Ask HN: Is it clear what we do? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
We've recently allowed a public access to our product https://staply.co/
Is it clear what Staply is from our landing page? <comment><USER2> Visually the blue buttons on the teal gradient doesn't go well, and your top menu links blend into the background image too much, also the gradient on your image "All those files" makes it unreadable.

Concept wise, I like the idea I just don't myself using it as a stand alone app. Would be more interesting if you could hook it into existing chat software to create interactive archives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback.

We personally use Staply together with other instant messengers/chats and use it more like a shared folder. So like i share files(and discuss them a bit) in Staply but discuss daily routine in IM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On first glance I wasn't entirely sure if it was an integration (into gmail, for example) or a standalone product.

As I scrolled down the page I started to think it was a standalone product, but then there seemed to be this chat-centric layout which just confused me (as I'm used to dropbox where most of the real-estate is occupied by the files and their meta data). And then my mind went back to "wait...why am I logging with a google account?... maybe it _is_ just a plugin for Gchat or something...thus the unbranded chat-centric layout...

Then I kept scrolling and the next section clarified things. But then I left the page thinking "My team shares gigabyes of files, thousands of them...how could I possibly store all that stuff this way, with a chat log that goes on for miles?" So I lost interest.

Hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much. That is a very insightful way of providing feedback.

Staply is not made for teams, it is a much simpler tool made for regular people who just want to share and discuss files in a group.

Now they have to use FB chat, shared folders, email or even tools for teams and we want to make the whole process easier and more enjoyable for them. Especially when it comes to finding and understanding files/links that were sent previously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I landed on staply.co, I did not know what the site about so was not immediately able to understand the description on first page. "A better way to share files and links ....", I personally liked the sentence on the second page, "Instead of email and shared folders use Staply when you want to share files and find them later. ".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback, I now understand that we should make the tagline more specific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like a chat/im web client with robust file and link support. It reminds me of Slack at first glance ([http://slack.com](http://slack.com))

Also, you have a typo on your page:

> Attach it. Send it. Never loose it.

change "loose" to lose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Stupid mistake... Thanks!

Slack is a complex tool made for teams of developers and we are a more lightweight solution, made for regular people, with a focus on file sharing and file organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Suggest a quick demo/prom video. Problems solved, how it works, etc... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFb0NaeRmdg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFb0NaeRmdg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that is a great example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of the picture in the first slide, could you put the screenshot from the second slide? Maybe it will be more clear than just "A better way to share files and links".

<comment><AUTHOR> I am planning to put a video there :)

<comment><USER8> I don't usually bother watching videos, I don't have the time to waste especially when it's something that isn't a pressing need / major paint point for me.

I just want to figure out what the service is about and whether it's worth my time as soon as possible so I can bounce / explore further.

So IMO the screenshot would be much better and less expensive / difficult for you to produce!

<comment><AUTHOR> Just thought may be an autoplay video/gif screenshot would fit there well. Thank you for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clickable link: [https://staply.co/](https://staply.co/)

So, it's like chatrooms where you can upload files?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for a clickable link ;) We see Staply as something like a shared folder with annotations. It is made specifically for file-sharing and it gives you a possibility to add context to the files you share.

Later it is possible to filter out just files and in one click get to the place where they was discussed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No. My first thought was "Will you misuse my personal details if I sign in with google?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment, we are requiring minimum info from you Google account (we have this option for the sake of convenience) and you can always sign up with just an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not immediately obvious, but I've seen much worse landing pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, what do you think can be obviously improved?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me? or I see this website over and over and oooover again? :/

<comment><AUTHOR> We try to collect as much feedback as possible ;)

BTW what so you think about the landing page/product itself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> no, not really. file sharing and group chat, i suppose, but it's not clear what makes it special.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I guess we'll have add something like "features" page.

Basically other solutions are made for teams, they are complex and have a lot to setup. Staply is simple and made for all kind of groups.

Moreover we focus not only on real time sharing. We've made it super easy to find and understand content that was shared even few months ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> clickable link: [https://staply.co/](https://staply.co/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Evernote with chat?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, interesting. We prefer to put it as Dropbox shared folder+messenger.

<comment><USER15> I don't think of Dropbox as handling both bookmarks and files. (it may..) the URLS in the chat made me think of Evernote.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks for the idea. I'll test it :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What share to give the first employee? - <AUTHOR> Hey there, we are disrupting the unfair higher education application process with our Google of "University Searches" our natural language generation engine. We are ramen profitable and we have employees but they are salaried without any stake in the company. We are looking to take on our first technical employee but we are not sure how to do it. About what share in the company should we offer him? And should he receive an industry standard salary on top of that? Perhaps there is some ratio? <comment><USER2> It's hard to give a recommendation without knowing your location and other specifics. I would first talk to the employee and see if she prefers more salary or more equity.

Buffer uses their own formula for calculating salary and equity: [https://open.buffer.com/buffer-open-equity- formula/](https://open.buffer.com/buffer-open-equity-formula/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this was very handy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 5%</comment>


Raising Money After Bubble 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://dty.me/raising-money-after-the-second-bubble/

<comment><USER2> If we look back: 2005 to 2007 was the heyday of user-generated-content companies (i.e. Mahalo, Squidoo). As the Google bubble ended starting around 2008 the excitement transferred to some of the leading UGC platforms that had grown into mass market distribution channels in their own right. Facebook mania in 2008 was followed by a similar wave of enthusiasm for the App Store around 2009.

All of these mini-funding bubbles focused on specific distribution vectors: Google, Facebook, the App Store. Central to them was a hypothesis in the potential for fast and easy _exponential growth_ for companies, because this was how people justified supra-market valuations.

If the "social bubble" is deflating now, it's not because Facebook stock is falling so much as because it is increasingly difficult to achieve exponential distribution in these channels and nothing else has come along yet to replace them. And this is what Chris Dixon is saying as I understand him -- if people want to demonstrate that their service is genuinely viral the threshold is much higher since VCs are skeptics.

But advising someone who wants to go down the VC route to focus on revenues is still a bad idea, because you can't justify a supra-market valuation without the prospect of exponential growth. If someone is bootstrapping by all means collect money, but be aware that 10k a month is still only 1.5 million total valuation at ten times revenue, which doesn't give a lot of leeway for raising a ton of money by relying on fundamentals.

<comment><USER3> So as for the "bubbles" in valuations related to respective distribution platforms, you're spot on (I think a huge part of social gaming's explosive growth and valuation growth was a function of the Facebook platform, not of its own intrinsic value).

I also agree that the "social bubble" is deflating because the gold rush of everyone-being-connected-as-a-free-marketing-channel is largely winding down. Chris Dixon's post can reflect that new reality, but I would still be equally skeptical of a 10m user service with no revenue. (Of course, I'm not a VC.)

Where I disagree is in your last paragraph. Yes, I think a focus on revenues can be a bad idea for some businesses. But I think exploring or attempting revenue is a good idea for every business. If the numbers look bad, don't use them, but you need to try. Even if you are only earning $10,000 per month, that's starting from $0, so there will be a growth rate attached. This is a really good number to show VCs right now. Also, you can make projections of revenue growth with the assumption of your continued user base growth, and basically double-dip into your user growth numbers that way. I still think this will be a better way to fundraise in the next 3 years than ignoring revenue completely.

<comment><USER2> I agree the startup ecosystem would be better if there were more of a premium for revenues over traction, and hope things develop as you say, but don't think that describes the way things work right now for anything past seed- stage rounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it funny that people are already assuming that the "bubble" has popped.

Yeah Zynga and Facebook are doing badly. So what? LinkedIn is killing it. There are other success stories. Maybe the bubble in these two company's valuations has popped, but they were overvalued to begin with, not a big loss for me.

<comment><USER5> _they were overvalued to begin with, not a big loss for me_

"for me" is important here. While I fully agree that FB, and (especially) Zynga were both overvalued, the near-constant deterioration of their stock price is very visible - both to Wall St and investors. Perception is king, and it's not just "ours" which matters. What the public sees is the tri-fecta failure of 3 super-hyped tech IPOs (Groupon, Zynga, Facebook).

edited to add : It's also very worth noting that the perception of FB being massively overvalued may very well have been highly confined to "insiders", or those close to tech.

When I speak with my non-tech friends, most of whom are highly educated (law, medicine, etc.), the general reaction to FB's decline is one of surprise. For instance, I often hear that " _everyone_ thought the price would go up!".

<comment><USER6> Yeah Facebook was the last tech stock that was able to sucker in the "muppets". That's why Morgan Stanley & co jacked the price up as much as possible before running away like bandits

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another point that's not explicitly mentioned in the article: raising money isn't fun and afterward makes the whole venture less fun. If you do a good job generating and growing revenue, hopefully you don't have to worry about raising money until a lot later than you would otherwise. I think most people here probably agree that Github's trajectory should be the goal: crush it on revenue early, and then raise money for scaling later, if you want to.

