovative with engineering. Build down. Silly that for an area that's supposed to be the centre of high tech, the options are overpriced city, or essentially suburbia.

<comment><USER10> Are there any examples of cities that have ever built down? You'd get the housing, but then there would be fighting over the scarcity of windows.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps I'm too high on sci-fi. But I'd imagine office and retail would work well enough. Put in artificial sunlight, channel some light from the roof area, run large displays to simulate outdoors. If it really works well, then residential might work, too.

And fighting over real window space is a far cry better than fighting over any space. As-is, there are even parking garages taking up nice window space in buildings here.

The geography looks a bit hilly in SF; it might be cheaper to dig under those hills than just going straight down from a flat area.

Maybe I'm just completely naive, but anything seems better than the current solution of doing nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These class warfare style pieces are tiresome. SF could be argued to be a "foodie" destination which may attract outside visitors regardless. Artificially caping supply will only serve to increase prices anyway if people really want to eat somewhere. Conflating this with a housing argument is a misdirection mishmash that is borderline linkbait by the post.

</comment><comment><USER12> To me the solution is clear: tear down the shitty Victorians and build skyscrapers instead. It made me terribly upset to see that the new buildings in Mission Bay are only 5-6 stories. Nothing that gets build in SF should be under 30 stories. We need living space and lots of it, so that prices come down.

</comment><comment><USER13> With increasing population, it is incredibly simple.

Choose one:

      1. Live further away
      2. Increase number of people per living abode
      3. Increase number of living abodes per space

Numbers one and two are personal choice, number three is political.

</comment><comment><USER14> They forgot to include the part where there's a neighborhood that's 10 minutes away by train with no meal restrictions, but the Junpero-ans don't want to eat there, because it isn't a popular place to eat, and it's harder to eat with their friends. They'd rather pay outrageous prices to eat in Junipero than get on a dirty train.

Also, let's not forget all the tiny, artisinal birdcage companies that are buying up a non-trivial percentage of the available meal credits on the black market, so that they can feed their employees free lunches during the daytime. Maybe as many as 40% of the meals being served in some neighborhoods are being used for birdcage company cafeterias.

But really, this is a stupid metaphor, because in city that's _less than 50 square miles_ , lack of available real estate isn't a manufactured problem.

<comment><USER15> Lack of available _living space_ is a manufactured problem. All SF needs to do to solve this problem is allow construction at the population density of Hoboken, NJ (39k/mile^2). Hoboken is not exactly a dense megacity.

<comment><USER16> It might be manufactured, but building high-density housing is not going to bring any prices down.

I lived in downtown Sacramento for a few years. I moved into new high(er) density apartments [0] the first year they were built. I paid $1000/month for a 400 sq ft studio with parking. For price reference, later I rented a more traditional apartment that was twice as big, several blocks away for only $650.

The takeaway is that until everyone who _can_ pay ridiculous prices has housing, prices are going nowhere but up in SF. Decent middle-class apartments with a couple bedrooms in Mountain View are $3k+.

Prices are expensive because the SF bay area is awesome. It has a massive number of high paying jobs, ridiculous natural beauty, a gorgeous climate, tons of culture, diversity, and history.

Contrast to Stockton, a mere 90 miles away, where you can buy a 2,000 sq ft 4bd house for $276k [1]. But Stockton's got none of the appeal of the SF bay, and it certainly doesn't have the jobs that SV does.

People will fight hand over fist to get into SF, nobody's sprinting to live in Stockton.

(nothing personal against Stockton).

[0] [http://1801l.com/](http://1801l.com/)

[1] [http://www.redfin.com/CA/Stockton/9467-Ravenna- Ln-95212/home...](http://www.redfin.com/CA/Stockton/9467-Ravenna- Ln-95212/home/19720757)

<comment><USER17> > It might be manufactured, but building high-density housing is not going to > bring any prices down.

Where's the part of your post that backs up this statement?

<comment><USER16> Um. The entire post. Takeaway: density doesn't cause affordability.

