Ask HN: Disappointed that scoutmob never got covered by HN - <AUTHOR>

I've been working towards an idea for a local deal site where users don't pay anything to get the deal instead they directly pay to the merchant.  My idea further involved charging the first X merchants only a low flat fee and then at a later point start charging a low % from every transaction.  This % would be based on how many deals actually got used at the business.
I wrote about this idea in two earlier HN posts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2966649 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2978078
Today was our first time going to local Washington DC area to spread the word about our venture. This being our first  venture, we now realize that what we did today we should have done a month ago. Anyways, we went from business to business searching for an owner or manager however, at most locations we only founds staff that could only give us a business card. Luckily, we went to one place where the owner was there and told us that what we are doing is already being offered by Scoutmob. It is really bad from our side that we did not know anything about Scoutmob, even though now we know that it was been out for almost 2 years and has secured up to 1.5M in funding. We don't know how much they are charging to the merchant but what we know is that they let users 'get' the deal for free. They pay the merchant directly. Furthermore, this user told gave us the reality of the situation that we don't have services that other deal sites offer. For example, writing great summaries, organizing free events (to create user base), etc. etc. We don't have any of this since we have no funding.
I'll be writing a detailed post about our experiences but I'm really disappointed in myself for being a every day visitor to HN and not knowing about Scoutmob. It was only been covered once on HN with one point post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813331
When we thought our idea was not taken we were skeptical whether it would work but now seeing it in action we realize that it is doable and marketable.
We've hit a roadblock and are at a point where we are thinking of changing our business model or completely switching the domain.
Would you continue on? <comment><USER2> What are your long term goals with the business? What would you consider a success?

Scoutmob has a good amount of funding, but this is a huge market place. Along the lines of changing your business model, is there a particular niche that you are focusing on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would consider being in scoutmobs place a success. Executing a new idea successfully enough to get funding, users and businesses. But in worst case scenario, since we are not full time on it yet, being able to generate considerable profit on monthly basis for a year would be a success as well.

We have not focusing on a niche other than restaurants so far bur are now considering mom and pop restaurants. Since from today's experience we have found that big businesses only partner when there is a guarantee of a huge user base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> But you should have come across Steve Blank on HN: Founders, get out of the building!

<comment><AUTHOR> Just read that! ....:(</comment></comment>


Birdly Wants to Help Call Your Customer Data by Talking to a Slack Bot - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/26/birdly-wants-to-help-call-your-customer-data-by-talking-to-a-slack-bot/ <comment><USER2> Quang Hoang, CEO at Birdly

Hey there, Quang, CEO of Birdly here. We think there will be a new way we consume enterprise softwares and apps via messaging.

Today the average employee has to use over 10 enterprise products in order to do their jobs. Salesforce for CRM, Zendesk for Customer support, Stripe for billing, Concur for expense reports, Quickbooks for accounting, Intercom for customer communication … Each time they have to remember a password, navigate an outdated UI, and then context switch back into what they were doing.

Our goal at Birdly is to allow you to use any enterprise app directly from the communication tools where you spend most of your time: Slack, Email, and SMS.

As Matt said in the article, we'd love to collect information from potential customers. We're very open to feedback, please email me at email@example.com</comment>


Telegram Update: Pinned Chats and IFTTT Integrations - <AUTHOR> https://telegram.org/blog/pin-and-ifttt <comment><USER2> Still waiting on the "end-to-end encryption by default" update that would actually make their original promise to be the most secure app on the planet true.

They don't even have to talk to Moxie and use his protocol at this point. They can just use Matrix's Olm:

[https://matrix.org/docs/spec/olm.html](https://matrix.org/docs/spec/olm.html)</comment>


Intel sells McAfee - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-nears-deal-to-sell-mcafee-security-unit-to-tpg-1473277803 <comment><USER2> Smart move by Intel. They should never have bought it in the first place. One of my favorite quips about it was by a stock analyst who said, five years ago:

       Intel might as well have bought Whole Foods

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dealtalk-intel- idUSTRE73K7...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dealtalk-intel- idUSTRE73K7ZZ20110421)

</comment><comment><USER3> Valuable things (hardware) are sold to China, junk is sold to private equity.</comment>


Chinese Students Want To Know: How Do I Get Rich? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/27/chinese-students-rich-opinions-contributors_investment_banking.html?feed=rss_popstories <comment><USER2> Chinese Students: 'We like how you guys were making money, and profiting immensely without benefit to others, how did you do that?'

