How A Kid Funded VoodooPC With His Credit Card And Sold It To HP - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/voodoopc-rahul-sood <comment><USER2> Pet peeve: I hate the use of "kid" in this context. It seems insulting and condescending.

<comment><USER3> Every link from mixergy.com seems to follow that same format, too. "How [Someone Just Like You] Made [Large Sum of Money]". Why make your site sound like a late night infomercial? Maybe there is decent information about starting a successful company in these interviews, but I never bother reading them because the titles are lowest common denominator.

<comment><USER4> 1) If you click on the link, the first four words are "At 17 years old", so I think it's fair to call him a kid.

2) He used a credit card instead of seeking investors, waiting until he saved up money, or just foregoing entrepreneurship because he had not money.

3) His company was called VoodooPC (context).

4) He sold a company he started with a credit card.

That's an awful lot of information to put into a 14 word title. I just took about 100 words to describe it. I think Andrew's headlines are very well written.

There's a reason they sound formulaic - _he interviews successful entrepreneurs_.

Who are the entrepreneurs everyone respects, and how would you tell their stories in 20 words or less?

College dropout writes software for PCs, makes billions.

Ex hippie makes PCs more stylish, then does the same for music, makes billions.

Two college braniacs use research project to find all the world's information, make billions.

Wannabe artist helps people sell stuff online, then helps start startups.

They all sound trite compared to what we all know about Gates, Jobs, Brin, Page, and pg, but for these less well known entrepreneurs, it's helpful to get a concentrated dose of context.

For what it's worth, I think Andrew's interviews on Mixergy are some of the most useful content on the internet.

<comment><USER5> Why is #3 relevant? Voodoo was the name of (at the time) the hands down best quality graphics cards on the market. Was 3DFX some 'kid' because it decided to name its product after magic?

His product was a well made, top end PC and was aptly named. Compared to the rest of the market, his PC was literally magic. Why this makes him a kid, I have no fucking clue.

I hate seeing the word 'kid' used to describe anyone young and talented. It's derogatory. "Look someone young did something mentionable" it's as derogatory as "Look a woman's in technology _gasp_!"

This guy was obviously going to fund this project himself, so again I don't see what the relevance of #2. It's $1500, if he had it in his account he'd have likely used it. If he'd have taken out a loan, he'd have been charged almost an identical interest rate . . . but he's 17 so he'd have likely been denied for a loan anyway. How could he have got investors? It's $1500, the only people willing to give that would have been family and dealing with money with family tends to be a bad idea. Instead of going to family, like a child would, and simply asking for money that may well have never been paid back he took the debt onto himself.

How not being a leech on your family can be childish, I don't know. I still know people well into their 20's who still leech off of their families for cash, this guy at 17 acted _maturely_.

Mixergy links virtually always get a click from me because they're _good_. If I hadn't heard of VoodooPC before, I wouldn't have touched this link, the title is god awful. It tells nothing, and the article (at least the writing) is shit awful. No mention that this "kid" now works for HP!

This was very poor writing by Andrew. He's a good interviewer, but he seriously needs to work on his copy editing to sell his interview talents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Andrew, can you stop doing so many of these please? They are so good that I feel compelled to drop what I'm doing and read them.

:)

Just kidding. I know each minute spent on Mixergy will save me multiples of that over time.

<comment><USER7> Good point. I came in to post that it's remarkable that nearly every Mixergy interview (maybe even _all_ now?) makes the HN front page. This stuff is like brain candy to entrepreneurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I keep wanting to do the same with HTPCs (not so much the high price/ferrari aspect, but the niche aspect). This interview may have given me the kick in the ass to stop being so scared/hesitant and move from prototype/research to production.

</comment><comment><USER9> I sat in on the venture class at UChicago last night (I'm auditing the MBA program).

They actually talked about this and the professor referenced some study out of UVA of successful entrepreneurs and one of the recurring traits was that their investments are guided not by the size of the opportunity but by their own conception of 'acceptable loss'.

It was emphasized multiple times that _you really should _not_ fund your venture on credit cards_ , 2nd and 3rd mortgages on your homes, etc even if you think an opportunity promises to be the next google, twitter, whatever.

<comment><USER10> I can't disagree with that. It's a reasonable point.

But when I left school, I used tens of thousands in credit card debt to build my first business because I just HAD to be an entrepreneur and there was no other way.

\- I didn't want a side job, because I felt it would be an excuse to procrastinate when the going got tough at my startup.

\- I couldn't raise money, because I didn't have the slightest clue where to begin. (All the books I bought on how to raise VC money were useless. My family didn't have the cash. And my family friends kept telling me I should get a job.)

I would have given anything just for a chance to start a business. My kid brother and I actually talked about me selling a body part to raise money. Sounds ridiculous now, but it shows how determined (desperate?) I was to be an entrepreneur.

Losing my money, credit, house, etc, all that meant nothing in comparison to a shot at being like the people I admired.

I wonder if you can make it without that kind of determination. I wonder if someone who thinks rationally about not taking on too much debt can have the irrational passion to be an entrepreneur (or to do anything exceptional).

<comment><USER11> _I wonder if you can make it without that kind of determination. I wonder if someone who thinks rationally about not taking on too much debt can have the irrational passion to be an entrepreneur_

I'm thinking "You can" and "Plenty of people _do_ ", and that we just filter out their stories because they don't fit the narrative.

<comment><USER12> 37 signals would be an obvious example that it can be done, wouldn't they?

<comment><USER9> Again, 37 signals like VoodooPC is just an exceptional example. That's why it is useful to look at aggregate numbers like the UVA/Darden study (I'm still trying to find an online copy for you guys) which tells you what the majority of successful entrepreneurs (who themselves are already a minority of entrepreneurs) do.

And the majority of successful entrepreneurs _do not invest assets based on their perception of the magnitude of the opportunity but rather on their own idea of acceptable loss_.

Stripped of the emotional mumbo-jumbo and romantic appeal of putting literally everything into an investment, the statistically successful position makes perfect sense.

<comment><USER12> Sounds sensible. If you do find that study, make sure to post it. I'd love to see all the conclusions they came to

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you read the transcript, make sure to hit the bottom.

The healthcare startup and twitter stock trading stories are also very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER13> Find a niche market and dominate it, works every time.</comment>


Ask HN: How to prioritize tech debt on old system? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I was being assigned to a new team as a lead 2 weeks ago. I am not familiar with the team's existing system. There are many bits and pieces that I find non-ideal.
For example, existing monitoring and alerting are lacking and noisy at the same time, integration test is non-existent, unit test coverage is low and many important code paths are not being tested.
How should I tackle these tech debts and still deliver business features? Happy to know your thoughts <comment><USER2> The best advice I can give is to eliminate toil [1]. Non-ideal does not necessarily mean it's something you need to change.

Beyond that, the standard evaluation of where you are, where you're going, and evolving the system to get there is always necessary.

