Hacking Super Mario World to Warp to the Credits [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAHXK2wut_I

<comment><USER2> I believe it's been posted before, but sethbling (of vanilla-minecraft-hacks fame) pulled off the impossible and did the credit warp on an actual SNES, live[1]. As this video very-nicely explains, this required incredible amounts of pixel-perfect accuracy.

Lining up the line of koopa shells on exact x-offsets and _very_ narrow heights mid jump (!) to write the landing-sled - using a controller, realtime - is utterly insane.

As a side note sethbling's latest project is teaching[2] (using neuro- evolution) his machine learning bot to play SMW[2], SMB1[3], and Mario Kart (original)[4]. While he machine learning is simple by today's standards, his brief videos give a really nice introduction to the topic that should be accessible to most people.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14wqBA5Q1yc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14wqBA5Q1yc)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iakFfOmanJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iakFfOmanJU)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Y_I9vY8Qw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Y_I9vY8Qw)

<comment><USER3> Note that this video is of SethBling pulling off the credits warp for the very first time, when the current setup for the warp was unknown. Here is a video of Seth performing the warp that was explained in the posted video, which is faster by over four minutes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KADhybyjOEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KADhybyjOEo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unbelievable. I had watched the glitch itself too many times to count. But seeing it explained makes it even more impressive.

I would love to hear the story of who figured out how to do this and how much trial/error it took.

I'd also love to see a similar explanation of the mario pong/snake glitch. It seems it goes even further and is able to actually input large amounts of arbitrary code. [http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/14/5309662/bizarre-super- mario...](http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/14/5309662/bizarre-super-mario-world- hack-turns-the-game-into-pong-snake)

<comment><USER5> Probably not as awful as it sounds on the surface, with an emulator you can sit and stare at the current state of the machine quite handily. It would be essentially impossible to work this sort of thing out without the aid of tools.

<comment><USER4> Totally, but even with an emulator, the number of obscure glitches that have to be strung together in just the right way to make this work is staggering.

<comment><USER6> I would guess the games are disassembled and dissected first in order to identify potential exploit paths/bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just forwarded the link to my work email. This is the ultimate answer to any objection to security efforts on the grounds that "the vulnerability is too complex for anyone to bother exploiting".

</comment><comment><USER8> This was awesome! Any recommended introductory books for assembly programming and reverse engineering to appreciate this hack even more?

<comment><USER9> Go old school and dowload this book: [http://www.romhacking.net/documents/615/](http://www.romhacking.net/documents/615/)

'Programming the 6502', by Rodnay Zaks.

<comment><USER10> His Z80 book is pretty good, too. In fact, I don't remember a single bad book from the old Sybex (Zaks' publishing company).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Manufacturing shellcode with shells. I like it.

<comment><USER12> Programming with koopas - it truly is turtles all the way down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The hack looks insanely contrived but this video has a very well paced, well explained, and well illustrated explanation.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just out of curiosity, anyone know why only 12 sprites can be loaded at a time into memory? Is that a hardware limitation or a design decision by the developers?

<comment><USER15> The SNES graphics chip supports up to 32 sprites _per line_ ; this must be a limitation of the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These are the chess grandmasters of our time.

If you can fit all of that in your head and understand what you're doing here while you're doing it, you're a god to me

<comment><USER17> It's nothing like as complex as you think, it's all very logical and once you can code 6502 assembler, it's just lining up ducks.

<comment><USER15> Or, in this case... lining up Koopa shells. :)</comment></comment></comment>


These Days a Penny Doesn't Buy Very Much (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/05/21/314447812/these-days-a-penny-doesnt-buy-very-much

<comment><USER2> This is quite funny!</comment>


Why Pagespeed is vital for SEO? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yunemozcan/pagespeed-monitoring-at-2020-e5766e50a6db <comment><USER2> Google has indicated site speed (and as a result, page speed) is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. ... Page speed is also important to user experience.</comment>


India's First Openly Transgender Mayor in Her Own Words - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/01/07/indias-first-openly-transgender-mayor-in-her-own-words/ <comment><USER2> An article about a politically significant LGBT person in South Asia without exploring or giving a more substantial background on the concept of Hijras feels a bit like having pizza without cheese. Being from the West and growing up with its binary sex and gender concepts, even reading the Wikipedia article on Hijra makes for some eye-opening reading.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_\(South_Asia\))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing. In my last trip to India, I visited Bahacharaji and didn't understand why most people would pray with (and offer money to) the transgender women before entering the main shrine. I had no idea they considered themselves to be part of a third gender.

Highly recommended Joothan [1] if you want a first-hand account of a Dalit (member of the "untouchable" caste). "Joothan" refers to chewed up food or leftovers on a plate that a higher class would throw out. Many Dalits in Indian slums would resort to that for food. Fascinating autobiography with controversial theories on the origins of vegetarianism in Hindu culture.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Joothan-Untouchables-Life-Omprakash- Va...](http://www.amazon.com/Joothan-Untouchables-Life-Omprakash- Valmiki/dp/0231129726)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm sorry, but my main take away from the discussion wasn't about the LGBT community at all. It was that India is still not ready for democracy. A candidate decides to try out this election thing without any agenda and plans, and they win without any reason. They don't even know why they won and what they can really do for the community. Giving government jobs to beggars isn't a plan. And I'm saying this as an Indian.

<comment><USER4> _" A candidate decides to try out this election thing without any agenda and plans, and they win without any reason. They don't even know why they won and what they can really do for the community. Giving government jobs to beggars isn't a plan."_

Actually, that sounds like normal democracy in action to me. Unprepared candidates being voted in happens all the time in all democracies. And this candidate seems reasonable and may end up doing a good job.

If you look to other democracies for comparison, Talkeetna in Alaska has had a cat named Stubbs as the elected mayor for years. Mel Carnahan got voted into the US senate in an election 3 weeks after his death. And Tiririca the Clown got voted in to Brazil's congress and was completely inexperienced and was accused of being illiterate. He apparently worked really hard and did a very good job of it.

Remember, democracy is not a plan and nobody is ever 'ready' for it. It just tends to be usually less objectionable than the alternatives, especially the planned alternatives.

edit - Also, Ms. Kinnar did not win for no reason.

 _" I have no experience, I've never made a public speech, but while campaigning, I went to every household."_

And she seems to have a clear idea of what she wants do to for the community.

 _" I feel the most-important responsibility I have is towards my people. My community. I have to stop them from begging for money on the trains. Instead, I want to give them jobs in municipal corporation. Apart from that, the deplorable condition of roads and drains in the city worries me. Raigarh doesn't have a water shortage but taps often run dry. I want to make sure people in Raigarh get adequate water supply."_

<comment><USER3> I agree that democracy is arguably just better than other alternatives. Nothing more. However I can't be happy about a candidate just because they are at least not a clown. Yes, they may do a good job. But that's as good as randomly choosing a candidate and hoping that they do a good job, right? We can surely do better than that.

<comment><USER5> I accidentally started to think seriously about your quip, and I think it belies the profound difficulty of the problem. I would contend that it's _not_ obvious that we can do better than random elections.

There's all sorts of perverse and misaligned incentives otherwise. I'm not politician or historian, so I'd love some insight into the consequences of such a system. Intuitively, I would assume it'd just implode from incompetance, but bureaucracies are shockingly resilient on government scales. And I'd have no idea how to reliably find qualified individuals; the USA has a long history of effective leaders coming from seemingly random backgrounds. (Whether these individuals did _good_ or not, well, that's _hotly_ debated to this day... I don't often grok politics.)

<comment><USER3> Yeah doing better than random is more of my wish than anything based on facts. Now that I think about it, considering the population that self selects itself out of politics in India, maybe random selection of a candidate from all of the population may do better than what we have currently.

<comment><USER4> " _Now that I think about it "_

This is one of the best phrases ever invented.

By the way, I am not meaning to attack. I completely understand the frustration of watching completely unqualified assholes run the country. I live in the UK.

However, to see what happens when qualified assholes run the country, look to China. They are the world's most successful technocracy. There are more people with engineering degrees in government there than anywhere else I know of. (if anyone cares to correct me on this, please do)

The results of this are nicely mirrored by your respective space programs.

China has people in orbit.

India found water on the moon.

Just so you know my biases, I like what I see as India's democratic openness and China's secular practicality (being a stereotypical Brit who goes around stereotyping stuff so it will fit into all the neat little display boxes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> She is not India's first openly transgender mayor. My city elected one more than 10 years back. She was later disqualified because India's Supreme Court did not recognize "third-sex" officially then and she contested stating her gender as female, and my city's mayorship was reserved for women . Here's a link about her dismissal: [http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/may/13up.htm](http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/may/13up.htm) .

</comment><comment><USER7> Failing to see why pop morality is on HackerNews?

<comment><USER4> This is a new section for things that are both popular and moral.</comment></comment>


North Carolina cities mobilize against anti-muni broadband bill - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/north-carolina-cities-mobilize-against-anti-muni-broadband-bill.ars <comment><USER2> One of the more active previous discussions of this controversy, fwiw: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2328116>

</comment><comment><USER3> Good to see opposition to this mount.

