One startup strives to make Iron Man's J.A.R.V.I.S. a reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2013/10/14/one-startup-strives-to-make-iron-mans-j-a-r-v-i-s-a-reality/ <comment><USER2> I started watching the video. By 2:30, I had seen a voice recognition Google search, and what appeared to be a voice recognition "I'm Feeling Lucky" Google search.

Bored with this, I started skipping around looking for the really whiz-bang AI. I saw some home automation stuff that didn't seem to be much more than something OS X Automator could do by kicking off a script.

If you roll enough dumb voice activated services together, that can still be a useful tool, but I didn't see anything that was at Siri's level. Maybe it's hidden in the video somewhere. If it is, it should have been showcased right away.

<comment><USER3> Same exact experience - I was at least hoping for some cool natural language processing. Their "generate reports" feature just scrapes text from Wikipedia...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hate to be negative, but not really all that impressed. JARVIS implies AI and conversational/contextual UI, this just appears to be a thin voice action skin which has been done for decades, not sure it was worthy of a Forbes article.

<comment><USER5> _> not sure it was worthy of a Forbes article._

Don't confuse Forbes magazine with Forbes.com. The website uses the same model as sites like seeking alpha, where pretty much anyone can write poorly researched, unverified articles and get them published.

From Wikipedia:

 _In contrast to the Forbes magazine, the website Forbes.com uses a "contributor model" in which a wide network of "Contributors" writes and publishes articles directly on the website.[15] The Forbes staff does not assign stories, fact check, or edit contributions, and Contributors write stories about any topic they choose.[15] Contributors are paid based on traffic to their Forbes.com pages; the site has received contributions from over 2,500 individuals, and some Contributors have earned over US$100,000, according to the company.[15]_

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You have to click an icon to activate voice... I'm sure you can write a quick Python script to compare new audio input, stored in a watched directory, to a base audio dictionary that fires an API based on normalized matches to "terms" in that dictionary. If you say "search" the script compares/approximates to existing waveforms.

We should have a Speech-Computer Interface API, rather than boring ourselves with the standard "Search for...", that makes a canonical set of speech patterns which computers should respond to habitually.

Things like "I'm thinking..." (fires off search, feeling lucky, wikipedia, etc. mashup results pages), "I'm hungry..." (fires off search, geolocation information, personal biometric data, etc...), "Who is..." (wiki? pipl? facebook?), "What is..." (wiki?), "When is..." (shows a calendar)...

</comment><comment><USER7> The Startup I am currently working on (also called "Jarvis Inc"), is aiming for the same star. While the current form is far from the contextual understanding. I love to see people working towards the same goal. This was our earlier mockup at jarvis.co. We only saw limited interest probably because of the high end market size. We are currently in the middle of building an open API platform as a spin off of this project.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hate to be an a-hole but this is not impressive at all. The UI, the interface, and UE is woefully deficient compared to SIRI or offerings from Google.

<comment><USER9> I don't mind. Their OS sucks. But I think it was the forbes author who pumped up our expectations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am not feeling lucky for the people behind this...</comment>


Startup Competitive Advantages that Work - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/unfair-advantages.html <comment><USER2> What is sad is to see a company with a competitive advantage fail to see it and throw it away.

I used to work at Rent.com. A key competitive advantage is that its revenue cycle is wrong. When it started its competitors all made money as soon as they referred someone. Rent.com only made money after the person was referred, leased, reported it to us, the apartment was contacted, and the apartment paid. Optimizing for this was difficult, but once Rent.com had traction none of its competitors could afford to switch models because that would open them up for apples to apples comparisons, with a company that had already been optimized, when they didn't even know how to track that data!

Then Rent.com got a new, well-funded, competitor called MyNewPlace.com with deep industry connections. Same model. Some people there used to be at Rent.com. Absolutely no idea how to implement. This is where Rent.com should have increased their spend on advertising to the point where the unoptimized upstart was losing money on every sale and Rent.com was making money. Wait until the competitor went under. Then cut back on advertising.

Unfortunately Rent.com had been purchased by eBay, eBay didn't understand Rent.com's business model, and so Rent.com was forced to squeeze margins. This gave MyNewPlace all the time in the world to figure out the business model. Worse yet, Rent.com put someone in charge of internet advertising who completely didn't understand affiliate relationships (even at break-even they are profitable because of positive SEO), and that self-inflicted wound only helped MyNewPlace more.

It was a great competitive advantage. No competitor should have been allowed to flourish. But if you don't understand your competitive advantage, it is easy to throw it away. And they did.

<comment><USER3> _even at break-even [affiliates] are profitable because of positive SEO_

Not necessarily true in all cases, but broadly accurate. Also, you can work the backend. (Solicit upgrades, upsells, and repeat purchases from the customer, which would typically not result in you paying additional commissions to the affiliate.)

<comment><USER2> It was certainly accurate in Rent.com's case. Working the backend is another good idea, but not one that Rent.com used. (Typically once people have found a place to live, they aren't in immediate need of another.)

<comment><USER4> Moving services? New furnishing for that bigger apartment?

<comment><USER2> Rent tried those things, but they were never more than small sidelines compared to the main business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still think that the best predictors for success are variables that characterize the founders (smarts, perseverance, adaptability, etc), rather than their initial ideas or pitches.

People like to dissect ideas and pitches because that's a lot easier to do than assess the competence of the founders. (Via for example, recommendation letters, but that's a whole new topic).

Try doing this: Read "Founders at Work" or some other collection of startup stories, and try to identify _any_ pattern in the initial ideas that were reasonable predictors of success.

I am sure you will scratch your head for a long time before realizing that it's all about the founders: how they adapted to the circumstances, how they dealt with the tough times, etc. (Ask the very author of the post above!).

My family is full of successful entrepreneurs in totally different market segments (ice cream shops, uninterruptible power supplies, ornamental rocks, etc), and frankly if I didn't know them I'd think they'd all flop: their markets were saturated at the time, they were non-experts, and there was no clear "competitive advantage".

I love the following quote from my cousin (the most recent and already very successful entrepreneur in the family), when talking about how he dealt with all sorts of difficulties with his company:

 _Sometimes I'm afraid of what I might want in the future. Because it seems like if I really want something, there doesn't seem to exist anything I_ can't _have._ (Loosely translated from Portuguese).

<comment><USER6> What you are describing is called Upper Echelon Theory or the Upper Echelon Perspective which is backed up by quite a solid base of research. It basically states that a company is a reflection of its officers (or founders) and that they therefore are largely responsible for a company's successes or failures.

Upper echelon theory is one of the things used to justify the bonuses and salaries that Top Management Teams receive in today's world. Also a lot of the research into entrepreneurship in the last years has focused on the upper echelon perspective a lot and tried to establish a link between factors in the founder team and a company's success.

For my Master Thesis I myself looked into the fact if diversity in a founder team increases the likelihood of startup success. The result there have been that) diversity largely has no significant influence on the success of an internet startup, only diversity in Nationality had a significant, negative impact.

If you are interested in the topic I can dig up and post a few of the papers that I used as the base for my Thesis. Unfortunately I am not yet allowed to post my own Thesis.

<comment><USER7> What kinds of diversity did you look into? Did you find any factors in founding teams correlated with success?

<comment><USER6> I only looked at diversity and no other factors. I did a survey which I also published here on HN and in total got back 67 usable results. Quite a small sample but enough.

I checked for a total of 7 different kinds of diversity that can be split into two broad categories:

1\. Ascribed Characteristics - Things that are "visible" and others ascribe to you. Here I checked for Gender, Age, Nationality, and Race. Hypothesis here was that diversity in Ascribed Characteristics has a negative effect because it fosters non-task related conflict.

2\. Achieved Characteristics - Things that people have worked for. Here I checked for type of education, level of education, industry experience, functional experience. Hypothesis here was that diversity in achieved characteristics enlarges the overall knowledge available to the company and fosters task related conflict which leads to better decisions. Therefore diversity in achieved characteristics should have a positive effect.

As mentioned before while the results trended towards what I expected the results weren't significant enough to reject the Null-Hypothesis in all cases but Nationality diversity which had a small negative effect.

To summarize what I found: The effects of diversity in founder teams of internet startups are so small that they are outweighed by many other factors that are easier to achieve than to fine tune the composition of your founder team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The founders he admires (Gates&Allen, Jobs&Wozniak, Page&Brin) probably wouldn't be able to articulate competitive advantages that this guy considers "real". They didn't have insider info or authority. They were passionate about what they are doing, but who knows if they were more passionate than their competitors (also applying this point to Apple for design and Google for search is not correct; Apple sacrifices very little to make their products look beautiful (and this is a narrow understanding of design), Google founders cared more about collaborative filtering at first).

<comment><USER9> Same goes for the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Craigslist, Ebay, Yahoo, etc.

<comment><USER10> Those companies (except maybe Yahoo) had the advantage of being the first to get-it-right in markets that tend toward natural monopoly (due to network effects).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> None of these are competitive advantages that are the opposite of the suggestions from the previous post about things that are not competitive advantages.

There are plenty of people who are passionate about their startups, working in a team of talented people, with customers, and insider information.

If a company went to a VC and used these competitive advantages, they'd be shot down in a second. Imagine this scenario:

 _Hi, I'm jargon. I am really super passionate about this idea and it's in my knowledge domain, because I have retail store. I'm a programmer with a retail store who has this software that I wrote to help me manage my retail store. I got 5 other retail stores on my block to buy it because it is so awesome. No other company is going to be able to compete with it, because all I care about is retail store software. Plus, we got Donald Trump to market it for us!_

What VC in their right mind would ever invest in something like that?