For monitoring and alerting - aim for actionable alerts first (raises on-call when there's either a known or unknown event), then warnings (slack channel message, for SLOs, not SLAs) second. It's better to be more aware than unaware at first, as it will help your team quantify the situation, so play with the thresholds.

Testing is always a balance - I'd suggest ensuring that the critical paths of your system are covered, then only strive to do better from there.

As far as scheduling to tackle the tech debt, work toward including it in the requirements for future work. You must address X to build Y, etc. Addressing technical debt as a project that leads to no new end result (eliminating toil is one), has little (but not zero) value.

[1] [https://landing.google.com/sre/sre- book/chapters/eliminating...](https://landing.google.com/sre/sre- book/chapters/eliminating-toil/)

<comment><AUTHOR> > As far as scheduling to tackle the tech debt, work toward including it in > the requirements for future work. You must address X to build Y, etc. > Addressing technical debt as a project that leads to no new end result > (eliminating toil is one), has little (but not zero) value.

This advice is very actionable, I'll try it out, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about a debt snowball?

Pick a level of effort that can be applied to tackle the debt, and start with some of the smaller things, working to the bigger things. You often get more bang for the buck on the smaller things, and it can help energize the team.

Try to figure out why the debt is accumulating and fix the habits that are increasing debt. For alerts, as new features are completed, have a checklist for them so that they get reviewed and the feature is not complete until the alerts are necessary and proper. What is the criteria for start and end of alert? Does the alert automatically deactivate?

For tests, how is a feature being merged without adequate test?

You may need to set different expectations for your leadership as to how long things take as you're no longer cutting corners and also making up for previous cutting of corners.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're not familiar with the system, why are you insistent on changing it? And since you're new to the team, what's the rush to tell everyone their work is poor? What would be your reaction if you were in their place? How do you think your approach will play out in the long term?

Leadership is about people not code. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry that I present myself to be critical to the team, I am not and I am impressed with how much they achieved given the time frame. In fact, all of the team are in agreement on most of the issues, but I am not entirely sure what to prioritize and how to balance it with the regular feature work

<comment><USER4> Ask the team. Let the priorities vary with the team member. Empower each team member to work on what they think is important.</comment></comment></comment>


Has anyone here used Prudence (REST framework. Would you recommend.? - <AUTHOR> http://threecrickets.com/prudence/

<comment><USER2> From a very quick scan of it, looks a lot more complicated than something like Sinatra. I've been using NancyFx for .NET and I've really enjoyed the lightweight, to the point syntax for building RESTful web services.</comment>


How to Launch a Product, Lose a Contest on Gumroad, and End Up a Winner Anyway - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chris_hawk/how-to-launch-a-product-lose-a-contest-and-end-up-a-winner-anyway-b725ad8e71aa

<comment><AUTHOR> Before anyone else points it out...yes, I made the bonehead move of releasing a podcasting book with no audio version. D'oh!</comment>


Schiaparelli landing investigation makes progress - <AUTHOR> http://exploration.esa.int/mars/58590-schiaparelli-landing-investigation-makes-progress/ <comment><AUTHOR> Relevant excerpt:

> [...] saturation – maximum measurement – of the Inertial Measurement Unit > (IMU) had occurred shortly after the parachute deployment. The IMU measures > the rotation rates of the vehicle. [...]

> When merged into the navigation system, the erroneous information generated > an estimated altitude that was negative – that is, below ground level.</comment>


Stanford Machine Learning Course - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E

<comment><USER2> There's a pile of great AI/ML content up on Youtube as well. IIT has posted two cool AI series that HN'ers might like. See:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLbMPyrw4rw&feature=PlayL...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLbMPyrw4rw&feature=PlayList&p=2F21126C45E3213F&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1)

and/or

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV2k2ivttL0&feature=PlayL...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV2k2ivttL0&feature=PlayList&p=7DDB194A77DF884F&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1)

<comment><USER3> These lectures follow Norvig's AI: A Modern Approach. If self studying, I find it helps a great deal to reinforce what you've read through watching these lectures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Additional content (transcripts/handouts/assignments) are available at the Standford website.

[http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3...](http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=348ca38a-3a6d-4052-937d-cb017338d7b1)

</comment><comment><USER5> Andrew Ng is great. He's worked on some really cool and practical stuff. Check out his projects:

<http://www.cs.stanford.edu/people/ang/research.html>

I helped build parts of the hardware and control software for Retiarius and the Snake robot:

<http://www.cs.stanford.edu/people/ang/rl-videos/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Some people have been working through this class together on Curious Reef. It's loosely organized, with people posting questions and ideas in the class forum: [http://curiousreef.com/class/stanford-cs229-machine- learning...](http://curiousreef.com/class/stanford-cs229-machine- learning/forum) Might be a useful resource to people learning this material. (Disclosure: it's my website)

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Thanks for posting this. The course is on iTunesU also, if anyone wants to download the files to sync to your iPod or iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was hoping for a video thick with data I could apply or use to Google and learn more.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is good but not excellent. Too much theory motivated by theory motivating more theory, whereas in the real world the theory is motivated by and usually invented after practice.

<comment><USER9> Huh? You use the theory to figure out what to implement in practice.

The idea of just randomly hacking some shit together then backfitting a theory onto it is absurd. That's the same strategy that led to many of the past failures of "AI" -- approaches based too much on intuition that wasn't theoretically well grounded.

Probability theory and statistical models are foundational material for anyone interested in machine learning.

<comment><USER10> There's a great applicable quote from Nikola Tesla here: "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor."

<comment><USER11> As I just pointed out to someone else who quoted the exact same thing elsewhere on HN, that approach seemed to work out pretty well for Edison.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone else experiencing unstable behavior with Google search? - <AUTHOR>

For the last month or so (I honestly don't recall when this began, could be longer), I have been experiencing unstable behavior with Google search. Indefinite pauses with the search results grayed out, searching for something similar to what I typed, but messed up/shortened/slightly garbled, indefinite pauses with a blank webpage. Just a bunch of strange behavior, really. Anyone else? If so, it's hard to believe Googlers don't notice, so what gives? <comment><USER2> I think it's related to the extra crap they are adding on the results. I did a post on this a couple weeks ago -

[http://mergy.org/2013/01/what-is-up-with-the-insane-long- goo...](http://mergy.org/2013/01/what-is-up-with-the-insane-long-google- results-url-now/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't seen that. But I have seen when clicking on a search result an interminably-long URL pop up in my URL bar that takes far longer to resolve than in the past when searching. And getting the same result twice in Google Books is a matter of luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, ever since they rolled out Google Instant Search. It's never worked right for me. Yes, I restarted my machine. No, I'm not switching from Firefox.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I don't enjoy the instant search experience and have used it on multiple laptops and desktops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes this will happen to me if after a search I try to amend what is in the search bar. However, simply clicking on the search icon resolves this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Only when I have a crappy internet connection</comment>


Flutter: How we're building UI framework for tomorrow at Google [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=VUiVkDpikDI <comment><USER2> The thing I get from this most, is that Google as a company is very smartly investing across multiple approaches to the same problems. By betting on "all the horses" instead of picking one, Google can help each different approach be the best it can be. In this specific case, for example, you could use Flutter or build a PWA using Angular or Polymer, all to build your next great mobile app.