Today, it seems like there is a plague of (fake) "libertarian" arguments for protecting essentially government-sponsored enterprises from ... the government.

IE, the oligopolies which currently control broadband are protected from private competition by regulation (control of right-of-ways in the case of broadband) and from government competition by "libertarianism"/"free-market" arguments/ideology.

We can also see this in health care, intellectual property, etc, etc.

Someone should coin an evocative term for these entities-outside-either- markets-or-serious-regulation.

(Notice the quotes to distinguish this from real libertarian arguments)

<comment><USER4> That is a _huge_ blind spot in libertarian thinking: the failure to realize that a lot of "private" industry is not actually private.

<comment><USER5> I don't consider myself a libertarian by any stretch, but isn't their argument in favor of a completely free market? If so, any government regulations that protect these de facto monopolies would not be supported either, as they are by definition creating a regulated market.

<comment><USER6> Wired broadband companies can't exist without government support, because they need right of way to run wires across many peoples' property. The problem is that governments tend to give permission to do that to only one or two companies.

<comment><USER7> Which is what libertarians hate. The argument against government is that government unscrupulously uses eminent domain to seize land at below-market prices, which is then handed over to the ISP. Government's intervention a la eminent domain takings favors the most-favored-ISP. So what they're doing now in NC is have government step in to solve government problems, which doesn't solve the cause of the problem.

<comment><USER8> What land in NC has been siezed by the givernment and handed to an ISP?

Look, just like phone, water and electricity, broadband is a natural monopoly, at least until peer-to-peer access becomes a reality. Not many people complain about the city running water servives because often it is just more effecient. Broadband is no different. The only" scary" thing is that thecity might screw it up. And while that is a possibility, at least you as a citizen can directly participate in how the tech is rolled out and indirectly participate by voting. OTOH, good luck convincing your cable provider that last mile fiber is a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a North Carolinian, I am all for more competition. Just today I found out I can order Wideband Internet from Time Warner Cable (50Mbps down) for only $99. This is after languishing for over a decade at 5-7Mbps. I'm theorizing that the muni-backed broadband initiatives are spurring the existing monopolies to "step their game up" so to speak.

</comment><comment><USER10> It doesn't always work out well. My city's entry into broadband was a colossal disaster that ended up losing millions of dollars: [http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/the-other-shoe-in- alam...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/the-other-shoe-in- alameda/Content?oid=1093197)</comment>


You Have Insufficient Privilege to Read This Law at This Time - <AUTHOR> https://law.resource.org/pub/us/code/ibr/nfpa.nec.2011.html <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently we cannot read the statutes that govern us. I was under the impression that when something became law the copyright went away. It seems like these trade organizations are trying to take down public domain knowledge.

I'm trying to read up on my building and electric codes so I can plan out future renovations. Under the code homeowners can do any work on their own house but they have to adhere to the codes. Except I need access to those codes to adhere to them.</comment>


cPerceptron: A neural network (Simple Perceptron) implemented in PHP. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gzanitti/cperceptron <comment><USER2> This makes me think I should upload my random computational intelligence assignments and get sweet, delicious karma.

Edit: OK, I was a bit snarky, but I'm serious.

I see these things on HN all the time. These are, quite literally, undergraduate projects.

I don't see people upvoting "My First Stack" or "Check out this Pet Shop I wrote in J2EE". Computational intelligence is not some land of super wise geniuses that mere mortals cannot ascend to. It's all pretty straightforward.

Eg, my Ant Colony Optimiser for a Travelling Salesman Problem:

<https://github.com/jchester/ruby-ry48p-aco>

and my Genetic Algorithm for optimising Ackley's Function:

<https://github.com/jchester/ruby-ackley-genetic-algorithm>

<comment><USER3> > This makes me think I should upload my random computational intelligence > assignments and get sweet, delicious karma.

Does karma matter that much to you?

> Edit: OK, I was a bit snarky, but I'm serious.

Well, what's stopping you? The fear of getting people to hate at you like this in comments? Really, you can do much better than this.

> I see these things on HN all the time. These are, quite literally, > undergraduate projects.

They are people taking steps on the ladder to proficiency, as such they should be encouraged rather than be beaten down.

> I don't see people upvoting "My First Stack" or "Check out this Pet Shop I > wrote in J2EE".

I don't see people submitting those either, which is one reason they're not being voted up. Once upon a time you too were a beginner. And in the eyes of many you probably still are.

> Computational intelligence is not some land of super wise geniuses that mere > mortals cannot ascend to. It's all pretty straightforward.

Exactly! And what better way to demonstrate that by showing it, in a language that is generally despised.

> Eg, my Ant Colony Optimiser for a Travelling Salesman Problem:

> <https://github.com/jchester/ruby-ry48p-aco>

> and my Genetic Algorithm for optimising Ackley's Function:

> <https://github.com/jchester/ruby-ackley-genetic-algorithm>

That's pretty neat code ;)

<comment><USER2> > _Does karma matter that much to you?_

Revealed preferences suggest that it does :(

> _That's pretty neat code ;)_

Flattery will get you karma beyond your wildest dreams (for wildest dreams = 1).

<comment><USER3> > Flattery will get you karma beyond your wildest dreams (for wildest dreams = > 1).

It's encouragement, not flattery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. Sort of the computational equivalent of 'A model of Neuschwannstein Castle made out of spaghetti'.

<comment><USER3> The code isn't all that bad, the spaghetti reference might give that impression.

PHP gets a bad rap because 'it's not a real language after all' but frankly I don't care what language you use if you write neat code like this that's an automatic 'pass'.

You can write spaghetti code in any language, but this isn't it.

<comment><USER5> I suspect that comment was more about the analogy of building detailed models out of pasta; in other words, that the subtext was that it looks like a painstaking technical feat achieved with strange materials for the purpose. And maybe in that respect all the more impressive.

PHP gets a bad rap because of problems with its design and implementation and some loosy-goosy culture (though most of these can be worked around or smoothed over by a framework and personal discipline, core language issues can be a form of technical debt). Really fixing this might require a breaking new version like Perl 6 or Python 3. But of course you can still build things with it. Like models of Neuschwannstein Castle ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's pretty neatly written code!

If you've mastered PHP then you could easily make the switch to C or C++ for a very large speedboost while still being able to recycle a large chunk of your code. PHP and C look quite alike (drop the $ signs and add declarations and you're halfway there).

Neat to see you interested in doing more advanced stuff than just web bits and pieces.

</comment><comment><USER6> Always nice to see these pet projects as proof of concept for ML in PHP. There's a bunch of them, but the more, the merrier.

</comment><comment><USER7> I find it quite interesting how PHP developers try their best to encrypt their function names as much as possible? rdmFloat? Why not randomFloat or random_float?

This particular example isn't very problematic, but I see this pattern in PHP way more than in other languages.

<comment><USER3> Naming things is tricky. I got into programming when 6 character assembly labels were the norm. You can imagine what that led to. I _still_ catch myself dropping vowels from function names every now and then (rndflt anybody?).

What's pretty good about this code is that it is neatly laid out, the modularity is just about right and it solves a particular problem and provides a bit of text showing how the bits get put together to make it work.

As such it beats a very large number of the github projects out there. Brevity in function names is easily forgiven when the code itself is this easy to read.

But I'm with you on the basic principle and I'd vote for random_float. iNeverCouldGetTheHangOfCamelcase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ha! You've triggered me to put my own PHP multi-layered neural network on GitHub. Available for forks & downloads here: <https://github.com/infostreams/neural-network>

</comment><comment><USER9> ok whats the point? what can i train with this? what kind of outputs can i get?</comment>


Ask HN: What are you reading right now? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently reading
The Code (By Charles Petzold )
Brain Rules (John Medina) <comment><USER6> Steve Jobs - I have to admit, it is not at all what I expected. I thought it would be a gushing tribute, but instead he comes across as a complete asshole- tyrant (so far... I'm about halfway thru the book) and his success was almost _in spite_ of himself. He was dead wrong almost as much, if not more, than he was right (at least until he rejoined Apple, which is where I'm at right now). Not a glowing biography in the least, which is shocking but I guess refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Rules of Ascension_ by David B Coe. A book I picked out of a library shelf one day because it sounded intriguing, and it is – it's the first volume in an epic about political machinations across several fantasy continents, and about a race war between two species, one of which is basically human, one of which is a frailer, magic-wielding species. I'm a sucker for political complexity, and I love that fantasy lets authors invent hypothetical scenarios for me to delve into.

I just wish the book's marketers would have respected it a bit more. The cover is of a long-haired man with an earring and a sword walking away from a burning castle, and it makes me feel a little bit cheesy carrying it around. I dislike smart books with deceptively stupid covers about as much as I dislike stupid books with deceptively smart covers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Feynman lectures on physics - vol 1

If at some point you found Physics wonderful, and then lost it when everything became calculations, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, and the other volumes once you are done with it.

