An Open Letter to My Former NSA Colleagues - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/08/nsa_domestic_spying_mathematicians_should_speak_out.html

<comment><USER2> I can understand the public outrage over what the implications are for things that have been circulated in the press. The author, however, is guilty of a very terrible error in my opinion -- he has walked the halls of Ft. Meade and seen how the NSA operated, and yet now he believes that the NSA operates 180 degrees from when he joined. He's essentially casting aspersions at those who have joined the NSA since his leaving, and those who still yet join, saying "Shame on you, shame on you for not having a higher moral standard!". Well, you sir can politely go fuck yourself.

Those who have served in the military or as civilians in the department of defense have given up a lot of their personal liberties in order to provide for the common defense. Service. It's not a concept I expect you to understand if you're reading this from a Starbucks while pitching your new startup idea to your friends. It entails willingly giving up the ability to talk to your friends and loved ones about _anything_ you do -- you often end up telling people that you do some mundane job because you can't answer their followup questions. It means getting called into work or off of vacation because your small piece of the world has gone to shit, and not having anyone to vent to about it. It also means placing the very notion of where you live in the hands of the government, and sometimes being forced to be away from your family for years. It is all these things and more, but it is not _ever_ something one should be made to feel ashamed of doing.

There are thousands of employees right now in the NSA who aren't even allowed to come to their own defense on the matter, because DoD has deemed that speaking about the situation is a security violation. They have to sit there and endure that the people around them who are very ignorant as to what it is NSA even does, just plain get it wrong. Well, as my NSA/CIA security clearance finally closed out yesterday, I have no qualms about speaking on their behalf.

The public is completely and utterly wrong about the motivations of the NSA and the information they were provided as "fact". Everything has been skewed to paint a picture that is damning and I would definitely be angry about if it were true, but it just isn't. There is a culture of protecting American civil liberties in the NSA. It's almost pathological -- anything that can potentially affect a US person is given extremely wide berth. There are major auditing and oversight mechanisms in place in case someone were to ever run a query that affected a US person. So the notion that in 2 years, the intelligent, passionate, and devoted people I came to know have somehow flipped around and violate rights willy-nilly now is a ludicrous idea. If this were true, we would be seeing a thousand whisteblowers (true whistleblowers, not Snowden) coming out of the woodwork trying to correct the system.

It is not true that the government doesn't care about the rights of individuals just because you want it to be true. Those that are employed are individuals too, and are not being magically compelled to carry terrible secrets against their individual moral codes and ethics. They are carrying out a mission of defense which extends into the technology of this century -- even cars have had 100 years for us to deliberate and come up with the current system of laws that govern that technology. While the legal framework for their actions are up for debate, their collective character is not.

The current public climate surrounding those who have been in the intelligence community hearkens back to days of activists yelling "Baby killer! Baby killer!" at passing by Vietnam vets. A few of you who are self-reflecting will at some point in your life when the intelligence practices becomes more public, regret your outrage and overreaction at this time. I feel like the rest will not, because it was a passing trend and never really affected you directly either way.

I would like to thank those that have served (including the author) and continue to serve for their part in upholding their oath. It may seem like no one gets you, but a few out here in the public sector do. In the cycle of the public raging against government powers, and then asking why the government didn't do more about x situation, the people in service get lost in the mix.

I hope that regardless of who you are reading this, that you have the ability to empathize with those who are outside of your personal story, with whom you will never have any interaction with. That I happen to know some of their faces doesn't change the fact that I don't assume the faceless ones are perpetrating a great conspiracy against the American people. I just assume that they're serving.

<comment><USER3> Parent makes the case in favor of sympathy for public servants very eloquently, but constructs his argument by appealing to how much we don't know about what's really going on in the NSA--but the American public shouldn't have to take the NSA or its sympathizers on faith. It may not be reasonable to expect full disclosure, but the current level of disclosure is insulting. It's easy to believe that most civil servants have our best interests at heart; but we shouldn't have to just believe it. Suitable oversight should provide all necessary evidence.

<comment><USER2> Oversight is definitely the key to limiting the possibility of government overreach, but it is wrong on the populace's part to think that just because they aren't privy to the oversight that it isn't there.

There is much the same problem with those who work in the political realm in D.C. They are constantly derided as do-nothing on a macro scale, but on an individual basis a lot of effort is put into how laws are constructed and amended. This is analogue to the situation in the intelligence community -- a lot of work is done by individuals and the organization they are a part of to preserve civil liberties, but disclosing the nature of their collection abilities in the interest of the transparency of their protection of civil liberties is absolutely counter-productive. A big difference between the two, is that the political worker can disclose their work while the intelligence worker can not.

I'm not denying that there are instances of overreach, but I'm merely making the point that the framework for protection of civil liberties is not a piece of glass that shatters on the first stone thrown against it. It is an organic process, which is subject to upper and lower bounds in order to come to rest at a medium level with which both the public is suitably comfortable, and which gets the job done.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the thoughtful reply, but respectfully, this seems to still be begging the question.

> ...it is wrong on the populace's part to think that just because they aren't > privy to the oversight that it isn't there.

The populace seems to be decreasingly comfortable with the information currently available, especially when much of that information seems contradictory or deliberately deceptive. I have no doubt that you're right, that a more complete picture would obviate a lot of the public's concerns; so it's sensible for the public to demand a more complete picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seife's book "Zero" totally blew my mind a few years back. Powerful words:

"If this is really what the agency stands for, I am sorry to have helped in whatever small way that I did."

</comment><comment><USER5> What bothers me is that there is just 'us' and 'them'. There is not even the hint of allies or any shade of gray in all this, you are either part of the United States or you are fair game.

<comment><USER6> What do you mean? US citizens are fair game too.

<comment><USER5> They are but they're not supposed to be. At least, they weren't. I know that's apparently changed but that is a funny thing to have such a flap over, if you feel that it is somehow bad in principle to target your own civilians when they have not (yet) done anything wrong what is it that makes it a-ok to do the same on foreigners? I can't follow that reasoning.

<comment><USER6> That wasn't my argument. I hope they burn the whole thing down. It is a terrible embarrassment and shame on the whole country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If a nation or a group was acting towards American citizens the way the NSA (and other TLAs) does, we'd probably assume they were at war with us.

<comment><USER8> Now you know how everyone outside the United States feels.

<comment><USER7> I've been aware of it for years. My only consolation in the events of the past few months is that a lot of my friends no longer view my opinions as being in left field.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Live Face Detector Using Chrome's Native FaceDetector API - <AUTHOR> https://chirag64.github.io/live-face-detector/ <comment><USER2> At the risk of sounding grumpy, this is not someting that should be in a browser IMO. Browsers have become monstrosities that only a few giants can maintain, by including everything and the kitchen sink.

Face detection is a perfect example of what should be a plugin. I'm not saying it has to be a horrible old school NPAPI plugin. It could be a sandboxed app, it could be a WebAssembly library, and so on.

Edit: nothing against the OP's post, it's probably cool although I cannot test it on this PC :-)

<comment><USER3> Agreed this is out of control now! And yet still, 20 years later, I can't scroll the body of a table whilst keeping the header and columns aligned.

Surely things like that, or a src attribute for csv files, or even rudimentary charts and graphs for tables don't even get considered.

Suppose fixing 20year old issues just aren't as sexy as usb access from the browser...

As time goes on I connect less and less with browser developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google really is pushing forward what browsers do - I am not sure if that's a good thing. Especially in regards to privacy and security. Maybe they should separate browser from OS in some meaningful way. These capabilities should not be easily available in your ordinary web browser. Same with WebUSB that hackers can use to mount your USB drives and read data or eg. steal passwords from things like ubikeys... I know the analogy is a bit flawed, but it reminds me of all the power that Active X provided back in the day, when Microsoft tried to make the browser the OS.

<comment><USER5> That is what ChromeOS is all about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was expecting a link to github proof of concept... received my browser doesn't not support FaceDetector API (Thankfully!).

</comment><comment><USER7> What would normally be already somewhat creepy is amplified by the irony of having this appear at the same time as the several other items about SESTA/FOSTA/CLOUD.

</comment><comment><USER8> This API is like 18 months old and super experimental, I don't think ever will land in official specifications. WebAssembley is here so is better to implement such things with it

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, I'm glad I use Firefox now

</comment><comment><USER10> Safari on iOS already has face detection. But I don't think there is an API for it.

If you can't see well and so enable VoiceOver, when a webpage opens the camera to take a photo the phone will what it sees, "like face in centre of photo".

It's very usefully for blind of partially sighted people to take selfies.

Here is a reference: [https://www.apple.com/uk/accessibility/iphone/vision/](https://www.apple.com/uk/accessibility/iphone/vision/)

Edit: added link

</comment><comment><USER11> Draft specification is at [https://wicg.github.io/shape-detection- api/](https://wicg.github.io/shape-detection-api/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I need a butt detector to launch my startup, Buttstagram.

</comment><comment><USER13> "What could possibly go wrong?"</comment>


HP Converged Networking - <AUTHOR> http://thesolutionsarchitect.com/2011/08/04/hp-the-legos-of-enterprise-it/

<comment><USER2> Interesting article, just some questions

1)what solution you would pick and why? 2)if none is the answer for (1) what could be the best solution approach to follow and why?

Could you include a table of comparision among these options?