Wharton Profs: 'Yeah, we've found that does not work so well.. at least for the last few months. I guess if you do not want to provide value to others you could figure out a good way to steal.. that has worked before'

Chinese students, to each other: 'Thanks for nothing..'

Wharton Profs, to each other: 'They seem to have the notion that because all of our students are making huge iBanking bonuses, we can tell them how to make a fortune without delivering any kind of value. Surely they could not have learned that from us?'

<comment><USER3> I don't quite follow: how were the profs making money without benefiting others? Profs don't make that much money, or do they? Also stealing was just one of three ways for getting rich they suggested.

I can't imagine business schools are to blame, much more likely seeing people get rich in banking is to blame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, the problem isn't restricted to Chinese students. A lot of the US students that these Professors teach at Wharton and other comparable business schools see I-Banking and finance jobs as the path to personal wealth, not as a way to create value in the economy.

But what would you expect when finance industry jobs pay so much more than anything else.

<comment><USER5> I think you're right. I recently graduated from one of the nation's top universities and I can tell you first hand that only a couple years ago, you could ask almost any ambitious student what their aspirations were after college and the default answer for many of them would be banking or consulting. I think this default position can be partly explained by the large salaries attached to these jobs and partly explained by students not knowing what exactly they wanted to do with their lives. If they were going to do anything, they should be well-compensated for it...right?

It is surprising, however, that graduating students are still gunning for these i-banking jobs given current industry conditions. If you're bright, ambitious, and hard working, I would think the odds of procurring some measure of wealth from some form of entrepreneurship would be on par with i-banking. Students lack foresight if they don't see that the banking industry will be drastically changed given current events.

<comment><USER6> I think they think it's going to come back within a year or two or five at most.

I think they are being delusional. For the next twenty years, _minimum_ , bankers in general and investment bankers in particular should come to expect that if anybody's making lots of money, they're going to get scrutinized. Not just by the government and not just by the people, but by the banks themselves. The banks have seen what happens when you pay too much money to those people, and while the upper echelon shall always be handsomely paid, I think the rank and file are going to see a severe and long-term pay cut.

At this point, you tell an investment bank that if they don't pay a lot they aren't going to get the smartest possible people and the reaction is likely to be "Thank god! At least when they make mistakes they won't make _really smart_ mistakes! Those are the worst." Why should they pay someone five million to destroy the company when they can find people for $200,000 who will do quite adequately? (Recall that "beating the market" is very hard and that an index fund is generally an astonishingly good investment, all things considered.)

It will come back, though. It will come back when those who remember how we got here are flushed out of the system and the people of 2040 or 2050 make the same damn mistake and fall into the credit bubble trap again, as the balance of the workforce tilts away from those who are at least 20 today. But that's probably not soon enough for the students of today.

<comment><USER7> I don't think the investment banks will be back for a while because all of the action is moving to smaller firms. There will be a shakeout in the hedge fund industry, but there will continue to be successful firms that do very well. Believe it or not there is still a lot of money out there looking for investments. I already see what looks like a bull market in the creation of financial startups trading markets that are not related to fixed income. These people will not have the government looking over their shoulder on compensation so they will be able to attract the best young talent that is sick of the uncertainty over pay and firm performance at a big institution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I then suggested that perhaps they might work for companies that made things. Actual things."

Honestly, has anyone ever seen a better description of our problems right now?

<comment><USER9> "The other thing is a survey that I just read about in the Times. Over six in ten Americans think that someone in their household will lose their job in the next year. That means six in ten people won't buy anything other than basics. The economy comes to a full halt even worse than now."

[http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/02/we_are_all_vultures_now...](http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/02/we_are_all_vultures_now.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought these "very intelligent" Chinese students wanted to know how to start businesses. Then I read this line:

 _"How can I get that job? How can I get a high-paying job in investment banking now?"_

How disappointing. It seems that these "very, very goal-directed" dudes are more interested in a cushy job at some shiny office than in doing new things, cool things.

<comment><USER11> Trust me, there's no shortage of entrepreneurialism in China.

Insert something about sufficient sample size and selection bias here. Is there something hard wired in Americans' (specifically white Americans') brains that assume that anything they read about a few Chinese people automatically apply to the entire country?

<comment><USER12> China has well over a billion people. You'll find a lot of ANYTHING in China, including entrepreneurialism. However, in my experience, most Chinese don't believe that starting a business is the best way to wealth.