Feynman has an engaging conversation style, and when you are immersed in the book, you literally feel the wonders of the universe. You go through Newton's motion and gravitation laws, and then using simple numerical methods, he plots you the orbital path around the sun of a given planet.

It does has derivations, but it doesn't let derivation take over the idea it's discussing. And some derivations and deductions will be enlightening when you already know something about something - for e.g for the first time in my life, I saw why the observed velocity won't exceed speed of light.

Even for the ideas I know, Feynman's explanation either add something, or make me thing "Holy Shit I didn't think of it that way." While discussing Newton's laws, he mentions this whole set of laws depends on a coordinate system - <USER2> we really can't say all experiments are to be performed at place x - but you know what, these laws are independent of the axis you choose, and here is how.

You are left thinking, hell, I kinda knew it but didn't approach it that way.

Then he will tell you a system moving with constant velocity in a straight line will observe the exact same laws of physics, and here is why, which is just an extension of the previous axis transform.

Even if you don't like Physics, give this book a try. Most likely you will understand universe better when you are through.

<comment><USER7> If somebody hypothetically knows nothing of Feynman or physicals, would this be a good starting point? Or would you suggest this book as a follow-up to something simpler and more immediately engaging?

<comment><USER8> You don't have to know anything about Feynman or Physics. The book assumes a basic knowledge of Mathematics and Science, and that's all you need to understand it.

But be warned - this isn't an easy book, and you can't skim through it. This is an extremely dense book; it builds on what it already has told you, which makes sense because "Observe, Reason, Experiment" is how you do science. To reason/deduce, you need to have a base and then you take it from there. When it introduces concepts that can't be deduced, it tells you that. Also, it clearly says analysis/logic alone isn't a killall - sometimes you just go the numerical method road(which is somehow similar to brute-force algorithm most of the times), and it gives you results which analysis alone can't.

I am reading it a very slow pace, because the book is packed with information with no superfluous content, and many a times I have to stop to think about what it's telling me.

I would recommend you read the first chapter "Atoms in motion" first. Well, I already knew everything is made of atoms(duh), but still, it presented things to me in a very engaging way.

Some gists to give you a preview:

Everything is made of atoms; water is made of molecules which are atoms in a bond; molecules are held together by mutual attraction; molecules always jiggle; the jiggle is represented as heat; you heat water - you increase the jiggling; increased jiggling loosens the mutual molecular attraction and some molecules escape, and you get steam.

And molecules which escape are the ones which are jiggling badly; because the ones which aren't jiggling hard won't be breaking the mutual attraction; and when high energy molecules escaped, the net energy of the system is lower.

Oh, and now you know why you feel cold when your sweat evaporates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths : [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GHN26W?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GHN26W?ie=UTF8&tag=dedasys-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=B004GHN26W&redirect=true&ref_=kinw_myk_ro_title)

Thinking, Fast and Slow : [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00555X8OA?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00555X8OA?ie=UTF8&tag=dedasys-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=B00555X8OA&redirect=true&ref_=kinw_myk_ro_title)

Here's my Kindle @ Amazon link - does it work if you're you and... well, not me? [https://kindle.amazon.com/profile/David-N-- Welton/208047#rec...](https://kindle.amazon.com/profile/David-N-- Welton/208047#recentActivity)

It shows what I've been reading lately, notes, etc...

Speaking of which, something that aggregated Kindle reading patterns of HN readers is something I would _love_ to see as an application. How cool would that be? Popular books, notes, etc...

</comment><comment><USER10> Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Michael Lewis recently wrote an article about Kahneman and the book, and the discussion of that on HN really piqued my interest. (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219240>)

</comment><comment><USER11> Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

I hesitated to start. Partly because I found the original Harry Potter kind of boring/frustrating. And partly because it's fanfiction, a sort of writing I do not normally enjoy.

I'm most of the way through the 1200 pages and find it pretty enjoyable.

Harry's portrayal seems pretty uneven (swinging between "scientist/genius in an irrational world" and "arrogant prick demigod").

I like Drako's additional depth far better than Rowling's one dimensional jerk.

Find it here: <http://www.elsewhere.org/rationality/> (after the first few chapters I switched to the pdf version.. link on the right of that page)

</comment><comment><USER12> The electric Kool-Aid acid test by Tom Wolfe. In a way I feel sorry that we don't have these kind of counter-cultural, non-conformist movements anymore. A hipster just isn't the same as a hippie... Reading this book has been an experience, although I'm not sure what exactly. I guess I'm just "on the bus"!

<comment><USER13> hipster is the new scenester, there is no comparison to a hippie. There are still a lot of counter-culture types out there, I consider myself one of them. I think we're just a lot less in your face and loud than what you're thinking of which is in some ways rather unfortunate. The modern day hippie is focused on real local food, reducing waste, anti-consumerism, labor issues, etc. Look at everything that's been going down in Madison, WI to see lots of examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hacker Ne

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0x4ea43cbc in memcpy () from /lib/libc.so.6

</comment><comment><USER15> Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

[http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive- Others/dp/140...](http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive- Others/dp/1400064287)

\- quite good so far (1/2 way through)

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster

[http://www.amazon.com/Room-View-Bantam- Classics/dp/055321323...](http://www.amazon.com/Room-View-Bantam- Classics/dp/0553213237)

\- not sure what I think of it yet (about 1/2 way through). Found some of the writing a bit opaque, where I'm not sure what he's trying to say.

</comment><comment><USER16> _The Beginning of Infinity_ by David Deutsch. A wide-ranging inquiry into the kinds of ideas that lead to human progress and those that don't. In the top five on the list of "best books I've ever read".

</comment><comment><USER17> An introduction to Probability by William Feller Code(By Charles Petzold) Feynman Lectures Vol1 Artificial Intelligence,A Modern Approach By Norvig Blink By Malcolm Gladwell. Concurrently.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Road To Reality - Roger Penrose. Slowly, step by step.

Neuromancer - William Gibson. 6th or 7th time through. Coming to it now after having read Delany's Nova, and the influence is clear.

Little Heroes - Norman Spinrad. All that's good about Spinrad and all that's bad. He does write well about Hollywood.

History Of Film- David Parkinson. A short survey text, sort of a review for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Physical Chemistry by Levine. It has given me an amazing theoretical and quantitative grasp for thermodynamics, aqueous systems, etc. It's incredibly easy to understand if you've had general chemistry and diff eq. It's my best textbook this semester.

It gets into quantum and statistical mechanics, but I haven't made it that far yet.

</comment><comment><USER20> Version Control by Example ~ Eric Sink

</comment><comment><USER21> The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook

[http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming-Interface-System- Han...](http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Programming-Interface-System- Handbook/dp/1593272200/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows

Early Retirement Extreme - Jacob Lund Fisker

</comment><comment><USER23> Steve Jobs Biography - Walter Isaacson

I'm surprised at how good a read this is, it is anything but a hero worship style book. Its long for a biography but Steve's life is a very interesting one, and am yet to be bored with it.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick [http://www.amazon.com/Art-Intrusion- Exploits-Intruders-Decei...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Intrusion-Exploits- Intruders-Deceivers/dp/0764569597)

</comment><comment><USER25> Currently reading Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger. Interesting concepts :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Cryptonomicon, so far love it

Interesting that most seem to read two books at the same time. Usually I read one fiction and one non-fiction, but this time really enjoying to focus on only one book

</comment><comment><USER27> The Sorcerer's Apprentice: How Medical Imaging Is Changing Health Care (by Bruce Hillman and Jeff Goldsmith )

Agile Web Development with Rails (by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson)

</comment><comment><USER28> A Game of Thrones and A Hitchhikers guide to teh galaxy. I've been using this past few months to read up a few things that I shyould have read long ago. Next up is Stranger in a Strange Land

</comment><comment><USER29> Calculus - Michael Spivak

Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky

</comment><comment><USER30> Teaching as Leadership,

<http://www.teachingasleadership.org/>

to learn more about effective teaching.

</comment><comment><USER31> _REAMDE_ by Neal Stephenson

 _Steve Jobs_ by Walter Isaacson

 _The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick_ edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem

</comment><comment><USER32> Artificial Intelligence, a Modern Approach (Russell & Norvig), while doing ai- class.com. Great writing for a text book.

Coders at Work (Seibel).

</comment><comment><USER33> The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy (Dave Madden)

Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty (David Kadavy)

</comment><comment><USER34> The Ruby Programming Language - Flanagan, Matsumoto

Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example - <USER3>

Blood Meridian - <USER4>

</comment><comment><USER35> How to live safely in a science fictional universe

Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in "The Matrix"

</comment><comment><USER36> Breakthrough Rapid Reading (Peter Kump)

The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt)

Cashflow Quadrant (Robert T. Kiyosaki)

</comment><comment><USER37> Currently on book two in the Spin series. Just finished book one (Spin) which was great.

Axis (Robert Charles Wilson)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm far more into history than anything. I'm reading "The Campaigns of Alexander" by Arrian and "Halliburton's Army"

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm still slowly working my way through GEB. Also reading Ghost Story (Dresden Files #13) for some lighter fare.