Which approach will turn out to be best? It might matter a lot to a developer using these things, but overall Google can be in the right place regardless, because they have great solutions for both major approaches. At least a couple of different frameworks less libraries for building rich web apps as PWAs, Flutter and ongoing evolution of the native APIs for the native approach, and flutter versus the native APIs in terms of whether it is better to render at the OS level or app level.

(I happened to be finishing up watching this when I saw it appear here is a new submission.)</comment>


78 killed and 140 injured in Spain train crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23448002

<comment><USER2> Here is a video of the moment of the crash: [http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bca_1374749009](http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bca_1374749009)

The train does seem to be traveling in high speed.</comment>


File 'sharing' or 'stealing'? If IP is property, where is the property tax? - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-healey18feb18,0,5092348.story

<comment><USER2> Heres the problem I see: should it ever come to a point where ripping DVDs and downloading ripped movies is totally legal, will studios then have an incentive to produce quality movies?

Won't it hurt _us_ if they stop making movies we like to watch, because they can't turn a profit?

I see the guy's point, but it could prove to be an unfortunate truth.

<comment><USER3> "An inconvenient truth" was one of the better movies I've seen recently. It didn't cost all that much to make and has turned out to be quite profitable.

The big studios would like us to believe production expense is related to quality, but I doubt that's the case.

<comment><USER4> Bingo. It's hard to predict things like story quality or actor chemistry, so those things are not good investments (from the POV of the studios), even if they can have bigger effects on earnings. This is why so many sequels get made - it takes the unpredictability out of story and screen chemistry. Unfortunately, the only way to find the limit is to beat the story/characters to death.

Things that do provide predictable financial returns are:

\- big stars (basically a marketing expense, although they can affect chemistry in unpredictable ways - see DaVinci Code, The)

\- visual effects, since given the same story, a pretty movie will do better than an ugly movie. But everyone has chased this one to the point of diminishing returns, and the audience expectation here is through the roof.

\- production quality (things like editing, lighting, etc) - but this is so universally high quality that it's now more of an expense of doing business than a differentiating quality.

Basically, expensive movies tend to do well because studios throw money at areas with more predictable returns. And since the studios have quarterly earnings reports and shareholders, etc, that's what they focus on.</comment></comment></comment>


Your Computer May Already be Hacked – NSA Inside? - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2013/07/15/your-computer-may-already-be-hacked-nsa-inside/ <comment><USER2> Is there a (proof of concept) way to examine the processor microcode?</comment>


Monochrome browser – bringing mobile web apps to desktop - <AUTHOR> http://lucianmarin.com/monochrome

<comment><USER2> does this actually do anything other than give you a fixed-size chrome browser? because it really isn't that hard to resize a browser window.

<comment><USER3> http header probably shows the browser as mobile instead of a desktop browser.

this will force most sites to show in mobile version, which usually has less overhead.

<comment><USER4> Using desktop chrome, dev console -> settings -> override -> change device to iPhone/Nexus, done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am a web app user, not a developer and I can see some use cases. Chrome/Firefox/Foo as the main browsers are nowadays packed very heavily already, zillions of tabs, some heavily loaded, usually takes the majority of the system resources. Sometimes, I just want a little browser that can host a few discrete web apps where maybe I just don't want everything crash together at the same time...

</comment><comment><USER6> why?

<comment><USER7> If you have to ask, you're not a web developer. It's incredibly useful if you are.

<comment><USER8> I am a web developer too, and i can't see any point of this. If i would realy wanna test webapps or responsive websites, i would just do it in a emulator or in my realy phone.

<comment><USER9> I'm fairly certain this is more for users and not developers. Giving people an easy small window for little-apps makes a lot of sense to me.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't, is just a waste of resources for something that you could easily have just opening a new tab.

<comment><USER5> What tabs wouldn't provide you is the separation of resource management. Your little tabs would die, refresh, reload with the rest of your main browser (there may have other limitations, e.g. cookie size limit). Is that a good thing? Not always, at all time, at least.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a non-subscription service to easily create a landing page? - <AUTHOR>

I think it would be a valuable tool for those who don't want to sign up for a subscription service just to create landing pages. Sure, constant optimization through A/B tests is important but I'd prefer to use something like Visual Website Optimizer to run the tests, instead of using something like Unbounce.<p>Is there a service that can take the styling from my current website, turn it into a landing page with a few templates to choose from, and make it easily editable? <comment><USER2> Maybe not entirely what you're looking for, but I've found Premise by CopyBlogger pretty useful: <http://getpremise.com/> It's a WordPress plugin for a one time fee of $165, but if you do some searching you can find affiliate's offering discounts to get it at $95.

You can ignore all the extra features and focus on landing pages, which is where Premise is really good. (I find the membership and checkout features to be a little iffy.) There are a ton of included graphics, style settings, and different ways to layout the pages, though you won't get the large variety of templates that Unbounce has. Premise also comes with a large library of videos and seminars on copywriting, SEO, conversion optimization, etc. You can also integrate it easily with Visual Website Optimizer, and hopefully soon with Google's new Content Experiments.

Overall I find it a pretty good alternative to Unbounce.

<comment><AUTHOR> I heard about Premise during my research, but only quickly glancing over the service after seeing that it's a Wordpress plugin.

Thinking about it now. It doesn't really matter if it's a plugin since I can just install Wordpress in a subfolder.

Does the URL matter for a landing page? For example, if I have product A's URL as widgets.com/products/a. Would it be fine to have the URL of the landing page for this product to be: widgets.com/landingpage/a. In this case, I would've installed Wordpress+Premise in /landingpage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unbounce's free service is pretty good, and it's what I've used, but you say it's not for you.

It sounds like you need to create landing pages repeatedly, and you don't want to pay recurring fees, so why not get some landing page templates from ThemeForest or somewhere, and use it on your websites with your styling? I guess it'd take some work, but you could make them customizable for your needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply.

I want to optimize landing pages by continuously performing A/B tests through Visual Website Optimizer, which already allows easy editing of the web design.

I'll look into the themes from Themeforest but I just thought there'd be an easier way (DIY perhaps) to create an appropriately themed landing page.

<comment><USER3> Maybe there is, I hope someone more experienced than I will answer you :) (there are plenty of more experienced people here :) )

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope so too. In the meantime, I'll keep throwing this tennis ball at the wall.

Thanks again!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Stop Saying "Um," "Ah," and "You Know" - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/08/how-to-stop-saying-um-ah-and-you-know <comment><USER2> BS, you use them to tell other people not interrupt. it might work in a speech if you practice with people that don't interrupt but, that's not the average person.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those are called speech disfluencies. TL;DR just use audible parts in speech.