Of course, I'm a white American (that happens to live in China). Perhaps you have some insights that I'm lacking.

<comment><USER13> You're right. I've met many Chinese people who think the way to wealth is to get a cushy government position with some kind of power over others so you can get bribes or to be a purchaser for a company due to a similar reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe that this group of Chinese students are brilliant as I used to be one of them. They all have goals, some goals are even ambitious. They want to help poor people, make a more balance world. The thing of why they want to make money by making illusion because they see money as a method to achieve their goal, that to say, the process to make money is irrelevant to what they _really_ want to do. They just want to get rich quickly and then distribute the wealth. Of course now I know that it is a naive thought but many still believe this kind of financial freedom. They have to be given more time to figure out that by distributing money will do nothing to the world as this happened all the time. By making real thing, through value creation, in the process of making huge amount of money, the world become much better.

<comment><USER15> Your thoughts are very nice and I know there are many that think like you. Unfortunately, the path to riches, as these students depict, almost never leads to wealth redistribution.

I live in Shanghai. All I see the new wealthy do is park their cars illegally in the bicycle lanes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a Wharton student, I feel that contrary to what the professor says, top business school students (Wharton students) are still interested in creating another paper monster, because historically finance offered a much greater salary for the individual.

Operations, marketing, and the other essentials have a much lower salary and potential to growth. I feel that the traditional product-making firms should offer more "fast-track" positions to attract top students to create real products.

I feel that in our global society today, people are more interested in me than we.

<comment><USER17> Making things, aka being an engineer, is an art and a craft that takes time to master. Even if you work in software, there are no quick routes to riches. Zuckerberg may have been young when he hit it big, but he had been programming for a long time. I can't imagine that physical engineering takes less time to master (but hey, I don't really know.)

My point is "traditional product-making firms" probably fail to offer fast- track positions because there is no fast track to being good at traditional product making.

<comment><USER16> I think there is a difference between the engineers making the products and the people marketing and managing the companies. I acknowledge that it is not likely that the engineer will add huge value without substantial time to master his field, but I do feel that a bright creative business person could add substantial value. Unfortunately, I feel that they are lured away by the finance riches, so we never are able to see their impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting insight into a small section of China's best and brightest.

I am certain though these people are the minority, just like the rest of the world I'm sure some students want to just make money and the others want to create wealth and products. And with the recession more people are wising up to it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The financial mess sort of reminds me of the space shuttle disasters.

I remember thinking after the Columbia tore apart that space travel would be finished. How could we possibly risk more people in space after such a horrendous event? And that happened _twice_. There were lots of smart people working on those projects, doing lots of complicated work that few could understand. Did it affect millions of people? Other than emotionally, no. Were there immoral people working for NASA? Probably.

My point is that it took about 3 years after the Challenger disaster, and another 3 years after the Columbia disaster to get things moving again. Many changes were implemented. But rockets still flew.

The science didn't get any easier, and neither did the math. Rocket science and materials science are still chalk-full of tough, unpredictable problems, but that doesn't scare people away from being employed in those industries.

I-banking needs some sweeping changes. Perhaps the compensation will change as a result. At the end of the day though, financial engineering is still needed, and intelligent ethical leaders will be more in demand than ever.

</comment><comment><USER19> At least they cut to the chase.</comment>


Ask HN: Let's make an open source/free SaaS platform to tackle school forms - <AUTHOR> I have 4 kids. I am filling out all the start of school forms for each kid. I have to fill out these same forms each year. Are you doing the same thing? Let's make this year the last year we are manually filling out forms -- let's build a SaaS platform for school forms. Community built, open-sourced, free.
Brief sketch of the idea: survey monkey + docusign, but with a 100 pre-built templates for K-12 school situations. Medical emergency form. Carpool form. Field trip permission form. Backend gives schools an easy way to customize and track forms. Forms are emailed to parents and filled out online. Parent's information is saved so that any new form is pre-filled in with as much known info as possible.
Anyone feeling the same pain? Anyone want to join with me and do it? <comment><USER2> I've been developing apps for the school systems for years now. There are existing systems that can handle their forms. The tech isn't the problem. Implementation, and making it easy for all levels of staff in a district to use are the challenges you would need to resolve. Sending papers home with kids and getting completed papers back is archaic and unreliable... but easy on teachers.