</comment><comment><USER40> Code By Charles Petzold. This book is taking me back to school. Law of conservation of energy. Brilliant text

</comment><comment><USER41> Principles of Functional Programming - Glaser, Hankin, Till

I Have America Surrounded - John Higgs

</comment><comment><USER42> Accelerated C++ (Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo) A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin)

</comment><comment><USER43> Fundamentals of Physics - Halliday et al. and The Collected Short Stories of Robert Dahl.

</comment><comment><USER44> Predictably irrational the hidden forces that shape our decisions by Dan Ariely

</comment><comment><USER45> The Shallows (Nicholas Carr)

</comment><comment><USER46> Les Miserables by Victor Hugo -- the book, not the musical. Well worth it.

<comment><USER47> Kudos to you!

Tried reading it several years ago and flung it down in despair at its veboseness ~quarter way through. My French friends laughed with & at me, saying I was lucky it wasn't mandatory reading like it was for them in high school... I hear glowing reviews very occasionally, but when I think of the sheer bulk of the book, I don't know if I can give it another chance.

<comment><USER46> I'm reading on Kindle and carefully not looking at the "% read" indicator... that might be helping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> _Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think_ by Brian Wansink

</comment><comment><USER49> Well Grounded Rubyist, iOS Programming (Big Nerd Ranch), Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER50> Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, ofcourse. (still a noob)

</comment><comment><USER51> Auralia's Colors (by Jeffery Overstreet)

</comment><comment><USER52> The Ascent of Money (Niall Fergusson)

</comment><comment><USER53> The Forever War (Joe Haldeman)

</comment><comment><USER54> Surface Detail, Iain M Banks

</comment><comment><USER47> White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)

</comment><comment><USER55> hacker news required reading of course:

Hackers & Painters - <USER5>

</comment><comment><USER56> 1984, Gorges Orwell

<comment><USER57> One of the best ever. There's a part of me that is afraid to re-read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Gödel, Escher, Bach

</comment><comment><USER59> A Feast for Crows</comment>


CSVJSON – Self Rise of an Online Tool - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@martindrapeau/csvjson-self-rise-of-an-online-tool-3a91fef3a201 <comment><USER2> Having actually written something like this before --- and it remains on my machine as an executable of only a few kilobytes --- I'm curious about the thought process that could lead to someone uploading a considerable volume of potentially sensitive CSV data to this site, and then downloading a proportionally larger amount of JSON from it.

The site doesn't even appear to support HTTPS.

<comment><USER3> Technically, all the file processing can happen client-side now, thanks to the HTMl5 file API. Users' data doesn't have to leave the browser.

[shameless plug] This is the approach I have taken creating a similar converter (which also works offline):

[http://mango-is.com/tools/csv-to-json/](http://mango-is.com/tools/csv-to- json/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is a good idea. However I chose to upload it in order to allow sharing the conversion via a unique generated URL.

<comment><USER4> Why not use location.hash and URL shortener? That way no upload is needed.

<comment><USER2> What's the maximum length of a URL?

Hint: a lot smaller than almost all the CSV files I've had to deal with.

To the grandparent: you might want to make it more explicit that you're actually retaining the uploaded data and not just using it to generate the result page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks, I've used your tool a few times and it works beautifully. Quite interesting article too from the SEO pov.

BTW, does anyone know of a tool to do the reverse? I have some json files with deeply nested arrays and would like to output a csv file with one line for each "leaf". I can write it myself but would be happy to use an existing tool.

<comment><USER6> > BTW, does anyone know of a tool to do the reverse?

I created a java/scala library[1] (source is scala, but there's a jar with dependencies for java) a few years ago for an Android app I was hired to work on that converts nested JSON to CSV. I was allowed to open source the library later on and released it under the MIT License, so anyone can use it now.

Never thought anyone else would ever need to convert json to csv, but I guess I was wrong :)

I don't have a use case for it anymore, so I haven't maintained it, but if someone wants to update it, feel free to send a pull request.

[1] [https://github.com/yareally/json-to- csv](https://github.com/yareally/json-to-csv)

<comment><USER7> Yes. Use the built-in JSON.parse() to get the data into memory, then use my jquery-csv library's $.csv.fromArrays() to format the data as CSV.

Guess I found a good candidate for a blog post. It's amazing How much I see others struggle with such a aimple concept.

<comment><USER6> Not sure if you parsed my comment incorrectly or you meant to reply to someone else :)

<comment><USER7> Somehow missed the 'java/scala part'.

Either way, why do 2 data format transforms as one lib? It makes more sense to parse JSON into memory in one step then format it as CSV in a separate step.

Ie, what about the 'Single Responsibility Principle'?

<comment><USER6> 1) The parsing and converting are done with separate methods. Thus single responsibility.

2) It's a very small library. Less than 200 lines (including comments). There's no reason to put this in 2 jars, classes or packages. Have you looked at the code at all?

3) The method call to parse JSON is in the method that converts the CSV, but it's trivial to move it out and run it explicitly. Simply remove the call to parse and explicitly run it separate.

4) Client wanted the ability to filter out JSON data they didn't want in the CSV. Thus, it's a little more complicated than a call to something like JSON.parse() in Scala/Java.

5) Code does what it needed to do and made the client happy.

If you think you can do it better while keeping the code in Java/Scala, send a pull request to my repo and we'll discuss :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Coincidentally, I used this today for the first time. It was the 2nd result on Google for me, but was far superior to the first in ease of use. Thanks for your contribution and good luck going forward. My use case today was to create a fixture of initial data for a django app from csv. Oddly enough I wasn't able to find a specialized online tool to create the django fixture and was forced to use your tool along with some manual hacking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad it was helpful. And thanks for the nice comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The funny thing is, very capable libraries already exist to handle CSV parsing.

I know because I authored jquery-csv, te first RFC complete CSV parser implementation in vanilla JS.

The transform is ridiculously simple and data can be fully loaded and processed client-side using the HTML5 File API.

As soon as JS gets the :: function bind operator I plan to reimplement it as a pure async function.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I wish I had found your library when I wrote this. Looks like you published it around the same time I wrote it. I especially like the idea of client-side loading using the HTML5 file API. Things to consider for the future.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately. I made the mistake of hosting it on Google Code rather than GitHub. Everything has since been moved and it's gradually gaining traction again.

The HTML5 part was very appealing to me because I wanted to build a client- side tool to load/save/edit database imports/exports.

It unlocks a lot of potential for fully-featured client-side applications that work more like desktop apps.

The bad part about it is, browser vendors, specifically MS, have been dragging their feet when it comes to fully supporting the File APIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, I see JSON-to-CSV and the opposite tools as an anti-pattern.

You're essentially applying 2 pure function transforms to data so it should be done in 2 steps.

The built-in JSON.parse() provides a native implementation to handle the first transform. My jquery-csv lib handles the second. If you require stream processing and/or need to process large data sets client-side use the more fully featured PapaParse lib instead.

The number of half-assed CSV parser implementations I've seen in the wild is what drove me to provide a fully-featured RFC implementation. To do it right requires a DFA, anything less will fail on many hard-to-identify edge cases.

My project has been downloaded over half a million times, used on every platform/environment imaginable, and every technical limitation painfully identified. Seriously, I don't understand why devs feel the need to roll their own and miss out on benefiting from existing battle-tested solutions.

Not to mention all the devs who embed a wholesale copy of an old/outdated version of my lib in their projects.

Nowadays, half-assed CSV implementations have changed to half-assed JSON-to- CSV implementations. The same holds true for JSON and/or CSV to HTML transforms.

Formatting a HTML table by iterating over data is so painfully sinple I don't know why devs feel te need to provide it as a standalone library.

</comment><comment><USER9> You don't rank on beutifier, I've searched lots of times and have never ever seen you, I wish I did

<comment><USER10> Um... beutifier or beautifier?

<comment><USER9> Maybe user error ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> FYI: The term I search for when needing something along these lines is "JSON prettify"

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I had never considered that search term. The volumne is low (Google AdWords Keyword Planner shows a 2,400 search volume per month, 10% of JSON beautifer). Yet it is a keyword I will add. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://2json.net/](http://2json.net/)

</comment><comment><USER13> from 15000 quality page views you should expect at least $15 of revenue ($1 CPM) even higher numbers from developers (valuable users).

Check out something like [https://carbonads.net/](https://carbonads.net/) and it might at least pay for your hosting. It's invite only though, so you might have to ask for an invitation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally I hate it when ads get in my way. Like anyone else, I do like money though. So I'm struggling with trying to monetize this. I don't want to annoy developers.

This being said, I will consider trying carbonads. Thanks for the tip.

<comment><USER5> Have you thought about a long term sponsor? It may interest a toolmaker in the ETL space by offering to host a respectful ad yourself with a link and no tracking. You won't get rich but it's probably much better than using an ad network.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am open to this. Just haven't actively looked for one yet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft removing 27 languages from iOS Outlook - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/22/outlook_ios_language_axe/ <comment><USER2> They could have asked the community to volunteer with maintaining the translations. I'm fairly certain there would be people willing to do that for at least some of these languages.