Examples: Nob Hill and Telegraph Hill in SF, Wilshire Corridor in LA, and downtown SD. All examples of expensive areas where housing densities are high. Manhattan is quite dense and nobody asserts that it is affordable.

Affordability is a separate issue from density.

<comment><USER17> All you've done is tell a story about how upscale apartments cost more per square foot than traditional apartments.

> The takeaway is that until everyone who can pay ridiculous prices has > housing, prices are going nowhere but up in SF. Decent middle-class > apartments with a couple bedrooms in Mountain View are $3k+.

So you're saying that adding more housing will make prices stop going up. So why do you simultaneously claim that building more housing won't bring prices down?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I took the word "fable" too loosely, and didn't realize I was reading a made- up story until 5th paragraph.</comment>


Introducing SkyDrive for the modern web, built using HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/06/20/introducing-skydrive-for-the-modern-web-built-using-html5.aspx

<comment><USER2> The problem with most of these cloud initiatives from Microsoft is the missing integration with WinXP. LiveMesh and Skydrive desktop integrations are fine on Win7, but there are still lots of XP users out there, and most of this stuff does not work on XP.

<comment><AUTHOR> SkyDrive is a browser-based cloud store, not a desktop application. So you should be able to use it just fine on XP, provided you are running a modern browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is excellent web software.</comment>


So I tried to convert today's Google's Doodle into Pure CSS (no JS) - <AUTHOR> http://cssdeck.com/item/297/google-doodle-for-eadweard-j-muybridges-182nd-birthday

<comment><USER2> I like this site's playground feature. Sort of like jsfiddle.. we are building something similar (<https://designduke.com/designer>) to play around with CSS styling.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great work, but I think this is the kind of thing that fits better with JS.</comment>


FlatBuffers 1.1: a memory-efficient serialization library - <AUTHOR> http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2015/04/flatbuffers-11-memory-efficient.html

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion is still valuable: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7901991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7901991)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, Aard is at Google now? Was always a big fan of his Cube work, I wonder what else he'll come up with there?

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't heard of FlatBuffers before, but it looks similar to Cap'nProto[1] (which was written by the guy who wrote protobufs). Does anyone know how they compare?

[1] [https://capnproto.org/](https://capnproto.org/)

<comment><USER5> Here's the comparison by the author of Cap'nProto: [https://capnproto.org/news/2014-06-17-capnproto- flatbuffers-...](https://capnproto.org/news/2014-06-17-capnproto-flatbuffers- sbe.html)</comment></comment>


Texify - Online LaTeX equation writer - <AUTHOR> http://texify.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice. I love URL interfaces (phras.in is another good one). Definitely useful for tutoring over IM.

Font looks a bit cartoonish though...

[http://texify.com/?$\int_a^b\left(\frac{\partial%20L}{\parti...](http://texify.com/?$\\int_a^b\\left\(\\frac{\\partial%20L}{\\partial%20q}\\frac{d\\eta}{d\\epsilon}+\\frac{\\partial%20L}{\\partial%20\\dot{q}}\\frac{d\\dot{\\eta}}{d\\epsilon}\\right\)dt$)

</comment><comment><USER3> Or <http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php>

</comment><comment><USER4> There is also <http://mathbin.net/>

</comment><comment><USER5> check out <http://www.pastemath.com> that has been around for 5 years now.</comment>


Let's not localize programming languages. Please _ - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/1197735

<comment><USER2> We have an in-house XML driven formatting engine to generate PDF reports at the company I work for (we're in England).

The style attribute names have been written in British English - e.g. the colour attribute is colour and not color as it would be in CSS.

Despite being British this drives me crazy! I use the US English spelling all the time (I've been used to it in CSS for 10+ years!) and then wonder why things arn't working.

So, +1 to no en-us to en-gb localisation. This Brit will take consistency any day :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a similar issue when building a JSON API for a company in the UK. The lead developer insisted that all API end-points, internal variables, classes etc, should use the British English spelling of "favourites" among other things, cause "we're in the UK".

At least we stuck to US English spelling of our custom HTTP "authorization" headers... lol</comment></comment>