<comment><USER3> uh, I mean *pauses</comment></comment>


Facebook Adds 'Civil Union,' 'Domestic Partnership' To Relationship Status - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/17/facebook-adds-civil-union_n_824758.html <comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me of the Diaspora gender option conversation. <http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/>

<comment><USER3> It has been discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1944628>

<comment><USER4> But since the subject came up again, IMHO the simplest way for facebook and/or diaspora to tackle the 'transgender problem' would be to simply add a third gender option: It's Complicated.

In my case, however, since I still believe in the gender binary I'm just relieved that facebook allows you to change your sex with a mouse click - <USER2> apps assume that never happens (what can I say? I'm an edge case.)</comment></comment></comment>


People are losing trust in all institutions - <AUTHOR> http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/05/people-are-losing-trust-in-all-institutions/

<comment><USER2> I'm not surprised to see banks having sunk so much with the current financial crisis.

I really recommend watching this recent Frontline documentary on the subject:

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall- str...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/)

</comment><comment><USER3> My first thought when I read the title was, "universities." I was surprised to see nothing about it. I would tend to think the approval rate has gone up due to the increase in attendance. Which is sort of counter intuitive to the self- education movement which seems to be previlant on hacker news.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that most people here would want to replace their college education with self-learning because the latter is inherently harder. I agree that one can learn nearly everything on his/her own but that takes a lot of willpower and motivation which would result in higher _dropout rates_.

I am , in fact, going to graduate in a few months and cannot think of a better place I could have spent the last 4 and a half years. I could have spent it in a better way: read more, do more, try more and procrastinate less, but there is no way I could have learnt as much as I have (educational things as well as life lessons) so easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.globalnews.ca/video/index.html?v=gCdns_7CGf9Wu3_0...](http://www.globalnews.ca/video/index.html?v=gCdns_7CGf9Wu3_0lBU4qV7Vlka00EkT#top+stories)

Another example of people having reasons to stop trusting.

</comment><comment><USER6> If only 22% really trusted America's financial system, Ron Paul would have no problem getting elected.</comment>


Extend HipChat with Plivo's Open Telephony API - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hipchat.com/2013/10/08/extend-hipchat-with-plivos-open-telephony-api/

<comment><USER2> Another handy feature would be - ability to call teammates from within hipchat. When I read the title, that is the feature I expected. But even this is pretty neat.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes two of us. VoIP integration on Hipchat is something I'd like to see happen. (I don't work at Hipchat :D)

And obviously it looks like we're not the only ones on this. [http://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions/suggestion...](http://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions/suggestions/2938873-allow- audio-only-voice-chat-no-video-needed-)

<comment><USER3> So, just a heads up, but at Atlassian Summit, they announced. video chat support for HipChat. My understanding is that their is also support for not using the video as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, it's DH from Plivo here. More than happy to answer any questions you might have. :D</comment>


A good explanation of the problems with YouTube's algorithms - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 <comment><USER2> Great video. A feedback loop between algorithms and content creators, with the audience's influence being quite weak and indirect.

The monetization in general is often heralded as important for revenue sharing. By comparison, facebook just takes all our content and gives us nothing for it.

But it obviously isn't all good. It creates a lot of perverse incentives to optimize for the letter of whatever the algorithm recommends, instead of authentically serving the audience's needs or authentically trying to produce content purely of high quality.</comment>


An Introduction to Zend Framework 2 for the Zend Framework 1 Developer - Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hock.in/zf2-for-zf1-users-part-1

<comment><USER2> Looks good! Started with ZF2 a couple of weeks back and hacked this to ease with prototyping: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4580784>

Have a look there if there is something you could use! :) Looking forward to part #2!</comment>


Ask HN: What software technologies will still be around 20 years from now? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> That's easy: Python, Java, C++, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, SQL, Postgres, MySQL,...

A better question would be: what software technologies will not be around 20 years from now? My bet: Babel, npm, Vue.js, React, Angular, Zend, most of the SaaS/IaaS we know and use, Kubernetes, Visual Studio Code, ...

<comment><USER3> I'd actually bet against Java and C++.

C++ is no longer taught in CS degrees where I live, and not offered for jobs. At this point, it doesn't really do anything much better than other options.

Java is being replaced by Kotlin officially in Android docs. But the big thing is that people are actively converting Java code to Kotlin, which you don't see being done with PHP, MySQL, COBOL and so on. And the resurgence of functional programming benefits Kotlin over Java.

They might still be around in legacy systems, but maybe not in the front line manner that JS and Python will be.

<comment><USER4> This is the silliest thing I have read in a long while (albeit partly because I don't read Paul Graham anymore).

In 20 years no one will even recognize Kotlin's name.

But C++ will be going stronger than ever. Why? It is absolutely exploding right now, even though it is 40 years old. Attendance at conferences for C++ (until lockdown, of course) was through the roof, with C++ conferences multiplying to try to absorb the overflow. Attendance at each of the ISO Standard C++ conferences in the last four years has exceeded that at all previous meetings.

Essentially all of the highest-paid development in Fintech, CAE, telecom, aerospace, semiconductor simulation, HPC, and neural AI is done exclusively in C++, for reasons.

Java will still be trundling right along, not for any good reason, but just because it is a steady job with light demands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the Lindy Effect, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect).

So, things that are old but still around are more likely to still be around: Unix, SQL, emacs / vim, fan-favorites lisp and forth ...

Web / CSS frameworks / mobile frameworks are less likely to be around.

</comment><comment><USER6> The linux kernel for sure. Servers and smart phones. It may not conquer the business desktop soon, but the desktop is a smaller piece of the pie every year.

Relational databases will be around forever. The nature of data does not change. Relational data will always be a good fit for an RDBMS.

I think skill in low level languages like C will have less market share in the job market, but always needed. It could be a lucky financial boon for people who have these skills, as they will be a rare commodity.

</comment><comment><USER7> Software technologies from 20 and even 40 years ago run today, and programmers continue using them. Looking at history the most likely answer to your question is "All of them."

Almost everything presented as something new in the software development field actually just retreads something from the past. Truly new ideas and techniques come along rarely.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wordpress. Downvote me, but you know it will be there 20 years from now.

<comment><USER3> By 2040, WP will be used for e-commerce, CMS, and building MMOs.

<comment><USER9> WordPress OS... Has a nice ring to it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most of the tools/languages which are used heavily in enterprise world will continue to exist.

e.g

Java / C#/ C++ / JavaScript / Python

Oracle / SQL Server

Unix / Linux / Windows

SAP / ERP Systems / Mainframes / Cobol

Apart from this, We will see lot of changes the way we do development. We will see lot of improvement in automation / No Code / RPA etc

</comment><comment><USER11> Unix. Linux. Python. Emacs. Vim. Databases. SQL. Bash.

Now for the losers:

Web browsers will be gone. Windows will be gone. JavaScript will be either a painful legacy language or have been transformed into something entirely different. JS frameworks will be an anachronism that old programmers chuckle over while drinking beers.

<comment><USER12> I think it's unlikely that everything you mentioned will be gone: Web browsers - right now there is a trend towards unification and open source because the software is just to complex to build and maintain for most companies and I expect this will continue in the future. So we will have either same browsers(i.e. Chromium, Firefox) or some derivatives/forks.