> in order to maintain consistency

Yeah, Microsoft has always been all about consistency.

Seriously though, if it's really about it, then why not include these languages in other apps as well with a community-driven translation?

The likely real reason for the removal of these language versions is that the places where they are used are not major markets for iOS devices. But then it's not like they were either when Outlook for iOS was being released in the end of 2015. And if the iOS and Android apps were _consistent_ internally, then 90% of the translation strings would probably overlap, so the overhead of maintaining the additional translation for the iOS version would be minimal.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot of comments.

Here are the languages:

Afrikaans Amharic Azerbaijani (Latin) Bosnian Latin Basque Persian Filipino Irish Galician Gujarati Icelandic Kazakh Khmer Lao Lithuanian Latvian Macedonian Malayalam Marathi Norwegian (Nynorsk) Slovenian Albanian Serbian (Cyrillic, Serbia) Serbian (Latin, Serbia) Tamil Telugu Urdu

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a bad reason for removing languages.

>The reason given for the impending visit by the Redmond axeman is "in order to maintain consistency across the Microsoft 365 apps for iOS."</comment>


Quora Pivot$ - <AUTHOR> http://www.wac6.com/wac6/2011/09/quora-pivots.html <comment><USER2> I think this will probably hurt Qoura more than anything, new members are not going to want to "pay" experts limited points (I imagine this will turn into "reputation points" like SO that people can share) to do anything Side note: I wonder if bounties on SO are working?</comment>


How we used Crowdtilt to test a new product idea: the ultimate hoodie - <AUTHOR> http://vastrm.com/blog/

<comment><USER2> Great way to validate.

Quick question around this qoute from the crowtilt campaign.

"Our hoodies have been retailing for $245 in some upscale stores around the country, but weare selling these below our wholesale pricing ($90) at $69 + $9.95 (priority shipping)"

Do you mean this type of hoodie sells for $245 or your actual hoodie?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are selling a similar hoodie with the same fabric, but different style treatments in boutique retail stores. These are stores that sell brands such as Cucinelli, Zegna, Brioni, Kiton. They have polo shirts that retail for upwards $450. Not for everyone, but it reflects the quality of fabrics, craftsmanship and design that we are able to obtain with our supply chain and mfr capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is super exciting. Definitely a better way if you're looking to sell something to an established community.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any way to actually buy one if this is the first you've heard of it?

</comment><comment><USER5> worked great! excited to get them :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Damn quick (and cheap) MVPs - anyone? - <AUTHOR>

Please check out:
http://httpd.co/damn_quick_mvps/
If not you, could someone you know be interested? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link:

[http://httpd.co/damn_quick_mvps/](http://httpd.co/damn_quick_mvps/)</comment>


Lets make November "Launch an App Month", who's with me? - <AUTHOR> The past week or so has seen a number of inspirational HN threads on single founder/small group/side/part-time projects that have become successful and in some cases are supporting those people (and some have gone on to become huge).
So, with that in mind, I'm suggesting we all take the month of November and work on that side project or idea or whatever it is, with the goal of having a working application out in the wild by the end of the month.
Personally I am going through a transition right now (independent to full-time), but have 3-4 ideas that I want to implement.  I'm going to pick ONE project and pledge to finish it by the end of November in whatever hours I can find.  Who's with me?
Update: Some have suggested that you also get at least one Paying customer by the end of the month.  I think its a great point if your goal is to have an app that helps support you.  I am updating my pledge to include it. <comment><USER2> Spiffy, let's see if this works: Appointment Reminder will be live by the end of November, and I really really mean it this time and will not allow myself to be distracted by consulting work, conferences, weddings, the weather, Starcraft 2, 23 urban fantasy novels, or the overpowering desire to take a month off just because I finally could.

<comment><USER3> There is no "beer" in that entire sentence. Your keyboard is obviously malfunctioning.

<comment><USER4> because "beer" isn't a distraction factor but a boost of creativity.

<comment><USER5> Specifically the "Ballmer Peak" <http://xkcd.com/323/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I created a facebook group,

<http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952>

Lets keep in touch here !

edit: i'm off to sleep now. so , for joining, just hope that facebook works ! Added 2 people to be admin of the group, wait&see , or cay tomorrow everyone

<comment><USER7> works, but can't comment there (just wanted to say hi), it's a bug or feature?

<comment><USER6> It should be ok now. FB Groups need a validation before you can comment.

<comment><USER7> I still can't

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> But...it's NaNoWriMo that month! How are we supposed to write a novel _and_ launch an app? ;-)

<comment><USER9> -29 days to write an app that can write novels in less than a day.

-1 day to write the novel.

-done.

<comment><USER10> Or 27 days to write any app, 3 days to write the novel: www.3daynovel.com

Go, go, go!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Small suggestion: change it to "Launch an App and Get ONE Paying Customer Month"

<comment><USER12> Getting the first paying customer isn't going to be a watershed moment for every kind of venture. Some aren't in it for the money, others are building a foundation for what may be profitable later (re: basically everything Google does or has done).

Launching an app, for whatever the reason, is an accomplishment in itself.

<comment><USER11> _Launching an app, for whatever the reason, is an accomplishment in itself._

Absolutely. I was going by the present scene where a lot of folks seem to be able to launch something but struggle to get customers. _Launch something_ has been hammered real well past few years. IMO upping the bar a little can help.

And yes, like Steve Blank says, if you think you got the next FB or Google, ignore every rule about making rev.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good idea: November Startup Sprint. Require weekly status reports from all participants and use that as a way for people to help each other out when stuck. Encourage everyone to be totally open about their idea, their research and their progress. Offer a hosting discount for NSS startups from Linode.

I'd participate I just launched my new baby last night: fanbldr.com

<comment><USER14> For the future September Startup Sprint might be better, what with the alliteration and all. But, in the interest actually getting something done, I think we can let it slide this year. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ok- Everyone trying to use the google spreadsheet - this won't work. They aren't that good at supporting concurrent users. Instead, please try the facebook group at <http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952> and get an account on techtrepreneur.com, where you can post about what you're doing as the month passes.

<comment><USER15> The (clickable) url for techtrepreneur is <http://www.techtrepreneur.com>

<comment><USER16> techtrepreneur emails are flagged as spam in Gmail.

<comment><USER15> Anybody know how I can take care of this?

<comment><USER17> Use an. Email service provider that will handle deliverability for you. Email liverabity is a complicated and annoying thing, and ESPs have individual relationships with the large email providers so they have an edge that you cannot easily replicate unless you are going to be sending a LOT of email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I had a goal of launching 2 startups this year. I have launched my first (www.socialadmanager.com) and it is ramen profitable. I will be launching the next one around the end of november so this is really good timing.

I think we need a way to organize this such that we can offer assistance etc... to each other and at the end of Nov. everyone can reveal what the built kind of like a mini demo day. The new HN facebook group would probably be a good way for everyone that is participating to communicate.

<comment><USER19> this might be an idea worth developing too. a way for independent developers to keep in touch and keep each other accountable on different products they are working on. probably closed system.

<comment><USER12> I'm working on <http://www.sparkmuse.com> to aid in just this purpose. I was hoping to get it out by the end of the year, but in light of this thread I'll push for November too. The day job is brutal to side-project productivity, especially when you've to work overtime!

<comment><USER20> I've been thinking about this for at least 2 years.

Please:

1\. Make it real time. Ie Quora-ish. 2\. Create an environment in which I share with only a small set of users. This is because I would be scared that my "tweets" about my work could be tracked by someone who wants to figure out the direction I'm taking on a paritcular solution. This is strategic info I'd rather not give up. Also groups larger than 10 lose their cohesion/importance. (eg: the 300 people on your fcebook page). 3\. Basically stick to tactics that are being implemented without giving up the strategy. I think that way people could learn from each other but still not give up their overall goal. 4\. Some way to pledge a goal under a time frame shared by everyone would be useful. (Like this novemeber launch idea). 5\. Competing teams of 10 might be another idea. That would up the ante a little more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And we'll all have some additional spare time since we won't be shaving during the month.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel so timid. Posting on Hacker News for the first time. I'm working on a new project, so it would be great to accept this challenge and join a pseudo- team of App-launchers. Count me in.

</comment><comment><USER23> We will be launching <http://goodsie.com> in November, though it's been in development for over a year now because of various fits and starts!

HN will work as a code for anyone who would like to try the beta :)

<comment><USER24> Looks very good. Would you mind doing a short list of differences or planned features between Goodsie and Shopify ?

<comment><USER25> I'd be curious to see that too. Don't be shy! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've created a (publicly) shared google docs for tracking who's launching what, here's the link:

[https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoLJFombeWOmdFpPcVV...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoLJFombeWOmdFpPcVVaRTZuN1dYdkFZejJBS0NGV3c&hl=en_GB&authkey=COHvn8kC)

I've took the liberty of adding two entries, haven't add my own since I'm still developing, not sure if I can launch by November.

<comment><USER13> Give us edit access!