<comment><USER12> You're in a pretty sweet position if you can go to an investor and say:

1) I'm an expert in my target market.

2) I have a functional product deployed in a real environment.

3) I have five other customers lined up already.

You'd be sitting better than 95% of startups, even if The Donald isn't shilling for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think number #1 competitive advantage is Distribution.

Microsoft got to be an exclusive OS for IBM PC. Yahoo got a free button in Netscape. Kindle was pushed by Amazon (the default place for book buyers)

<comment><USER10> Distribution is definitely big. Look at how much the top iPhone apps make, look at Farmville. People generally will not seek stuff out. They will only consume stuff that's placed directly in front of them, like pigs at a trough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good article.

Asking questions like "what would you do if someone will fully copy you" is a bit dirty trick. Abstract competitors are always better, so it's meaningless to talk about them. Real competitors, even very smart and mighty, can't cover everything - they must limit themselves to something (market niche, demography, geography, price range etc.), and this may become a chance to avoid competition.

<comment><USER15> I certainly agree with you in practice.

Think of this like an Einstein thought-experiment -- it's not how you should run your life every day, but it's maybe a nice foil for thinking about such things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I keep hearing about "complementary skill sets", but what was complementary about Brin and Page? They were both computer scientists with a mathematical bent.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's good to see someone admit that they didn't have an advantage in the market place and then built something great.

<comment><USER18> I think there's too much focus on initial advantages. There are a lot of people that make a lot of money by starting restaurants, dry cleaners, book stores, and other run-of-the-mill, every-day things in common and saturated markets. The idea that you have to have something earth-shaking to be a successful entrepreneur is far too pervasive, imo. The real thing is that you start, persist, and have some semblance of the skills that you need and a lot of dedication and perseverance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He makes a fair point, those are definitely competitive advantages.

Now the question becomes, most companies won't have them but they will still be expected. Then what?

Of course, where do we draw the line? semi-fame? is that competitive advantage? I have 20,000 twitter followers? 100,000? 1 million? (or mailing list members, rss feed subscribers, whatever metric you want).

</comment><comment><USER20> There are a ton of successful companies that don't fit any of the criteria (Facebook, Nike, McDonald's, etc) In fact I have to think hard to come up with companies that may have had unfair advantages.

So, while unfair advantages may work in your favor. Not having them (yet being successful) may actually be a norm.

<comment><USER21> Zuckerberg _was_ a college student when he developed The Facebook, so he at least had the insider advantage over his competition at the time (Myspace, Friendster, Orkut). This also ties into the fact that his product was a lot more narrowly focused, which leads to the "single-mindedness" advantage and was absolutely crucial to Facebook's success. I don't know enough about the history of Nike or McDonald's to comment there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very well written, I got a lot out of this. I think it provides a good framework for thinking about this part of the business.

</comment><comment><USER23> I like it! These advantages sound very good. But my problem is that these are reformulations of the 'fake' advantages for purposes of marketing to VCs, rather than any substantial actual difference IMO.

It seems to me like fake advantages Passion + Feature = Real Adv One Thing and PhDs / MBAs is simply one way of saying Dream Team. I mean as a marketing term 'Dream Team' is even less substantial than PhDs / MBAs.

<comment><USER15> I would take a proven entrepreneur over an MBA and a proven uber-coder-geek over an MBA any day of the week, and most VCs would too.

<comment><USER23> Not a real dichotomy though...</comment></comment></comment>


UK Police placing anti-piracy warning ads on illegal sites - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28523738

<comment><USER2> So wait, they're paying illegal websites to advertise that those websites are illegal? _Starts working on an illegal website_</comment>


You need to be bigger! - <AUTHOR> http://www.carsonified.com/small-biz-101/why-your-company-should-be-bigger <comment><USER2> I'm betting that 1 of the 2 votes for this fluff was a sockpuppet.</comment>


"The DNS Camel", or, the rise in DNS complexity - <AUTHOR> https://blog.powerdns.com/2018/03/22/the-dns-camel-or-the-rise-in-dns-complexit/ <comment><USER2> In my experience, we're already past the point where DNS is too complex.

I worked with a customer who had a postage meter that refused to work correctly. After _tons_ of troubleshooting, it turned out the issue is that the postage company had DNAME records in the mix ... and the DNS server on that network doesn't support DNAME at all. That troublesome DNS server is the (then, at least) current version of Samba.

I tried contacting the vendor to report the issue and, in typical fashion, I don't think I even got a ticket escalated to somebody who understood it. We put the postage meter on a VLAN with different DNS to work around it.

I've also seen major issues with US government websites advertising AAAA records for websites that aren't actually available on ipv6 - and again, no way to report/resolve it, we just disabled ipv6 on the workstation we file those reports from.

Both experiences made me realize how fragile DNS is, how hard it is to get anything fixed once you do diagnose it, and that a _lot_ of "flakey" tech probably suffers from DNS issues outside either the vendor or consumer's control.

<comment><USER3> Samba shouldn't be trying to deal with records it does not understand, and those AAAA records aren't exactly a DNS issue.

The Internet has become way too complex lately and DNS gets to carry the burden of gluing everything together. It may be wise to rethink its role, make it more general, and stack things on top of it, instead of inside.

<comment><USER2> Samba isn't "dealing with" them, it's just dropping them because it doesn't know anything about them.

<comment><USER3> Dropping them is dealing with them. DNS is an opaque key-value registry, you get a record from upstream, you store it and repeat to everybody that asks.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that Samba 4 has to deal with them, since it will look them up in ldb, and if they're not there, forward them. I guess it doesn't blindly pass records through that it can't look up in LDAP.

As a side note, although I love AD DNS, MS are so slow to add new record support. I still can't add SSHFP records to Samba. :(

<comment><USER5> You don't have to use the built in DNS server in Samba. You can use BIND - [https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/BIND9_DLZ_DNS_Back_End](https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/BIND9_DLZ_DNS_Back_End) and [https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Changing_the_DNS_Back_End_o...](https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Changing_the_DNS_Back_End_of_a_Samba_AD_DC)

<comment><USER4> Ye, I find the inbuilt one more reliable, and i've seen a ppt which says bind_dlz is a horrible hack and they'll stop it at some point. Also that doesn't affect what record types can be stored and manipulated in AD.

<comment><USER5> I've seen a similar thing ("and they'll stop it at some point"). If you need DNS functionality beyond the Samba implementation then I would suggest having a separate BIND or PDNS server that all clients point at and that collates the DNS view that you wish them to have. A GPO will get them to update records on your Samba DNS and your PDNS or BIND or whatever can do the rest.

<comment><USER4> Nice thinking. I'll give that a think, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is underrated. Bert is so reasonable, and the DNS is so brittle. Worth really saying, hey, "who is benefitting" with many of the new proposals.

<comment><USER7> The proposals seem to be about tapping the breaks. Good idea. It's not good to leave so many people hopelessly in the dust.

His way of framing the cost/benefit analyses in terms of who bears the costs and who receives the benefits seems sound. It's nit enough for something to have benefits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting the see that the BGP WGs take such a different approach. Both DNS and BGP fill a similar essential role, you'd think that they would develop new standards in a similar fashion.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, since things like DNSSEC, DNS has become more complex for sure.

</comment><comment><USER9> I feel like tying ips to a name and tying accounts to real people or to each other should be handled by the same entity. It could be called identity services. We need more centralized, simplified and potent identity services

</comment><comment><USER10> and netbios in the mix</comment>


Signato – A new font inspired by the Independence of Lithuania - <AUTHOR> http://signato.lt/en/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the license permits the use of the font only for "non- commercial" purposes, which means that it cannot be included in Free Software distributions.

<comment><USER3> Non-commercial licenses are IMO seriously wrongheaded. It's hardly a unique problem here. See also Creative Commons which spent something like a decade trying to define what the term meant and then ended up pretty much punting when it came time for 4.0.

Even leaving aside philosophical free software issues, the practicalities are considerable. A term (as in this license) such as "not aimed at direct or indirect financial gain" could be read as ruling out pretty much any non- trivial public use given how many things are indirectly monetized in various ways today.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't this just mean you have to contact the author to work out terms for a commercial license?

<comment><USER3> "Just" that. But the reality is that if I'm looking for a commercially licensed photograph, font, or whatever, there are already plenty of sites that I can go to and pay for. And, if I'm looking for something free in a situation that clearly doesn't fall under non-commercial (e.g. marketing materials), I'm just going to skip over anything with a "non-commercial" only license and pick something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In 2 days Lithuania will celebrate 100 years of independence (apart from a 50 year intermission of Soviet occupation).

The release of this font is connected to the celebration.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious about this -

> While typing, you will notice that it is a much more sophisticated > handwritten font than others. Spaces between words will not be perfectly > identical, and the same two words when typed next to each will not look the > same either, thus giving an impression that the text is actually written by > hand.

How is this accomplished? I assume there's a ligature for spaces depending on the preceding character - but how does one randomise the ligatures between pairs of characters?

<comment><USER7> However they do it, it repeats deterministically. Every third character in a repeated string is the same. If you paste "EEE| |EoEoEoEo| |EoiEoiEoi|" into the box and note the changes to the 'E' you should observe the way the E is dependent on the previous characters, but only for a certain distance. I assume this is a ligature-like feature but I don't know enough about fonts to say any more.

<comment><USER6> Ahhh! I see. It becomes more obvious if you type a lower-case t repeatedly. Thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Minor niggle: The 'Download' section has a header that reads 'For IOS users' that should read 'For macOS users'

</comment><comment><USER9> As a writer of English I find a font without the letter Q to be distinctly lacking...