Windows - this one definitely not going anywhere, there is just too much software built for it. Windows 7 which was last updated 6 years ago is still widely used. So there are no premises that Windows 10 or its successors is any different.

JavaScript - while currenty popular frameworks are quite likely to disappear and their best practices and functionality incorporated into the language, the core language is unlikely to go anywhere. Even things like WebAssembly are developed as a complementary part to JS, not as a replacement. Maybe we will see a wider adoption of things like Typescript, but JS still will be underneath them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the core question I'm focusing on in the learning curriculum of my screencasts [https://www.semicolonandsons.com/about](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/about)

I'm betting on

\- unix-like systems

\- SQL-like systems

\- vim

\- "core" aspects of programming languages (data types, algorithms, operator precedence, etc.)

\- HTTP protocol

\- program design

\- security

</comment><comment><USER14> All of these are just guesses.

Niche stuff:

\- Lisp, in some form or another will continue to exist.

\- Forth will continue to exist because it is possible for a single person to revive it.

Common stuff:

\- vi/vim will live on. I will stop typing if it doesn't.

\- JavaScript is probably here to stay.

\- Java seems like a safe bet for longevity.

\- Spreadsheets. Maybe not Excel, but spreadsheets will live on.

<comment><USER15> Spreadsheets is a really interesting one here. I'm extremely curious to see how No Code tools can be used in corporate environments to replace more advanced spreadsheet-driven workflows.

I don't think they're going away either, but I think there's a lot of value to be unlocked by teaching non-developers how to build basic applications to support their business processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think every technology that's widely used today that requires some backward compatibility is here to stay for a long time. Things like API/protocols are hard to move from.

As for new technologies I would expect them to appear and take the niches where current technologies are not good enough. Take C++ vs Rust for example: the former is quite bad in terms of security and the latter is good at that. So Rust will become more popular in writing security critical applications and web services. But C++ seems to be good enough for things like high performance/scientific computing so it will be still widely used there.

</comment><comment><USER16> I started my career as a ColdFusion and Mainframe developer, and even those systems are still running today. Drupal was created 20 years ago, and I have worked on multiple Drupal codebases this year. I learned Django and Rails in 2005 or 2006 and both are still very relevant. So I would say there are too many to count.

</comment><comment><USER17> Embedded systems, running either Linux or an embedded OS, programmed in C or C++ or Rust.

</comment><comment><USER18> You can bet there will be some company or government system still running COBOL.

</comment><comment><USER19> Java, probably, considering the billions of devices that run it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Many of the software technologies that we have today is more than 20 years old: Java, C++, functional programming, automatic memory management etc are not going anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER21> IBM has maintained backwards compatibility with OS/360 for like 50 years now so I think that is a pretty safe bet.

<comment> non-entity From what I hear the compatibility is insane. Apparently unmodified OS/360 binaries run the same on a recent z/OS mainframe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hopefully not Facebook and Twitter

</comment><comment> modal-soul Emacs and some Vi-likes. Some people are very attached to their editors and their configs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Python 2

Which is a shame as many would have migrated to Python 3 if it was turing complete

</comment><comment><USER24> Python.

It will start making it's way deep into hardware

</comment><comment><USER25> HTML, CSS, and JS

</comment><comment><USER26> I would say, functional programming for sure.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not being facetious here, I'm genuinely asking - does it matter at all? What difference does it make if something will be used in 20 years?

<comment><AUTHOR> As I look back on my career, there have been things that I learned early on that I still am able to leverage today (i.e. bash, linux, vim, java). There are a slew of other technologies that didn't last (i.e. DCOM, Corba, J++, J2EE). If I'm going to invest my time in learning, I'd like to realize some return on time. Granted there are cool experimental technologies that I learn with the realization that they may not be around in a couple years, but I can plan/architect around that.

<comment><USER28> Those specific technologies may not have lasted in those formats but OO techniques and patterns in them will persist for a long time like ModelViewController and its variants.

There may be some cool new tech that comes out with a neat pattern for solving a problem, we need to identify that pattern and re-use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Vim.

</comment><comment><USER30> C++

</comment><comment><USER31> Fortran

<comment><USER32> Yep, just in a lot fewer places.</comment></comment>


Steganographic Bitcoin seeds: Hiding cash in plain sight - <AUTHOR> http://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/steganographic-bitcoin-seeds.html <comment><USER2> What's the point? The "Use Cases" doesn't actually contain any use cases, it just contains instructions. I'm struggling to come up with any reason whatsoever why I'd want to do this.</comment>


Show HN: Siri hack to use any location with reminders - <AUTHOR>

I figured out a way to get Siri to set reminders for you when you leave or arrive at ANY location, not just home or work.
1.  You need to go into your contact card
2.  Push edit and scroll down to addresses
3.  Add a new address, and push the label that appears to the left of the address (usually work/home)
4.  At the bottom, you can add a custom label, it can be anything, say "Target."
5.  Add the address for the Target, then push done
6.  When you launch Siri, you can now tell her to remind you when you leave "My target." For example: "Remind me to buy milk when I arrive at my target" Be sure to say "my," I couldn't get it to work otherwise.
I've found that its more accurate when you split up the reminder, so it would be "remind me to buy milk" and when she asks when to remind you, say "when I arrive at my target" <comment><USER2> Why wouldn't you just add another contact card for a the location? For work it would be the name of your company...for the grocery store it would be the name of the grocery store? I think I am missing how this is a hack...

<comment><USER3> Until now, it was believed you couldn't set a "geofence" (location-based reminder) for anything except home or work... but if this tip is right, "home" and "work" are just the two default instances of "named location types".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just watched this demo - [http://www.techcrunch.tv/show/new-and- featured/5tdmJ3Mjrhxdd...](http://www.techcrunch.tv/show/new-and- featured/5tdmJ3Mjrhxdd8qkyCA8PUaSAqXNxw3a). I'm quite impressed with the speed. A lot of the tasks he demoes are actually faster than doing them with the touch interface.</comment>


Is Britain Becoming a Failed State? - <AUTHOR> https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/britain-brexit-failed-state-by-chris-patten-2019-08 <comment><USER2> The over the top rhetoric is getting tiresome. It's become trendy to dismiss every legitimate viewpoint you may disagree with as being the harbinger of the end of civilization. Of course Britain isn't a "failed state." It's a sovereign country going through a contentious internal debate on disengaging from a multi-national trade union.

By the way, the "enemies of the people" quote is from a _Daily Mail_ headline, not anyone in government as the author implies.

<comment><USER3> I call it "the age of hyperbole." It's everywhere--"mainstream" news media, YouTube video thumbnails, political protests... No one is allowed to hold nuanced or data-driven views; either you believe it's the end of the world or you are an absolute evil to be extinguished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We're at a stage where ignorance is celebrated. The EU has been attacked by the press so much people blame it for everything.

This week a football pundit blamed the EU for a recent handball rules change[0]. On live TV. What hope do we have?