<comment><USER26> Sorry, I thought it was editable by default. Some people said that google docs are not really suited for this, so I nuked the doc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Stuck for ideas? Here's 999 of them: <http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html>

I like that page as it's a good reminder that ideas are almost worthless without implementation.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm in, but not in the quite the same way as many people here.

I'm not looking to launch a full business right now, as I am still in college. I plan on making an Android app to provide a small side income source, and to learn about the Android platform.

<comment><USER29> Awesome goal. Starting small is definitely the way to do it. I just went through that same process and now the Android app is making me a little bit of side income. Good luck!

<comment><USER28> Thank you! Any tips or resources you recommend for getting started?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> AFter a year or so of lurking I've decided to finally create an account on HackerNews just to say... "Count me in"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've bought startupmonth.org to house a forum or something. Any thoughts on what should be there?

<comment> w-ll dispora --- just kidding... but a mailing list imho would be the best. Fuck facebook groups and google doc sheets. a mailing list is the only thing this idea needs to get organized.

<comment><USER31> Why not a posterous blog? I've setup one for private tracking of my progress and you get the best of both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Count me in. How about we -200 rep everyone who doesn't deliver?

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm one step ahead of you: Yesterday I made a public commitment to launch jMockups, a web-based mockup tool I've been working on for several months, by Nov 3rd:

[http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/10/a-public-commitment-to- laun...](http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/10/a-public-commitment-to-launch- jmockups/)

Now back to work.

</comment><comment><USER15> Guys, we need to use ONE central place for coordination. How about the facebook group posted by ritonlajoie?<http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_141079939271952>

I've joined...

</comment><comment><USER34> Your timing is impeccable. I've just recently started a project, and I think a nice, public goal (and deadline) will help keep me motivated. I've only written one half-workable program before (a python script to check if a number was prime or not), so this will be a learning experience more than anything else.

I've started work on a program that will let a business generate and track coupon codes for their promotions. Eventually I will port it to a web app and make it accessible online... only I don't know how to do that yet. I should get back to work!

P.S. One thing I would really like to find is a hacker mentoring group or program. Is there anything like this for green hackers like myself?

<comment><USER35> I am almost in the same case. After months of procrastination disguised as reading about programming, I just launched my first completed project ever: my own blog written in Ruby on Rails. Just today ! <http://hackiel.com/blog> Seems like a great opportunity to level up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm in too. I have a few side-projects that have not been pushed, so it's about time! Thanks for the suggestion. We should help each other out as a sounding board during this too

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed. Trying to figure out a good method for all to keep in touch. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER36> Well, forums have always been good for this. Happy to host one. Maybe someone else might have a better idea. I think if we do this in a way that its visual - ie you tell other people what you're trying to achieve - then its much more likely to be done. I also like the idea that everyone is pushing forward, but as a group there will be a diverse range of skills and experiences to call upon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have started <http://onlineqrlab.com> with no clear idea in my mind (what it will do or how to monetize). I built a nice generator and I'm now improving more the interface.

I would be interested in QrCode ideas as I don't have any. Does anyone think of a small, 1/2 months feasible QrCode project that can be monetized somehow (SaaS like). I'm mainly doing this for learning purposes, so I don't bother if it really works well or not.

<comment><USER38> I was thinking about QrCode graffiti the other day. Basically, each QrCode links to a specific page and capture "engagement points" with that page (i.e. viewing the page, filling out the form, etc). Then give reward people for the engagement points they earn by posting the Qrcode places.

Then provide as a service to people employing street teams, guerilla marketing, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I pledge to launch a web app allowing mobile access to library accounts. Libraries will be able to create branded portals for their patrons. I will focus my attention first on an open source integrated library system such as Koha or Evergreen (primarily so there is no conflict of interest with my current place of employment).

How I'll do this while juggling work, school, another startup, and a girlfriend I do not know.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'll launch a blog search engine until Nov 30th.

</comment><comment><USER41> Oddly enough, I have already committed to starting and launching a project this November. It's good to know I won't be alone.

</comment><comment><USER42> My birthday is on the 2nd of November, and I was planning to do my yearly maintenance of my life, and then take a week off to finish writing the first releasable version of my app.

So, clearly, Done. Done like burning. I'll make sure all my CI and test environments are up in time, and then I'll see you by the end of the month ;)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm in. Can someone make it their goal for the month to create a site to aggregate all the sites created during the month, or is that too meta?

Also, I mentioned this elsewhere, but September Startup Sprint has a nice ring to it. Perhaps next year? (Hat-tip to tlack for the original "November Startup Sprint" inspiration.)

</comment><comment><USER43> Hey guys, lets put together a launch site where with everyone's products on it - and maybe we can get some publicity on it. Also maybe some kind of co- working arrangement even if just online chat where we can support and encourage each other if not help each other using our individual expertise.

</comment><comment><USER44> Dang. I just started on a project which I want to launch in a month. That month is October, not November. Then again, there is nothing stopping me from launching in October and then another project in November! <http://shadyrudy.tumblr.com>

</comment><comment><USER45> I just posted on Twitter about a programming version of NaNoWriMo. This is exactly what I was thinking.

Lets see how I go juggling this, finding a job, getting a visa, having family visit from overseas and going through a wedding ceremony all in one month. Sounds like fun.

</comment><comment><USER46> Last 9 hours update: Decided which idea to launch, booked the domain and designed a landing page @ <http://www.AppsToWin.com> . Will add the invite sign up tomorrow. :-) Please share your comments.

</comment><comment><USER47> Ok count me in :) I already released one. hopefully another one will be done by end of Nov

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/popn-learn- abc/id400222528?mt...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/popn-learn- abc/id400222528?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER48> Sounds like a most excellent plan, count me in!

<http://diabeti.ca> has languished as a landing page for too long. Time to clean it up, get it out there, and get more people using it besides my wife.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've got a lot of very small projects going on but I'm afraid that I will never finish any of them. So this is a great opportunity to focus on the last one and don't jump on any of the others until it's finished. Count me in!

</comment><comment><USER50> Yesterday I launched my little project Rejose (<http://www.rejose.com>) it is still very basic and I am playing with different concepts and will release some improvements soon.

<comment><USER51> Nice one, a job post aggregator and dev language trend tool. I like it. Quick UI feedback: clicking any of the top nav bar items causes the buttons to 'stutter' on the redirect (if that makes sense). OS X, chrome

<comment><USER50> Yeah, those buttons are irritating, I will get rid of them and use something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm in. Working on a game that I've been dinking around with for the last few years. This should help motivate me to get it out there.

Has there been a decision on where to post status and communicate with other folks who are launching?

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm in. I've also set up a development blog where I'll be posting (almost) daily with progress reports and next steps. <http://chartility.tumblr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER46> Count me in.. I am looking at couple of ideas myself. would you mind commenting on them @ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773435> ?

<comment><USER46> I have been procrastinating for long and want to do it this time. I was thinking of two ideas as I put in my above link and decided to work on an app for hosting the contests of fellow Startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Hey guys, I'm new here, and I've already got an app on the android market called Cubes. What I intend to do before the end of November is come out with a paid version that is integrated with Open Feint.

</comment><comment><USER55> Maybe we would have waited if I knew November was the month! We just launched <http://globalfolders.com> using Rails 3, and had a blast developing it.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm in. Let's build some structure on how we'll report and share information as well. Honestly, I don't have anything in mind at the moment, but I'm open to grabbing a simple idea off of someone else.

</comment><comment><USER56> Thank you for putting this up! I have a goal to launch <http://privio.net> by the 18th. It's nice to get that out there - feels... official.

</comment><comment><USER57> We're definitively aiming for launching <http://www.webpop.com> during November - so I guess I was in already before I read the post!

</comment><comment><USER58> Ok, I've joined the facebook group, I have an idea and I'll do it.

</comment><comment><USER59> Count me in. I will get an app in the Appstore before the end of November. I think it will be small and simple but I plan on building it into a small collection of apps.

</comment><comment><USER60> So, what if you all oversaturate the market with applications?

<comment><USER61> Which software niche is not already oversaturated? :)

<comment><USER62> Organizational software for clowns and clown related businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey let's open a google wave to keep in tou ... what ?

<comment><USER63> Hmm, looks like they shut Google wave down. I'd like to give them a piece of my mind! I'll just use GOOG-411 to ca...wha?!

<comment><USER44> Not a problem. Join me in Google Lively where we can... wait a minute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm in. Should we set a fixed date? I propose the 28th, last Sunday, so we have more time to iron out the last details and to check each other's apps.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'll be posting about my experiences here: <http://novemberstartup.posterous.com/>

</comment><comment><USER66> Ok we'd like to be in but have to qualify what we are committing to. We already launched v1. We'd like to launch our android/iphone app in November

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm in for November 28th! I was just thinking about an idea for my next project this morning- looks like now I have motivation to build it.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm also in! Hope we figure out quickly the place to hang around. And having at least one paying customer is a great goal to achieve.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm in. I've been building so many features that this should help me actually push it out the door.

I like the idea of one paying customer!