<comment><USER3> That's absolutely the goal of every company, I think, but it's not always possible, especially if you're building a consumer-facing product. Companies like Github are more the exception than the rule

My point in this article is that nowadays demonstrating the ability to get some paying users, even a tiny amount, is going to leave you much better off than not trying at all. So while a lot of companies will still not be able to live off of the revenue, they can hopefully raise another round with the proof that they've found something people will pay for.

<comment><USER8> Does anyone know how much an operation like github cost to get off the ground before it was able to support itself (excluding founders time)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All great advice. However, it's a tad amusing that someone still has to put in the effort to get these points across, points that the rest of the business world would find obvious. Are these business practices still perpetuated in the Valley?

Generate revenue? Of course!

Show the revenue growth slide? I'm not sure who that makes look worse: the fundraisers not showing it, or the investors not expecting it.

<comment><USER3> Ha yeah I mean my advice isn't exactly revolutionary, but many people don't realize that they're going to need it in their Series A now, when they wouldnt have before

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It still boggles my mind that revenue has not been prioritized with many (most?) of the hottest companies in the last decade. That must be unprecedented at such a scale.

That said, I don't think any investor ever thought their investments would have no revenue. I assume they just figured it would come through advertising, inadvertently making every new product a marketing tool.

</comment><comment><USER11> Other than Facebook and Zynga stock prices, is there other evidence that a bubble has popped? I haven't seen signs of funding or liquidity drying up. Valuing Facebook at $50 billion rather than $100 billion could be the sign of a massive slowdown in Silicon Valley... or it could just be a market correction to Wall Street hype.</comment>


Methods to unlock hidden potential for your startup through user-behavior analytics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mixpanel.com/2009/01/methods-to-unlock-hidden-potential-for-your-startup-through-analytics/

<comment><USER2> Short: consider a user flow that changes the index page for returning visitors.

Response: i think they may be on to something. Subtly implemented this could really make me wander back to a site, at least for one more visit.

Unfortunately this could also go the way of the pop-up and just end up annoying the hell out of me as every site decides to bring a call-to-action to it's returning visitors.</comment>


On Vanishing - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2020/04/14/on-vanishing/ <comment><USER2> As a person walking away from us gradually escapes our senses, a person slipping into dementia gradually escapes the ability of our social apparatus to comprehend them as a person. To the observer, they both disappear, but they continue to exist outside of our ability to perceive them. It's this aspect of the unknowable that gives me a sense of dread and wonder about so many things: physics, psychology, death. A kind of epistemic thalassophobia. How much truth escapes our ability to witness or measure it? How different would the world be if our senses, instruments and minds were better adapted?

<comment><USER3> We are not comfortable behaving normally around people with physical disabilities and it takes much more courage and patience to deal with people with mental disorders.

Our senses, instruments and minds are well adapted. It is just we lack experience to deal with the problem same way you can't feel relaxed the first time you talk to large audience but in time most people can do just that.

As children we are sheltered from people with disabilities and later in life most of us are not exposed and are not seeking exposure.</comment></comment>


I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived - <AUTHOR> https://uss-la-ca135.org/60/1960Judkins-Knott.html <comment><USER2> Earlier this year on a white water rafting expedition I had the misfortune of falling out of the raft and into a series of category 5 rapids. It was absolute chaos. The force of large bodies of moving water is astounding. Any notion of "swimming to safety" is ludicrous. A more accurate description is "being washed to safety" because you have no control over the larger movements of your body. I've heard in avalanches survivors sometimes don't know which end is up and digging themselves deeper. This was me while underwater in the rapids. I couldn't see, didn't know which end was up, and couldn't breath. How he managed to survive is astonishing. Finding his knife, assessing the situation, and acting before being pulled under while injured almost defies my imagination. Riveting read.

<comment><USER3> if your unlucky enough to be fully buried in an avalanche, it's not possible to dig, period. After everything stops moving, the loose snow refreezes almost instantly, locking you in place. Still, you're correct... Survivors often state they had no idea which direction was up.

<comment><USER4> This depends on the type of avalanche. I know,because I was caught in one. The one I was in was relatively minor and made up of a large part newly fallen snow. I had stopped for a break and managed to get my skis back on, but the thing overtook me hundred meters later. I had managed to get to higher ground relative to the rest of the slope, which is probably what saved me. I broke one leg and both my arms and got a pretty bad concussion.

I managed to walk/ski (one ski was still on me, but badly broken ) to a nearby village and driven on a stretcher to the hospital.

I am lucky to be alive. It is amazing though how clear you can think in life threatening situations. the moment I noticed the avalanche I knew exactly what to do and where to go. When I was buried I remember rocking back and forth to get some wiggle/breathing room and when it stopped I waited until my mind cleared up, struggling hard to defeat the panic and pain, until assessing g the situation.

<comment><USER5> Wow! Firstly I would like to say this was one of those rare HN comments which blows you mind away.

Very nice to hear you survived such a bad accident.

>>I am lucky to be alive. It is amazing though how clear you can think in life threatening situations.

David Allen talks about these situations in this talk. In the moments of crises, the brain brings about all its focus to the highest priority task at focus. Its almost like crises commands the best kind of productivity.

<comment><USER6> Students have known that since the dawn of time. It's why they don't work until the night before the deadline, when the urgency is enough to allow them use 200% or their brain's capacities in order to obtain a passing grade.

The cherry on top: they can now spend the time until their next deadline thinking about the amazing grades they would get if they worked more than one night per month.

Source: me

<comment><USER7> Cortisol does wonders, but only for the short term. It basically destroys part of your body to supercharge the rest.

Later on in life, plenty of companies try to make use of it, pushing people into long hours and short deadlines, and find that it doesn't work as well.

<comment><USER5> >>pushing people into long hours and short deadlines, and find that it doesn't work as well.

That is because you need some skin in the game. Nobody is losing sleep to work on a project whose success or failure has no disproportionate effect on the well being of the individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was once in a plane crash in which the wing of our small plane hit the mast of a sailboat that was motoring in front of the runway and we didnt see it. We impacted the seawall and flipped over onto land and slid upside down a few hundred feet.

The author's description of both not feeling his injuries until he tried to move as well as his own recognition of not being dead were spot on. I would have described it exactly the same way myself. I ended up with a broken foot and leg, but overall no lasting damage which was extremely lucky. Looking back on that experience is always incredibly surreal.

<comment><USER9> It is amazing how little you feel immediately after an accident. Mine wasn't so death-defying, but I did shatter my shoulder in a bicycle accident, and called a friend to come get me and drive me and my bike home. I did not realize I was hurt until he got there, and could not stand up or move the left half of my body. Then we decided to go to the hospital instead of my home. But for about the first 10 minutes, I thought I just was just scraped up a bit...

<comment><USER10> Back in high school, my ear got cut nearly in half in a car accident. I didn't feel a thing until the paramedic jammed and taped a styrofoam restraint against my ear as a precaution for neck injuries. Apparently, the full range of pain free neck motion vs the gouts of blood gushing from my ear wasn't convincing enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome read.

Can anyone explain the quote below? I don't really understand how the minesweeper understood the signal.

\---

The Coast Guard amphibian gained altitude and flew off. (I learned later that he headed for a squadron of minesweepers that was returning to the United States from a tour of the Western Pacific. He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.)

<comment><USER12> I think it was mostly a matter of people asking "what is that Coast Guard amphibian rescue plane trying so hard to tell us?" and that question having a very short list of likely answers.

<comment><USER13> Makes me think of Lassy. "What are you trying to tell us? Is Timmy stuck in the well?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Huh, an F-8, just like Lt Col William Rankin who spent over 40 minutes stuck in a thundercloud after ejecting from his F-8:

[https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the- storm/](https://www.damninteresting.com/rider-on-the-storm/)

<comment><USER15> Nice, thanks for sharing! I also like Bill Weaver's story of ejecting from an SR-71: [http://www.chuckyeager.org/news/sr-71-disintegrated-pilot- fr...](http://www.chuckyeager.org/news/sr-71-disintegrated-pilot-free-fell- space-lived-tell/)

and this one of a paraglider surviving a thunderstorm uplift: [http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dead-luck-ewas-flight- of...](http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dead-luck-ewas-flight-of- fury/2007/02/16/1171405421626.html)

<comment><USER16> You can watch the documentary about Ewa here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTEoD2j4xdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTEoD2j4xdQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One important note is that this was _NOT_ free fall as you'd expect. The pilot chute is still pretty large and provides a LOT of drag. Instead of 120mph, you'd be falling near ~90mph with just it behind you. That is 44% less kinetic energy!

<comment><USER18> He mentioned not preparing for the impact. How would one even prepare for an impact if one wanted to? Ground or water, I just can't think of a good way to land. Anyone have any insight?

<comment><USER19> I think about this sometimes. Ground, I have no answer, you seem like you will die. Perhaps landing legs first allows you to use those as a crumple zone.

Water, though, isn't the pencil dive the clear winner? Everything else would decelerate you so much faster that it would be bound to cause injuries. The only downside (relative to all other methods of impact) I can imagine is how far underwater you might end up.

I would be happy for someone to tell me otherwise, but this is my completely theoretical summation of a terminal velocity water-landing.