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely dependent upon environment. EMC, Netapp and HP all make a great solution, you just need to know how to combine them. I feel a good integrator may be your best investment</comment></comment>


The country where a luxury Tesla has become the budget option - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/norway-where-the-electric-tesla-has-become-the-budget-option.html <comment><USER2> The article mentions that the batteries don't perform well at -20°. I wonder what Tesla has done to prevent freezing and how well their systems work in the extreme cold. My guess is that they have planned for this but it would be nice to hear from someone in a colder country that can confirm the performance of the batteries in extreme conditions.</comment>


Gradio – Painting Generator (StyleGAN) - <AUTHOR> https://360.gradiohub.com/ <comment><USER2> While it's fun to play with, and at least makes 1K images, the end result seems hardly to match the 3 categories. I picked Monet/Portrait/Color Field and got a nice open field. I think it's not that well trained.

<comment><USER3> Yeah its a bit tough to match the inputs. I've found truncation has the biggest effect, and in a certain range all paintings look pretty similar. Try changing truncation to 1

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of my friend's '09 senior HS project at the art school we went to. She made a graphical Java app that would generate a random Mondrian design[0], and it would also generate a random "artist statement" too. That last part was my absolute favorite, because the disillusioned student I was felt like a lot of the "artist statement" assignments were just BS.

[0] [https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/all- works#!#filterN...](https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/all- works#!#filterName:Style_neoplasticism,resultType:masonry)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey I made this! Thanks for sharing OP! To be clear I only wrapped an interface around the model using Gradio[1], I used Peter Baylies fork[2] of NVIDIA's StyleGAN2[3]. EDIT: If you're not seeing paintings change try setting truncation to 1.

[1]: [https://github.com/gradio-app/gradio](https://github.com/gradio- app/gradio) [2]: [https://github.com/pbaylies/stylegan2](https://github.com/pbaylies/stylegan2) [3]: [https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2](https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2)

<comment><USER5> Nice work! It's fun to play with. How do you make it reasonably performant without a backend that costs much? I've thought it'd be fun to do stuff like this, but I wouldn't want to have server costs that exceed the price of a netflix subscription, so never really publically share the fun things I build. I'm assuming your backend is doing the heavy lifting here.

<comment><USER3> Wish I had something better to say, but our setup is not that cheap. Here's something though, if you're not expecting crazy traffic Gradio let's you launch a shareable link (like the one you're seeing) from your laptop (or your own hardware).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are a lot of options, but they all seem to lead to the same results.

<comment><USER3> Try changing truncation to 1, that should've been the default and should fix things :)

<comment><AUTHOR> What does seed and scale really do? It feels like seed and scale are connected. Set Artist=Unknown, Genre=Cityscape, Style=Abstract Expressionism, Truncation=1, Scale=0. No matter what the seed value is, it keep generating a portrait until scale is changed.

Edit: same settings, seed=75575, scale=4, trunc=1 it returns a face.</comment></comment></comment>


Buffer app hacked - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/buffer/status/394170769254932480 Buffer's Facebook tokens have been used to post spam to Buffer users' Facebook walls. <comment><USER2> This is the email I received:

Hi there,

I wanted to get in touch to apologize for the awful experience we've caused many of you on your weekend. Buffer was hacked around 1 hour ago, and many of you may have experienced spam posts sent from you via Buffer. I can only understand how angry and disappointed you must be right now.

Not everyone who has signed up for Buffer has been affected, but you may want to check on your accounts. We're working hard to fix this problem right now and we're expecting to have everything back to normal shortly.

We're posting continual updates on the Buffer Facebook page and the Buffer Twitter page to keep you in the loop on everything.

The best steps for you to take right now and important information for you:

        * Remove any postings from your Facebook page or Twitter page that look like spam
        * Keep an eye on Buffer's Twitter page and Facebook page
        * Your Buffer passwords are not affected
        * No billing or payment information was affected or exposed
        * All Facebook posts sent via Buffer have been temporarily hidden and will reappear once we've resolved this situation

I am incredibly sorry this has happened and affected you and your company. We're working around the clock right now to get this resolved and we'll continue to post updates on Facebook and Twitter.

If you have any questions at all, please respond to this email. Understandably, a lot of people have emailed us, so we might take a short while to get back to everyone, but we will respond to every single email.

\- Joel and the Buffer team

</comment><comment><USER3> According to their Twitter feed they have halted all outbound messages. If you go reset your password on Buffer realize the site might be compromised and use something unique from all your other passwords.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really like the folks at Buffer, hope they're able to resolve the immediate, solve for the future and that neither they nor those who's feeds were compromised suffer too much as a result.

</comment><comment><USER5> The email I got had the following core info:

All updates have been paused.

Passwords and payment information have NOT been compromised.

\--

It would be sorted out in a bit.

</comment><comment><USER6> they are in big trouble! they should solve this stuff

</comment><comment><USER7> thats not good! people are getting weight loss stuff!!</comment>


Equation to predict happiness - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140804151413.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual publication can be got from here- [http://thegreatbrainexperiment.com/publications](http://thegreatbrainexperiment.com/publications)</comment>


HMD's revived Nokia 3310 classic mobile gets 3G - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/28/hmds-revived-nokia-3310-classic-mobile-gets-3g/ <comment><USER2> Put a simple wifi hotspot in there, and i would be really interested. Except that where i live they plan to phase out 3G but retain 2G, because the market has almost completely moved to 4G/LTE except for simple remote sensors and such that are operated over 2G text messaging.</comment>


Show HN: Various Statistics in Git Repository - <AUTHOR> https://git-quick-stats.sh/ <comment><USER2> This looks awesome, I've searched for a tool like that a year ago and couldn't find.

Thanks for putting in the time and effort.</comment>


Creative Ways to Use a Digital Whiteboard in the Classroom - <AUTHOR> https://explaineverything.com/11-creative-ways-to-use-a-digital-whiteboard-in-the-classroom/ <comment><USER2> This is spam</comment>


China takes a key step toward building a large space station - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/china-takes-a-key-step-toward-building-a-large-space-station/ <comment><USER2> Very happy that countries continue pushing into space. However couldn't help but notice that SpaceX is progressing faster than anyone else. Long March 7 that they used for this mission had just 2 launches [1] compared to similar by payload to LEO Falcon 9's more than 30 launches [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March_7)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9)

<comment><USER3> SpaceX hired all NASA's engineers and uses all NASA's technologies. China builds its technologies all by itself, given that the US banned any collaboration in space program with China. You bet that SpaceX launched a few more than rockets than China. Even that, China has a higher success rate than SpaceX in rocket launching. SpaceX explodes a little too often.

<comment><USER4> > China builds its technologies all by itself

Well, if you want to be technical about it: they are using Russian designs and got help from Russia.

Russian designs are also very reliable, which is why we use them ourselves.

<comment><USER5> > they are using Russian designs

Not at all. An important and telling detail: pintle injector is almost never used in Russia, but standard for Merlins. Or you can look into gas generator cycle, which isn't used for today's Russian kerosene engines except RD-107 family, which have separate components for turbopumps and pressurization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's irritating that the US hasn't swallowed their pride and invited China to join in on the ISS. If we can manage ITAR with Russia, we can manage it with the Chinese.

<comment><USER7> ITAR is a complicated problem. In many cases the Russians either already have the technological capability or don't have the interest/ability to clone it. The Chinese are often the other way around on all three constraints.

The issue isn't so much ITAR, but tech transfer in general though. The US is an economic rival to China whereas Russia has roughly the GDP of NY. We've seen time and time again that feeding China technology only results in it being replicated and further developed domestically.

<comment> dis-sys Here comes one interesting problem - as an economic rival to China, if the US keeps refusing to sell its techs/high tech products to China, what US can really do about the current trade deficit with China?

For the general tech transfer issue, did the embargo actually work? Look at supercomputers, satellites, nukes including its delivery systems and jet fighters etc. It didn't work very well to serve the US interests. It is a failed system that probably slowed we Chinese down a little bit, but in a long run it gives your rival all motivations to invest heavily in _all_ those areas and eventually master them. When the US is basically forcing its rival to invest in itself, it sounds like a strategic mistake to me.

<comment><USER7> Yea, it's probably true that it incentivizes China to develop it's own tech (most notably super computer chips) but to develop something from square-one takes a lot of resources. It's a lot easier to reverse engineer something you bought and use it to build your own then it is to develop something from a concept. If everyone has to spend their time reinventing the wheel, they're not doing other things.

As far as the trade imbalance, the things that would fall under ITAR (the only goods that are significantly restricted) are not particularly significant on a global trade scale. Yes, the US could sell a few billion dollars worth of F-22 jets to China, but that still wouldn't make a dent, and to acquire the tech, China would only have to buy one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I fail to see what's the point of building space stations. What problem do they solve? It doesn't help with exploration of other planets and satellites. No major engineering application or scientific experiment needs them. They harm space efforts by taking money away from more fruitful ventures.

<comment><USER7> They serve as a platform for testing the technologies required for long term space exploration.

You can't just jet off into interplanetary space and expect good things to happen, you need to develop a huge array of life support systems that need to be highly reliable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every time I see a story about the Chinese space program I have two thoughts. First is the standard "good for them, let's get more competition in space."