Also, keep in mind that not all families have computers. Not all parents have email. A solution that doesn't work for the low income, or homeless children, is a non-starter.

The idea is good... I'm not trying to discourage it. Just that the problems that need solved likely are not what you think they are.

<comment><USER3> I also work with schools (including registration) and agree fully with codingdave. The problems are almost always related to practical not technical issues in education.

That said, Id love to support an open source solution that school providers (be it formal companies or people helping out) could use. Offline upload (eg by admins scanning docs at the school) is a must, also mobile support (where I am most parents have phones, very few have laptops)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh man, I'm in the midst of some of this right now. Theres no dowloadable form for certain things because they want it on identical sizes and types of paper... I have terrible handwriting and its killing me.

</comment><comment><USER5> For work stuff,docusign already solves this. Why are schools not on docusign? Budgets? For the same reason they may not subscribe to your potential startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a startup. Free service for schools, parents. Built by parents, community- run, not for profit.

I think the real problem is incentive: the school has no incentive to digitize the form - it is easy for them to just copy the old form and send it out each year. If we build a database of common forms and give parents/schools easy ways to digitize old forms, it gets them over the hurdle.

Plus, docusign, etc. don't build a structured database with the data to make it easy to access.

<comment><USER6> If the incentive were financial based on the cost per copy of printing, a 10,000 student school with .02 per copy is still only $200 to print a paper form per kid.

You're also talking about collecting personal data (contact info, medical info, etc.) digitally which brings on a whole mess of laws for this free service to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sort of, my daughters school just needs the tech help. A solid online FAQ that is maintained would be more valuable to me

</comment><comment><USER8> Technically, a checkbox may qualify as a digital signature; however, identification / authentication and storage integrity are fairly challengeable (just as a written signature on a piece of paper with a date written on it is challengeable)

Given that notarization is not required for parental consent forms, I'm not sure what sort of server security expense is justified or feasible.

How much does processing all of the paper forms cost each school? Per-student?

In terms of storing digital record of authorization, a private set of per- student OpenBadges with each OpenBadge issued by the school would be easy enough. W3C Verified Claims (and Linked Data Signatures) are the latest standards for this sort of thing.

We could evaluate our current standards for chain of custody in regards to the level of trust we place in commercial e-signature platforms.

The school could send home a sheet with a QR code and a shorturl, but that would be more expensive than running hundreds of copies of the same sheet of paper.

The school could require a parent or guardian's email address for each student in the SIS Student Information System and email unique links to prefilled forms requesting authorization(s).

Just as with e-Voting, assuring that the person who checks a checkbox or tries to scribble their signature with a mouse or touchscreen is the authorized individual may be more difficult than verifying that a given written signature is that of the parent or guardian authorized to authorize.

AFAIU, Google Forms for School can include the logged-in user's username; but parents don't have school domain accounts with Google Apps for Education or Google Classroom.

How would the solution integrate with schools' existing SIS (Student Information Systems)? Upload a CSV of (student, {student info}, {guardian email (s)})? This is private information that deserves security, which costs money.

Which users can log-in for the school and/or district to check the state of the permission / authorization requests and PII personally-identifiable information.

While cryptographic signatures may be overkill as a substitute for permission slips, FWIW, a timestamp within a cryptographically-signed document only indicates what the local clock was set to at the time. Blockchains have relatively indisputable timestamps ("certainly no later than the time that the tx made it into a block"), but blockchains don't solve for proving the key- person relation at a given point in time.

And also, my parent or guardian said you can take me on field trips if you want. [https://backpack.openbadges.org/](https://backpack.openbadges.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> why not google form?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem isn't that schools don't have options, it is that they don't have the incentive. The easy thing for them to do is just send out the same old paper forms. We need to build the template database and give parents the tools to do the form conversion.</comment></comment>


Earth's sixth mass extinction has begun, new study confirms - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-has-begun-new-study-confirms-43432 <comment><USER2> From the abstract at source, which is written better:

> Even under our assumptions, which would tend to minimize evidence of an > incipient mass extinction, the average rate of vertebrate species loss over > the last century is up to 100 times higher than the background rate. Under > the 2 E/MSY background rate, the number of species that have gone extinct in > the last century would have taken, depending on the vertebrate taxon, > between 800 and 10,000 years to disappear. These estimates reveal an > exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, > indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.