<comment><USER20> We were taught the sailor dive, which is good to about 90', according to training. You use it to abandon ship. Err... I was in the Marines.

Basically, cross your legs, point your toes, cup your testicles with one hand, and cover your nose with the other.

The force of hitting the water will crush your testicles and rip your nose off your face. So, you cover them. You cross your legs to keep them together. You point your toes so you don't shatter your feet, ankles, or legs.

When your feet hit the water, immediately bend at the waist. You're going fast enough that you're completely in the water. You fold at the waist to make your depth more shallow. You then flip and swim to the surface.

This works at greater heights but survivability goes down at about 90'. You can practice at lower heights, if you want to learn it. I'm sure there are videos and whatnot.

<comment><USER21> I believe I read that you want to clench your butthole as well (in addition to covering nose and mouth) to prevent the force of water rushing up your cavities from killing you. Certain pants fabrics help prevent this from happening as well.

<comment><USER20> Well, sort of. I don't recall that being specifically mentioned but we were taught to tighten all muscles. You actually want to be as tense as you can when you hit the water. You want to hit it as close to straight as you can.

When you do hit it, just relaxing will fold you up - by the way. You're going so fast that you won't relax before you're completely submerged and slowed. I forget the numbers but it means your dive is more shallow than if you'd stayed tensed. There's a ratio for it, but I've long since forgotten.

I suspect there's been a bit posted about this. My enlistment was a long time ago but I'm told they still teach it. There may be some modifications to it, or new data for survivability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> et-al This is insane.

At least 5 redundancies failed: the Ram Air turbine, primary and secondary ejection sequences, the parachute, and his survival pack went missing. And yet Mr. Judkins survived maybe because he had spleen removed. Amazing.

<comment><USER22> That's 6 failures, assuming that's why he had to have his spleen removed.

<comment><USER23> His spleen was removed after an auto accident prior to the flame-out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Two other incredible stories of men who jumped without a parachute from burning/crashing planes from tens of thousands of feet up in the sky and survived.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee) Alan Magee survived a 22,000-foot (6,700 m) fall from his damaged B-17 Flying Fortress. He was a ball turret machine gunner. Hit glass ceiling of a railway station which supposedly broke the fall.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade) Nicholas Alkemade survived, without a parachute, a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m). He was serving as a rear gunner in a Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster. His fall was broken by pine trees and a soft snow cover on the ground.

About non-functioning parachutes. I was reading "Flying Low" by B.K. Bryans who became a US Navy Jet pilot around mid 1960's. When he was going through his training in propeller driven training planes, a fellow student pilot bailed out of a trainer but fell to his death when the parachute didn't open. The trainer plane had no ejection seat so the student pilot had bailed out the old fashioned way, which required pulling a cord of the parachute manually after exiting the plane. His parachute tragically didn't open.

The base commander dropped 10 randomly selected parachutes from the base and NONE opened. A rigger from another airbase nearby was brought in and all the parachutes were all repacked.

<comment><USER25> Another one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov)

The debate is whether in this case what made the difference (apart the "luck" of landing on a snowy ravine) was that the pilot was unconscious (like in the Magee case), i.e. with all his body completely "relaxed", and this somehow mitigated the impact (in comparison to someone who "prepares " for the hit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why did "He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a wire from his aircraft and dragged it across the bow of the minesweeper, the USS Embattle. The minesweeper captain understood the plea, and veered off at top speed in my direction.)" work?

Did they just figure out something was wrong or is dragging a wire a common naval code?

<comment><USER27> Supposing it's not a common naval code, it's strange enough behavior that the captain would think it must mean something, and "follow me" is the best intuitive interpretation I can see, though by no means obvious.

<comment><USER26> That makes sense. I guess you have to have some wits about you on the high seas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I had a friend in high school who's father survived a skydiving accident "breaking every bone in his body." What made the biggest impression on me was that not only did he have to recover physically, but he had to deal with inability to work and medical bills leading to bankruptcy and a failed business. It may have been the first time in my life I thought about this kind of consequences.

<comment><USER29> I did a tandem jump from 10,000 ft when I was a teenager. We exited the plane while flying through clouds (which is illegal IIRC) and tumbled out of control for the entire free fall period before the chute opened.

The exit was my fault. To initiate a jump, the pilot would count down from three and then scream "GO". With the door open it was very difficult to hear. Clouds were forming and we had already aborted twice, with my partner pulling us back into the plane each time.

On the third attempt I misread the shouts and hand signals and exited the plane before "GO". I was taller and heavier than my tandem partner so he probably had no choice.

We tumbled into thick, gray clouds. Without a horizon this made me nauseous. My partner was screaming from the moment we left the plane. I'd catch a word or two but most of his instruction was lost to the wind. We were totally out of control.

We exited the cloud still tumbling, my partner still screaming. I remember the chute opening, but we were never properly in control.

The next few minutes were glorious, though still nauseous, and the landing was uneventful.

I didn't think much of the consequences back then... But no more skydiving for me :-)

<comment><USER30> ... which means you had a shitty tandem instructor . Shortly after a tandem pair leaves the door the instructor chucks a drogue which slows your terminal velocity to that of a single person and basically suspends the whole setup. Once that happens getting out the belly to earth position is basically impossible. The whole pulling back and description of your experience gives me an impression you were at a really sketchy drop zone.

<comment><USER29> Instructor? No, he was just a polite guy strapped onto my back who was about to have a memorable jump.

Our "instruction" was a 30 minute VHS tape about how we couldn't sue for any accidents.

Sketchy indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In case (heaven forbid) this ever happens to you, try to find a piece of wreckage to use to fly, like a maple seed.

The Free Fall Research Page: Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips by David Carkeet

[http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html](http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html)

Reading these articles is very personal to me, because I crashed my parapente on takeoff on what would have been my second solo flight. I still want to take up training again, but I need a new coach who I trust to tell me when the wind's strong enough.

<comment><USER32> Hm, you must be able to tell it yourself, you're the pilot, not your coach. In parachuting that's even one of the questions for test -- who's the final authority during flight:

A. Your coach. B. The most experienced pilot on site. C. You (the pilot). D. Parachuting club owner.

For paragliding there's USHPA ratings, feel free to study them: [1]. For example in 12-02.13 there's requirements for P1 (Novice Pilot) rating, and recommended operating limitations for them:

1\. "Should fly only in steady winds of 12 MPH. or less."

[1] [https://www.ushpa.org/legacy/documents/sop/sop-12-02.pdf](https://www.ushpa.org/legacy/documents/sop/sop-12-02.pdf)

<comment><USER31> I spent 2 months salary over the course of 6 months to train with an unlicensed coach who is not an official USHPA instructor. He was trying to sell me his old gear that hadn't passed safety inspections in over 5 years. Several people warned me against training with him.

Why did I continue? There's no other English-speaking coaches in the south of Taiwan. Also, his training was the only one I could afford. I really want to learn to fly.

"I need a new coach who I trust" is more related to the other issues than the relatively minor incident where I ended up in a tree. I accept my share of the responsibility for attempting that takeoff, and I'm grateful that it didn't result in serious injury. When it happened though, it was an appropriate time to call off the course and stop that con man from trying to sell me unsafe equipment.

And, back to the topic, it means I have a personal sense of how terrifying it can be when a parachute doesn't inflate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While not nearly as dramatic, this story reminds me a serious accident I had in my early childhood. For a long time I thought that perhaps I did die and that I had continued life in a near identical parallel dimension while leaving friends and relatives mourning in the one I had been born in.

I wonder if this thought ever occurred to the pilot.

A fantastic read.

<comment><USER34> I guess we're wandering a bit from the topic, but I used to feel the same way about, of all things, that childhood pastime of spinning around with your arms out. I spent more time than I'm comfortable specifying believing that every revolution put me in a slightly different universe, and that in order to get back, I'd have to perform exactly as many counter-revolutions in the opposite direction.

While this may sound insanely OCD, I remember thinking that I didn't have to get the number of counter-revolutions _exactly_ right -- within a half-dozen or so should be "good enough".

I guess I was an imaginative child.

<comment><USER33> Haha, wonderful. It's a an appealing thought I must say. What if the the "right" maneuvers in space actually open inter-dimensional portals. Sounds like we could've made good friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The human body can sustain a surprising amount of damage and still carry on.

Three different wingsuit pilots have survived unintentionally crashing into trees with no parachute out now:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp3YLdhraPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp3YLdhraPw)

[https://vimeo.com/50817449](https://vimeo.com/50817449) (view at 6:35)

[http://www.basejumper.com/cgi- bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2994...](http://www.basejumper.com/cgi- bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2994691)

And then you have Jeb Corliss crashing full speed into a mountain and surviving:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92-fNtnewxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92-fNtnewxc)

<comment><USER36> Sadly these near miraculous cases are _vastly_ outnumbered wingsuit accidents where the jumper was killed.

Your chances of surviving a wingsuit, or any kind of BASE jumping accident are considerably worse than your chances of surviving a single round of Russian roulette with five rounds in the cylinder, even if you're the only player.

<comment><USER37> Wouldn't you being the only player increase the chances of shooting yourself?