<comment><USER10> I was trying the Turkish characters and it surprised me by having İ. Very interestingly, it didn't have ı. Does anyone know an alphabet which has İ but not ı?

<comment> jake-low I don't think any languages make use of İ but not ı; perhaps when you press the İ key on your keyboard the actual character sequence that gets entered is the decomposition "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I (U+0049) COMBINING DOT ABOVE (U+0307)"? OpenType has tags that allow you to describe where arbitrary combining diacritics go relative to a glyph, so maybe the font knows how to assemble those two code points into an İ, even though the font designer didn't explicitly design for Turkish. Just speculating here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love stuff like this.

The demonstration text on the web site omits Q, but it exists in the actual font file. Maybe there's no Q in Lithuanian?

Too bad about the license, or I'd use it for lots of things. Though I think Millennials who weren't taught cursive writing may have trouble with capital i and both z's.

<comment><USER12> Yes - Lithuanian language doesn't include Q, as well as X (not sure why X made it into the font, though).

<comment><USER13> Wild guess - Lithuanian does not have W, Q and X, but those are on de-facto "standard" qwerty keyboard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Su vasario 16, Lietuva

</comment><comment><USER15> I was immediately disappointed by not being able to write my name (with ú and Á). It can work for Lithuanian, German, English, but not other languages that use different diacritics, as it doesn't have any others (accute, grave, circumflex, tilde, etc).

</comment><comment><USER16> This font is pure digital poetry.

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting to automate the creation of fonts from historical documents by training CNNs to extract suitable sample letters and transform them.

That wouldn't be a replacement for serious projects like this, where an actual typographer was paid to work for 160 hours. But it could be fun to try lots of documents and see how the fonts they yield vary.

</comment><comment><USER18> For all the beautiful ligatures that it has, the í (accented i) is very crude :(

</comment><comment><USER19> > All signatures by specially programmed robot-arm will be written and > published in the unitary book.

Cool

</comment><comment><USER20> What a treat. Made my Wednesday : }

</comment><comment><USER21> Beautiful font.

</comment><comment><USER22> Signed, Pilsudski.</comment>


New worm can propagate between power-plant controllers without a host PC - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/05/daisychained_research_spells_malware_worm_hell_for_utilities?mt=1462693149073 <comment><USER2> I work with PLCs and read the paper the article links to and it looks legitimate. They do note that the PLC program is stopped for 10 seconds when the worm infects a new host which may or may not give it away depending on the process the PLC is controlling.

I guess I'll start putting a password on my programs, although they point out that the protection was all based in the IDE and could be removed by writing directly to PLC.

<comment><USER3> Password protection enforced at the client seems to be Siemens way of doing security. I discovered this flaw in their heat pump controller when I was working on monitoring system for the pump. I had to disassemble their Java applet that was used to show temperature information and configure the controller to replicate the protocol used. Password protection? Client reads the password from the controller and compares it to user-provided string. If there is a match, client continues to read/write data, if not, client asks for password again. No password verification on controller at all.

<comment><USER4> hey, at least they started moving away from passwords hardcoded in firmware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What an awful title. It's almost unparseable, and the only I reason I clicked the link is to see if the article was as badly written as the title.

I have to ask: are the programming ports of PLC's customarily left open after deployment? I have little experience with them, but I thought most programming modes reconfigured some of the (few) pins for programming. In normal operation, aren't these pins reconfigured for something useful?

(edit: nevermind, seems I'm thinking of a lot smaller devices than the research article)

<comment><USER6> The Register's headlines are specifically constructed to emulate the scaretype headlines of British newspapers like The Daily Mail.

Think of it as their kind of snark. After all it is a site that has "biting the hand that feeds IT" as their subtitle.

<comment><USER7> True, but it became tired and tiresome more than a decade ago. It may well be costing them a lot of readers....</comment></comment></comment>


That Huge Mediterranean Diet Study Was Flawed. But Was It Wrong? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/health/mediterranean-diet-heart-disease.html <comment><USER2> I read that some researchers doubt the results of the re-analysis. However, I failed to catch what was their problem with the re-analysis?

Is it that the approach of the study overall was too naïve and out of control?

<comment><USER3> As someone completely unfamiliar with the field I can only go on indicators of intent, but the two facts that the re-analysis was: (a) prompted by an external person finding flaws with their research, and (b) performed by the original researchers themselves rather than by an independent party, both seem like red-flags to me for the possibility that the re-analysis could be an attempt to save face, rather than an honest re-evaluation.

There's no way to say either way for sure, but an independent analysis without bias would be a little better.

This excerpt from the article also supports the desperately-saving-face narrative:

"The investigators spent a year working on the re-analysis ... "You cannot imagine what it has been like," Dr. Martínez-González said, adding that he and his team worked through vacations and weekends — and swallowed considerable professional embarrassment."</comment></comment>


Tiny Skateboards and the Fast Fingers that Ride Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/tiny-skateboards-and-the-fingers-that-ride-them

<comment><USER2> As a classroom teacher I always saw these as just a minor nuisance. Interesting seeing some of the business side of things.</comment>


Double life as a KGB agent - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/11/thought-smarter-everybody-kgb-spy-jack-barsky <comment><USER2> A fair number of sleeper agents like this have been outed over the years. Another example that comes to mind is the KGB agent couple on which the TV show "The Americans" was based: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered- our...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered-our-parents- were-russian-spies-tim-alex-foley)

FBI Operation Ghost Stories arrested 11 people back in 2010. [https://vault.fbi.gov/ghost-stories-russian-foreign- intellig...](https://vault.fbi.gov/ghost-stories-russian-foreign-intelligence- service-illegals/images)

What I'm wondering is: how many other agents are out there and haven't been caught yet? Or were here and left without being caught?

I wonder if this type of agent is still in active use, in the sense of seeding more of them. Given the arrests just 7 years ago, I'd guess so. But perhaps not, since hacking and electronic surveillance can be so effective. You don't necessarily need an agent within a country's borders to penetrate a lot of their networks, email, and other communications.

But you never know ... what lengths would Russia go to to get an agent TS/SCI clearance and access to a SCIF?

<comment><USER3> One of the inefficiencies of embedding agents like this seems to be that they're subject to the same vagaries of chance as all of us.

What are the chances of an agent being hired and then promoted to have access to an SCI file you're interested in?

It seems a pretty poor bet compared to turning individuals already in relevant positions.

<comment><USER4> You can provide them with covert help. If they have a team of 10 people helping them out, they will seem like a 10x performer...

<comment><USER5> Any help the Soviets would have provided those agents would have also increased the risk of detection due to the unavoidable contacts with the helpers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For people who like this sort of thing: [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul- foot/the-great-times-they...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v10/n16/paul-foot/the- great-times-they-could-have-had) (on the British Royal family being infiltrated by fascists).

The TV series _Deutchland 83_ is also well worth watching for a snappy spy drama about a young man from East Germany being coerced into being a double agent.

<comment><USER7> Lovely series, but first thing I thought of when reading the article was _The Americans_ , it's about two spies in the Soviet illegals program living in a DC suburb.

Would definitely recommend it if you liked _Deutschland 83_.

<comment><USER8> Jack Barsky was interviewed for the behind-the-scenes podcast for _The Americans_. I think he might work as a consultant for the show, but I'm not sure.

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/03/24/a_former_kgb_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/03/24/a_former_kgb_agent_on_how_the_americans_compares_to_his_own_experiences.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the end, it all seems so mundane. Secretive to be sure, but a talented life accomplishing nothing. Well, maybe an improvement on East Germany in the 80s but that's it.

<comment><USER10> I remember reading a book about Gunther Guillaume, an east-german spy in Germany. The same feeling resonated throughout the book, the job is, as you said, secretive, but mundane. Interestingly, I would expect people that choose to go into this line of work to know this, since most all realistic books and media leave show how utterly lonely and boring it is. On the other hand, I guess there are spy handlers ane their life might be more... exciting?

<comment><USER11> Being a spymaster sounds far more fun and interesting than being a spy.

<comment><USER12> It seems worse to me. Just sorting through all these memos trying to figure out which people are and aren't important, and which data may be relevant. id the business is mundane, middle management isn't exciting.

<comment><USER11> I don't know, I'd find that kind of analysis a lot more fun than living a mundane line for decades just for a chance of learning some interest info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 60 minutes produced a segment about him. Here is the transcript: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-kgb-spy-jack-barsky- steve...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-kgb-spy-jack-barsky-steve- kroft-60-minutes/)

</comment><comment><USER14> This sounds true and similar to what I thought it would be, based on how laughably bad were the Russian "illegals" caught in 2010. It is virtually impossible to fit in having been born and raised in a different culture. Even simply the accent is almost impossible to overcome (women seem to have better luck defeating the accent than men and you have a chance up to the age of 17 or so).

The Americans is a cool show, but the real life illegals could not fool anyone.

These days Russia probably has no need for this type of presence, since there are enough Russians living in the US and enough of them support Putin that a small percentage may choose to work as spies. Same for China.

Another interesting detail that came out of the 2010 illegal bust was that America is so diverse and people are so respectful of privacy, that one of the spies was doing just fine with an American name ("Jack Ryan" or "Patric Foley" or something like), fully American "legend" and a heavy Russian accent. People wondered but nobody asked any questions.

P.S. And who needs spies when you can have a whole administration? :)

<comment><USER15> > Even simply the accent is almost impossible to overcome (women seem to have > better luck defeating the accent than men and you have a chance up to the > age of 17 or so).