The second is "thank God I'm not the head of security for SpaceX."</comment>


Ask HN: What short activities/projects have had the highest yield in your life? - <AUTHOR> Long projects can obviously have high returns, but what have you done in less than, say, 5-10 hours, that's had an outsized (positive) impact in your life? Can be in terms of satisfaction, or something more pragmatic.<p>Couple examples for me: - writing a blog post - learning countries of the world and their locations <comment><USER2> Probably more like 30 hours, but learning to touch type has been a tremendous benefit.

<comment><USER3> What the hell is touch typing?

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Learning Clojure and Emacs from the free online book Clojure for the Brave and True!

I can't imagine second order effects learning a lisp will have on my life!

I think about coding completely differently even though I have barely written anything sizable in Clojure.

</comment><comment><USER6> Leaving unsatisfactory jobs is probably the biggest one.

Also touch typing although I'm still getting used to doing it properly.

Learning Haskell, ok took more than 5 hrs but takes 5 to get started!

</comment><comment><USER7> Going through vimtutor two times increased my editing speed significantly.</comment>


"It's a tradeoff" and other uni-dimensional thinking - <AUTHOR> http://benlog.com/articles/2010/04/03/its-a-tradeoff-and-other-uni-dimensional-thinking/

<comment><USER2> Don't forget that Apple is reaping 30% fees on all software sold on its platforms. It's not just a little bit of money btw, the fees taken off the app store are very nearly 100% profit and are currently running somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year range. Let the app store grow for a few more years and app store fees could easily account for 10% or more of Apple's profits.

And isn't the review process totally and completely necessary because it justifies this fee structure?

Tradeoff or not, capturing those rents is a major concern for Apple. It's not ending any time soon, and it's not a mistake on their part.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was just thinking this.

The example that got me was "iPhones need to be locked down to prevent viruses". Linux, Mac OS X and Android don't have virus problems. Apparently Windows 7 is better in this regard too.

<comment><USER3> Google's DeWitt Clinton has similar thoughts too:

[http://www.google.com/buzz/117377434815709898403/brmY1L9Xh69...](http://www.google.com/buzz/117377434815709898403/brmY1L9Xh69/Sincere- question-why-would-someone-defend-Apples)</comment></comment>


Canada's vanishing tech sector - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/canadas-vanishing-tech-sector/article4396596/?page=all <comment><USER2> »" _Many Bay Street investment dealers have lost all interest in the sector, content with the flow of deals in mining and oil and gas._ "

This is indicative of Dutch disease, the process by which a country's natural sources drain investment from its human capital, producing a structural competitive disadvantage in the latter.

It usually manifests through resources firms pushing the exchange rate too high for manufacturing et al to compete. In a country with restricted and/or irregularly risk-averse capital supply, however, it could also arise as such, i.e. with limited capital seeking low-risk resources assets. This would imply regulatory constraints on Canada's capital markets.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is depressingly spot on.

What worries me most is an inability to set Nortel aside in the ongoing historical narrative of tech in this country. The seemingly inevitable decline of RIM may well put us over a tipping point in this regard, putting us in a situation where we're so paralyzed as a nation by what's happened in the past that we can't bring ourselves to look to the now, much less to the future. We can't get over Nortel in the same way that we continue to look back at the Summit Series year after year after increasingly annoying year; adding RIM onto the pile of failed Canadian tech stories is going to make a mountain that will take decades for us to come to terms with, all the while distracting us from getting shit done.

As a country, if we continue to look to the past for lessons about how to build success, we're going to be building a country that is cribbing off the skeletons of failure. Sadly, looking towards the lessons of the past and staying in the shallow waters that result are very much a part of the Canadian way. I worry that we'll be spending so much time wringing our hands over Nortel and RIM (especially outside the sector, which is where most of the money comes from) that we'll be unable to spot the next big thing.

<comment><USER4> As a Canadian working to bootstrap his own startup, I'd have to agree with everything you and the article have said.

It'll be an interesting discussion point at next week's Startup Festival in Montreal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As one of those "early tech exit" Canadian entrepreneurs, this article really hits home for me. When I first started out I talked to several successful entrepreneurs who were living in Vancouver at the time and got some rather interesting advice. Paraphrasing: Move to the valley. There are too many reasons to be there. Don't be a patriot - and don't be a martyr.

Lack of critical mass in any of these "tech hubs", overall aversion to risk, lower paying jobs, and ease of moving to the valley are all cards stacked against you before you even start.

Many smart people realize that and they leave - critical mass is incredibly difficult to achieve when you're still bleeding all that talent. This is why having anchor tenants - large companies that draw talent in is so important. We can just never seem to have more than one at at time, and then they're mis- managed into oblivion.

<comment><USER6> Why skip over Seattle, which is much closer to Vancouver than the bay, and has a pretty thriving tech scene (both startups and big players like Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft)?

<comment><USER7> You're right, we should blame them as well.

Woe is us.

On the other hand I do not see anything wrong with our Canadian talent drain. Canadian software engineers are not for want of jobs, I imagine we have the easiest time moving to the states of any nationality. Many of us are in the same time zone!

If it is not for lack of opportunities then why does Canada 'need' a tech sector? I think the truth is we _want_ a tech sector.

Just because we want something does not mean we know how to manage it. Chances are we'd mismanage it. Take our submarine fleet. Up until a few years ago about half of our submarines were stationed in Edmonton, a land locked city. Then we bought used British ones that managed to catch on fire, in the middle of the ocean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent my life in Ottawa, including the first 10 years of my professional life there, before getting out. I'm sure everyone has a different perspective, but as a coder, the problem is clearly talent.

Overwhelmingly, programmers are below average. Management are textbook gantt charts and timesheets. It's pretty much the problem that you see throughout the industry, except it's every single company. If shopify is an exception, it's a recent one.

Ottawa is particularly bad because it's a government town. 9-5 is a rule. Lot's of consulting companies. Lot's of certified managers. There's a huge sense of entitlement. The city is geographically large with bad transportation, so you have long commutes (Toronto's no different).

</comment><comment><USER9> There is a lot of high-tech stuff happening in Canada. Montreal is very attractive to gaming companies, for example. Quebec City is a hub for high- tech optics companies. The Enhanced Full Rate codec for GSM was developed in Universite de Sherbrooke (Quebec): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_full_rate> .

There is a startup festival next week in Montreal: <http://startupfestival.com/>

The problem is that all this occurs in the French-speaking part of Canada (Quebec), NOT in Ontario. There is a strong push against anything that would actually help Quebec become stronger financially, as this might trigger a greater willingness for independence.

That is why the Globe&Mail did not mention Quebec at all in their article.

Sad, but not unexpected.

<comment><USER10> Gaming companies in Montreal are a sad joke and represent everything that is wrong with Canadian tech. 37 % of game developer salary is paid by provincial government. Our tax money is given to France's business elites.

<comment><USER9> And in what manner does this situation prevent high-tech stuff from happening in Montreal, with Quebec talent?

The idea here is that a critical mass of talent is being raised in Montreal.

I agree with you that this is a good example of what is wrong with high tech in Canada: why is it that French investors are willing to invest money in Montreal, but Toronto Investment banks don't?

In what manner are Canadian VC's prevented from doing exactly the same thing as the French?

<comment> excuse-me Montreal VCs don't invest in Montreal startups, they invest in getting tax credits and grants - it's the same reason call centers "invest" in the maritimes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's amazing how most of these articles just talk about the difficulties of raising money. As if that's the only important thing missing in Canada for startups. What about the difficulty of finding out what users want (when your customers are all in the US), the lack of a concentrated talent pool of people in your sector (hard to network let alone hire), lack of sector-specific mentors. All much harder to do in Canada at the moment.

<comment><USER12> I can attest to the lack of talent in my area (Alberta).

Our company spent over a year looking for a junior PHP developer. Literally couldn't find one anywhere (the few bites we did get had no clue how to actually program in any language). And on a personal level - I've never been able to find a decent mentor anywhere. Local user groups are anemic and tend to be filled with nothing but MBA's and "idea guys" looking for dev talent, so networking is a total bust.

While this situation is great for a contractor/young developer with talent (in demand, loads of bargaining power) - it's frustrating as all heck once you buy into a company and want to take it to the next level.

Our province is bursting with resource money - yet very little of it is being directed at creating a sustainable economic sector based on something other then crap that can be pulled out of the ground.

<comment><USER13> The lack of PHP/Rails developers in Alberta is unfortunate, but the cause is that enterprise development dominates the industry, with .net and Java projects taking up nearly all the market share and the rest existing in very niche markets. Software development exists here primarily to facilitate stuff being pulled from the ground.

Have you considered using .net for your startup? There is the obvious drawback of having to license the Microsoft stack, but ASP MVC is now mature enough to being a solid backend platform for a startup, and your odds at finding a talented .net developer in Alberta are magnitudes greater than the platforms hyped in Silicon Valley. The BizSpark program also gives you a 3 year free run at MS licensing.

As an experienced contractor in the Calgary area, I'd go as far as saying the Oil & Gas has created a large surplus of .net developers especially in the last 3 years, which explains the booming IT headhunting sector here, and hiring capable developers seems to take only a handful of days from start to finish.

<comment><USER14> If there's a lot of Java devs there, the poster might also consider using a JVM-based language. No licensing with MS required, and it should be a relatively painless transition for Java devs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm Canadian and worked in high-tech in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver until 2006. Then I moved to Southern California and worked there until 2010 (on a work visa) and have been in Australia since.