[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253)

tldr; everyone except the human species is getting extinct.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is worth pointing out this article is from June 19, 2015.</comment>


Ask HN: Gamedev/3d gfx programming language - <AUTHOR> So there modern programming languages for math, statistics, distributed programming, hpc and system programming. Still ain't a single language aimed at low-level gamedev (3d graphics etc).<p>What do you think such a language could even look like? Any ideas? <comment><USER2> "Still ain't a single language aimed at low-level gamedev"

Sure there are - C, C++, Rust, OpenGL, Vulkan,..

They're made to be able to handle all the things that games need - what do you think they lack?

<comment><AUTHOR> OpenGL/Vulkan are not programmingd languages (though they can be accessed from C, C++, Rust etc.)

C is great but, in my opinion, is not productive enough.

Rust is strongly geared towards safety, which is great in general, but is surely not a 1st priority in gamedev (you often have a perfectly "safe", as in memory-safe and thread-safe code which fails to render 3d graphics correctly).

This leaves us with C++, which is indeed performant, arguably productive and has a benefit that there is a vast amount of libraries that are already written in it.

However, C++ is horribly complicated general-purpose language with quite a legacy bag.

What I'm saying is that one could imagine (and design) a language aimed at gamedev which will be simpler, nonetheless performant and have productivity features specific for gamedev/gfx.</comment></comment>


SQL Developer's "Securely" Encrypted Passwords - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jooq.org/2014/06/05/sql-developers-securely-encrypted-passwords/

<comment><USER2> I love it when people put StackOverflow links into comments - the discussion there explains the much better than 99% of people's comments could ever do.. It also shows a certain humble way, too often I've seen people copy answers from SO and then try to pass them off as their own.

<comment><USER3> "I googled a bit...Parts of the source code were borrowed..."

He's really not even trying to hide it. But at least he released the code he cribbed from other people under a liberal license. Ug.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Ray Ozzie: "Apps Don't Make Your Phone Special" - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5407068/microsofts-ray-ozzie-apps-dont-make-your-phone-special <comment><USER2> "Mobile apps require very little development, so it's much easier to bring them onto every platform." is a fairly insulting statement. Mobile apps have serious resource limits and new input methods that require some real UI testing and planning.

Porting is also going to be an issue. The platforms have very different capabilities and conventions.

<comment><USER3> _Mobile apps have serious resource limits_

Aahahah, that's funny. Smart phones are as powerful as the box I used to play Tribes and Wipeout on. They have more than enough resources to do things.

<comment><USER4> People are used to more, and we need to do it with less time. They don't want to wait for loading screens, they want to load their smoothly scrolling images over the WiFi on-demand from Flickr while performing high quality interpolation to produce the thumbnails.

They want to rotate the device to CoverFlow, and we'll have to load all those images as GL textures and pay the CPU hit for rendering the text labels as they rapidly scroll through their caturday pictures, all the while downloading and caching images in the background to provide a seamless and smooth user experience.

I can't add loading screens (so I have time to preload/pre-render), or restrict my data accesses to loading to optimized textures I have on disk, or spend months (years?) working on optimizing out every CPU cycle. That's not what people want.

So yes, for the things people expect from our applications, we're up against serious resource limits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some people who claim to have been at the talk said that Ozzie's opinions were more nuanced than what's been reported on Gizmodo and VentureBeat. Check the comments at the bottom of Scoble's blog post:

[http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/17/ray-ozzie-is-wrong-about- sm...](http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/17/ray-ozzie-is-wrong-about-smartphone- apps/)

Wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft or Ozzie issues a clarification about this.

<comment><USER6> From those comments: _The real battle is not between RIM, Android, iPhone, WinMob, Nokia - it's really between Flash, HTML5+, JavaFX and Silverlight_ summed it up for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple would probably disagree

<comment><USER8> They might now but the iPhone didn't need apps to start selling.</comment></comment>


8 Predictions for Private Companies in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/sam-hamadeh/private-company-predictions.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _"5. Foursquare will fail by the end of the year."_

They never really did much with the product. It could have been a great competitor to Yelp, but they stuck with the check-in concept for far too long.</comment>


Show HN: Get a free page to share all your links - <AUTHOR> https://click.page <comment><USER2> I recommend using stretched links like in bootstrap[0] on social links and maybe others as well it'll improve experience on mobile users I think

[0]: [https://v5.getbootstrap.com/docs/5.0/helpers/stretched- link/](https://v5.getbootstrap.com/docs/5.0/helpers/stretched-link/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not a valid Show HN. Please read the rules: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks impressive. Was looking for something like this from a long time. Glad finally I found it. Best wishes and than you dev!</comment>


Is Working From Home Really All That Bad for Business?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/laura-montini/hp-now-requiring-employees-to-report-to-the-office.html?cid=em01011week41day09a

<comment><AUTHOR> HP is cutting telecommuting to improve collaboration. What do you think the result will be? When I'm bored at the office I go and mess around with co- workers or find ways to leave early.</comment>


Chatroulette and the Inevitable P*nis - <AUTHOR> http://djoe.posterous.com/chatroulette-and-the-inevitable-penis

<comment><USER2> Offtopic question: why is _penis_ censored?