<comment><USER36> It would, but your odds of not shooting yourself are 1 in 6, assuming a standard 6 chambered cylinder. Your odds of surviving would be very slightly higher (depending on where you choose to shoot yourself) because, of course, a gunshot wound might not be fatal.

Like I say, your chances of surviving a wingsuit accident (basically impacting the ground, a cliff, a tree, whatever) are _considerably_ worse than this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Humans never cease to amaze.

I'm anxious about an event tomorrow, and this put me at ease.

Then again, I have a spleen...

<comment><USER39> Hey, maybe tomorrow you won't have one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Came across this on 'Hot Network Posts' on the Stackexchange network: [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/44740/why- cant-...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/44740/why-cant-you- ditch-your-aircraft-in-the-sea)

Asked because of reading this article.

</comment><comment><USER41> Related: A Serbian flight attendant who survived a fall of 10,160 metres without a parachute.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87)

<comment><USER42> Tangently related: Israeli F-15 pilot who loses a wing in a mid-air collision and still successfully lands.

[https://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one- wi...](https://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one-wing/)

Interesting tidbit: they slapped a replacement wing on and returned the aircraft to service.

<comment><USER43> And totally different tangent, GM will not warranty a C7 because of a minor crack on the chassis[1] so it's declared totaled and offered for 7.5 grand or so.

[1][http://gmauthority.com/blog/2017/09/one-tiny-crack-led- a-c7-...](http://gmauthority.com/blog/2017/09/one-tiny-crack-led- a-c7-corvette-grand-sport-to-be-totaled/)

<comment><USER44> [https://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-corvette-was-totaled- becaus...](https://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-corvette-was-totaled-because-of- one-inch-of-1806727930)

A small crack, but not minor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> As with almost everyone who survives, note the missing spleen

<comment><USER46> What is this referring to?

<comment><USER47> A ruptured spleen causes internal bleeding. It's one of the more likely traumatic injuries to the abdomen. If you have had it removed, internal bleeding is less likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I know a guy who ruptured his spleen from hitting the water at a water park (he was very overweight at the time). It happens.

</comment><comment><USER49> By the way, this story happened in 1963.

<comment><USER28> I was wondering!

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> For non-americans: 15 000 feet is 4.5km.

<comment><USER51> I am a non-american, and understand the concept of 15000 feet. :)

The only countries not to use feet as a measure of altitude for aviation purposes are China, DPRK and Russia. They use metres.

<comment><USER50> Ah I didn't know that, so pilots in France use feet as a measure for aviation altitude?

PS: wow, interesting [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_en_aviation](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_en_aviation)

<comment><USER52> They only use it internally, when communicating to passengers, they still use metres (because nobody has any idea what a foot looks like in France).

<comment><USER53> Not actually true; French pilots and ATC use feet too (whichever language you're speaking).

French influence on aviation has been strong since the beginning (hence all the French words - aileron, fuselage, décalage, etc), but the unit of height/altitude is one where the Americans set the standard.

(Source: I fly an American-designed, French-built aeroplane to/through France semi-regularly.)