</comment><comment><USER15> It would be nice if we had a google form signup, so we could keep track of one another and what we are working on.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm really excited about this. I just requested a weeks vacation to try to get more deveopment time this month.

</comment><comment><USER70> I would definitely be in, but I can't even code yet.

What are your suggestions on going from 0 - launch by the end of November?

</comment><comment><USER71> I am in. I will hopefully launch a small web templates site. Geez! I should really start to work on it.

</comment><comment><USER72> Count me in. I have plenty of ideas, but haven't gotten started majorly in any side projects lately.

<comment><USER24> Hey, If you have a couple of ideas you would like to share and allow others to develop, let us know.

<comment><USER72> Alright, a few ideas of mine though are really just about learning things for me. Here's one though that I really wanted to work on, but got bogged down in exactly how to go about doing it.

I started work on a fully extensible browser. My idea was to create a bare minimum browser, then extend that with plugins created in a scripting language like LUA. The browser would only run with the plugins the user selected, so someone could use a browser that only had features they wanted and used. This was also in response to perceived bloat in current modern browsers. This was a rather large undertaking, and it never got beyond a simple browser with basic cookie management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I'll be launching one product and releasing another project as open source during the month of Nov.

</comment><comment><USER46> Did the first two steps of market verification & domain registration today. AppsToWin.com !

</comment><comment><USER74> I am also trying to develop one app on android. I will take this challenge too. Great Idea

</comment><comment><USER75> This could be fun. I'm in for Nov 28th.

Could we arrange to start voting for the best apps on Dec 1st?

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm in. Just released an MVP so will use this as motivation for the 1.x update!

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm in. I have 3 little apps I'm working on. I'll pick one and run with it.

</comment><comment><USER78> Bahhhhhhhhhh I'll do it

Couple sites on the to-do list and I want to get one done.

Boo now I'm on the hook

</comment><comment><USER79> don't charge individual users) by month's end, but I hope to have at least one user who has entered interesting information, and be able to give out interesting recommendations in return.

</comment><comment><USER80> Noooo! Why does this clash with the NaNoWriMo?! www.nanowrimo.org

</comment><comment><USER81> I'm in, will post details on what we are launching on the group.

</comment><comment><USER82> I'm in if I can learn enough Obj-C to toss an iOS app together.

</comment><comment><USER83> I'm in. Three startups and a game live by the end of November.

</comment><comment><USER84> I am very much in, is there a decided venue for the updates?

</comment><comment><USER85> I am in, I am making Quiz Blog Chief, a wordpress add-in.

</comment><comment><USER86> Will def. be doing this... can someone hold us to it?

</comment><comment><USER87> I'm in, except that I don't have an idea for an app.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fantastic idea. Fits perfectly in my schedule :)

</comment><comment><USER88> Bah I am totally doing this, motivation begin!

</comment><comment><USER89> That might be the kick I need. Count me in!

</comment><comment><USER90> Like others, this is my first post. I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER91> I'm in too. I've been procrastinating.

</comment><comment><USER92> I'm in for November 28th. Great Idea!

</comment><comment><USER93> I guess I'll bite to then :)

</comment><comment><USER94> I'm in. Bring it on.

</comment><comment><USER95> How do we follow up?

</comment><comment><USER96> Totally in on this.

</comment><comment><USER97> i'll probably still be too addicted to minecraft :(

</comment><comment><USER98> Ok, I am in too!

<comment><USER98> Ok, I am launched: <http://videolla.com> What now?

<comment><USER99> Since you launched before Nov 1st, you have to start another one now for the November Launch project. ;)

Alternatively, validate and pivot your existing project. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Am i in reddit?

</comment><comment><USER101> Count me in!

</comment><comment><USER15> Count me in!

</comment><comment><USER95> Count me in.

</comment><comment><USER102> Count me in

</comment><comment><USER103> I'm in!

</comment><comment><USER104> I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER105> I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER106> count me in !

</comment><comment><USER107> im in too!

</comment><comment><USER108> me!</comment>


Vinod Khosla: I believe 70% of VCs reduce the potential of a company - <AUTHOR> http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/vinod-khosla-be-wary-stupid-advice <comment><USER3> So, he thinks it's best for entrepreneurs to ramp up the volatility, because a 90% chance of failure with a 10% chance of $100M is the way to go. Advice from a guy with his own risk spread over a portfolio of such companies to a guy whose whole net worth is invested in one company that has a 90% chance of wipeout.

Hmm. Maybe there's something to that estimate he makes about how harmful VC advice tends to be.

<comment><USER4> Ironically, VCs prioritising "10% chance of $100M" as the way to go was exactly what I thought of when I saw the headline suggesting they actually tend to reduce the potential of the company

There's no shortage of perfectly viable $xx million businesses pushed into chasing an [ultimately optimistic] hypothesis there was a 10% chance of breakout success which, when the mass market turns out not to exist, leaves them with the potential to achieve nothing other than failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Greenspun article on his experience with VCs back in 2001 is interesting if you're in to that stuff and have not read it [http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/](http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/)

</comment><comment><USER6> 90% of the time Vinod Khosla pulls numbers out of his ass.

It's amazing really how much this guy subs the press. He acts as the entrepreneur's friend when the truth in the Valley is the exact opposite.

Beware.

</comment><comment><USER7> VCs have some sort of superstar economics going. The highest potentials hit the superstars VCs first, and get picked up. Second tier goes to second tier VCs and so on. The market sorts itself out.

So when a first tier VC disses lower tiers for 'not adding value', he is probably stating the truth, but sadly there is no alternative. The superstars can't scale up without lowering the bars somewhere, so they don't. The companies looking for VC can't be too picky since no capital is no chance of traction. So in the end, you'll settle for the capital you can get and take the reduced value as a given. Remember that the outside option (no VC) gives no value, and the negative value is relative.

<comment><USER8> Wait, why is VC the only option? What happened to the old fashioned way of getting money, taking a business loan?

<comment><USER9> It depends on your business model. For companies that require capital to build product before being able to sell, and thus don't have near term positive cash flow to pay off loans, debt is usually impossible to find. Only equity capital (i.e. VC or angel money) is willing to take that risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, was surprised to find the beach comment on the top :-) Amongst people who know Vinod I have heard a common theme but he is included in the list of inhibiting potential for second guessing everything, and creating an unhealthy tension in the founding teams. But isn't that the way of things? VC's want their investment to thrive, and because they have money and you don't they will always assume they know how to make it thrive and you don't. The only difference is how much leeway they give you.

<comment><USER11> Why are you surprised? This issue is still outstanding, Vinod layers are _still_ trying to block access to this public beach. Also it looks like he is violating the judge decision by "only opening the road sporadically".

[http://martinsbeach.blogspot.com/search?updated- min=2015-01-...](http://martinsbeach.blogspot.com/search?updated- min=2015-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max- results=3)

If you feel that this is not how it should be: [http://martinsbeach.blogspot.com/p/get- involved.html](http://martinsbeach.blogspot.com/p/get-involved.html)

<comment><USER10> Because I felt it didn't really add anything to the more important question which is "Do VC's add value or subtract value to your company?" For me, I think about that question from time to time and try to find empirical evidence to back up one side of the argument or the other. I will admit however that "Good Character" does not seem to correlate at all with "Effectiveness" in VC circles, there are bastards and there are saints and it doesn't seem to really effect the success or lack thereof of the companies they fund.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What amazes me about VCs is how passive they are about the whole process. Why sit and wait for talent to come to you? Why not go out and hire the best people and then put them to work with adequate funding and see what they come up with? If every start-up ends up pivoting as soon as they get funding why not bypass the whole process and just put a great group of people together and let them come up with something fantastic.

<comment><USER13> They call those "entrepreneurs".

I worked in several companies bootstrapped by very wealthy founders.

<comment><USER12> If the founders are wealthy is the company really bootstrapped, or just privately financed?

If VCs think the idea is worthless and execution is everything why waste time listening to pitches? Just hire the best people able to execute, give them the money and get out of the way.

<comment><USER14> That's actual work though, and that would also tie them directly with any of their failures. Can't have that.

<comment><USER12> It is true that it would take more work, but surely the rewards would make it worth trying. I can understand following the current modelled you are one of the tier 1 VC firms, but if you are tier 2 or 3 you need to do something different to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I run an exponentially growing fully automated business that is limited by my available operating capital. If VCs are useless (or finding a good one is a lottery), what are the other reasonable ways to raise capital (that don't eat all the profits nor want to control everything)?

I would prefer Vinod's brutal honesty to fake politeness any time.

<comment><USER16> Assuming that your question is not rhetorical, there are multiple ways to address this cash flow problem. You can focus on collecting revenue faster, offering new customers less generous payment terms, demanding payment up front or in advance, taking out loans against your receivables, asking vendors to finance your spending, converting a portion of employee compensation to a profit share that is payed out on a later date, finding strategic partners to provide financing or resources, etc. I hope this is helpful. There are many possibilities, but none are necessarily better than selling equity.