Accent reduction does not work for everyone (see e.g. Bela Lugosi), but its success rate is much better than what your post would suggest.

Three of the 2010 illegals (Chapman, Mills and Zottoli) had Russian accents. Their neighbors knew that they were Russian, and said that they never tried to conceal their national background. On the other hand, nobody could tell that Heathfield and Foley weren't real Americans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Crazy story. It's amazing what a state power can get individuals to do for it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Amazing story!

</comment><comment><USER18> I had some level of respect for The Guardian vis a vis Glenn Greenwald. But wow, the brazen seed on current events "Might Trump have been recruited by Putin?" and "right wingers are easier to convert". First class journalism right there folks, way to be taken hook line and sinker by the intelligence community while doing an article on the intelligence community. Pretty comical.

<comment><USER19> I lost my respect for the Guardian a while back. They were reporting on hostilities in Israel.

They had a side-bar for "Related Articles", which were one after the other - critical of Israel as being an unprovoked aggressor. Fine, if that's the truth, except:

Every article I opened had a long lead-in about Israeli aggression, its consequences, etc. Every article had buried in the last paragraph, practically mumbling under its breath, "The IDF moved in because they were repeatedly being attacked by RPGs &tc." Nothing was provided to suggest the IDF was lying or incorrect about being provoked - so why was one headline after the other all about characterizing unprovoked unilateral aggression?

I was done. It's fine to be critical of Israeli policies and military posturing; it's another to essentially lie through your teeth and then cover your ass in postscript.

<comment><USER20> Israel is occupying Palestine. When Palestinians fight back, Israelis can't claim to have been provoked, when their occupation is the original provocation.

It's like claiming Hitler just justified in killing 6 million jews because after he killed 1 million, a few jews tried to fight back, and he had to kill another 5 million because he was provoked.

<comment><USER21> I think "original provocation" is a little hard to claim when we are talking about Jerusalem. Even in recent history, the '48 Arab-Israeli war, pan-Arab forces attempted to crush the nascent Jewish enclave.

Also, I find your Holocaust allusion extremely tasteless.

<comment><USER20> > Even in recent history, the '48 Arab-Israeli war, pan-Arab forces attempted > to crush the nascent Jewish enclave.

If you're going that far back, why not just a handful of years earlier? Palestine getting flooded with immigrants whose sole purpose was to replace the incumbent population and establish their own state.

The American far right is terrified that muslims are going to take over an establish sharia law... all based on nonsense. The Palestinians _actually had that happen to them_ , and you don't think they were justified in feeling invaded?

> Also, I find your Holocaust allusion extremely tasteless.

Of course it was. That was why it was said. I find your defence of the Israeli apartheid and their continued occupation of Palestine and brutal oppression of a hopeless people to be just as tasteless.

EDIT: In any case, thank you for explaining the original downvote, unlike the others.

<comment><USER21> The Jewish flight from Europe and concurrent Zionism is significantly different is character to the current Israeli behaviour, which is undoubtedly seeking to illegally expel Palestinians from the West Bank. But to say that the Palestinians and their allies had no role in this process is also absurd. The plight of the Palestinians is dire, but their actions must also be weighted. In many ways they have the Israelis they deserve, and the Israelis have the Hamas they deserve.

The American far right is so disconnected from reality and humanity as to render their arguments null and void. I am not arguing their positions.

I don't think though that any mass migration of a persecuted people is an invasion, no matter how much the current inhabitants don't like them.

When the state of Israel was attacked by an existential threat it defended itself, and it now occupies the terrain required to defend itself. The continual threat from Syria more than justifies holding the Golan Heights. The rocket attacks from Gaza on heavily populated areas (and control by Hamas) certainly justify some blockade. The West Bank territory squeezes so close to Tel Aviv that ceding it to a regime that might rocket them is impossible.

The Israelis use of heavy weapons on Gaza is indefensible, as are the continued growth of West Bank settlements. But they fall short of being comparable in any way with the Holocaust.

<comment><USER20> Well argued. Thank you for sharing your opinions on what is obviously a very complex issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just like engineers, they think they are smart and they are changing the world and blablabla but it is actually all about billions and power going to the big guys

<comment><USER23> This comment comes across as small minded and pessimistic without real evidence. Scientists and engineers typically help the world, with or without money. See Gates, Stallman, Page & Brin, Clair Cameron Patterson, etc

<comment><USER24> To expand, Oppenheimer, Turing, Feynman and even Gauss come to mind. Really stupid comment.

<comment><USER25> Those weren't engineers. Mathematicians and physicists, really.

<comment><USER26> The KGB spy from the article itself wasn't even an engineer, but a chemist.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bussard: A space flight programming adventure - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard <comment><USER2> Hi folks; author here. Definitely interested in getting feedback from playtesting either here or in the issue tracker.

As for status, the engine is probably at 85% completion or so; the remaining features are mostly just functionality that will enable additional programming challenges, like hooking in portal access control to an SQLite database or integrating a Forth interpreter for the finale. (There is already a lisp compiler functional in-game.)

There is still a lot to do in terms of story, programming challenges, and plotting though. I have a fairly detailed backstory and outline plotted out, (see the spoilers/ directory) but it's going to be a lot of work to flesh it out into the game.

My long-term goal is to make it a game that you can learn programming just by playing. I feel like most "learn to program" games end up feeling really contrived because they don't lay the groundwork to create a rich enough world to enable anything non-contrived. So my goal here is to create a fairly detailed simulation, and then find the places where you can use programming to overcome problems you run into.

Anyway, obviously the project is OSS, so if you're interested in contributing, please drop me a line.

Edit: if you're impatient and want to just download a single file and play, releases are at [https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard](https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard)

<comment><USER3> Interesting, nice work. Were you inspired by Mojang's cancelled 0x10ᶜ? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0x10c](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0x10c)

I see the fan version released a v0.1 a couple of days ago. [https://github.com/trillek-team/tec/releases](https://github.com/trillek- team/tec/releases)

<comment><USER2> I heard about 0x10ᶜ after I had been working on Bussard for a while. There are similarities, but they are accidental. I specifically want my game not to include combat, and while early on I thought it would be an open-world thing, as it's progressed I've decided it would be a lot more compelling with a good story behind it.

I may end up having an assembly language in the game, but it would be one of many languages rather than the only one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see "A Fire Upon the Deep" cited as an inspiration and I'm immediately on board!

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice game! Here are some thing I've notices during playing it.

* There is no usefull coding workflow. Thats how I do it: CTRL+o, enter filename, write some code, ESC, CTRL+ENTER, CTRL+UP, ENTER, oh an error, CTRL+o, enter filename, .... That is a little bit tedious.

* Without syntax highlighting, typos occur everywhere :)

* If there is an error in a script, the stacktrace shows a line number. But the editor does not have line numbers, so I have to count it manually. That sucks.

* Switching between modes would be nice. So switching from the mail view to the editor an back again (with the file and the mail opened) would be nice. A lot of time, there are some bits an pices in the mail which are relevant in the flight mode or in the editor (station names, some hints etc.)

* I've crashed the game and brought it to a point it can't be played any more. ([https://p.fu86.de/1468240067-8920.png](https://p.fu86.de/1468240067-8920.png)) (I think I've done ship.docs.msg1 = dofile(...), which caused the problem). Even if I wipe the savegame and use the stock config, the game crashed again after a few seconds.

<comment><USER2> Thanks; following up on these things in the issue tracker: [https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard/issues/127](https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard/issues/127)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks very interesting, found a small teaser trailer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_gdeS3d6F8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_gdeS3d6F8)

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks very cool. When I was a kid I spent many an afternoon programming robots in RoboWar, which used a simple stack machine processor with a bunch of special instructions and registers for doing robot-y things. I think I enjoyed that (and TIS-100 also, which you mentioned) because it provides all the fun puzzle-y nature of programming without having to learn a big API or complex language. Using a "foreign" language / machine architecture also helps separate the game from reality, which I think is important.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting! I once did something related for a game jam: [http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1794/anniver...](http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1794/anniversary- game-jam-2014/1799#1799)

</comment><comment><USER9> Question: from browsing the manual, the scoop is something very different from a Bussard ramscoop, correct? And the physics are all non-relativistic?

I don't mean to knock the game at all, it looks absolutely fantanstic and just the list of inspirations makes me want to play it, very much.

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, the word "scoop" is used to refer to a collector for asteroid mining, though the manual also refers to "fuel collectors" that are intended to be Bussard ramscoops.

The physics are non-relativistic; correct. I have a section in my dev notes labeled "crimes against science" where I list out all the places I can think of that the game diverges from realism, (and avoid adding to the list) but I hadn't considered that yet since all the interstellar travel in the game happens through artificial wormholes: [https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard/blob/master/spoilers/...](https://gitlab.com/technomancy/bussard/blob/master/spoilers/readme.md#crimes- against-science) (edit: spoiler warning for the link)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anybody tried this yet? It looks fascinating and I'd like to hear some testimonials.

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel like this needs multiplayer. Would be amazing to use it to teach others how to program.

<comment><USER2> It would be pretty cool, but it would be a lot harder to pull off. At this point the thought of having to be responsible for another server doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me, and preventing users from writing programs that suck up all the CPU cycles is really tricky.

Plus I really want to focus on the storytelling aspects. Especially the end- game scenario (see spoilers/readme.md if curious) would be extremely problematic to implement in multiplayer.