<comment><USER54> It's true about French influence. Even the weather observation reports used worldwide, METARS, use abbreviations like "BR" for fog, because the French word for fog is "brouillard".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This guy's ability to keep calm is incredible. He's falling after being sucked out of the cockpit with a useless parachute, and his remark is:

```"This is very serious," I thought.```

This is balls of brass and nerves of steel combined.

</comment><comment><USER56> Morale, sometimes just everything goes wrong.

But if you stay calm, despite thinking it is hopeless and take your small chances, once they arise - you might actually succed and survive ..

<comment><USER57> Good takeaway.

I believe that's a core part of the training for Navy SEALS.

They push you far past your "breaking point" to realize that it isn't where you thought it was, helping you learn to keep your head about you when in extreme situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why are fighter pilots such extraordinary story tellers?

<comment><USER59> You only read the stories written by pilots who are good story tellers; nobody shares the rest.

<comment><USER39> Oddly, good storytellers also don't have a spleen. Weird.

<comment><USER60> In this case, good storytellers _who are alive_ don't. Survivor bias, quite literally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> At least the life vest inflated!

<comment><USER62> Lucky devil!

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The woman in this court case [1] managed to survive a double parachute failure (ALLEGEDLY caused by her husband) from 4,000ft, partly because she managed to land on a ploughed field which was relatively soft:

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/04/army-sergeant- hav...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/04/army-sergeant-having- tinder-affair-tried-murder-wife-tampering/)

</comment><comment><USER64> >The main, 24-foot parachute was just flapping in the breeze and was tangled in its own shroud lines. It hadn't opened! I could see the white folds neatly arranged, fluttering feebly in the air.

> "This is very serious," I thought.

<comment><USER65> I bet that wasn't the first thing that came to mind.

<comment><USER66> I think it was a euphemism for the actual words that came to his mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> What about Luke Aikins, who jumped without a parachute into a net from 25000 feet. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qF_fzEI4wU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qF_fzEI4wU)

<comment><USER68> Altitude doesn't really make a difference past ~1,500 feet. At that point, you've hit terminal velocity.

<comment><USER69> For downward velocity, it doesn't matter. But for lateral movement, where the wrong move 10k+ feet up could send you off course, it matters.

<comment><USER70> I imagine most people falling from heights are not doing so with a net waiting for them, so that lateral movement to attempt to find a better spot to crash is probably beneficial.

<comment><USER67> It is if you care where you die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> This is a interesting quote, googling it only shows this article, did the person writing the story make it up, or is this actually a saying that "some" say.

"Some days you are the dog and others you are the fire-plug."

<comment><USER72> "Some days you are the dog, some days you are the tree / fire hydrant" is the canonical quote.

I would assume the fire plug is the name of one of the things that failed while he refueled. Doesn't quite go together in my head, but once you understand the original quote it makes sense. Some days you're on the giving end, some days you're on the receiving end.

<comment><USER73> At least where I'm from (Texas, where the story teller at least spent time), hydrants are called fire plugs. I've no idea why but that's what I know them as.

<comment><USER74> The term comes from the history of firefighting: [http://www.firehydrant.org/info/hist- fp.html](http://www.firehydrant.org/info/hist-fp.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> As I read it, I thought this is such a well written piece (I thought the author was the pilot himself), and that the pilot must be insanely talented because not only was he a fighter pilot (which requires skill) but he was an adept writer as well.

Then I later realized that this was a chapter from a book. Whew! the tale has got my heart pumping. This is some amazing narration of an amazing incident

<comment><USER76> I think it was written by the pilot (Cliff Judkins). The book is a collection of stories from 'forty-five Crusader' pilots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> > The main, 24-foot parachute was just flapping in the breeze and was tangled > in its own shroud lines. It hadn't opened! I could see the white folds > neatly arranged, fluttering feebly in the air. "This is very serious," I > thought.

How can someone be so calm in that situation?

Nerves of steel, bravo!

</comment><comment><USER78> >>> For the first time, I felt panic softening the edges of my determination.

Given the situation, he's got some balls.

<comment><USER79> I panicked just by reading the story. Can't even imagine what I'd do if something like that happened to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> That's pretty wild. For another good falling from the sky story check out this woman that fell two miles after a commercial airliner broke up in the air[1]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_508](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_508)

<comment><USER80> Found the podcast I originally heard this story on. It's a good listen.

[https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/07/10/podcast- episode-16...](https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/07/10/podcast- episode-161-girl-fell-sky/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> If you like to read about stories like this check out this wikipedia page:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sole_survivors_of_airline_accidents_or_incidents

I think it's even more amazing when it's a commercial flight and everyone dies except one person. I can't imagine what sort of psychological toll that would have.

</comment><comment><USER82> Amazing story. He mentioned that that doctor was "high-lined" over from another ship. Am I right that that's a "zip-line"? (TIL also that High Line is a "park" in Manhattan.)

</comment><comment><USER83> He fell in an ocean. I wonder, if you happen by some extraordinary feat of skill or luck to fall feet-down in a perfectly straight body formation, would the impact be too small to have any injury?

<comment><USER84> Judging by his injuries (smashed ankles and broken hip), I guess that is exactly how he fell.

<comment><USER85> From cliff jumping 13 meters and nearing ripping my hip out of it's socket by having my feet ever so _slighty_ apart, I can't imagine the amount of injury from 15,000 feet.

<comment><USER86> Fun fact, there is no difference between 2000 feet (about 600 meters) and 15,000 feet, because of terminal velocity.

It also means that in a free fall spreading your body out horizontally to increase the drag forces, then re positioning just before landing would be the optimal choice. Not that you think of that in a free fall, but the physics are there.

<comment><USER54> I wonder if there's some way you can actually do the opposite: First, gain all the speed you can (speed is energy). Then before you hit the ground, do a kind of "flare", where you make your body into a wing, and decrease your downward energy. Do this right to the point of stall (as close as you can get) to reduce kinetic energy when you hit.

I know it'd be basically impossible for a human to actually do this perfectly. But I wonder, in theory, how much one could reduce the impact energy. Maybe you could hit at 50mph instead of 120mph.

<comment><USER87> not an aviation/physics buff, but I think having a point of 'stall' implies there is some 'lift' to begin with..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Related HN submission, great read as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13839177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13839177)

</comment><comment><USER89> I've experienced this, metaphorically

</comment><comment><USER90> It sounds like Marine pilot flight-gear of the time didn't include a reserve 'chute. Is that right?

</comment><comment><USER91> Thats an awesome read!!!!!

Will a passenger from a passenger airline survive if falling from 15,000 feet?

<comment><USER92> Unlikely. The only reason he was able to survive IMO is that his pilot chute deployed, slowing him down.

<comment><USER93> Survival without a chute seems to involve hitting some large object that slows you like a tree or a bendy roof.

Here's a pic of the roof that saved one guy [http://cdn2.fella.com/2016/06/20151717/Magee-11.jpg](http://cdn2.fella.com/2016/06/20151717/Magee-11.jpg)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Goddamn! That was riveting!

</comment><comment><USER95> What a great story!

</comment><comment><USER96> Amazing story.

</comment><comment><USER97> I dont know what to say whether its scary or awesome.

</comment><comment><USER98> That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty by design and/or maintenance teams.

There would be blame to go around as a result of this, and surely some op changes.

<comment><USER99> > That there was a mechanical failure, + 2 failures on the ejection, and a > parachute failure - is not a fluke. This is an extreme dereliction of duty > by design and/or maintenance teams.

Re: Ejector seat, it _could_ also have been pilot error, if he had forgotten to take the safety pins out of the ejector system during his pre flight check. They are there specifically to prevent the ejection rocket from firing while maintenance crew are working on the aircraft on ground, and should be removed (by either pilot or crew chief) before flight. I know that in Naval aircraft, the pilot has to replace these pins as one of the last things he does before leaving the aircraft after landing.

<comment><USER24> I doubt anyone could've missed a pin with a big red tag (flag) attached to it. It can't be missed.

<comment><USER60> Yeah. "Can't possibly happen" until it does.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introduction to System Architecture Design - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backendarmy/introduction-to-system-architecture-design-fcd4f327b6c9 <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this article to help people who have not done system designs. I am thinking to make it as a series. Feedbacks are most welcome:)</comment>


Fujifilm X-T3 announced with 26.1-megapixel sensor, better autofocus - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/6/17823930/fujifilm-xt3-camera-announced-features-pricing-release-date <comment><AUTHOR> But probably still with the infuriating off-axis mount?</comment>


Virtual Environments Demystified - <AUTHOR> https://meribold.github.io/python/2018/02/13/virtual-environments-9487/ <comment><AUTHOR> As someone that hasn't been using Python while the concept of "virtual environments" emerged I always found how many tools for managing them exist confusing. Eventually I tried to just create a virtual environment by hand, which turns out to be pretty straightforward, and wrote a short article about it.

<comment><USER2> It does demystify it when you show the steps to create an virtual env by hand. Very helpful.</comment></comment>


The Grand C++ Error Explosion Competition - <AUTHOR> http://tgceec.tumblr.com/post/74534916370/results-of-the-grand-c-error-explosion <comment><USER2> They're not running again next year? :(</comment>


Contingency Planning for Presidential Interference with the Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/contingency-planning-presidential-interference-election <comment><USER2> Military members have "no political statements" drilled into them. You will not get the Joint Chiefs or anyone else to make a statement that would be read as opposing the President, even on a matter as obvious as this. That's not aided by the fact that his party has a long-standing preference among the military in general -- far from universal, but it means that they are even less likely to want to break that injunction. They prefer to maintain a "neutral" position even though they know that their silence will be read as assent.</comment>


Fred's ImageMagick Scripts - <AUTHOR> http://fmwconcepts.com/imagemagick/

<comment><USER2> I get that the author wants a portion of whatever money you make with his scripts, but I wonder if they are aware of the ambiguity in "noncommercial" licenses. I feel like this precludes the use of these scripts anywhere but hobbyist projects that you never intend to profit from. And I think that's sad because the author could be probably make more of a name for themselves by using a more permissive license like the GPL.

<comment><USER3> Maybe he doesn't care about 'making a name for himself' and just wants to eat?

If you use software for a commercial purpose and the price is lower than what it would cost you to make it yourself then buy don't make is where it's at.

If he wants a 'portion of whatever money you make with his scripts' (that's called a profit share) then I think he's over-estimating that cost by a considerable margin, also he's building this on top of ImageMagick which is a very extensive suite of programs doing all the heavy lifting and these scripts tie those programs together.

If you don't know ImageMagick enough to string together 6 commands then this might be a useful resource, if you can then it might serve you as inspiration just by looking at title and documentation and never downloading the script.