Frankly, we are an embarrassment and don't deserve the EU.

[0] [https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier- league/...](https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/ian- holloway-brexit-handball-eu-rule-qpr-blackpool-a9072536.html)

<comment><USER5> Most would agree there are plenty of ignorant people on either side. Nothing new there. For those who appear to believe that Brexit is merely born of ignorance & populist nationalism, there is [https://briefingsforbrexit.com/](https://briefingsforbrexit.com/) \- contributed by pro-Brexit academics and writers who focus on argument rather than cheap rejoinders.

<comment><USER6> The very first sentence there says "Much excitement from Remainers this week ...".

That's not going to be a website promoting a data driven, fact based viewpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > But given the extent to which the Brexit campaign has undermined Britain's > institutions through lies, it is reasonable to worry that the country will > soon come to resemble a tinpot dictatorship.

One could contend that the Brexit crisis is a culmination of decades of bad governance, that itself bears ultimate culpability. It's all too convenient to pretend that the other side is composed of nothing more than gullible rubes.

</comment><comment><USER8> Let's not forget that the state is not just the politicians. When we talk about failed states, it's often not just that the wrong people are in political leadership positions, but that everyday responsibilities of the state are not being fulfilled.

So for instance you have countries where you don't expect the police come and help you if there's a crime. Or where kids aren't offered education. Those kinds of things certainly are also the responsibility of the political leaders, but it will probably be a while before they break down in the UK. There is at least some institutional memory in the civil service that will allow things to keep going for some time. Belgium ran for a while with no government.

"Yes, (Prime) Minister" was very much about this; whatever fool is in power doesn't matter terribly much, because there's capable people in actual power.

</comment><comment><USER9> Really? If you want to see a failed state look at Venezuela. Britain might have her challenge, but it's far from a failed state. I'll stick pick Britain over many other locations in EU

</comment><comment><USER10> Before dismissing this (although I suspect it will be flagkilled anyway), it's worth noting that the author is a Conservative, and the former govenor of Hong Kong.

</comment><comment><USER11> Written by Chris Patten, a long time Conservative party member that has always been very pro-Europe. So of course he thinks leaving the EU is a disaster, because it goes against his long held belief that the UK should be all-in with Europe.

<comment><USER12> I don't remember name for this logical fallacy but I can think of a simple way of demonstrating, by rephrasing your comment.

Vaccines don't cause autism by Dr. XYZ >Written by 'XYZ', a long time 'Vaccines Support' party member that has always been very pro-vaccines. So of course he thinks 'Vaccines don't cause autism', because it goes against his long held belief that the 'Vaccines don't cause autism'.

Just because someone has been in a 'idea camp', it doesn't automatically disqualifies their arguments.

I don't really care about the topic, but this type of comment is my pet peeve.

Attack ideas not people.

<comment><USER13> Circumstantial ad hominem fallacy perhaps?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#Circumstantial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem#Circumstantial)

<comment><USER12> seems like a right fit</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lots of progress for Debian's reproducible builds - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/630074/ <comment><USER2> Why the re-post?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8950292)

<comment><AUTHOR> Debconf15 is happening right now. Here is a video with details of the latest progress: (warning 2.1G)

[http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian- meetings/2015/...](http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian- meetings/2015/debconf15/Stretching_out_for_trustworthy_reproducible_builds_creating_bit_by_bit_identical_binaries.webm)

Sorry, I didn't realise it had been posted before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately neither the excellent LWN article nor the comment thread so far talk about the main benefit of reproducible builds, which is security, at least potentially. If you're running an irreproducible build of some piece of software in your user account, you're running on _hope_ that the person who compiled that software didn't have malware on their machine that inserted a backdoor into the software. Reproducible building makes that kind of attack enormously more difficult: not only does the attacker need to insert the same backdoor on the machines of all the developers who are reproducing the build, but now the malware is almost certain to be detected, sooner or later. Coupled with diverse double-compiling, reproducible build processes can even detect the Thompson attack.

The big push for reproducible builds came in the wake of the Snowden evidence that the NSA was specifically and systematically attacking the machines of system administrators in order to gain access to the machines they controlled. Debian and Tor developers should logically be even bigger attack targets.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you consider the effort required for this, I always wonder how reproducible the things in Docker or NixOS really are.

<comment><USER5> Debian wasn't built with reproducibility in mind, whilst NixOS was. "Backporting" features to existing systems is monotonically harder than building a new system with that feature, since we have more constraints.

Even if, hypothetically, it were trivial for NixOS to obtain perfect reproducibility, that doesn't necessarily help with making Debian reproducible in a backwards-compatible way.

<comment><USER6> Honest question: is NixOS really doing reproducible builds, where you get byte-identical binaries when rebuilding from source?

I only found this issue on the Tor tracker, and apparently NixOS does not produce reproducible builds in the same way as intended by Debian: [https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12520](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12520)

<comment><USER5> The _aim_ is to have such reproducible builds, for example builds are always performed with the system clock set to 1 second after the Unix epoch. The reality varies from package to package; reproducibility problems are counted as bugs, but as always there's a cost/benefit decisions about fixing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't reproducible builds eventually cut down on the work of package maintainers for Linux distros? Looking from my outside perspective, once you get the packages building reproducibly the work to maintain them is reduced (especially if you can pass the responsibility for packaging to the developer). Couple that with a build-time test suite and the work becomes even less of a burden.

I hope this is the case, as I believe that one thing that holds Linux/BSD back from further refinement is the workload involved to maintain packages.

<comment><USER6> I don't think so. Reproducible builds means that compiling the binary packages results in byte-by-byte identical copies, even when done on different machines at different times: the packaging sources do not get any simpler (to the contrary, they may get slightly more complex due to additional concerns).

The XDG App effort to produce standardized runtimes and isolated applications is probably what you're looking for, but it is completely orthogonal to reproducible builds as runtimes for XDG App can be built in a multitude of ways, eg. with pre-built distribution packages (reproducible or not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So this is sort of like lightweight nix in some aspects, without giving up on dynamic linking?

<comment><USER9> Nix doesn't give up on dynamic linking.

<comment><USER8> Care to explain this? My very newbish view of it was that every package is compiled against dependencies that are cryptographically hashed and it's totally bound to them.

They even try to link mutt to a particular version of gpg, which is a bit extreme as mutt calls gpg via shell so the interface between both is really really loose.

That said I really like nix.

<comment><USER10> I'm speculating here, but it seems like a case of missing the forest for the trees.

Yes they still use dynamic linking in the technical sense, as the libs are not folded into the resulting binary.

But they miss the spirit (or raison d'etre if you will) of dynamic linking by making hashing part of the linker requirements.

Its something that seems to crop up more and more in the Linux world these days.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what I meant. Thanks for putting it in clearer words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Now all they have to do is figure out how to build debian without systemd in and I might consider using it again.