In Ottawa I worked for the federal government. It paid off my student debt but professionally was a dead end (although that's mostly true of any government town). I then worked for a branch office of an American company in Toronto (although FWIW most of the developers were Romanian) before moving to Vancouver where the startup I worked for folded in the aftermath of the dot- com bust.

I loved living in California but hated the restrictions of the H1B work visa so moved to Australia (my wife is Aussie) largely so I create my own startup, which I've done (<https://www.SlickDNS.com>). The weather in particular in California is fantastic.

The fact of the matter is that compared to the US the high-tech economy in Canada is very small. There are really only a handful of _cities_ with a high- tech sector (Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary?, Vancouver) whereas the US has at least as many _regions_ with sizeable high-tech sectors (Seattle, Silicon Valley, SoCal, Texas, Research Triangle, Boston, NYC).

In all of the cities in Canada, the weather is worse, salaries are lower, taxes are higher, and houses cost more than pretty much any of the US regions I mentioned barring perhaps SF or NYC. (Vancouver's real estate is notably expensive, largely because it's an easy way for nominal immigrants from Hong Kong to park their money.) So financially the US is unbeatable, but the price you pay is having to put up with the Kafkaesque US immigration system and work visa restrictions.

Australia's economy is actually quite similar to Canada's in that it's dominated by the natural resources sector. House prices are also similarly in a bubble (e.g., try comparing prices for 3 bedroom houses in Melbourne vs. Austin), but on the plus side the weather down here is better. I do miss Tim Hortons though.

</comment><comment><USER16> The problem extends beyond financing. As even the article says, successful companies like Shopify are able to raise $$$ from the US. It's also a scale problem. Canada has has, by my count, four micro tech scenes (Waterloo, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa). In a Country with such a small population, there really still isn't a "hub" for tech. With talent so dispersed (and much of it moving to the US as it is), it's hard to get talent for good ideas in one place.

<comment><USER17> Indeed. Big companies like Microsoft and Google tend to snatch a good portion of highly skilled engineers, while most designers (product and visual) tend to head towards New York City or San Francisco for better growth and money.

<comment><USER18> IME the remaining skilled engineers want to work remotely.

The last 8 years I've worked almost exclusively for US based businesses as a remote contractor. It's the best of both worlds, I can charge competitive rates but have a relatively overall lower cost of living and access to free healthcare. Taxes are higher in Canada, but it works out that I'm way ahead than if I lived in SF or NY.

The downside is that I occasionally do miss the one-on-one interaction I get with team. It helps that I've begin working for a co-op, and I'm often working as a team with the same devs on new client projects. I also do lots of oss work, which helps me keep my skills up by working on challenging projects as part of a community.

<comment><USER19> That's interesting, I've always wanted to do something like that and never really figured out how. Mind giving details? Or if you'd rather not do it here, just send me an email, it's my username at gmail.

<comment><USER18> I don't mind talking about it here. I've worked solo for a number of years after leaving a stable full time job. I did a lot of open source work and through the community I've come in contact with a group of devs who work together on client projects.

The people running the coop are responsible for finding us the new contracts, and they add something on top while I get to charge decent rates. I know I could probably market myself and earn the same thing without the middleman, but I don't have to worry about keeping the pipeline full, billing, negotiations, etc.. having someone else handle that frees me up to focus on development.

The nice thing about this arrangement is that since we're a team we can work on larger projects than I would otherwise be able to bid on myself. Instead of having to juggle 5 or 10 projects to fill all my billable hours in a month, I can easily do it with just a couple. I'm also able to go much deeper and work on 6-12 month contracts, rather than doing short, trivial projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As an individual Canadian entrepreneur, really your only course of action is to ignore the talk of doom and gloom and just get shit done.

It does seem to be the reality, though, that beyond a certain stage the only way to get a good valuation is to work with American VCs.

<comment><USER21> I'm actually surprised that the article didn't touch on how the rules have been loosened so that American VCs can play in Canada a lot easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is fairly true of pretty much every country except the US. Finland had Nokia, now in decline. Germany still has SAP but that's it. The UK has nothing large left, all sold abroad (last one was Autonomy). Most countries have never had a big tech company at all.

<comment><USER23> You forgot another continent, Asia.

<comment><USER22> Well there is Samsung, a few companies in China. The Indian companies are mostly services, not tech. So similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Many say it best, risk averse. Early stage, tech savvy angels are as rare as sunny weather here in Vancouver. There are about 3 in total, all working out of Growlab.

That being said, complaining about it won't get it fixed. Growlab is doing yeoman's work to get the SV money pipe flowing north, they just need help. They need better companies with bigger ideas, more aggressive founders, and one decent exit. All it will take to lure some money out of the mining and oil sector is a couple big returns, and I see a few that aren't far off.

Tough as hell trying to raise out here, but it only makes you stronger.

</comment><comment><USER25> Saw a post in Engineer Blogs recently, <http://engineerblogs.org/2012/07/wtf-17-seditious-traitor/>, which was written from a Canadian who decided to move to China to seek out tech opportunities. Kind of wondering if Canada's tech industry with RIM and Nortel is like Detroit in general with the auto industry - as the big companies go, so does everything else.

</comment><comment><USER26> If the United States passes the startup visa act, it would be vanishing much quicker.

I'd most certainly be in line to apply.

<comment><USER27> Good news for Canada then. The odds of the US coming up with a rational immigration policy are pretty low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am an Australian/British dual-citizen (born in Australia but lived and worked some ~3 years in London and ~1 year in Zurich) who now works in New York. I've had discussions with various people (mainly other engineers) on the topic of how one would go about starting a startup.

These discussions--largely theoretical--have centered around three problems:

1\. Where?

2\. The route to funding/profitability; and

3\. Visa/residency issues.

(3) of course depends on (1) and the nationalities and residencies of the respective founders. As a UK citizen I luckily have the right to reside anywhere in the EU. For the US unfortunately I need a visa but Australians have access to the E3 visa, which has a lower bar to issuance than even the H1B (there is no need for the employer to "prove" they can't find someone local, which is essentially a legal circus) but there are issues in using work visas to found companies.

There are I believe many foreign engineers in the US in the same boat as me.

I've looked into the possibility of either situating in Canada or at least using it as a stepping stone. It could have a lot going for it, for example:

\- Vancouver is relatively speaking close to Seattle and the Bay area;

\- No health insurance problems (comparatively);

\- Relatively low cost (compared to, say, San Francisco);

\- English-speaking;

\- Cultural similarities.

And here's where Canada really has an opportunity to attract fledgling companies: software patents. If Canada were to invalidate software patents then they'd essentially be providing a safe haven for small companies until they're large enough to defend themselves. Of course, trolls can still go after US operations (if, say, you hosted in the US) but you would be at least partially protected.

Sadly, the Canadian government seems to be just an inept when it comes to IP issues as other Western governments (and, worse, it seems to take its lead from the US).

But if you go look at the Canadian immigration sites you find out that:

\- getting residency is relatively difficult; and

\- engineers aren't even on the list of high-demand occupations (whereas restaurant managers are, for example).

Now Canadians could be concerned that if such a program existed people would use it until they could get to the US and I suspect that would happen a lot but I think that's fine because a certain percentage would stay. Some would employ Canadians, at least for a time. Some of those would go when the startup move. Some wouldn't.

That's how ecosystems form. It's not an exercise in being better than say Silicon Valley. Like so much else in life, it's simply an exercise in persistence and ultimately a numbers game.

Beyond those options I'm not sure where next someone in my shoes might otherwise go. London and Germany (I lived in Cologne for a time and loved it) are obvious choices.

In a bootstrapping scenario or even at a seed-funding level it would be ideal to keep costs low. Costs in the Bay Area for talent and even housing, etc are bordering nightmarish and I say this as someone who lives in Manhattan. Finding and retaining talent in SF/SV must be torture for new companies.

Personally I prefer New York but hey YMMV.

Anyway, back to Canada, it seems to have the same problem Australia does in a way: it's too focused in ripping stuff out of the ground and selling it than it is on tech. Oh well, their loss.

<comment><USER29> _engineers aren't even on the list of high-demand occupations_

Probably because there is no demand. My local municipal government was recently looking for someone to maintain their website, which is little more than a simple blog. The job description essentially laid out the job as your basic, run of the mill CRUD application. The kind of stuff kids in high school do for fun.

When you read down to the requirements section though, they were asking for a CS degree and a bunch of other stuff you would normally expect to find from a $200K/year job at Google, not a mediocre pay, small government job. The fact that they can actually ask for such ridiculous requirements and fill the position speaks to there being far more supply than demand, at least from my point of view.

<comment><USER20> Absolute nonsense. The only reason that probably got posted was because whoever posted it had no idea what they were doing.

Demand for talented engineers in Canada vastly outstrips available supply. Period.

<comment><USER30> I attended an event in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in the summer with about 50 local developers. At the end they had an informal few minutes where people who are hiring can stand up and pitch. There were a half dozen people from medium to large companies (e.g. Electronic Arts was one of the large ones). They asked who was looking for work and not a single person raised their hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Many non-tech friends/family have told me that Victoria BC has a booming tech industry (esp in gaming). _Can anyone confirm that for me_? I haven't found very much online about it so feel a bit doubtful.

I'm Canadian and moving back to Victoria next month from NY. The current plan is to push hard on a small service business for the airline industry (so I'm not in a hurry to find a new job). Even so, I've been away for over a decade and the place is likely to have changed a lot.