Either way, it's out there without any obligation on your part, for hobbyists it's a boon.

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree, but I would point out that for those who are new to the industry, making a name for yourself can be a very good way of feeding yourself in the long term. Perhaps I should have instead framed it as building his portfolio.

But everyone needs to eat in the short-term too. :)

<comment><USER4> I think Fred has enough to eat

[http://www.fmwconcepts.com/fmw/fmw.html](http://www.fmwconcepts.com/fmw/fmw.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen these before but I've always stayed away because the costs for commercial licensing aren't spelled out or even estimated at all. I just never liked to anticipate the friction involved if I were to incorporate these into a project that would become a commercial endeavor.

<comment><USER6> "noncommercial" is impossibly vague to enforce.

If a not-for-profit entity like a library used one of these to make a T-shirt that is sold at a profit (but the profit goes to the non-profit) is that commercial use?

What if the design is done by a for-profit design firm for the non-profit library?

What if the non-profit library installs it on it's computers, and they get used by someone on a for-profit project?

Anytime you put a "profit" based limit on a license, you're probably doing it wrong. I'd much rather have a GPL style copyleft than this - it's less invasive.

<comment><USER7> It's not clear to me that "non-commercial" would permit any for-profit or not- for-profit use. Both are commercial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tend to agree that people who write software should -- where possible -- licence it so that people using it for commercial purposes either need to release the source code (GPL) or in terms similar to Fred's ImageMagick scripts.

The reason for this is that there is a very active competition between OSS (open source software) and non-free software and if OSS can access libraries which non-free software cannot, it gives OSS a very much needed advantage.

That being said, these scripts look incredible! We shouldn't focus so much on the licence but rather in the incredible effort the author has put in, and the knowledge he displays (I think it's pretty impressive!)

</comment><comment><USER9> I see that the license prohibits rewriting or copying the scripts into other software. Is there a GUI image editor that works by running modular CL scripts (such as these) on an image in a simple UX window? I imagine that would not be against this license.</comment>


Ask HN: From freelancer to salary? - <AUTHOR>

So basically I've been doing some combination of contracting and consulting work for short to mid-length contracts for the past 10 years or so. Anyways, I've made a decent living so far going this route. But there have been some ups and downs. So now I'm thinking I want to go the route of a salaried job and have been kind of exploring the job market in the area. I'm 30 y/o now, am married, and have 2 kids (7 and 9).  And, am starting to value the idea of financial stability afforded by a salaried position. So I'm seriously ready to take the plunge.
I have an Associates in IT with a local community college affiliated w/ the University of KY and ~11 years of professional experience doing web design/ development as well as complex data intensive web applications/services and windows software for various .gov/.mil, state and city. As you can imagine, most of the web design projects were smaller and done solo while the larger projects I was part of a team.
Aside from the standard HTML/CSS/Javascript combined with a bit of Photoshop skill. I do a lot of development in ASP.NET/C# w/ SQL Server or Oracle database  on the backside. A lot of Entity Framework and bit of Silverlight too. I consider myself a pretty decent programmer these days. I'm really looking for advice on how best to craft my resume. Besides the .docx I threw up http:/michaelkelley.me and a little more adventurous http://michaelkelley.me/resume
Advice on honing my resume and presentation for landing a decent job in the ~60-75K/year w/ benefits and whether I should bother with any kind of website resume
SO yeah... this turned into a pretty long-winded AskHN but please any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm still churning around some ideas for a great startup and I plan on saving some money up through this job to work towards that goal! Hopefully I can turn this process into a nice blog post after I land a position and let everyone know how it went. <comment><USER2> Few things. Personally, I'd much prefer a PDF version of your resume (loading LibreOffice takes a lot more time than evince does on my netbook). Create a GitHub account, or some other way of allowing me to see your coding skills. Talk more directly about programming, if that's what kind of work you're interested in. Also, what are your other interests? Do you work on any OSS projects?</comment>


Historian's Cookbook: We All Scream for Ice Cream (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/archive/historians-cookbook/we-all-scream-ice-cream <comment><USER2> Beware of getting nerd-sniped by solid phase H₂O: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon#Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon#Death)

Ancient egyptian ice-making (by radiative coupling to a sink at a few K) was impressive, as was the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhchāl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhchāl) .

====

Off topic, but as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836805) no longer admits comments:

> "¶ Howe is it possible, that women should haue faces of Angelles, and heddes > of deuilles?

> Be not Deuilles called Angelles in holie write? Reade the scriptures and ye > shal be resolued."

Compare [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRIRTQ_k- Sg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRIRTQ_k-Sg)</comment>


Ask HN: Any interest in TL;DW versions of YC videos? - <AUTHOR> I'm a big fan of all the videos that YC puts out on  it's YouTube channel. I do some video editing on the side. Would you guys be interested in TL;DW versions of YC videos? Short 2-5 mins summaries with just the highlights. <comment><USER2> In all honesty I'd prefer a writeup than a shorter video. I'm ok with watching video and can have them on in the background and tune in to the highlights. The problem comes in where I've not got access to sound (work PC), I don't want to dedicated my device to watching videos (mobile), or I have limited data capabilities (commuting)

I know there's transcripts available for most things if not all but they run a touch long too for most situations.. I think just to be annoying my personal ideal would be the transcripts of the highlights

</comment><comment><USER3> Writing up the high points into a few bullets, with timestamps and links to that point in the video would let people understand the content, and watch very specific sections if we wanted to hear the actual words. I'd recommend that approach instead of a short summary.

<comment><USER4> Yup timestamped links TLDRs like indie hackers does would be sick! (But I think you could improve on their site design a bit in terms of how those links work)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to do this with the transcripts, as well as translating PG's essays into my native language. They were extremely popular. Just posting them on Facebook goes viral about a quarter of the time. I would highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hacking videos to be more efficient is always a good idea. I hate when people take 5 minutes to explain something that could be said in 30 seconds with proper editing and planning. Go for it.

<comment><USER7> video speed controller chrome extensions has been a great addition. Shortens videos by speeding them up and skip freely.

I generally skim through first by jumping 20secs ea, then rewind if I find anything interesting. And if the pace is too slow I 5x.

<comment><AUTHOR> I learned that if you access the html5 youtube player you can actually change the speeds.

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5845484/force- html5-yout...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5845484/force- html5-youtube-video)

The other hack I was thinking about playing around with is removing silences, or long pauses, ummms, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCELF25lFYowjBcI26cgRbjQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCELF25lFYowjBcI26cgRbjQ) ??

<comment><USER9> [https://youtube.com/channel/UCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg](https://youtube.com/channel/UCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes. That will be really helpful

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes! That would be most helpful.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds amazing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes, please!</comment>


Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57569944-75/bill-gates-not-satisfied-with-microsofts-innovations/ <comment><USER2> No one involved in the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone should be satisfied, it was a complete failure. At the time Windows Mobile pretty much owned the Smart Phone market(unless you consider BB at the time smart phones, they were close to but not just IMO. No where near the freedom as WM). But over Windows Mobiles life time it completely stagnated, but even with that had a large following.

With there transition to Windows Phone they completely deserted there current user base opting for a more iphonesk ecosystem. That of restriction instead of freedom.

Ironically Android is the true successor to Windows Mobile, and in a position Microsoft can only dream of right now.

<comment><USER3> I was working in the mobile business _before_ the iPhone came and owned everybody (waiting then for Android) and I recall things totally differently than you.

The smartphone market was owned by Nokia and their Sxx series. That and the BlackBerries.

We were working on mostly Nokia (either native or Java), Qualcomm BREW (C++) and, granted, we had _some_ demand for Windows Mobile but they were pretty much a nobody in that pre-iPhone world. Just as they're still nobody.

There was hardly any customer demand for Windows Mobile compared to Nokia and the others.

There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered with their phones.

It has always been an utter failure.

Now of course you may your definition of a "pre-iPhone Smartphone" which appears to be: "Certainly not a BlackBerry and certainly not anything that wasn't running Windows Mobile". So then it becomes hard to argue ; )

<comment><USER4> >There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered with their phones ...

That's not really true because there was the PDA market, which was dominated by Palm and Microsoft. So you had RIM and Nokia in one corner, and Palm and Microsoft in the other. Any one of them could have created the iPhone but none of them really got it, and they are where they are.

<comment><USER5> Microsoft existed in the PDA space to keep Palm from growing.

Lets face it, the secret sauce to smartphones from a technology POV is the web and web services. Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of IE6, and thought that they had put the Internet problem to bed.

<comment><USER4> You can write a book on the number of missteps and missed opportunities Microsoft had in the last 10-15 years. They missed the boat on everything from search, to web-mail, to social networks, to digital music, to smartphones.

>Microsoft had disbanded its IE team after the release of IE6

I remember when that news hit slashdot like it was yesterday. I remember because I got really angry at Microsoft and their idiocy. I actually thought ie6 was a decent browser, but there was no fuckin chance it was going to be- all and end-all of browsers. It was also the day that I _really_ started looking for an alternative. Soon after, I installed Firebird beta and never looked back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ways to boost MSFT stock in 1 hour:

1\. Announce that Bill Gates is coming back.

2\. Announce that Ballmer is leaving.

<comment><USER7> Not really. Gates is still anti-web. He also doesn't absorb how culture has changed - both the culture of technology creation and the culture of technology consumption. Ballmer is not great but he probably has more daily exposure to the right arguments than Gates. Also, Ballmer's buffoon-psychopath persona seems to be a cover for a paranoia or fear. Gates seems genuinely more cocky, perhaps because he's more intelligent, while Ballmer seems more likely to listen to ideas he doesn't agree with. A contemporary Microsoft led by Gates would probably make some awesome but irrelevant products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Microsoft simply could not dictate to the telcos like they did to the PC manufacturers in the 1990s. The telcos decide what phones get sold to consumers. Kin, for example, was killed because _no_ telco wanted it.

Telcos like Android - its free and they can skin it.

Microsoft has been arrogant and _toxic_ to every one of the mobile phone manufactures that partnered with it.

It is ironic that Android, with its free software Linux kernel, is _crushing_ Microsoft worldwide in the most dominating fashion!

If smartphones are true personal computers, then Microsoft is _toast_.

</comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft had been going downhill since steve ballmer took the Gate's position. They're loosing their empire that Bill built.