<comment><USER17> > You can focus on collecting revenue faster, offering new customers less > generous payment terms, demanding payment up front or in advance,

It's worth adding that these in particular are good business practices with or without VCs, because:

1\. It demonstrates that people will pay for your product. Nothing is worse than spending money making something only to discover nobody will pay for it.

2\. It's aware of the 80/20 rule. Up-front payment does a good job of limiting you to the 20% of your client base who will make you 80% of your money. The clients who want things most on their terms, who will nickel-and-dime you, make unreasonable demands, and review you poorly to other clients, are going to balk at an up-front payment and go elsewhere, _and that 's a good thing_. You don't need them. They'll weigh down your competitors and leave you more efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Say what you want about Vinod Khosla, but that doesn't make him wrong. Disproving what he said would make him wrong.

I'm not a fan of the man personally, but I think he's right--and it's not surprising. When you bring in a VC, you get a team which is personally, emotionally, and temporally invested in the project, and you bring in an outside person for whom this is only a small part of his larger financial investments and give him a significant amount of control. _Of course_ taking away control of a project from the people who are most invested in its success is going to decrease its chances of success. I'm not sure why this would be a topic of debate.

<comment><USER18> Because it doesn't matter how personally, emotionally vested you are in a company if you don't understand how to run one, how to monetize, to find new customers, hire good managers and leaders, or a whole slew of other things which your team at a startup hasn't done before but a good investor knows how to advise on, or has connections with advisors who do. Success of a company is determined by a lot more than how invested your team is in the project.

<comment><USER17> What you're saying is correct, I'm just not sure why you think it's relevant. It's entirely possible to have both personal investment _and_ competence.

<comment><USER18> It is, but the point was more that bringing in an outside person who may be less invested but has some skill that falls outside of the team's existing range isn't necessarily going to decrease your chance of success. We have advisors and incubators for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 624 days ago: _Vinod Khosla: 70-80% Of VCs Add Negative Value To Startups_ : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369626)

<comment><USER20> I wonder what caused the 14% regression of negative value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I sense a strong dislike for Vinod Khosla the person himself in almost all the responses irrespective of his actions. Are a few incidents like the martin's beach and some statistics which he pulls without references the only reason for it. The responses to beach discussion and statistics themselves are very hostile like "If he dosen't like shelling out $500k for maintainence of a public property he should not have bought it" which I think is unfair and "my best dev is an english major" when he clearly meant that for Business consultants and Journalists etc. And can't one pull a number based on a lifetime of personal experience without backing it up with statistical data? Don't we all do that in everyday lives? Even when someone mentions having a good personal experience with him, it gets discounted.

I have never been to the valley. Genuinely interested in knowing what makes a person so universally hated on this fourm. Unless he is the Donald Trump of the Valley. In which case I understand.

</comment><comment><USER6> If only the Onion knew the Valley, this would be a great headline:

Vinod Khosla: Be Wary of "Stupid Advice"

that's like saying:

Donald Trump: Be Wary of "Gold Diggers"

</comment><comment><USER22> > "Why pay attention to an English major?"

one of my best devs was an english major. So ....I don't discount ANYONE for being an english major.

edit, another point: I wish there was more advice on how to separate good from bad advice based on more than what is described in the article text - <USER2> major, not having been a CEO etc.

<comment><USER23> I've noticed that some of the best devs come from the humanities, too. I think a lot of it has to do with a certain calm, centered approach to learning. If you watch a young CS major "learn" something, they approach it with a manic, wild-eyed approach where they try to do things as fast as possible because their time is so valuable, they don't read docs because they don't need them, and so on.

Confession: I approached Docker like a maniac before humbly working my way through the official Docker user guide slowly and methodically, without distractions, doing all the exercises (and taking notes with questions). When I look back, I've done this with Maven and git, too. In every case my frantic scramble up the learning curve left me with broken, incomplete and unreliable knowledge that had to be repaired later. Lesson learned!

<comment><USER22> ha! the first paragraph in this article (letter to Isaac Asimov: [http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm](http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm)) touches on the key issue:

> In the first sentence, the writer told me he was majoring in English > literature, but felt he needed to teach me science. (I sighed a bit, for I > knew very few English Lit majors who are equipped to teach me science, but I > am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn > as much as I can from anyone, so I read on.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Regardless of your attitudes towards VCs, purely from a statistical perspective this makes sense. If you consider only a small percentage of individuals are capable of running or leading a high-growth company to millions or billions of dollars of revenue, then for every VC you add to your board, you have a greater chance of adding someone who isn't capable of adding value. Say only 1 out of every 10 individuals are rockstars in the startup/investing world. Assuming you and your co-founder are those rock- stars, the other 3 people on your 5 person board are only going to drag you down ;-)

</comment><comment><USER25> "Journalists? Why pay attention to an English major?"

Tell that to Jack Ma.

</comment><comment><USER26> Reminds me of my interview with a Japanese venture capitalist. He doesn't have experience startup, but managed to invest in a few.

[http://rickyreports.com/archives/kinoshitayoshihiko/](http://rickyreports.com/archives/kinoshitayoshihiko/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Most VCs could be safely ignored as toxic (if not useless) if they were restricted to investing their own money. The fact that they're allowed to gamble with retirement pension funds (which are sometimes insured by the state) is troublesome.

</comment><comment><USER28> Probably closer to 99.99%.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sometimes you learn about a person implicitly more than his explicit intentional declarations. This is the same Vinod Koshla who seized a public beach, and a beautiful and rare one, to his own utility against the law. This says a lot about attitude to others, maybe in business too.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/27/martins-beach- vinod...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/27/martins-beach-vinod- khosla_n_5885662.html)

<comment><USER30> What I gather from that is that this guy does not know how to monetize a road and/or run a public beach.

Build something along side the road. Build a strip mall and rent bays to surf shops and restaurants. For the amount of money the article claimed he spent he could have afforded to build a hotel or resort.

<comment><USER31> > Build a strip mall and rent bays to surf shops and restaurants

The government would not allow this to happen. The California Coastal Commission prohibits any such development. I've talked to a local architect who had his plans to remodel an existing single-family home in that area scuttled by the commission. That's why, when driving south after Half Moon Bay, you encounter essentially no coastal development until you hit Santa Cruz.

There are one or two shops scattered along the way but those are grandfathered in; as far as I can tell if it didn't exist 30-40 years ago, it never will. If Vinod Khosla proposed building a strip mall, anti-development activists from all of California would converge on Martin's Beach and chain themselves to the bulldozers while conducting a hunger strike while environmental groups would file at least three parallel lawsuits.

Put another way, SF bay area politics are non-intuitive.

(Note I'm not expressing a normative opinion about whether development _should_ be allowed; I'm merely saying what is currently allowed.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 84.3% of all statistics are pulled from the nether regions.

</comment><comment><USER33> agree</comment>


Introduction to compute shaders - <AUTHOR> https://anteru.net/blog/2018/intro-to-compute-shaders/ <comment><USER2> This is certainly interesting and informative for somebody who already kinda knows how the code->gpu->screen pipeline works and wants to know how it's made fast, but I'm still missing some of the "pre"/"post" background for how/when the request to the shading system is made and what happens after the GPU is done.

I just started poking at doing computer graphics "from scratch" (working my way up from ray tracers now). I know that modern graphics systems are huge and ultimately your C++ library or whatever is just gonna flip some bits on graphics-card registers/busses or something, but I was really hoping for some background on "here's a bit of code that asks the shader to add depth to a triangle" and then how that gets mapped back to the screen.

<comment><USER3> Start here. Work through all 5 parts. [http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles](http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles)

You'll have to implement each part yourself to understand them. It's not something that can be skimmed. But it's so worth it.

After that, most of the mystery of graphics will be gone. (But not the thrill.)

One of the most frustrating aspects of learning graphics programming was that most resources immediately start talking about theory. Partial derivatives of uv's and xy's, gradient values and mipmap selection, and you're just trying to draw a damn picture on a triangle. Learning from working code and implementing it yourself is a better teacher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure "Introduction to compute shaders" is the right title here. I was expecting to see come code, but it's more about the history of its design.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's some great information about how GPUs are organized here. It's interesting that GPUs and CPUs aren't _that_ different, even though maximizing performance requires different considerations. SIMD lanes are just wider on the GPU, and you have to treat memory differently (registers are bigger, main memory has higher latency but better bandwidth, etc).

It's also funny that Nvidia lists the total number of SIMD lanes as "CUDA cores", meaning that a single compute unit with 64 SIMD lanes counts as 64 CUDA cores. That's cheating, if you ask me :P

<comment><USER6> In Volta, each "SIMD lane" has its own PC, if that makes it more legit.

<comment><USER7> Citation? SXM2 didn't look that different, and adding that many ports to the new instruction cache they added would be absolutely crazy.

<comment><USER6> [https://devblogs.nvidia.com/inside- volta/](https://devblogs.nvidia.com/inside-volta/)

Ctrl-F "volta SIMT model"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And to browse cool shaders: [https://www.shadertoy.com/](https://www.shadertoy.com/)</comment>