If you are in Victoria, the island, Vancouver, or the sunshine coast, I would love to buy you lunch (or just a coffee) and chat about the lay of the tech landscape in the area. Email's in my profile if you're up for it.

<comment><USER21> Victoria "booming" is a pretty extraordinary claim. I'm in Vancouver, and there is at least some startup activity, but I can't think of much in Victoria. Maybe from a non-tech perspective it looks that way, but look at the companies in both locations and see which are hiring. It's probably the most objective way of finding out which is "booming".

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been recently asking my Engineer friends about this very topic. I've always known that it's not the same as it was. I wish I was wrong. Quite a few have left the field, and others have left the country. I've been working in the high tech sector in Ottawa for 10 years now.

I started out working for (big surprise) a start up telecom company as a co-op student. I loved it. Then tried the government. I wanted to kill myself. So I tried hard to stay in the private sector. I got a job at Newbridge, which had just been acquired by Alcatel, a company from France. (Alcatel is now Alcatel- Lucent). I was there when they started laying off people. It was around 2001 when things started going south. The start up I worked for went bankrupt shortly after.

So now I was done school. Quite a few friends from different universities had gone south to Cisco, Nvidia, etc. Meanwhile, I tried to get into QNX, but then money became an issue for them and nothing materialized. Jobless, I waited and took anything I could get my hands on, including the dreaded Government, which turned out to be OK. I told myself I'd do this until things settle down and then I'd jump right back to the private sector.

Boy was I wrong. Most of the people, as mentioned in the article, were still put-off by the Nortel debacle. I knew people my senior, who had 20+ years of Engineering who couldn't get hired because they had too much experience. Pretty funny. They took off to the US, eventually returning to start their own company, but swearing never to work for a big corp again. They said the were tired of making other people rich.

In fact, they never really cared at that point to grow a company into a giant one. They just wanted enough to enjoy life. Management in the high tech had a sort of arrogance about them. Too much of a show off in my opinion.

And here we are years after Nortel sunk. Nortel was full of mismanagement. Quite the ego they had. They would have keg parties almost every Friday. Where the hell was the money coming from?!?

The tech sector had been saturated with Engineers and Comp Sci people with the promise of big money. A dime a dozen they were. Most didn't really have what it took, but they did it for the job. We all know that's not sustainable.

It's as though the Canadian high tech people need to go see a Psychologist. They're stuck like a sports team who just had a bad losing streak. They love looking and emulating the US in the aesthetics and show, but don't realize that there's more to it than that. I don't know, I shouldn't speak on behalf of an entire sector, I don't know that much. But something about how they went about things.

Needless to say, the risk taking and drive is no longer here because most of the people that had it aren't here either. And the ones that did remain, are still a bit jaded and don't want to play that game anymore. You need risk takers, and our society is not that anymore. We've all been scared into taking the safe route. This includes myself. Yup, I changed to a different position in the government (really, really boring - but I have a baby now) and at the moment, don't plan to leave. Maybe once the mortgage is paid off, and the kid is older I'll take risks again, but until then, I'm not willing to take a risk. Working for a corporation is silly to me because you have ZERO control. That may be one reason why there aren't going to be many RIMs or Nortels coming up in Canada. People don't trust large corps anymore, so the odds of building one isn't going to get any better.

My 2 cents on this issue. Hopefully I'm wrong and people with guts (not like me) will take some risks. Who knows what the future holds.

<comment><USER33> Well, you are right but you are looking in the wrong areas of the City. I'm clearly biased, being the founder of Shopify, but we are here to change everything you mentioned above and we have succeeded so far when everyone told us we couldn't. Feel like going for a coffee?

<comment><USER34> I'm a big fan of shopify, so don't take this the wrong way, but would you really be a good fit for someone with a baby and a mortgage? Currently, he's making decent money, with great pension and benefits, doing incredibly boring work. He could leave all that behind and work for shopify, for what? A couple fun years of lower total compensation without the security?

As someone who's finishing up college, I'd hop on that in a heartbeat. If I had a kid and a house, though? Far less likely.

<comment><USER33> Ok this is super difficult to answer because you only gave me circumstantial information instead of data that I need to make a recommendation. The questions that need answering are:

      * How high is the individuals potential on an absolute scale?
      * Is the current environment providing a steady way to reach this high potential
        in a reasonable time frame?

If the answer is something like "high,no" then it seems to me that the opportunity cost of not coming to Shopify would be very high.

We are huge on work life balance because this is something that we can do much better in Canada then in the Valley. There are about 5 core hours in the day that we want people to be there ( 11 to 4 ) for meetings. We pay child support bonus, gym membership, catered free high quality lunch every day, we do tons of offsite events etc etc etc.

Now, let me read between the lines. I assuming we are talking about a dev position. The fact is that there is essentially 100% employment for great programmers. That's unlikely to be change in our lifetime. The reasons for that are complex but googling for "Software is eating the World" is a good starting point. Given this, it worries me when people talk about risking their pension and secure jobs. The only thing that's at risk in ones career is to not hit your personal full potential. If you don't agree with that then Shopify will not be a culture fit.

Also: A ton of people at Shopify, including me, have kids and mortgage but.

<comment><USER27> You explicitly pay people more money if they have kids? That's interesting ... I've never heard that one before.

<comment><USER35> Any company that covers the premium for a family health plan is paying 'more' for employees with families.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> To give a sense of what the job market is like here in Vancouver, I know a few people who accepted great offers at Google or similar companies after getting only a couple of mediocre offers locally. There are some interesting startups here for sure and I haven't had trouble finding work but the major tech employers are not on the same level as what you find in the Bay Area.

The talent drain that exists unfortunately forms a self-perpetuating cycle. It lowers the quality of remaining talent, so there are fewer successful companies, and as a result there are fewer potential tech investors of the kind they have in the Bay Area. This is a perennial problem in Canada that has affected multiple industries in a similar way.

Another local problem in Vancouver is the high cost of living. Even Toronto suffers from this somewhat. They're both pretty appealing cities but they don't necessarily have the best "price to performance" ratio.

</comment><comment><USER37> Toronto's a hotbed of tech, but you won't find many of the companies listed on an exchange.

I find the focus on public companies to be misguided. Why not look at job creation instead?

</comment><comment><USER38> I've just moved back to SF bay after 8 years and am looking for a job. I realized there are so many Canadians here! Almost all from waterloo too.

I was thinking of going back to Toronto where I went to university and have a network but it doesn't seem very promising.

</comment><comment><USER39> As a South African developer with 14 years experience, and looking at moving from South Africa, what are the names of some of these events I should look at to make contact with some of these co's?

</comment><comment><USER40> IMO, here is the salient part of the article:

"risk-averse"

</comment><comment><USER41> agreed. been looking at this for a while. If you're Canada based you gotta reach out internationally (Europe, U.S., Asia) to acquire funds, projects, ideas. Thinking domestic is not optimal.

</comment><comment><USER42> Even within EA, Bioware's not doing too hot as a division, isn't it?

<comment><USER43> It's doing OK, but I think EA wanted Mass Effect 3 to sell more than it did.

<comment><USER44> ME3 actually exceeded expectations, despite all the online whinging. It's the failure of TOR to achieve WoW-killing success that's keeping the stock low.</comment></comment></comment>


PyCon India 2012 in Bangalore(28-30 September 2012) - <AUTHOR>

Pycon India 2012 regular registration extended<p>http://in.pycon.org/2012/blog/regular-registration-deadline-extended <comment><AUTHOR> PyCon India 2012, the fourth edition of PyCon India conference is being held in Bangalore,India from 28th September 2012 to 30th September 2012.

<http://in.pycon.org/2012/>

With two keynote speakers, Jacob Kaplan-Mos (co-author of Django) and David Mertz (author of Text Processing with Python) and with lot of interesting talks coming up (including 2 talks proposed by a core CPython developer), this is promising to be best PyCon India ever.

The last date for regular registration has been extended to August 31. Register soon.

<http://pyconindia2012.doattend.com/>

If you are planning to submit a talk or a tutorial, the last date is August 25. Talks can be submitted at:

<http://in.pycon.org/2012/funnel/pyconindia2012/>

Conference Dates:

Tutorial day - Friday, September 28, 2012 Main Conference - Saturday-Sunday, September 29-30, 2012</comment>


April Zero v3 - <AUTHOR> http://aprilzero.com/2015/12/9/ <comment><USER2> Looks sharp, definitely a lot of great work on design.

I just can't seem to see the value in it; what actionable or information do you get out of this? I've tracked my movements with OpenPaths [1] in the past and had fun building a couple data visualizations out of it (I love the fact that others can request access to anonymized data collected by OpenPaths).

I just have no anecdotal or empirical evidence of users putting this data to good use. If anything, folks I've seen using Fitbit/FuelBand could use a bit more exercise and a better diet. People tracking their sleep activity tend to stay late and have poor sleeping habits (for example).

Do you really need a fancy dissection of your every move and interaction to even know what you should be doing with yourself?

[1]: [https://openpaths.cc](https://openpaths.cc)

<comment><USER3> One of my university professors always said: "No metrics, no movement."

The opportunity to add value is by intersecting the metrics. As a software engineer who likes to work in cafes, I'd like to know at which cafe I have the highest commit frequency. As a coffee drinker, I'd like to know at which cafe my resting heart rate is the highest (strongest cup!)