But I have to give it to Bill, he knows how to control and take over. Letting others pirate your software just to let your empire grow is astounishing to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> No kidding. They missed the boat on almost every trend in the last decade.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just one question, where is my Microsoft Linux? Give me that and a UI better than Unity (like Gnome 2) and I'll actually pay for it. Subscription. Seriously. I don't even need a "Visual Sudio for Linux", Eclipse works great but hey if you want to put C# apps on Linux I might go back to buying MSDN (for Linux) oh and this deal is only on if you don't take it all away in a year or two. You bet the farm on Linux Microsoft, and I'll bet the rest of my future on Microsoft and Linux.

If you don't I bet IBM or HP will.

</comment><comment><USER11> This title is somewhat inappropriate.

Technically it's true, but I think it gives the impression that Bill Gates is not happy with Microsoft's decisions.

Really it's that Gates doesn't think Microsoft has reached the end of its innovations, and that he wants to improve smartphones.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the quotes on this title should have been around the word "innovations".

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not like Microsoft ever innovated much anyway. DOS was bought from a hobbyist and repackaged as MS-DOS in the early days, Windows was not the first OS with GUI (on the contrary, it was quite late in the game), the Xbox 1 was no more no less than a PC under the hood, DirectX was Microsoft's own library to copy OpenGL, etc... In that sense, what they are doing nowadays reflects their past history of poor innovation.

<comment><USER14> This level of dismissal could undermine any potential accomplishment.

If you're talking 'innovation' like Marie Curie, then sure. But its willfully disingenuous to say that they weren't -- or aren't -- an innovative company, relative to so many others.

<comment><USER13> Well Microsoft had "I can do it too" kind of innovation, if you like, but rarely pushed for something very new on the market by themselves. I have rather known Bill Gates and his friends for his "innovative" market practices to crush competition than actual product innovation (having OEMs install Windows by default, and threatening the ones who would not do that to get the next versions of Windows later, and so on).

I reckon that PocketPCs were probably an exception to that point, and there are here and there innovative parts in the company, but it feels more that it's "innovative DESPITE its roots" than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Windows Mobile still goes strong in the PDA market with retailers and for POS devices. My company makes custom software for WinMo PDAs, and admittedly my opinion is colored by the fact that our software is also a POS (pun intended), but I can't really believe that WinMo once held a dominant market share. Or rather, I can believe it, and can believe that the iPhone had it for lunch.

</comment><comment><USER16> He should be very unsatisfied with the total abortion that is Win8. One of the single biggest mistakes MS have ever made IMHO.

<comment><USER17> Bigger than Vista? Or the red rings of death?

<comment><USER16> IMHO certainly bigger than Vista dont know about RRD. Vista was not THAT bad and SP1 fixed most of the issue. W8 is wrong at a fundamental level, its an OS for a tablet scotchtaped onto a desktop OS. What made my mind up is trying to help a woman in the shop the other week who had unknowlingly bought a new PC with Win8 on and was totally confused. I tried to help her and even I was lost... its a mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The title of this article bothers me and sticks out more than any of the actual content.

</comment><comment> adam-f Well, that makes two of us.

<comment><USER19> I'm, however, perfectly happy with how things are going. If all goes well, we'll get rid of them in a decade or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice haircut.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate.

It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

<comment><USER22> Not sure why you were downvoted. Upvoted even though I don't particularly agree.

Having lived in Seattle for a couple of years, and knowing _many_ Microsoft employees during that time, my outsider's view is that MS's consumer-side failures are largely geographical and cultural.

Redmond, or even Bellevue, is _extremely_ isolated from Seattle, which in and of itself is not exactly deeply intertwined with the cultural centers of the US. Locals know this - Microsoft employees who move from Seattle across the lake to the east side often joke about nobody ever visiting them again (sometimes less-than-jokingly). It's also more or less a company town - Microsoft's presence is so overwhelming and absolute that a lot of the technological zeitgeist from the rest of the country _never make it there_. If you lived/worked there it's easy to believe Microsoft's ridiculously optimistic PR pieces - pieces that would be hilarious when read in any other environment.

This isn't even an urban/suburban argument (though it has shades of it), it's a "company town vs. diverse city" thing. Microsoft's geographical location gives its people tunnel vision and a grossly false picture of the technology sector.

The second part I've observed is a lack of internal honesty within Microsoft. Failure seems to be couched in safe corporate-speak to the point where it's greatly muted (maybe that's the intent). You cannot expect your work force to pivot and fight hard when they've been falsely told their giant failure was a minor hiccup. I saw this after the WinPhone launch - MS employees were still honestly bullish about its prospects even when the market as a whole had completely rejected it.

If MS wants to be nimble in the consumer space, it needs to set up shop in cities where their competitors play - you will not get an honest impression of how your products (or your competitors' products) are doing otherwise. They also need to have frequent, honest, no-holds-barred accountings of how they are doing. If a product was a flop, call it a flop.

<comment><USER23> I graduated from high school in Bothell (just north of Kirkland) and I'm a Microsoft employee, but I've never been based in Redmond before. I find your post is a bit weird, bizarre, and maybe a bit biased.

Yes, suburb Seattle is quite different from urban Seattle, but ALOT more people live in the suburbs. You also have to compare it to San Francisco and San Jose, how many of your friends from the city will visit you once you moved to San Jose? Honestly any?

Seattle is fairly international and non-isolated, its in the same category as the bay area, which is to say: we have a lot of space between us and the next mega-cities (Vancouver or Portland), but that is true of any western city.

As for Redmond, I remember when it was just a bunch of trees with a filming lot for Northern Exposure. It never had much of its own identity, like Kirkland, Bothell, or Lynwood; they are just part of the suburbs. Even Bellevue is a bit souless, they have an urban core but its mostly a shopping mall. Not much difference from any other big city in the states!

Microsoft employees are actually brutally honest. We internally criticize our own stuff all the time, there is not much of a reality distortion field in Redmond or Beijing. But we aren't going to hang our dirty laundry in public, what company would do that?

Finally, Microsoft has many offices around the world, many are deeply involved in core products; Silicon Valley for example. My own office has a 1000 people I think.

<comment><USER22> > _"Yes, suburb Seattle is quite different from urban Seattle, but ALOT more > people live in the suburbs."_

I was careful to disclaim that this isn't a urban vs. suburban thing (though it is, to a limited extent) - this is a company town vs. business-diverse city thing.

After all, Google and Facebook were _both_ born and headquartered deep within suburbs. The difference is that Mountain View and Palo Alto are _swimming_ in tech companies - even if your social circles were _entirely_ tech people, it's extremely unlikely they all work at the same place.

Compare with Seattle (stronger in Redmond/Bellevue) where practically everyone works for Microsoft (if you're on the east side) or Amazon (if you're on the west). Even for members of the community who don't directly work for MS, the relationship with MS is so overwhelming that it grossly distorts reality inside the bubble.

There's a lack of perspective because just about everyone works for the same company, subject to the same cognitive biases, with no substantial competition base (or hell, just other tech companies) to give you the necessary occasional whack upside the head.

> _" but its mostly a shopping mall. Not much difference from any other big > city in the states!"_

I very, very heavily disagree. The US has _many_ incredibly interesting big cities, even if some of them are deeply flawed from a financial or civic perspective. NYC and SF are no-brainers, but even the much-lampooned suburban gridlock of LA is (arguably) the cultural center of the entire country. New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, Boston... I don't think I can seriously describe _any_ of those as soulless mostly-shopping-malls.

This is my personal opinion, but IMO Bellevue epitomizes the worst of forced- urbanization. Its soullessness and emptiness is far from the norm in the US, and _definitely_ not the norm for urbanization in the world.

<comment><USER24> _The US has many incredibly interesting big cities_

The US has far more boring big cities, though. You've already mentioned the interesting ones.

<comment> iso-8859-1 Why do you not like San Antonio? Look how great it is: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_San_Antonio>

<comment><USER23> I like San Antonio, the river walk area is really cool.

I'm not sure about the suburban blight around it, I never lived there to experience any of it. But inner tubing down the Guadalupe....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the most telling evidence of Bill Gates satisfaction level is on the following page:

<http://biz.yahoo.com/t/38/567.html>

6-Feb-13 3,189,267 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.44 per share. (Proceeds of $87,513,486)

5-Feb-13 3,810,733 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.56 per share. (Proceeds of $105,023,801)

4-Feb-13 3,000,000 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.64 per share. (Proceeds of $82,920,000)

1-Feb-13 5,500,000 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.87 per share. (Proceeds of $153,285,000)

31-Jan-13 4,500,000 MSFT Automatic Sale at $27.50 per share. (Proceeds of $123,750,000)

We are in a world drowning in words, follow the money, it does not lie.

<comment><USER26> You've omitted a lot of context.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7106589/ljbox/doc/MSFT-shares.png>

Gates has been selling his stock at a steady pace for over a decade. Since Sept '01 he has sold an average of about 78.4 million shares per year.

Using your link you can see that he sells 20 million shares quarterly, with each block of 20M selling within one week. So he did his usual 80 million in the past year.

Since the rate of his selling has neither increased nor decreased significantly in at least 11.5 years, are you sure you can conclude something about his satisfaction level? What about the possibility that he is diversifying and funding his philanthropic goals?

As of today he still owns about 421 million common shares of MSFT, worth $11.8 billion.

<comment><USER25> You are right. I was not looking at the whole picture. But still, if Bill is putting that money into another growth vehicle, that means that he believes Microsoft isn't going to rise to superstar status again. It's not a place where his money will even retain it's base value. He wants to get it out as soon as possible without crushing the stock. A decade long opinion that Microsoft isn't going to get better with time.

<comment><USER26> _> if Bill is putting that money into another growth vehicle, that means that he believes Microsoft isn't going to rise to superstar status again._

But Gates is not putting his money into another growth vehicle, he's putting it into his philanthropic projects, which he spends most of his time managing.

He has made it clear (with both words and actions) that he wants to use the rest of his life doing the most good with his money that he can. And he has almost entirely redirected his career toward those non-Microsoft goals. If he was interested in making the most money he can, he would be doing totally different things.

Of course, he can't (sensibly) sell his entire stake in MSFT at once. Instead he is selling it slowly but steadily.

Also of course, he can't (sensibly) spend all his money at once. It is being invested in a diversified manner: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment>

Diversifying his wealth makes a great deal of fiscal sense, considering his goals, and the fact that he is no longer running Microsoft.

So, I don't see how you reasonably conclude that his MSFT sales mean he has lost faith in Microsoft.

 _> It's not a place where his money will even retain it's base value._

The MSFT dividend yield has historically been over 2% and is now over 3%, so it's not like it's doing completely nothing before he can sell it.

So it seems we agree that Gates wants to sell his MSFT as quickly as is reasonably possible, we just don't agree on his motivation. I suspect he will continue doing so until he isn't risking so many eggs in one basket, because he has other goals besides wealth accumulation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Grow - <AUTHOR> https://www.promoter.io/blog/how-to-grow/ <comment><USER2> "According to a study done by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)"