<comment><USER12> The debian installer has a boot prompt option to install sysvinit, or if you want to be lazy, just install the sysvinit-core package and have the package manager uninstall systemd after first boot.</comment></comment>


Popular websites built with Django - <AUTHOR> http://dream-force.com/post/60070885405/12-most-popular-websites-built-with-django

<comment><USER2> Two thoughts: I'd love it if there was a website or book that discussed these big websites' workings in depth. Not just "here's this cool thing we built and an interview with the tech lead" but "here's how authors enter content" to "here are the problems we encountered while templating" to "here's what we wish we had built-into our software stack".

Secondly, a couple years ago I went directly to a "we are really good at Django" web host to try learning Django, but the amount of plumbing required was really annoying. I asked a Django-using acquaintance to send me his documentation on deploying Django-driven apps on this host, and I received a four-page Word document packed to the gunnels with instructions. :-/ I really want to try out Django though so I guess I'll swallow my pride.

</comment><comment><USER3> The list seems to be inaccurate. Unless something has changed, the Washington Post and New York Times don't use Django for their main website (which the article implies), but for certain projects. The same seems to apply to the Guardian: [http://davidbliss.com/2010/09/03/sites-built-using- django/](http://davidbliss.com/2010/09/03/sites-built-using-django/). That link actually provides details.

Django is wonderful, but several of those sites don't use Django for their main website. That doesn't mean Django isn't good, but when one starts citing traffic numbers for the main non-Django-powered site, it's simply misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, sorry. I will change article accordingly.</comment></comment>


Most complete guide on design sprints - <AUTHOR> https://blog.useberry.com/design-sprints-complete-guide/ <comment><USER2> You lost me at "sprint."

I'm a marathon runner worried about a goal way down the road, not running 100m after 100m after 100m until I essenrially sprint a marathon (~42km) and die somewhere in the process.

To bring this silly neverending business analogy full circle, there's a reason people run quite differently in actual sprints and marathons. If you treat a marathon like a sprint, you're going to tire out early and fall behind. It's all about steady paces, small breaks, and occasionally picking up the pace to push yourself when needed.

You can set some runners up in a marathon, then lie and setup posts every 100m and tell them they just need to sprint to the first 100m and then "we'll treat this like a real marathon." After they get to 100m you can shout, oh shoot we need to catchup, and sprint to the 200m mark. Continue this perpetually until your runner basically exhausts and dies out and just says "I quit this race."

Thats basically what most businesses do, create perpetual sprints that are completely unsustainable. Businesses have the flexibility that in their race, if the runner grows tired of their terrible coach angsting them on, they can just sub out a new fresh naive runner mid-marathon and start the full cycle all over again.

Let's stop encouraging businesses that sprinting marathons is an acceptable practice... let's run marathons like--marathons.

<comment><USER3> You've gone far too deep on what was once a very loose metaphor, and is now just a piece of jargon with its own meaning (one which is pretty close to your exact suggested marathon strategy anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A decent overview of Knapp's original process, but not complete by any means. I'm participating right now in Global Virtual Design Sprint 4, being run by Robert Skrobe of Dallas Design Sprints. Originally, design sprints were onsite, but afaik, GVDS was the first to popularize Virtual Design Sprints, where global teams participate remotely, using tools such as Zoom, Mural, Miro and Figma. This started in 2019, so very timely to be ahead of COVID-19. Virtual presents some challenges but also great opportunities.

The Design Sprint is a useful tool for generating collaboration, shared process and fast prototyping results. As such, it is not a cure-all, just a very handy tool to use.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Sprint book seems to have a pretty accurate summary [https://www.thesprintbook.com/how](https://www.thesprintbook.com/how)

<comment><USER6> Wow. That link took me to a page with a cookie notice that had no options to deny them, and it hijacked my browser's back button.

Total UX fail. Zero trust in the content from this potential reader.

<comment><USER5> Maybe you'll prefer the paper version then: [https://www.amazon.com/Sprint- Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas-eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve- Problems-Test-Ideas-ebook/dp/B010MH1DAQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Most complete" is laughable.

</comment><comment><USER8> `useberrypr` Lol. If you're going to self-promote at least be subtle about it.

<comment><USER9> Why?

<comment><USER8> Why what? If you're asking why being subtle that was just rhetorical. My actual thoughts on this is that there's nothing wrong with self-promotion. I love it when people show their stuff here on HN or other places.

I just think that in this particular case it feels kind of disingenuous when it's coming from an account named UseberryPR. It feels more like an attempt to get traffic (potentially backlinks, since front page HN posts are replicated across many places) than to share something useful and intellectually interesting.

Again. I have nothing against self-promoting but the quality of this website relies on the fact that people are genuinely sharing interesting stuff, not expecting to get some profit out of it, or because they are doing "PR".

It's just my opinion though.

<comment><USER10> I think most people appreciate candor. Attempts to hide self promotion definitely garners more criticism on hn.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. That's true too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Subreddit that lists 4/5-star products selling near all-time low prices - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/blackfridaytoday/ <comment><USER2> A lot of these deals are unavailable if they're more than 2 days old. It's a good idea to sort that subreddit by "new".

Was this made with a webscraper? Or is there some sort of Amazon API that I should know about?</comment>


A Test Affecting Every Man's Life Will Soon Be on the Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/carrierubinstein/2020/08/11/a-test-affecting-every-mans-life-will-soon-be-on-the-market/ <comment><USER2> In Canada (at least in the province of Ontario) we use something called the FIT Kit, which is a through-the-mail stool sampling method. Men get it for free when they turn 50. But it has a shortcoming (as does its competing non- invasive method) that it can't differentiate blood from a polyp vs blood from hemorrhoids etc. So it can be prone to false positives if you have any of those conditions.

This urine test, which looks for a specific rna signature, probably doesn't have that flaw, and could probably be done through the mail like FIT.</comment>


Shameless Marketing Photos for Website using Body Paint Girls. THIS IS NSFW - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifestyleignition.com/shameless-marketing-downtown-chicago-body-paint-girls-photo-album/

<comment><USER2> Naked girls promoting website. Is this the best way to promote a blog?</comment>


A new take on AI? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@EvanGoldberg/a-new-take-on-chatbot-intelligence-57d604507eb2 <comment><USER2> No it's not. It's a very old take on ai. There are dozens of these bots that are just middle men for human conversation. But guess what! Random humans are not domain experts! Go to Yahoo answers and you'll find the same level of response and probably faster...</comment>


Is TED the new Harvard? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/148/how-ted-became-the-new-harvard.html <comment><USER2> When you list Elizabeth Gilbert and Tony Robbins, you make it plausible that TED is the new Renaissance Weekend, if you remember those.

Or maybe the new Aspen State.

</comment><comment><USER3> Umm no.

Deep brain-churning scholarship is hard! Let's have spiffy whizzy pop science talks!

(TED can be interesting, but this article is WTF.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe.

One of TED's purposes is to bring together people with ideas and people with the capital and influence to make them happen.

</comment><comment><USER5> No.</comment>


Is Microsoft looking to buy RIM? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/30/tech-rim.html?ref=rss

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense to me, but a hard deal to do for sure. RIM is not exactly a startup.