<comment><USER7> > preventing users from writing programs that suck up all the CPU cycles is > really tricky

I like the low level programming / virtual machine approach for this reason. You can provide the player with a machine that is severely limited in speed and size, which makes for a fun challenge and makes it easy to keep things bounded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice! A Gitlab repo!

</comment><comment><USER13> Sorry, not friendly a-tall. Never imagined a future vehicle would have a 1970s-era unix command line! Anyway said command line behaves oddly, cursor seems to get "above" the ">" prompt and then I can't type? I can see the point in that you can build up to some complexity without having to invest in a ton of artwork and pixel candy to create a believable GUI for the ship, but the cost in playability is high. I gather your implementation language is Lua... is there for Lua anything comparable to PyGame for Python where you could leverage some graphics?

In interactive mode, I zoomed out what seemed like quite a ways and didn't see anywhere to go.

<comment><USER2> > said command line behaves oddly

Yeah, there are some prompt bugs on master; try the beta-1 release linked in my other comment for a more stable version. Will definitely be fixed before the next beta release.

Edit: if you can provide repro steps for the prompt bug that would be super helpful.

> I gather your implementation language is Lua... is there for Lua anything > comparable to PyGame for Python where you could leverage some graphics?

Sure; I could easily create a GUI for the ship, but that would be a different game than the one I'm trying to make. There are plenty games like that out there already. I want something that feels more like TIS-100 than Endless Sky. (Not to knock the latter, but they already do a better job at making that kind of game than I ever could.)

On the other hand, part of the point of the game is that if some players want to play a more GUI-centric game, all that you need is already included to turn the game into that kind of game from the inside. All the HUD stuff and the graphics libs are exposed to the in-game Lua sandbox.

> I zoomed out what seemed like quite a ways and didn't see anywhere to go.

You have to use a portal to get to another star system.

<comment><USER14> To repro a prompt bug:

        Windows 10
        Begin game
        ctrl-P (game says 'Cannot log into target.')
        ctrl-enter (console is broken)

<comment><USER2> Oh, it looks like that specific problem has been fixed, assuming you were running into it on the beta-1 release from itch.io. Thanks anyway.

<comment><USER14> Note that I'm not the rude poster upthread. I was just reporting since you asked for a report.

Anyway, that IS the version wherein I found that bug. Is that not the latest published release of the game for Windows?

<comment><USER2> Sorry I wasn't clear--I thought he was talking about a bug that had been introduced since the release, but it turned out it was the other way around. The bug was present in the latest beta-1 release but fixed in git master since then.

I hope to have a beta-2 release out in the next week or so.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Deep Gradient Compression [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://openreview.net/forum?id=SkhQHMW0W&noteId=SkhQHMW0W <comment><AUTHOR> _In this paper, we find 99.9% of the gradient exchange in distributed SGD is redundant, and propose DGC to greatly reduce the communication bandwidth._</comment>


What's in a Production Web Application? - <AUTHOR> https://stephenmann.io/post/whats-in-a-production-web-application/ <comment><USER2> This was actually very helpful as someone in the process of learning these things organically in the growth of a site.

Luckily I have slow growth so I can afford taking one step at a time as a solo developer.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found that a helpful overview, too. I wish there were a carefully written, book-length equivalent that went into enough detail for a person with the basic foundation (basic front-end apps, basic server-side apps, HTTP, ssh/cmd line, SQL) to set up a production infrastructure of approximately the complexity of the one in the article.

With that, I could better understand the various managed options out there. In other words, I would be able to shop around and tell from their docs what it is they would do for me and what I would be doing for myself along with the limitations, tradeoffs, issues that needed to be dealt with up front and those that could wait for later (or never), etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really good walkthrough! This is exactly how a company I worked for started to scale. The part about checking logs on every server taking an hour hit close to home.

</comment><comment><USER5> A lot of wisdom in there, but my god, why the overengineering? Keep it simple! You can serve hundreds of thousands of users only using Python's standard library (http.server and sqlite3 with an in-memory dict for caching).

Fewer pieces of the puzzle will let you quickly identify bottlenecks, instead of trying to anticipate them before everything breaks.

<comment><USER6> Every hypothetical action he took was in reaction to a hypothetical scenario that _actually happened_ (hypothetically). This is not overengineering, this is plain ol' engineering.</comment></comment>


A sneak peek into the new technology behind Hey.com - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/borama/a-few-sneak-peeks-into-hey-com-technology-iii-turbolinks-frames-5e4a <comment><USER2> When I looked at the features of hey email ( [https://hey.com/how-it- works/](https://hey.com/how-it-works/) , [https://hey.com/features/](https://hey.com/features/) ), I recognized similar features and ideas already present in many SMS organizers. For example, SMS organizer from Microsoft: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.android.smsorganizer&hl=en_IN)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was another interesting post on the same topic [https://dev.to/zimski/hey-turbolinks-rjs-is- dead-13bj](https://dev.to/zimski/hey-turbolinks-rjs-is-dead-13bj)</comment>


We need to act fast to protect the open internet in India - <AUTHOR> https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/india-intermediary-liability-campaign/ <comment><USER2> I don't think anything will change for now but until then, does anyone know of projects that provide internet access over sms?

Should require sms stitching and burst sending on client with backend using twilio or something similar for sms automation.

Basic services like maps, bus schedules, organizing events, and reading web pages should be doable. Would be interesting to implement.</comment>


Quick Python/Developer tips for OSX Lion - <AUTHOR> http://jessenoller.com/2011/07/30/quick-pythondeveloper-tips-for-osx-lion/

<comment><USER3> I'll add more as they come up or people share them. I'm pretty happy with the upgrade, and nothing broke for me, really. My VMWare Fusion system kept chugging along, etc.

Also, full disk encryption is _amazing_

<comment><USER4> Just discovered this The Hard Way, but if you run Boot Camp; make sure you get the Boot Camp 4.0 update on the Windows side before you turn on FileVault. If not; Windows will try to mount your Mac volume (which is now encrypted gibberish), fail miserably, and BSoD every time within 30s of logging in. If it's too late, booting into safe mode and renaming the HFS drivers (AppleMount.sys and AppleHFS.sys IIRC) in C:\Windows\System32\drivers will get your system out of limbo.

<comment><USER3> Added a note to the OP; thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1) Install iTerm 2, a better terminal

2) Install Alfred, disable the spotlight hotkey and assign Alfred to Command+Space

3) Install Witch, a better command tab switcher that handles minimized windows.

<comment><USER3> iTerm2 -> Dislike, it doesn't offer me any benefits to my current workflow.

Alfred -> If you don't have this installed before upgrading to Lion, which the article is about, then I think you might have something wrong with you :)

Witch -> Never used it.

<comment><USER6> I'm wondering what's your screen resolution? I'm using it on 1920x1080 + 1600x1440 dual screen. To me, the ability of iTerm2 to vertically and horizontally split multiple terminals fullscreen on a big monitor is a huge plus.

And for a lone time, Terminal.app before Lion only supports 16 colors, which is a big reason for me to switch to someone better. iTerm2 fits the bill.

<comment><USER3> I don't like splitting terminal windows - I use the tabs built into terminal.app and sizeup (<http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/>) to split/stack essentially "tab groups". I normally have multiple spaces, each with 50% of the horizontal screen dedicated to vim, and the other 50% to two groups of terminals (each one taking 50% of the vertical).

I'm not running dual screen - just 1900x1200 and 1440x900 depending on where I am. Like I said, it's a workflow thing. I didn't even notice the increase in terminal colors - all my good coloring is in mac vim, not in the terminal.

<comment><USER7> The autocomplete and "instant replay" features are also very handy to have when you need them (from iTerm2).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author states _Lion's default Python install is a healthy Python 2.7.1._

I have personally had an unreasonable amount of trouble installing and using Python libraries and environments on Snow Leopard. I think right now I have at least 3 different versions of Python installed, each with various and disparate libraries. Has this been addressed in Lion? Getting Numpy, Scipy, etc to work is a chore; especially when comparing it to the Linux experience.

<comment><USER9> I used to have trouble getting numpy and scipy installed - until I started using homebrew. It blows MacPorts out of the water. Just make sure your architecture is set correctly as Jesse outlines in this blog post, otherwise you'll run into problems building the various C components with gcc.

<comment><USER3> What he said; use homebrew - judicious use of homebrew and virtualenv will save you lots of pain. I never install framework builds from python.org - <USER2> don't like installing things into /Library or ~/Library

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haven't upgraded to OSX Lion and probably won't purchase MacBook anymore in the future (I currently own a 13" MBP).

Setting up development environment in Linux seems more sane not just for Python but for almost everything else (Java, Ruby, typical LAMP stack) except if you're doing iOS development.

<comment><USER3> I only do Linux/web development; and it never really bothered me. Of course, I'm doing Python development, which means I rarely run into issues (and if I do, homebrew fixes them easily). I also run VMware fusion with Ubuntu/Fedora VMs for deployment testing. And throw in about 4 windows VMs for IE/compat testing to boot.

So, I disagree that it's "more sane" - I spend plenty of time chasing down crazy outdated versions of Python libraries the apt/yum repos contain, etc, and well, I don't like spending my time in linux window managers (I dislike the UI) so it's a wash, and getting a linux dev environment setup on my mac is as simple as booting a VM and swapping it into fullscreen.

But to each their own. If I wasn't running OSX, I'd be running Linux. I just prefer one OS' aesthetics over another.

See also Vagrant (<http://vagrantup.com/>) - runs off of virtualbox if VMWare isn't your thing.