<comment><USER4> I don't know if this was intended to be tongue in cheek, but I started working remotely 6 years ago and found that where I was working had a huge effect on my productivity. It took a while to identify the pattern but I think it is settings that are unfamiliar or, even better, where I feel very out of place. So the first time I go to a cafe, and especially if there aren't a lot of people with laptops there, I do great. If I keep going there for a month and feel really comfortable, then my productivity falls.

I gave up on trying to understand why, and just accepted it.

(That being said, firing up Self Control[0] and a pomodoro timer provide a much bigger boost for me.)

[0][https://selfcontrolapp.com/](https://selfcontrolapp.com/)

<comment><USER3> I was being sincere, and I think I identify with what you mean. A subtle (not discomforting) blanket of anxiousness has the power to snap me into focus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Super cool theme. The company seems to be at [https://gyrosco.pe/](https://gyrosco.pe/). They lost me at the facebook login, but it made me think about privacy and user-defined privacy a bit.

Gyroscope's pitch says you can share or instead keep everything private. I think a service like this would be a lot more appealing to me (and it is undeniably cool) if the data were kept encrypted on server, and only available on my end device.

I suppose the same thing could be done with some sort of multiparty destination encryption for sharing.

Until then, my data is just getting monetized for any party that will pay gyroscope. Any comments from your team, aprilzero?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

First of all, we're not selling any data, nor do we ever plan to. We do make money by offering a pro subscription--this new design is one of the features, along with things like custom domains and access to our Healthkit app. We've already gotten a few dozen upgrades today, which is really exciting and lets me confidently say things like "we will never sell your data".

We believe that sharing of this data is an important part of the experience for most people. Of course you don't have to, but for many people that is the first thing they want to do. Perhaps only with your family or a few close friends, and not the whole world, but a single-player experience that only exists on your device would be missing many of the experiences that we think are core to Gyroscope.

A small percent of users have made their profiles public, and many of those have set up a custom domain name and are very excited about sharing it and having a personal website that reflects who they are. Having the data in the cloud makes that use-case possible, though of course doesn't require it.

Our new mobile apps are also taking a slightly different approach, where all of the source data is private but allows for curation and customization, and you can export individual images with aspects that you want people to be able to see. I think that will be the right balance of privacy and control for most people, while still allowing sharing of things they want to highlight.

Making my account completely public has been an interesting experiment. When I first did it last year, I wasn't sure what to expect. Overall it has been very positive experience, and my current opinion is that more transparency is generally good. The location data is probably the most sensitive out of all the things we track. For other people, weight or age have been concerns, and we've added settings to fully hide those.

There are things I consider very private and wouldn't want anyone else to see — like my messages, emails, finances, etc. — but I am personally happy to release the data on the site, like what my heart rate is or how much I slept yesterday. That balance will vary for everyone, which is why I have been experimenting mostly on myself before recommending things to others.

The location data is probably the most sensitive, and we've been playing around with other themes that show different combinations of data and keep more of that private.

We might add other login options in the future, but currently we've found Facebook to be a great experience because we can boot up your basic account info (timezone, name, cover photo, age, etc.) without needing all that to be manually entered. It would be a terrible experience if the first 5 minutes on Gyroscope were just spent typing in basic facts about yourself. One of our big challenges with Gyroscope is how to passively power all this stuff without creating any more work for the user. Our goal has been to go through the whole experience without ever needing to use your keyboard to type anything, maybe with the exception of setting your username.

<comment><USER5> Well, in my case, I deleted my facebook a few years ago, so you actually did lose me, not just as part of some public stand.

I think it's interesting you're publishing your data, and I'm glad you're happy with what you're publishing -- it totally makes sense. User-defined privacy is an awesome thing.

It remains my proposal that you consider actually cutting off your own access to customer data unless they decide to publish it, essentially extending that ability you have while in control of the system to your customers. I think you can see from some of the comments in this chain that people aren't so trusting as you feel you deserve.

And, of course, if someday you or the company needs the revenue, then it might be nice to have already, when not under duress, made a not easily-revocable decision about the ways you'll choose to monetize user data. Or, obviously, it might hamstring your plans.

<comment><USER6> Same here, deleted my Facebook account a year or two ago, so any time a "cool" service pops up that requires Facebook, it's a bummer to not be able to try out the service, but at the same time it feels like it validates my stance that Facebook has become one of the biggest dangers to the original dream of what the Internet could become.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the most San Francisco thing I've ever seen

<comment><USER8> As a Pole living in San Francisco I don't even know if I should be proud or ashamed, but you're totally right :)

<comment><USER9> Why ashamed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was just thinking about the UI on a lot of shows/movies and how rarely we see any UI like it in the real world. Even those 'FBI databases mainframes...' that a character hacked into do not look anything like that in real life.

This is pretty cool and fits in well in 'Hollywood'. Now I want to find a project that I can actually use a similar UI on haha.

<comment><USER11> I love the 'Hollywood' look as well, and a recent hobby of mine has been to recreate some of my favorite ones for the web. It has been a great learning experience.

Tron Legacy: [http://www.robscanlon.com/encom- boardroom/](http://www.robscanlon.com/encom-boardroom/)

Guardians of the Galaxy: [http://www.robscanlon.com/about/](http://www.robscanlon.com/about/)

Wargames: [http://www.robscanlon.com/github- wargames/](http://www.robscanlon.com/github-wargames/)

It's interesting how certain techniques seem to come up over and over again... like they almost always use complex intro/exit animations for every element and additive blending over dark backdrops.

<comment><USER12> That's... just stunning. I'm bookmarking your site. Please continue this great work!

<comment><USER11> Thanks, that's very kind of you to say that. I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the UX but I still find the self-quantification data shallow. Time as a measurement of efficiency is inherently flawed, for example.

And there's (as best I can tell) no goal setting nor recommendations for meeting goals based on prior successes and failures.

That's still the big gap in self-quantification. In the mean time we're just making prettier charts.

<comment><USER14> I have been thinking about this too. I agree that time is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to measuring efficiency. Do you think measuring how many to do list items someone completes would be a better metric?

<comment><USER13> Of course, but whenever you skew from passive acquisition of data to a system that requires active participation you increase the likelihood of inaccurate or incomplete data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I vaguely remember seeing the homepage of a quantified self nerd that showed all his live stats - ecg, hydration, activity and stuff like that. I can't seem to find it though. It was absolutely beautiful. Then again, like the other arguments made here, I don't know what one can do

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure it was this. April Zero has hit the front page of HN before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here is some of the data collected during my work out this morning in the new mobile app coming out soon.

[https://instagram.com/p/_H22dosEM9/](https://instagram.com/p/_H22dosEM9/)

I have been using this product as soon as I could join, then joined the company few months after.

There is definite improvement in my health and focus. As a weightlifter, it's especially useful and awesome to see after a work out. Or whatever you do to keep you active. And if you haven't started make a goal of taking a walk or light jog! That's streaks keep your motivated to improve!

Check out other stuff here at [https://gyrosco.pe/myusuf3](https://gyrosco.pe/myusuf3)

Give it a shot and use the data to improve, set short term goals and strive towards them, the differences you will see are incredible.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why in the world would I want to connect this to Facebook? You really need an option to sign up with email.

Other than that... Very cool looking design. Looks like it would be interesting to try. I like the integration with other apps and sensors. Lots of potential.

</comment><comment><USER19> Big change since v2, congratulations. Any plans to commercialize? Would like to see this applied to athletic team performance monitoring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This is actually already available, and a demo of our new Gyroscope Pro offering, which is $7 a month and includes things like this new theme, custom domain name support (which is how I have it going to aprilzero.com), our healthkit iPhone app to power it, etc. Check it out at [https://gyrosco.pe/](https://gyrosco.pe/)

We want to build this as something that anyone can just go and sign up for and start using. I would love to get more athletes using this. We recently released a running app powered by the Gyroscope data — (see gyro.run) — and it's been really exciting to see people use it to share marathons, training, etc. We still don't have a good solution for things like gym training, which are hard to passively track, but that's something we're definitely thinking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The UI is very nice, very interesting. I am curious if this could fit with the Microsoft Band.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love the direction that this project is going in. I think a future where you can monitor your body in real time and use that data to make decision about what to eat, treat medical conditions in their very stages, maximize energy, etc. I think body chemistry is still a huge unknown area that I would love to see explored. Can you monitor the body and sense DNA damage and possibly be able to attribute it to something that you can change. Can you measure the levels of various chemicals in your body to find an imbalance? Fuck 140 characters, this is the direction the minds of our brightest people should be going in

</comment><comment><USER22> "What you measure is what you get."

Just wanted to say thanks for building this out. It'll be great to be able to see custom metrics in the dashboard which the user can enter themselves, and yes, the app can remind the user to enter them. This came to my mind since I can imagine people wanting to track body fat% or other specific body measurements which can't just be picked up by a tracking device, nor can be found in Apple's Health App.

</comment><comment><USER23> What tech did you use for developing the interface? Any framework, library, architecture (thinking React/Flux/Angular) or was it done by scratch?

<comment><USER24> Based on my quick poking around, there doesn't seem to be any special framework. It just looks like jQuery and manual DOM manipulation for the most part, with the code organized around a typical OO design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really beautiful work, I'd love to see a technical write-up on how this was achieved and would definitely follow something like that.