With iPhone and the mysterious gPhone, Microsoft might find itself played out of this market... buying RIM would make them the leader here.

It's also interesting to ponder what this would do to the other, non aligned players like Palm.</comment>


She Kills People from 7,850 Miles Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/18/she-kills-people-from-7-850-miles-away.html <comment><USER2> Death and destruction reduced to banality and written in the style of some cheap pulp novel.</comment>


Show HN: CrashBreak – Reproduce exceptions as failing tests in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.crashbreak.com/ <comment><USER2> @mjaneczek, this is a cool project and a nice take on yet another error tracking service. We built this feature into Airbrake back in 2012, [https://airbrake.io/blog/extension/airbrake-chrome- extension](https://airbrake.io/blog/extension/airbrake-chrome-extension) but we didn't get enough feedback to get it back into local development. Projects such as [https://github.com/charliesome/better_errors](https://github.com/charliesome/better_errors) have been a great addition to the Rails error workflow.

It's a tough business to get into, but I would suggest talking to the large players and having a standard for exception replays. I wish you the best of luck, feel free to reach out and keep up the great work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I came up with this idea almost one year ago and it is really awesome to hear some positive feedback (especially from the person who is working on the similar problems) after a hard work. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The page is very uninformative, I had to take clues from all around the site to realize this is ruby only. Also is not clear how it works, should I send a dump of the crash to a external server?

As a side note, it would be very useful to have a tool like this to debug iOS apps (and maybe integrated with crashlytics, I don't know if it's possible).

<comment><AUTHOR> True, I changed the post title. The idea is not connected to specific platform but for now it is only for ruby programmers, sorry! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a blog post about the idea: [https://medium.com/@mjaneczek/how-to- reproduce-production-ex...](https://medium.com/@mjaneczek/how-to-reproduce- production-exceptions-locally-via-request-spec-and-not-go-crazy-e93924f0693d)

</comment><comment><USER4> According to the terms and conditions, this service is free if you are a hacker, but $39 a month if you are a company.

So how can my company experiment with this to see if it has any value without paying?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hacker plan is for free even if you are a company! Feel free to test and contact me with any problems! ;)

<comment><USER4> And what is the language in the terms and conditions that makes that clear?

<comment><AUTHOR> 6.3 Using the "Hackers" subscription plan is free.

For now it's a beta and you can definitely test it for free (even with more than 3 users - just contact me). Paid plan is more for users who already love the idea and want to say "thanks!". ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Musk claims employee sabotage at Tesla in memo - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-claims-employee-sabotage/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17342126](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17342126)

</comment><comment><USER3> Blogspam.

Source is [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee- con...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/elon-musk-email-employee-conducted- extensive-and-damaging-sabotage.html)</comment>


The Future of Google's Street View - <AUTHOR> http://www.kmeme.com/2010/10/future-of-googles-street-view.html

<comment><USER2> Highly speculative, but naturally progressive ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a guess,

The city I live in, Berlin has an area of ~821 km^2

Let's suppose that one city block is about 0.2 km x 0.2 km

This implies that there are on the order of 10 km of road per km^2 of area. Thus the length of road is O(10^4) km for one major city. Now if we drive 30 km/h, and there are ~25 intersections per km^2, and the average wait time to turn is 1 minute (I have no idea), then we need 20 + 25 ~ 45 minutes to cover 1 sq km - In reality we will not have a perfectly efficient travelling salesman route and will have to cross some streets more than once so let's say it takes 1 hour per km^2. Thus the entire city can be covered in about 821 hours per car, or about one month / car. If we only allow a 40 hour work week, then it takes about 5 months.

Thus with a modest fleet of 5 cars the city can be updated about once a month. Does this sound right? If so not bad. Of course streetview isn't working here for legal reasons, but this logic should apply to other similar cities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe some day they will be able to get updates from any old photographs or video taken by anyone. Automatically figure out what part of the world is in view with overlaps, like Photosynth does today, then incrementally apply updates if something is new or different. For example if a restaurant owner snaps a picture of the specials board on the sidewalk, it will figure out what exactly is new and patch just that board in the virtual world.</comment></comment>


Oculus Quest and Rift S Pre-Orders Are Live - <AUTHOR> https://www.oculus.com/blog/game-on-oculus-quest-and-rift-s-pre-orders-are-live-shipping-begins-may-21/ <comment><USER2> The ars review of the Quest is really glowing: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/oculus-quest- review-2...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/oculus-quest- review-2019s-best-new-gaming-system-is-wireless-affordable-vr/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure its a Good Thing (tm) Oculus is part of Facebook. I'm not touching anything by Facebook with a 10 foot pole.

<comment><USER4> TBH, I'm not sure if it's that bad of a thing either. I'm also pretty cynical in regards to FB, and deleted my account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I missing something, or does the Rift-S page [0] not mention the device specs anywhere? That's killing the (minimal) remaining interest I had.

0: [https://www.oculus.com/rift-s/](https://www.oculus.com/rift-s/)

<comment><USER6> You don't advertise things you aren't proud of.

Valve will be doing a full reveal of the Index tomorrow, and based on what we know so far it will be more expensive and vastly better. At the very least it will be a headset designed for PC gaming by a company that cares about it, rather than a rebranded Windows Mixed Reality headset with a few extra cameras.

<comment><USER7> Valve already revealed the index today [https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/index](https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/index) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1059530/Valve_Index_Heads...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1059530/Valve_Index_Headset/)

<comment><USER8> Yikes, $1,000. I was really hoping it would be cost competitive with Oculus

<comment><USER9> I'm actually happy to see this. Strongly feel that the current generation of headsets are not good enough and VR needs at least one more cycle of pushing the envelope at the high end price point before finding mass market success.

Unfortunately, GPU performance per watt/$ seems to be capping out just short of the goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cordless Beatsaber = TAKE MY MONEY!

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been thinking about how people with excess income SHOULD act.

Giving money to unethical companies sounds like bad capitalism.

A cool product is interesting, but feeding a company or person who has lost the ability to be held accountable is dangerous.

If a company is evil (Apple/Facebook), it's bad capitalism to purchase from them.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your opinion on testing and linting Git commit hooks? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> On all branches it seems to much to me, but maybe on master (or any release or pre-release branch) you may want them.

At my current company we're on such an old and badly written codebase that this kind of hook would just annoy 90% of people. In fact some years ago we tried to introduce that and people escalated quickly to a manager and had that removed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm rather indifferent about it, but it seems to be one of those controversial topics in programming. Could you elaborate why you wouldn't want it on all branches? That's how most people do it if they do this sort of thing in the first place. And have the build server kick off its own sequence.

<comment><USER2> Somethimes you just use a few branches for testing feasibility - most of the time at my current company this involves zero testing and poor code quality. Moreover some developers (me included) are afraid of losing work and push frequently even "broken" code just for the safety of it. I tend to see feature branches as a "work in progress" and as such code quality could be temporarily lower than expected. On merge request linting and testing should however be good.</comment></comment></comment>