<comment><USER10> At some point in time in my life (I don't know when), I started to ignore the UI of various OSes. Most of my time I spent in an IDE, browsers, and occasionally a communication software (Outlook, LotusNotes, e-mail client, whichever floats).

On the other hand, I thought people install Python libraries either directly downloading the distributions or via easy_install? I never install modules from apt/yum.

<comment><USER3> _shrug_ \- Like I said, it's a matter of aesthetics and usability for me. I've never met a Linux UI I liked (except for XFCE a long time ago), and I go out of my way _not_ to use non-native apps on OSX. It's all about personal preference. I also dabble in design and UI/UX, and have for some time, maybe that's why.

ps. easy_install is bad for you, use pip! <http://www.pip- installer.org/en/latest/index.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Huh. He said "need done" instead of "need to be done". I wonder if he's originally from Pittsburgh?

<comment><USER3> Alaska, actually. Where did I say that in the article?

<comment><USER11> Oh, this is embarassing - I thought I was commenting on the Android/iOS article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone had any success using the osx-gcc-installer he mentions? I'm really curious how well it works in comparison to Xcode.

<https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer>

</comment><comment><USER13> By the way, does anyone know how painful is it to get Mysql working for Python apps. Installing MysqlDB on Python was painfully excruciating process on Snow Leopard.

<comment><USER14> I've had good results with the pure Python "MySQL Connector": <https://launchpad.net/myconnpy>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For emacs: change the system-wide keyboard shortcuts for mission control (Ctrl-up and Ctrl-down have better uses).</comment>


Idea evaluation flowchart for Wannapreneurs/Developers - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0NM2r6SdpbcVTdZeFBXbHVIdk0

<comment><USER2> I go through this exercise mentally all the time but is the first time I've seen codified.</comment>


Who would you not tell your great idea to? - <AUTHOR>

It's an entrepreneur's job to get out there and hype their ideas.  But prudence and good judgement still apply.  I received advice once to not fully explain my ideas to a large corporation because they have the resources to develop it quickly and/or without me.  Who would you not tell your idea to and why?  Any horror stories of "bad judgement"? <comment><USER2> _"... received advice once to not fully explain my ideas to a large corporation because they have the resources to develop it quickly and/or without me ..."_

Don't believe everything you hear. Large corporations are about as likely to take your idea and run with it as an Aircraft carrier doing a 180.

Why? Momentum.

Momentum means ability to take a new idea on, think about it and execute. It also means being able to communicate the idea to _Learned leaders_ then asking permission. So by the time it gets there your most likely to get someone with a _business degree_ [0] making a snap decision on some hypothetical tech idea. The other thing is most large corporations area of expertise is probably not hacking (MS, IBM, SAP all have hackers but management is still the problem).

Also telling someone about an idea is pretty lame because ideas are worth, well nothing. But a demonstration of and idea that works? Demonstrating something will spur others to do something ... maybe throw large offers your way.

I did read a post here some time ago of someone mentioning an idea (to a trusted friend) who then created a coy, hired outsourced coders. So demo first, shout second. Shout loud.

[0] Phil Greenspun mentions this in FOW, Ch24, P238 where the head of Wal- Mart, Kevin Turner had but one business degree. This doesn't mean he's not smart but it takes years to train in tech. Is one general are of expertise enough?

</comment><comment><USER3> Good question. Well, at first i told the world every single business idea i had in mind, not thinking anything of it because of my insignificance in the world, but boy, did i learn a very valuable lesson.You just remember that there are SOME multi-billion dollar company's out there who don't care about little bobby boo and will do anything just to capitalize on their own agenda's.

-cough-

IBM.

</comment><comment><USER4> In "Growing the business" Paul Hawken says that if people tell you that something is a great idea then it is to late. It means that it already exists that is why the people who think its a great idea could recognize it in the first place.

So if people tell you that's nuts or that you are too late or that it would never work, then you might be on to something. In that case you don't need to worry about any one copying it as it will be absolutely unique to you.</comment>


Silent, no gears, cheaper every day: electric cars aren't so hard to get used to - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/22/silent-no-gears-and-cheaper-every-day-electric-cars-arent-so-hard-to-get-used-to <comment><USER2> I'm not impressed by this article. Most of the things that he sees as "different" about these electric cars - push-button gearshifts, automatic parking brakes, programmable suspension - are available in internal-combustion cars now. Even the very aggressive engine braking is a feature of some ICEs (though, I will admit, not all the way down to a stop). The only real electric car feature he's caught onto is the silence.

On another note, I don't like silence in cars either as a driver or as a pedestrian. As a driver, engine sound offers feedback, it's part of my control loop, allowing me to gauge speed without taking my eyes off the road. As a pedestrian (or a cyclist, or even the driver of another vehicle), engine sound is a safety feature. It helps me notice cars and helps me keep track of where they are when I can't see them. A few years ago, I had a job in Manhattan and I commuted via bicycle. This was around the time that all the city's taxis (and plenty of other cars) were switching to hybrids - entirely silent at low speeds. I found it entirely unnerving (especially given the reputation of New York drivers) to know (from having looked back earlier) that there was two tons of metal moving behind me but not be able to tell where it was or how fast it was moving. I could hear cars with internal combustion engines and keep decent track of how far behind me they were, but the only noise these electrics made was from the rolling of their tires, which was completely drowned out by the bustle of the city. At times, I got a feeling of real danger - far more than typical as a cyclist.

<comment><USER3> Yes, he doesn't communicate well.

Teslas just have a gearshift lever. that's it. I have never driven a car with as few controls as the Teslas. ICE cars have the idea of on and off. With the tesla (s/x), you approach the car, the car wakes up as you near, you get in, move the gear lever into drive or reverse and that is the only control you touch.

I do disagree about the internal silence. The teslas are supremely silent inside (aside from A/C fan noise) and it is magical and modern. I have driven electric cars with added internal noise, and it really cheapens the experience.

External silence is a moot point with new laws.

<comment><USER4> ? Do Teslas not have an indicator stalk/accelerator pedal/brake pedal/ _steering wheel_?

If so, there's not much difference between an automatic ICE vehicle, except the engine sound.

<comment><USER3> lol, yes wheel, pedals.

I meant the author didn't really describe how radically simplified the tesla cars are. (maybe too much?)

You get in, foot on brake, shifter to drive then step on accelerator to go.

There isn't an on/off button. The model X even opens and closes your door without touching it.

Yes you should put on your belt.

(oh, and you can summon the car out of your garage automatically)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone built an electric car that has no network connectivity? That is the barrier to entry for me. I will not buy one that can talk to any network outside of the physical vehicle.

<comment><USER6> The gen 1 LEAF I had did have some minimal wireless connectivity. It did allow remotely starting the heater/cooler among other things. However, it used a 2G modem and those networks are mostly shut down now so it would be unable to connect anymore. I expect that the current one uses LTE for its wireless, now.

What is the nature of your concern?

<comment><USER7> Parent can buy ours, which has had the GPRS modem removed by the dealer. I figured if they're turning the towers off, and Nissan would remove the radio for free, might as well remove a threat surface. Point being, even if a first- gen Leaf still has the cell radio, there's nothing for it to connect to. AT&T turned all that off, and maybe Nissan quit listening even if AT&T left it on.

That, and CarWings was useless. It was quicker to walk out to the garage and turn the heat on than it was to use the app.

<comment><USER5> I still have some life left on my current vehicle, but I appreciate the extra information. I suspect most of the electric cars have some aspect of network connectivity.

<comment><USER8> My two thoughts, it's not just electric cars that have tracking spying capability, it's most new models. Especially higher end ones.

What I think is the number of new electric car models will increase dramatically in the next two years. At some point as battery prices drop EV's will hit price parity with gasoline/diesel cars. I'd expect you then see more bare bones cars, which are less likely to have tracking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Silent: nope. Most noise from modern ICE cars is tire noise. Still have tires? Not silent, or even signifigantly quieter. 2\. No Gears: maybe no changing array of reduction gears, but with the exception of hub motors, there are, in fact, gears. ICE cars exist with single speeds, they are just more efficient with more.

If you cant even get through a title without lies, how am I supposed to take the rest seriously? This abrasive 'did I mention that Im Vegan and im saving the world and you arent?!?' attitude is why many prospective ecar buyers avoid them. Just sell them on their actual merits, which exist. Unlike the merits expounded here and elsewhere by well-meaning fans.</comment>


Docker 3.0 EE and 19.03 CE Released - <AUTHOR> https://blog.docker.com/2019/07/announcing-docker-enterprise-3-0-ga/ <comment><USER2> I can't find any mention of Docker CE in this announcement. Am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> The enterprise engine is a superset of the community engine. They will ship concurrently with the same patch version based on the same code base.</comment></comment>


We love accessibility (and you should too) - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.freeagent.com/2019/05/13/why-we-love-accessibility-and-you-should-too/ <comment><USER2> Props to a site design that practices what it preaches.

Very solid advice given as well. Bookmark this one.</comment>


Where to find a mentor / tutor - <AUTHOR> I have had great success taking flamenco lessons from a teacher over the last 18 months.
I have had much less success putting together my own AI/Machine learning trajectory through Coursera and other online resources.
Granted these are not exactly the same, I do feel a good teacher, who provides homework and can scale the class to your current level is really useful.
So say I wanted to work through this book, http://www.deeplearningbook.org/ and pick up the missing math on the way, where might I find someone who can help me with that (through skype or other means). Paid of course! <comment><USER2> Are you looking for an AI, ML or a math tutor?

Also, what courses did you take so far (university, etc) for the above, and what do you feel is lacking?