I'm interested in joining this, however I don't have such a wrist device. Which tracker would be best for receiving the most accurate data? Is there a recommended tracker (Fitbit vs. Jawbone vs. etc.) that provides more data, so this app can track more things for the user?

<comment><AUTHOR> iPhones for the past few years have actually been tracking steps and other data in the background & storing it in Healthkit. You won't be able to get heart rate, but a lot of our views can be powered with just software.

Our new healthkit app (gyrosco.pe/app, currently in beta) loads steps from the iPhone, and we also integrate with other apps like Moves which also run on the phone.

The idea is you can get started within just a few minutes and not need to buy anything. We can also backfill the last year of data so you don't start with an empty site. Then you can start to add hardware to get more data you care about, like a wifi scale or heart rate monitor.

There are many other apps that also write to healthkit, like sleep tracking apps Sleep++ / Sleep Cycle, which will then show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Make it work in realtime, add a camera feed and you would have realised the Colonial Marines mission screens from the APC in aliens.

[http://www.robf.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2011/12/Aliens-A2S...](http://www.robf.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2011/12/Aliens-A2S7-screens.png)

</comment><comment><USER27> Splendid interface. I'll never stop saying I'm scared of the future but we have to embrace it. I am paranoid to use this as there isn't a TOS or maybe it's just me that couldn't find any but what if early sign-ups will just be experiments for them to work on? what if there's some way this affects the users later?

</comment><comment><USER28> DISCLAIMER: I don't mean to promote an application

This application reminds me about a mobile application that is similar with this.

An application that called "Exist" [1]. Exist tracks everything in one place. It tracks your fitness data and other services connected with yours.

[1]: [https://exist.io/](https://exist.io/)

</comment><comment><USER29> It looks cool, but I still don't see how this site will give me more info then in my example my Basis website. It claims it improves productivity but I fail to see how it would do that, aside me analysing graphs, that tends to waste time...

Anyhow, if anyone has good info that would help me understand this, I would appreciate it.

It is really impressive site.

</comment><comment><USER30> This looks good, but the real value would be in an AI monitoring you in the background, rather than yourself having to look at your stats.

In other words it suffer a little bit from the hacking in movies syndrome. The real interesting application is the continues monitoring by the system not by me. That kind of defeats the purpose.

</comment><comment><USER31> Looks cool and useful, but I'd never want a 3rd party to have that dataset. Could care less about privacy policies. (They're meaningless.)

On a different level, it's very much not clear from the site itself what hardware you need to have to get all the various metrics it's displaying.

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks awesome.

I am not sure this is your target market, but using TrainingPeaks as an integration will solve a lot of problems for athletes and coaches.

TrainingPeaks is the number one tool today for serious athletes, especially ones that have coaches and teams.

</comment><comment><USER33> > 1.4 hours on Gyroscopedev:5000

Looks like someone's been working on the dev version :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Do you still have the previous versions of the site?

I did like the places/travel pages.

</comment><comment><USER35> My only problem with Gyroscope is there is still no alternative logins. I don't use Facebook, and I don't want to make a login for them just to use it.

</comment><comment><USER36> The UI is nice but it runs very slow on my FF.

</comment><comment><USER37> What's with the UI here? Sure, it looks nice, but do you need all that fanciness for just a health dashboard?

</comment><comment><USER38> I like it and I upgraded. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> How will you measure Glucose levels?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably sano.co — very excited for the day when that is integrated and works in realtime

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Oh, another mystery-meat menu.

</comment><comment><USER40> Facebook account required.</comment>


Ask HN: As a programmer, what do you wish you knew at 25? - <AUTHOR> What have you learned now that you wish when you started? <comment><USER2> The most carefully-constructed, architecturally-pure piece of code will still break in the face of future requirements. And in a surprising number of cases, it will break on the _very first_ new requirement. Keep it straightforward and get it done.

You will almost never be working on something so performance-critical that it truly needs cleverness and super-optimization. And you will rarely have time to properly _measure_ a particular thing anyway. You _will_ be expected to frequently change things and super-optimal code is a pain to modify.

You will work with programmers with a variety of skills and it will often be impossible for them to maintain things of moderate complexity. Or, your team will be using ancient tool versions that _can't_ reliably do the spiffy new thing in the language. Again, straightforward code wins.

When you write a test, first set up a case that fails to make sure your test can actually catch a failure. Too much time is spent debugging things because tests "pass" when the tests themselves just weren't doing what they meant to do.

The code is king: put everything you possibly can in there (comments, etc.). Don't let people set up external documentation that no one reads, because it becomes wrong/misleading within a day. If you _must_ have things outside the code, they _need_ to be revision-controlled alongside the code, in the same repository.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most important take, which took me years to sink in, is that code does not matter. So many things stem from that simple fact.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh? What do you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To stop being obsessed with pointless BS and actually finish something. Even if it's terrible.

Also, that I would _deeply_ regret going to school to learn progamming once Udemy became a thing.

<comment><USER5> > To stop being obsessed with pointless BS and actually finish something. Even > if it's terrible.

Can you go deeper ?

<comment><USER4> Once my projects get complex enough, I have a habit of wanting to dump everything and start over or else get sidetracked by tangents.

For instance, in trying to get my second game project finished (cloning Berzerk) I got a decent bit of the way there but decided I hated everything. I've since deleted and rewrote the ECS at least three times, added, deleted and readded a Lua API (which I actually like but wasn't really necessary), wrote and rewrote a font atlas for SDL's font library (again, fun, but not necessary), and am currently on my whatever-th complete rewrite of the engine because I decided it needs to be redesigned around sparse arrays and not vectors of pointers.

So in the end I have piles of half-baked ideas and unimplemented code and nothing finished. Turns out I like the code I don't write more than the code I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish I knew at 25 that programming is perhaps not my actual calling.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are some

>Yes I am a programmer, stop questioning it

>Stop avoiding learning to make macros and job automation, it will pay dividends

>Javascript is fine, not great.

>Embedded systems should be my full-time hobby

>Stop avoiding capitalism and start charging money for my otherwise free products.</comment>


Language for Unix command line utilities? - <AUTHOR> I code for a small biocomputing company. We download nucleotide sequence and taxonomy information in a number of unrelated formats from a number of public repositories and run various kinds of translation and analysis on it. Much of what we write are small command line tools that search, summarize, or transform certain types of (large trees of) text files. These programs look and feel a lot like traditional core Unix utilities; our most widely used programs are essentially just a specialized version of diff and a specialized version of grep, respectively. We used to prototype most of our utilities as shell scripts or in Perl; we redid shell scripts in Perl or C (or sometimes Java) if they became performance bottlenecks.
Some years ago we decided to move from Perl to Python for new projects because Perl programs had a way of always ending up as maintainability nightmares and because Perl seemed on the way out anyway. It largely worked, but we were never really, truly happy with our Python code. I suspect part of the reason is that Python can be (or at least feel) less succinct than even C if you do lots of low-level file system stuff with close error checking. The true reason is probably largely aesthetic. We can't explain what's wrong, we're just vaguely uneasy.
What other alternative to C should we be looking at? Ruby? Haskell? Is Go there yet? We have very open minds and are willing to consider pretty much anything that gives us reasonably easy and unmolested access to syscalls and their return values. <comment><USER2> I do a lot of command-line-tool-writing, my language at the moment is Haskell, tho' I still count myself as a Haskell beginner, it's proving to be very productive. The old adage that if Haskell code compiles it works is mostly true; bugs are caught up-front rather than after running in the wild for a bit; type inference, explicit pure/IO and functional composition are real boons. I need to build more familiarity with the libraries before I can be as productive in the short term (e.g. for "one offs") as I am in Python but already I believe in the long term (because one-offs never are!) I'm pulling ahead.

OCaml would be a good choice too. Both of these languages work very naturally with tree-like structures. Profiling/code coverage in both is very easy. IMHO there's no need to go to C for any but the most performance-critical code (and remember that your I/O etc is already in C in the kernel). The C approach of checking the return value of every syscall (e.g. no exceptions) is very cumbersome.

Case in point today: rather than persuade our Unix guys to roll out Expect across a bunch of new machines, I rewrote a ~200 line Expect script I had in ~60 lines of Haskell and deployed a binary instead of a script.

<comment><USER3> On OCaml, <http://ocaml.janestreet.com/> might interest the OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Only thing I can think of is AWK, but that's only slightly more readable than perl and is probably less maintainable since perl has vastly superior profiling and debugging tools.

I mostly use Python for the sorts of things you are mentioning. And from what you're saying you don't like a bout Python, I suspect that going to Ruby or Haskell or such is going to be worse. Python can more easily call the underlying C routines then either of those.

It would be nice if you could provide an example of something you think is inelegant and/or awkward in Python so that we could figure out which direction to point you.

I do a lot of coding in common lisp and some programming in haskell, but wouldn't recommend either of those based on what I've heard from you so far. There's a few dataflow style languages I've seen that would probably allow very succinct code, but they were all toys and performed quite poorly.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It would be nice if you could provide an example

For me personally the main source of unhappiness is error messages. In C I can say

if (!(f = open(name, "r"))) die(name);

where _die_ is a tiny function that prints _name_ , followed by whatever strerror has to say to the subject, formatted in the usual fashion. One line, done with it. The obvious, conventional Python equivalent is four lines long because both try: and except: insist on a line of their own. Since I cannot tell Python to produce succinct unixy error messages instead of rambling stack traces I have to catch and examine more or less every plausible exception. Some exceptions I can deal with close to the base level of my call stack in a butt-ugly fourty-line catch-all clause but a large proportion of my syscalls end up taking three lines extra each. I know it's a trivial problem, but I agree with pg you tend to get the more productive the more of your actual application logic you can see.