Quick, before reading the article, what do you think they found?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are also two other statistics mentioned by entirely different sources/studies. Why didn't you call out those as well?

<comment><USER2> Because those are not as humorous.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough -- I like your style :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think your web server needs to know how to grow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol. Will be back up momentarily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pop-ups are really taking over the internet. Again. I'm all for optimizing/growth-hacking/whathaveyous, but when it detracts from the reading experience then maybe you've gone too far?

This page had social share buttons on the side, intercom(?) looking button, and a popup to give them my email all orchestrated to fade-in/pop-in before I had a chance to really dig into the article. And now I wont.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate the pointed feedback. Making adjustments ATM to improve the experience.

<comment><USER6> My browser asked me if your site could send me push notifications, and I feel like that's probably not necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Definitely agree with the power of referrals. Our customers have significantly higher conversion and (it looks like) a longer lifetime if they were referred by an existing customer.

</comment><comment><USER8> In case you were confused by the introduction of the acronym NPS, (as I was) it means "Net Promoter Score". It's a customer loyalty metric: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter)</comment>


Biomeme Could Turn Your iPhone Into a Tiny Disease-Detecting Lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/biomeme/

<comment> xkcd-sucks where to begin...

Building the device to require a smartphone is such a bad idea. The same functionality (battery, light detector, datalogging) could be added for negligible cost.

It seems like involving an iphone is simply a way to capitalize on the credulity of naive investors.

RT-PCR is notoriously difficult to do well. This is because RNA is unstable and nucleases (which destroy RNA) are a ubiquitous environmental contaminant. People that work with RNA typically set aside clean rooms and dedicated tools for working with samples. Can we expect users of this product to be careful re: cleanliness?

The reason 23andMe works is because its data is good, and the reason its data is good is because they generate it themselves (and, they're working with DNA, not with RNA).

The operating cost is mostly consumable stuff: Enzymes and DNA primers. DNA is cheap and stable, but the enzymes (reverse transcriptase, dna polymerase) are expensive and unstable. Will the device contain an integrated -20C freezer to store the enzymes? Has the company found a supplier of enzymes that are super cheap and of an acceptable quality? If so, lots of people in the research community will want to know.

<comment><USER2> Spot on. It's interesting how one of the original goals of the technical co- founders was to develop an open diagnostics hardware platform for the research community.

Perhaps a consortium-type non-profit structure would have been a better fit, incentive-wise.</comment></comment>


JRuby 184.108.40.206-pre1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://jruby.org/2015/01/20/jruby-9-0-0-0-pre1.html

<comment><USER2> With the plug pulled on Groovy I'd love to see optional static typing added to JRuby, even if it wasn't a Ruby-compatible extension.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't call it the plug pulled so much as the Grails project manager taking over from the Groovy project manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> w00t!</comment>


Calculus on Graphs (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0408028 <comment><USER2> Why has this been submitted, I mean I've seen few versions of "calculus on graphs", is it because of the "translation" of analysis to graph theory? Could the submitter explain their interest in this and why they think its relevant?

<comment><USER3> The downvotes on this post are a shame. I don't think every post should have to be defended for its relevance (especially since the explicit mission of the site is to gather news of possible _interest_ to hackers, not just hacking news), but it seems like a reasonable question to what the submitter thinks an interested non-expert should direct his or her attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like to refer to DNNs (specifically back-propagation on them) as the world's most lucrative application of the chain rule from Calculus...

</comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat related, but my old PhD supervisor had a very interesting paper on extending some ideas from Riemannian geometry to graphs. [http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.5898](http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.5898)

</comment><comment><USER6> I spent a summer as an undergrad doing research on this sort of thing, a nice paper came out of it from the grad students working with us [0].

I love to see graph theory creeping into other branches of mathematics, especially blending the discrete and continuous domains.

0 - [https://books.google.com/books?id=J65sAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA15&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=J65sAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&source=bl&ots=WFVXAqq8dd&sig=DZiKvOzQAp7V7V44Qd2ZvqJzj5Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBTgKahUKEwiS5tOYo7vHAhXKMIgKHa-2D8k#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER7> Standalone version here: [http://people.math.gatech.edu/~mbaker/pdf/Quantum_Graphs_Rev...](http://people.math.gatech.edu/~mbaker/pdf/Quantum_Graphs_Revised.pdf)</comment></comment>


What books to buy for christmas - <AUTHOR>

Every year I buy myself a bunch of books for Christmas. Suggestions for this year? Technology, startups, business, mind-opener, fictions, you name it. <comment><USER2> The Princeton Companion to Mathematics - [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350.html)

The Mapping of the Heavens by Peter Whitfield - [http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780876544754](http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780876544754)

The Macmillan Visual Dictionary - [http://www.amazon.com/The-Macmillan-Visual- Dictionary-Illust...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Macmillan-Visual-Dictionary- Illustrations/dp/0025281607)

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth - [http://www.amazon.com/Logicomix-An- Epic-Search-Truth/dp/1596...](http://www.amazon.com/Logicomix-An-Epic-Search- Truth/dp/1596914521)

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes - [http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Calvin- Hobbes-Bill-Watterson/...](http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Calvin-Hobbes-Bill- Watterson/dp/1449433251)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ringworld, Larry Nivens. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld)

If you like that then finish the series (3 or 4 books), then branch out into Nivens' related Known Space stories: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_space)

That should keep you entertained for awhile.</comment>


Masters of Computer Science – Online vs Campus Programs - <AUTHOR> http://www.mastersincomputerscience.net/masters-of-computer-science-online-vs-campus-programs.html Computer science is an industry that is ever-changing, so one of the best ways to advance in your field is to earn a masters degree. Masters of computer science programs fall into two main categories – online schools and traditional campus programs. Both can be great educational options; let's take a look at how they compare so you can find the best school to meet your computer science learning needs. <comment><USER2> For a list of "best" Online CS degrees it misses quite a few of the better schools with online programs. It has no mention of USC, Purdue, or Harvard.</comment>


Scientists Debunk The Myth That 10,000 Hours Of Practice Makes You An Expert - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027564/asides/scientists-debunk-the-myth-that-10000-hours-of-practice-makes-you-an-expert

<comment><USER2> There are two issues here. One is "10,000 hours of practice" and the other is "10,000 hours of deliberative practice." I wish fastcodesign had downplayed the Gladwell/Blink reference, as it makes it harder to figure out what they are talking about.

I haven't read Blink to know if Gladwell emphasizes the first or the second. I have read some of Ericsson's works.

The first of these is a myth. No research has ever backed it up, and Ericsson's work outright says that deliberative practice is the key part, and that only about 4 hours of deliberative practice are possible per day.

The actual research papers (which cost $36 each!) concern Ericsson's "deliberative practice" definition only. The new article is [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000087) and response [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613001736) .

</comment><comment><USER3> No one ever asserted that 10,000 hours of any kind of practice was guaranteed to make one an expert. Gladwell used it as a minimum and he did make the distinction between the kind of practice budding experts did vs. meaningless repetition, as does Ericsson. You can find a copy of Ericsson's response to the latest study at [http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/2014%20Ericsson%20re...](http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/2014%20Ericsson%20reply%20to%20criticisms%20in%20INTELLIGENCE%20posted.pdf)</comment>


Proof P!=NP (as one-way functions exist)? - <AUTHOR> http://cartesianproduct.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/computing-for-teachers/#comments

<comment><USER2> Not much to comment on. See Scott Aaronson's "Eight Signs A Claimed P≠NP Proof Is Wrong". [0]

[0] [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=458)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304) "Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong"

It's not nice to shine the spotlight on someone to subject them to ridicule.

This paper should be reviewed by someone with a reputation in the field before being distributed widely.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm skimming the "simplified" version so forgive me if I'm misinterpreting this.

> However, if we could obtain the inverse function in a feasible way ...

> The answer would be very simple: First, we start executing y on the program > M until 5 minutes and ...

> But, this is impossible: we could not reduce the time of 10 centuries to 40 > minutes over L due to L is EXP-complete

I have VERY minimal knowledge of this, but does this proof go into why this method to "obtain the inverse function in a feasible way" is the ONLY way or that it encompasses EVERY way to do it?</comment>


Building creative content on the fly for A/B testing and 1:1 personalization - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/building_creative_content_on_the_fly_for_a_b_testing_and_1_1_personalization <comment><AUTHOR> This article describes how to enhance a site's content optimization and personalization using dynamic image URLs with on-the-fly manipulation</comment>


Brutal honestly requested – Built this last night - <AUTHOR> http://justonetweet.com/

<comment><USER2> Hello Len,

I'm not an expert at Twitter (or other social media) marketing but I could see myself or other people working in startup/small project/MVP using an affordable ad option to kickstart adoption (get some early users and buzz).

Couple comments on the page: it took me a couple of quick readings to understand what it is, I think i was distracted by the big fonts of the steps section and I missed the summary at the top "Want to show the world something cool? Have it come from my twitter account, in my voice.". Perhaps make the summary bigger and the steps smaller?

Also the $75 is only mentioned at the very end, perhaps append "for only $75" to the top summary?

The 2nd step could have a link to the contact form itself, or add the form directly into the page (perhaps before the FAQ)

It took me a couple reads to get the "I want to join this network. Can I?", perhaps add something like "I want to join this network as a publisher", as first read looks like you are filtering buyers.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Cool idea!

fduran has some great points. I would shorten the Who are you? part to just the basics. You don't have to tell me your a marketing guru, once you get 100K followers and can charge the appropriate CPM well know you are.

You'll also eventually need some Demo information about your followers, average Klout score, average followers, etc (just throwing some stuff out there) to sell what I assume will be a premium CMP because of the 'curated' bit, and to do some quality control as you gain followers.

It would be cool to get some 'celebrity endorsements' showing off (with their permission) some big names that are following this account. Star power never hurts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just checked the stats on your latest tweet (<https://twitter.com/LenKendall/status/304626304391737344>)

Here´s the bit.ly stats for the link included in that tweet: <https://bitly.com/ZjYhUz+>

Bit.ly analytics show 20 clicks in the last hour.

$75 for 20 clicks is a CPC of $3.75.

Obviously the click rate will change depending on the nature/timing of the tweet, but seems a bit expensive to me.</comment>


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