</comment><comment><USER3> codementor.com might be an option. Or lookup a related subreddit and try to find someone there.</comment>


Facebook's plan to break the global financial system - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/21/facebooks-plan-to-break-the-global-financial-system <comment><USER2> They copied their plan from a TV show called Mr. Robot [https://youtu.be/1ee- cHbCI0s](https://youtu.be/1ee-cHbCI0s)</comment>


Ask HN: Strict alternatives to SQLite? - <AUTHOR> I love using SQLite for small (and even large) amounts of data and giving me a fast and efficient SQL frontend to query it all. But I don't love SQLite's decision to forgo type safety, foreign key constraints and all that. Are there alternatives that give me the simplicity of SQLite with the data safety of traditional databases? <comment><USER2> Referential integrity is nice, though not losing data is always job #1. In that respect, SQLite is pretty hard to beat. Seems like half the linux filesystem bugs I read about have a sidenote of " _SQLite unaffected_ ".

Richard Hipp did some very solid engineering on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's firebird which can be used as embedded sql db. It supports foreign keys. No idea about type safety though.</comment>


Show HN: Bitsms – Send Bitcoin Offline via SMS - <AUTHOR> https://bitsms.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the creator of [https://bitsms.org/](https://bitsms.org/) a Bitcoin to SMS relay that allows you to use Bitcoin without an Internet connection.

This is useful in areas with cellular infrastructure but no internet infrastructure or when using a cellular plan that doesn't have Internet.

Bitsms doesn't act as a wallet or a store your private keys, instead you sign transactions in your own wallet and broadcast it through Bitsms.</comment>


Google forms Montreal AI research group, gives $3.37M - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/21/google-forms-montreal-ai-research-group-gives-3-37-million-grant-to-yoshua-bengio-others/ <comment><USER2> I thought the going rate for researchers is supposed to be pretty high. For example for self driving cars it's supposedly 10mil a head: [http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun- sel...](http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-self-driving- talent-pool). Is that mostly exaggerated?

3.37M sounds like it can barely pay the salary of <10 people for less than a year.

<comment><USER3> That figure isn't quite right.

First, salary varies depending on what you mean by researcher. Someone with an MS in a hot field is going to make more as a specialist than a PhD student or postdoc in academia and professor salaries can heavily depend based on rank and funding. Some people at the top make out quite well, but they are either 1) entrenched in the bureaucracy (e.g. grant writing, publicity, actually running the university) and removed from actual research or 2) they have a side job (see Steven LaValle or any business school professor who does consulting work).

Second, looking at the exact quote from the article ("Uber has just bought a half-a-year-old company [Otto] with 70 employees for almost $700 million"), the analysis is off. Yes, $700 million / 70 people = $10 million per person, but they aren't just paying for people. They are paying for tech, code, IP, basically whatever the company has. Anyone who had points on the package there was probably pretty happy considering the company was less than a year old, but any developer without shares didn't suddenly become a millionaire over night.

This all said, if you are a specialist in a niche field that's going through a renaissance (which both robotics and ML are doing right now), you can command a nice salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Exploit cheap labour in Canada. Create more jobs. Win-win, I guess.

<comment><USER5> Or to exploit American labor who want to GTFO now.</comment></comment>


Travel Needs - <AUTHOR> Hi Everyone, We are working on an app, to be launched in next 4 weeks, which assist fellow travelers with organizing their trips and enjoying the social flavors from the local community. Would like to understand, what are the current challenge you all face while you are on a trip.
This will help us prioritize the features in the app. <comment><USER2> Hi,

Help us to understand your challenges by completing one minute survey

[https://juvo412611.typeform.com/to/WCY8uM](https://juvo412611.typeform.com/to/WCY8uM)

Thank You!</comment>


Performance of modern Java on data-heavy workloads - <AUTHOR> https://jet-start.sh/blog/2020/06/09/jdk-gc-benchmarks-part1 <comment><USER2> A very clear and interesting post.

I've been trying to fit big-enough long-running stuff into JVMs for a few years, and have found that minimizing the amount of garbage is paramount. Its a bit like games- or C programming.

Recent JVM features like 8-bit strings and not having a size-limit on the interned pools etc have been really helpful.

But, for my workloads, the big wastes are still things like java.time.Instant and the overhead of temporary strings (which, these days, copy the underlying data. My code worked better when split strings used to just be views).

There are collections for much more memory-efficient (and faster) maps and things, and also efficient (and fast) JSON parsing etc. I have evaluated and benchmarked and adopted a few of these kinds of things.

Now, when I examine heap-dumps and try and work out where more I can save bytes to keep GC at bay, I mostly see fragments of Instant and String, which are heavily used in my code.

If there was only a library that did date manipulation and arithmetic with longs instead of Instant :(

<comment><USER3> You're absolutely right. Its one reason I struggle with the modern fashion for immutable classes and FP, they are always making copies of everything, seems crazy.

<comment><USER4> Ideally, a good compiler that understands FP will, behind the scenes, detect when it's safe to mutate the old data rather than creating a copy. That's a big part of why Haskell manages to be neck-and-neck with C despite being functionally pure.

Where it gets tricky is in an environment like the JVM where programming in that style was not anticipated, and introducing any optimizations along these lines for the benefit of the proverbial Scala fans needs to be balanced against the obligation not to adversely impact idiomatic Java code.

That said, even without that, it's not necessarily crazy. It's just a value call: Do you believe that more functional code is easier to maintain, and perhaps value that above raw performance? I'm old enough to remember similar debates about how object-oriented C++ code should be, and to have at least encountered Usenet posts from similar debates about how structured C code should be. I don't bring this up by way of trying to weasel in some "historical inevitability" argument - these are legitimate debates, and there are still problem domains where coding guidelines may discourage, or even prohibit, certain structured programming practices. For very good reasons.

<comment><USER5> > That's a big part of why Haskell manages to be neck-and-neck with C despite > being functionally pure.

Come on... that's not what you typically get with Haskell, is it.

<comment><USER6> Rust gives you FP-style without loads of copies and C-like performance. Immutable data-structures aren't idiomatic, but it's ownership gives you most of the same benefits.

<comment><USER7> The nice thing about Rust is that it gives you the main benefits of FP even when you're not programming in "FP style". The Rust "sharing xor mutability" default model provides underlying semantics and ease of analysis that's quite comparable to what you get with a pure-functional language. Of course extended mutability as with Cell<>, RefCell<> etc. undermines this, but these are only used when necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how things would have stacked with OpenJ9 - AdoptOpenJDK project makes OpenJ9 builds available for Java 8/11/13/14 - so it should be trivial to include it in the benchmarks.

We have been experimenting with it in light of the Oracle licensing situation and it does provide interesting set of options - AOT, various GCs (metronome, gencon, balanced) along with many other differentiators to OpenJDK like JITServer which offloads JIT compilation to remote nodes.

[https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/docs/gc/](https://www.eclipse.org/openj9/docs/gc/)

It doesn't get as much coverage when it should - it's production hardened - IBM has used it and still uses it for all their products - and it's fully open source.

<comment><USER9> > in light of the Oracle licensing situation

You mean the licensing situation where Oracle completed open-sourcing the entire JDK and made Java free of field-of-use restrictions for the first time in its history?

If you're talking about the JDK builds you download from Oracle, then there are two (each linking to the other): one paid, for support customers, and one 100% free and open-source: [http://jdk.java.net/](http://jdk.java.net/)

<comment><USER10> I think he means the part where you have to pay to use JDKs older than 6 months, which means basically everyone has to pay.

<comment><USER11> Not true. You can use the OpenJDK for free until the end of time. If you want ongoing updates beyond six months, there are a bunch of free distributions: Azul Zulu Community (7/8/11/13/14), AdoptOpenJDK (8/11/14), etc.

<comment><USER10> The whole subject is about Oracle's JDKs here, and that's a very recent development too.

<comment><USER9> Oracle distributes two JDKs: one for support customers and one 100% free, forever: [http://jdk.java.net/](http://jdk.java.net/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Specific workload matter a lot. I had a good experience with Shenandoah collector on an application that generates very few intermediate objects, but once an object is created it stays in the heap for a while ( a custom made key/value store for a very specific use case). Shenandoah collector was the best in terms of throughput and memory utilization. Most collectors are generational, so surviving objects have to be moved from Eden to Survivor to Old. Shenandoah is not generational, and I suspect it has less work to do for objects that survive compare to other collectors. When most objects live long enough generational collectors hinder performance.

<comment><USER13> Yep, workload matters. Generational garbage collectors are fundamentally at odds with caching/pooling of objects. They are based on the assumption that objects die young. Typically that is not the case for internal caches, though. Caches usually consist of long-living/tenured objects.

<comment><USER14> It is a stretch to claim caching is fundamentally at odds with GC. It is more correct to say that LRU breaks the generational hypothesis, because it prioritizes new entries which take a long time to be evicted. However many workloads are frequency biased and these one-hit wonders degrade the hit rate. That is why you'll see more aggressive eviction in a modern policy, so you'll have better GC behavior and higher hit rates using something like Java's Caffeine library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> G1 looks very good. Glad it becomes the default so one less thing to tune for a deployment.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow-up post: [https://jet-start.sh/blog/2020/06/23/jdk-gc-benchmarks- remat...](https://jet-start.sh/blog/2020/06/23/jdk-gc-benchmarks-rematch)

</comment><comment><USER16> Converting Java code to Kotlin, then compiling it with the Kotlin Native[1] is more promising from the performance point of view. Native code is always faster (assuming compiler is good enough).