> I do a lot of coding in common lisp

We did experiment with clisp a while back; it turned out not to be a natural fit for problems that involve a lot of pathname, datetime, and stat info manipulation. If there was a reasonably modern Lisp that let me say things like (localtime (nth 9 (stat "/foo"))) I would go looking for it this very afternoon.

<comment><USER5> > Since I cannot tell Python to produce succinct unixy error messages instead > of rambling stack traces

`sys.excepthook` is how you can do that.

Without:

         x = {}
         def f():
             print(x['foo'])
         f()
         # ...

          Traceback (most recent call last):
    	File "stack.py", line 6, in <module>
    	  f()
    	File "stack.py", line 4, in f
    	  print(x['foo'])
          KeyError: 'foo'

With:

         import sys

         def short_err(exc_type, exc, tb):
             sys.stderr.write("error: tracebacks too long\n")

         sys.excepthook=short_err

         x = {}
         def f():
             print(x['foo'])
         f()

         #...

         error: tracebacks too long

So don't worry about catching exceptions if you're just printing errors.

<comment><AUTHOR> > `sys.excepthook` is how you can do that.

Awesome. Thank you kindly.

> error: tracebacks too long

I like your style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > ... Python can be (or at least feel) less succinct than even C ....

That's an interesting statement. Certainly, Python can be less succinct than _Perl_ , particularly for small scripts where a quick "while(<>) {" and a regexp get most of your work done. But C??

> ... if you do lots of low-level file system stuff with close error checking.

Hmmm. In my experience, C's I/O libraries tend to make error checking something we leave by the wayside. Is there any chance that the real reason your Python scripts are longer, is that you actually check for, and properly handle, the errors there, while in C, you often don't?

In any case, I'll echo a comment from aidenn0:

> It would be nice if you could provide an example of something you think is > inelegant and/or awkward in Python so that we could figure out which > direction to point you.

</comment><comment><USER7> With a modern version of Perl and the autodie pragma active (part of Perl 5.10.1), your dissatisfaction with verbose handling can often simply disappear.

</comment><comment><USER8> Python is just fine. O'Reilly have a great book "Python for Unix and Linux System Administration" if you'd like some great suggestions and ideas.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go is certainly there. It even has an easy to use Syscall module.

See the File example <http://golang.org/doc/progs/file.go?h=syscall></comment>


Multifamily housing: An innovative avenue for first-time buyers - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/multifamily-housing-an-innovative-avenue-for-first-time-buyers/2020/01/22/361da6a6-0d39-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html <comment><USER2> It's what I did, and also many people in my family.

Buy a duplex, rent the other half out, your mortgage is mostly covered. A duplex may wind up costing the same as a single family house since so many people won't consider buying a duplex.</comment>


The Banned Hashtags of Instagram - <AUTHOR> http://thedatapack.com/banned-hashtags-instagram/ <comment><USER2> You can always use it for good, you know. ;)

The Instagram API returns an APINotAllowedError (response code 400) when you search for one of these hashtags. I'm using it to automatically identify and categorize NSFW hashtags for one of my projects, HashPix. You can see it in action at [http://hashpix.herokuapp.com/](http://hashpix.herokuapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This list contains eg. both #sex and #thesexpistols. It seems more likely that anything containing the substring "sex" is banned. The list, then, is just examples, rather than some exhaustive, official blacklist.

<comment><USER4> Exactly; same same with "fuck"

<comment><USER5> It's the only way I could explain #fuckthelaw being banned but #fuckthepolice not being on that list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is #thinsipration banned again?

In a country with 35.7% obesity (e.g. 203 pounds at 5'9" = obese), you'd think it would be a good thing to let people inspire others to get back to normal weight.

<comment><USER7> Because 'thinspiration' is not about encouraging people to lose weight, it's encouraging anorexia/

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like a clear case of the Scunthorpe problem:

[http://hashpix.herokuapp.com/s/scunthorpe](http://hashpix.herokuapp.com/s/scunthorpe) (thanks @DjangoReinhardt!)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)

 _(EDIT: still can 't format comments correctly)_

<comment><USER2> Heh, good catch! :P

I've been lazy about writing a good filter to weed out the nasty ones. I considered quite a few approaches - ranging from an NLTK-based algo to basic brute-force list-search with word-stemming. Then I realized, it would take me a lot more time to develop that, than the rest of the project.

So, I chose the easy way out. Turn out it saved me quite a bit of effort, too. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting...George Carlin would be proud.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is #iDoNotCare also banned?

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how many lists the person who searched for that lot is now on?

</comment><comment><USER12> not sure about everyone else, but the first one i looked for starts with an "n", but it didn't make the list, how come?

<comment><USER13> People used to call me a ninny all the time, I don't think it should be banned though.

I agree though, imo the word you're thinking of is probably banned and the linked list is not a complete/exhaustive one.

<comment><USER14> The n-word is banned. Apparently one can test for this one self by searching her: [https://hashpix.herokuapp.com/](https://hashpix.herokuapp.com/)

If the word is banned you will get an error message saying "Instagram: (400) APINotAllowedError-This tag cannot be viewed" at the top.

<comment><USER2> I can confirm this. The search term alluded to, as well as all hashtags stemming from it, have been auto-tagged as nsfw in HashPix as well.

OT: We have just managed to carry out a conversation about a word that was not even mentioned once within the conversation itself. And yet, each one of us knows exactly which word we are alluding to. Voldemort, anyone? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> i didn't know you could put that on instagram...

</comment><comment><USER16> #knockers</comment>


QNial7 Array Language Announcement - <AUTHOR> Q'Nial, the language interpreter developed at Queen's University for the Nested Interactive Array Language, Nial is now available in a revised version that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.  The open source code can be used to build versions for both Unix and Windows operating system.
Nial is a very high level, general purpose, language based on a formal model of Array theory, developed by Michael Jenkins and Trenchard More, that influenced the development of APL2. Q'Nial is a C based interpreter with efficient, tuned, implementations of basic array operations.
As such it supports computations of large data sets that can be numeric or symbolic data. The programming style is highly functional but can be used in an interactive way to experiment on data and build functions incrementally. It combines concepts from APL, Lisp and functional programming and supports Algol-like control structures.
The implementation is competitive with other array languages such as J and APL as well as other interpreted languages with array libraries (Python/Numpy, Lua/Torch).
Nial has been used for rapid prototyping in areas as diverse as insurance underwriting, question/answering systems, composing music in a specific style, and a variety of artificial intelligence applications.
The repository is located at:
http://www.github.com/danlm/QNial7
This repository includes binaries for OSX, Linux, Windows, and Raspbian that can be downloaded and used directly.
Coordinator:
        Daniel Martin
Contributors:
        Mike Jenkins
        John Gibbons
        Stu Smith <comment><USER2> Clickable: [https://github.com/danlm/QNial7](https://github.com/danlm/QNial7)</comment>


Ask HN: How do we split ownership of a startup between cofounders? - <AUTHOR> We are three engineers who decided to work together on an idea of mine. Initially, the idea was to split (rather naively) the eventual company between the three of us equally.
Forward a month later and here we are. I have pulled about 70% of the work, another engineer 25% and the third engineer a "generous" 5%.
Yesterday, he asked me to put everything on paper to see if he would move forward with the project. In terms of interest, all three of us are pumped. We all love the idea.
At this point, I really need your help and advice. I want this to succeed and be fair. How should we proceed?
Note: None of us have any experience incorporating a business. <comment><USER2> I recently helped some friends design the bylaws and rules of order for their new startup. None of the founders are working on it full-time, and the goal was to ensure longevity and fairness despite this.

 _All founders are to receive an equal profit share, and equal ownership, period._ (Project governance is separate from company governance, and share ownership is separate from profit sharing percentage. If you quit, you might keep some of your shares, but only current employees share in profits.)

Effort isn't classified by raw hours worked. You're not farmers, tilling in a field, where the more time you spend the more crops you plant. You're white collar creative class and information workers, where one engineer may write 10x the LOC as the other two, but have absolutely no business skills, social skills, or common sense. Your MBA founder may be utterly useless until it comes time to get up in front of an audience and convince them to write you a check. Your designer founder might be idle 9/10 of the time because it takes you that long to implement their research and work. If they're your cofounders and not just your friends, then you picked them for a reason, and they will provide value.

When profit sharing is the only way to get earnings, it aligns your interest better with the company's. You have to help the company earn more money if you want to personally earn more money.

See this old advice from game industry mentor Dave Taylor: [http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=57975&cid=5575246](http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=57975&cid=5575246) and this Joel Spolsky answer: [http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a- new-s...](http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a-new-software- startup-how-do-i-allocate-ownership-fairly/23326#23326)

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion, if you have cofounders, you should split the equity evenly. If you are uncomfortable splitting ownership evenly because you don't think your cofounders will work hard enough in the future, you probably shouldn't start a company with them.

If you're concerned about fairly valuing the work put in until now, a month's work, even if you had done 100% of it yourself to date, is a small, small portion of the total work required to get to cruising altitude. This is a multi-year journey, after all.</comment>