[1] [https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/native- overview.html](https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/native-overview.html)

<comment><USER17> An ahead-of-time compiler doesn't have the advantage of the call profile of polymorphic call sites. The JIT compiler has much more inlining opportunities, and in some cases this results in better performance.

Also, there are cases where manual memory management, which usually boils down to reference counting, has great overheads where a GC-managed runtime has no overhead at all. They involve repeatedly building up and then discarding large data structures. GC algorithms simply don't see the dead objects, whereas refcount-based management must explicitly free the memory of each object.

<comment><USER18> > The JIT compiler has much more inlining opportunities

That's largely only true for devirtualization, which tends to not be as much of an issue in AOT compiled languages due to having features that just make reliance on virtual calls less prevalent (think C++ templates as an example in the extreme).

The only other case where JITs can inline more than AOTs is across shared library boundaries, which can be useful but if it is useful in a particular place it's also typically easy to "fix" by just making that function statically linked (or implemented in the header, even) instead.

Otherwise the time constraints of JITs near universally mean they cannot optimize as well as AOTs, even though they do have more runtime information available. Unless you do a multi-tiered JIT approach like WebKit does ( [https://webkit.org/blog/3362/introducing-the-webkit-ftl- jit/](https://webkit.org/blog/3362/introducing-the-webkit-ftl-jit/) ), with the last tier being the one that finally lets a full "AOT quality" optimization pass happen because you can finally justify the time spent on the optimizer. But then you also have ridiculous warmup latencies.

> Also, there are cases where manual memory management, which usually boils > down to reference counting, has great overheads where a GC-managed runtime > has no overhead at all. They involve repeatedly building up and then > discarding large data structures. GC algorithms simply don't see the dead > objects, whereas refcount-based management must explicitly free the memory > of each object.

There's a lot more to this than such a simple claim. GC'd languages also almost always need to pay a zero'ing cost in conjunction with freeing memory which makes the actual free that happens a lot slower, and GC'd languages are slower the larger the object count gets while manual memory managed languages are ~constant. There's also more strategies in play for manual memory managed languages than just ref counting - such as just single ownership (std::unique_ptr, Rust's Box<>, etc..)

If you are doing something that involves repeatedly building up & and then discarding a data structure, though, then that's where a manual managed memory would run circles around a GC'd one. A simple arena allocator is a superb match for that and cannot be beat in performance. Bump-pointer allocation speed, zero GC pause, zero collection latency, etc... This is what games do for per-frame allocations, for example. Essentially a single-frame GC without a collection pass being needed. Not a lot of things actually do build up and then discard a structure repeatedly, so you don't get to use this trick very often, but when you can it's stupid fast.</comment></comment></comment>


Why is there no Nobel Prize in Mathematics? - <AUTHOR> http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/why_no_math.html

<comment><USER2> And of course there isn't a Nobel Prize in computer science since the field wasn't well defined then. But the Turing award has similar criteria to Nobel prizes and is treated as the equivalent. [http://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-there- a-Nobel-Prize-for-comput...](http://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-there-a-Nobel- Prize-for-computer-science)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was under the impression that the Fields Medal: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal> is what mathematicians would consider their equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

</comment><comment><USER4> The economics prize wasn't in the original group, it was added some 60 years later.

<comment><USER5> The Economics prize is a Cold War creation intended to emphasize Sweden's association with the economic system and values of the West. Alfred Nobel's heirs have consistently criticized its association with the original Nobel prizes.

The official name of the prize is "The Swedish Central Bank's Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".</comment></comment>


My startup bombed and I lost everything (here's what I learned) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/57cknb/my_startup_bombed_and_i_lost_everything_heres/ <comment><USER2> > Avoid friends/family as cofounders.

Looks tricky to do. If your cofounder is a strictly business partner - how can you make sure you have the same vision/values? And vice versa, if you're pulling the same company together - should you do whatever to avoid becoming friends?

I understand the idea, but literal alternatives don't seem much better?

<comment><USER3> Well, 12 months later he started "another SaaS with a couple friends, and with less than $1k invested between us, 3 months in we were live with sales and it was acquired 6 months after that."

Apparently not following his own advice here worked out better for him this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I find about most of these pieces of advice is, they really just come down to common sense. Not that it takes anything away from the value in there, but I've long given up chasing advice.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, what I find crazy about this story is that it seems like the poster decided to start a startup based solely on watching "The Social Network" and reading a couple Inc. Magazine articles.

I mean, "let's take $50k spend most of our time/money on picking a baller domain name and making logos"? What? Startup culture is toxic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You want to always be in default startup mode so here is my contrary advice to number 2 which also sets you up for applying number 7

Spend a week setting up your future startup efforts for success at the beginning and then focus completely on reaching your customers and iterating on your solution to their problems.

step 1: first protect yourself legally by setting up a LLC you can use [http://www.legalzoom.com/](http://www.legalzoom.com/)

or might even try to get access to stripe atlas [https://stripe.com/atlas/faq](https://stripe.com/atlas/faq)

also get your terms of service setup. here is a resource for that. [http://snapterms.com/](http://snapterms.com/)

2-spend a few hours getting a generic domain name that is easy to spell. here is the registrar I use [https://dnsimple.com/](https://dnsimple.com/) also get SSL certs. you can use dnsimple but a free lets encryt cert is even better. [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/)

3-spend a day or two setting up continuos integration this involves a code repo such as github, gitlab or bitbucket. and continuous build and testing service such as cicleci, travisci or codeship (although all the repos are integrating build and testing features)

4-setup a hosting service such as AWS, digital ocean or heroku. Personaly I would start out with heroku as hosting service but to keep costs low with a bit more effort AWS proper or digital ocean can work as well. setup a staging server so that when you push code to your repo it is automatically deployed to your staging server and from there you should set it up to promote the code to production with a single command. I use heroku pipelines in conjunction with some simple automation scripts for this.

Also at minimum setup hourly backup and restores for any databases that you may use.

5-by the end of the week you should be able to push a hello world to your real production server out there on the open internet.

Now at this point you have a real platform out there in the real world to start iterating on. Start talking to your customers and build really small features and push them to your repo on a daily basis to get feedback from your users.

Since you have a generic domain name you can pivot in any direction keeping the focus on just the one project that you are iterating on.

One last thing. Start a blog related to your business and talk about what your mission is, your product features and your technology

<comment><USER7> One important detail I left out is that you need to also instrument you app to give usage analytics on how users behave on your site from the very beginning. This could be in the form of a service like google analytics but also custom code tracks metrics specific to the features that you are deploying.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Suggestions for Framework for CMS for multilingual site - <AUTHOR>

First, some background information... I'm coming up on a medium-scale website for a non-profit that will require both English and Korean translations. Feature-set includes: CMS for normal content, a blog, some form submission/handling (including CSV/PDF exports), a job posting board, a directory of related businesses and non-profits (that accepts visitor submissions), and a basic (probably blog-driven) newsroom.
I have a fairly strong development background, and I've done some sites using Drupal, built some basic custom CMSes using frameworks like CodeIgniter, and I've recently started getting into Django. These are the primary options that I am exploring, and I would consider using different tools for different portions of the project, but what I'm mainly interested in, is if anyone has any experience to share with regards to localization/internationalization. I haven't yet put together a site that supports multiple languages, so before I get in trouble by underestimating the task, or making poor assumptions, I'd like to get some input to help guide my decision-making process.
Do you have any recommendations for frameworks (Drupal, Django, CodeIgniter) that handle localization/internationalization/translation well for a CMS? I know they all support it, but I'm looking for real-world experience here (or suggestions for modules/plugins given explanations).
Sorry for the longwinded question, but I wanted to be clear as possible. Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Maybe try Zend Framework. take a look at that components. <http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/></comment>


Video Brewery Crowdsources Explainer Videos for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.videobrewery.com

<comment><USER2> What percentage does videobrewery get & what percentage the artists get?</comment>


I learned to touch type at the ripe old age of 29. Was it worth it? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/i-learned-to-touch-type-at-the-ripe-old-age-of-29-was-it-worth-it-112ef2150fec/ <comment><USER2> "I also need to improve my accuracy for numbers and sybmols — but again, this will come with time." \- oddly enough this hasn't been the case for me or at least as much I as I would expect. I believe it would take a concerted effort --though there are some symbols that I'm much more proficient at. ~ is not one of them!</comment>


An Entrepreneur's Legacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/articles/2007/12/hendricks.html

<comment><USER2> Definitely inspiring. Nothing quite like self made men who stay grounded.

There's one thing I'm conflicted about when it comes to the idea of creating jobs for so many people like this. It just seems so close to modern day feudalism. There are some _significant_ differences obviously, and there's probably nothing immoral about the modern version. Ultimately though there's essentially a king (owner), his knights (directors), and the peasants (workers). This guy may have been a benevolent dictator, but his death puts all of those people's future at risk. If the new CEO isn't as smart and ethical (likely) they're in for harder times because they put their livelihoods in his hands.

I think I would feel much better about enabling 100 families to become financially independent for the rest of their lives than supporting 10,000 dependents for N years.

<comment><USER3> maybe you could help 100 people, but those 10000 would probably starve if they dont have a job, simply because they cant think or execute a plan well enough to achieve financial success.

<comment><USER4> Everyone can think, but most people choose not to. It seems like the only exception is someone with a mental disability.

<comment><USER3> everyone can think, but the fact of the matter is, there needs to workers, because technically if everyone thought, everyone would lead, leaving no one to follow.

<comment><USER3> i wanted to add in, 'there needs to be workers'* as a correction, i suck at typing on my phone sometimes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>