<comment><AUTHOR> HN stripped the word out completely when I posted it non-censored. I thought it was weird too -- but probably spam protection.

<comment><USER2> Ahh, that makes sense, I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Argon-16 Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/argon16.htm <comment><USER2> What I wish the Russian speaking HN readers would provide some history or documentation on is:

\- Setun, a ternary (as opposed to binary) computer

\- DSSP, a Forth like language that users seem to gush about in the same manner Lispers gush about LISP.

Info/history on both those systems are increadibly difficult to obtain in English!

<comment><USER3> Is there anything particular you would like to know? I've heard a little about Setun from my parents, but nothing too exciting, I can ask around if you're interested.

For a little context: my mother studied cybernetics and father studied electrical engineering in USSR in 70s. They still have their college textbooks lying around, so I can try to dig something up for you from that era. But keep in mind, even in 70s it was obvious that USSR was decades behind USA. Heck, my first algorithm textbook was my parents' 2nd edition of Knuth's TAOCP (interestingly, my parents combined have 1 copy of 1st volume, 0 copies of 2nd volume, and 2 copies of 3rd volume).

<comment><USER2> DSSP, what's so special about it? I sense LISPers and Forthers sense of "enlightenment" (which I have not obtained). But what is so special about DSSP that it's considered a generalization of Forth?

Setun:

just about everything! I read it failed lately because bureaucrats stymied engineer's creativity to do things the "Western" way (it seems this slowed the Soviet's bomb since their scientists figures a better way to do something)

How were logic gates defined ? (Ie what type of ternary logic was used)

What were the voltage levels to represent the states?

What were the performance specs?

What did it do well? What did it do poorly?

Can it be re-implemented in CMOS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> English translation seems to have a mistake:

> Speed: addition - 5 ms, multiplication - 45 ms.

The times are in microseconds, not milliseconds.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. From [http://www.computer- museum.ru/histussr/13-3.htm](http://www.computer-museum.ru/histussr/13-3.htm) :

> _Время выполнения операций (мкс): сложения - 5, умножения 45._

мкс = микросекунды

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised its operating temperature range is so small (0-40C) given its main application.

<comment><USER7> It was likely installed in a conditioned enclosure with a bunch of other instruments. You can stretch mid-1960s semiconductor tech only so much.

<comment><USER8> I suspect this is due to the small thermal window of (then state of the art) germanium transistors which was still in widespread use. It wasnt until the mid 1960s that the silicon transitor overtook germanium in terms of speed. And the USSR was many years behind the West, in terms of materials & design.

Interesting related fact. The thermal operating range of germanium transistors was a concern even in the music world. The "Fuzz Face" pedal which helped give Jimi Hendrix his distinctive distorted guitar tone was built with two germanium transistors in a very simple circuit (< 5 components if I remember correctly). The distortion produced by this pedal was well known to change on stage, under hot lights or in cold basements, etc. To make matters worse, it was also sensitive to the supply voltage, so a fresh 9v acid battery would sound different than a dying battery. (ironically, the dying battery sounded better to most ears. The circuit only drew around 30 mV so a near-dead battery could still last a long time.) As a result, it was not unusual for working musicians to travel with several fuzzfaces and a pocket full of batteries, trying a few at soundcheck to see which sounded the best.

<comment><USER7> Correct, component base lagged behind in USSR and quality assurance was tricky. Even in 1980s there were 5 rejection classes of bipolar transistors compared to just two in the West.

I counted 3-4 years R&D cycle prior to 1974 and then subtracted a few years to account lag in the technology. However for high profile projects like these it wasn't uncommon to simply source the quality Western components.

One of my coworkers in the 1990s was an older guy who was developing systems like that in early 1980s. A lot of stories, not sure how apocryphal. Once they had problems with one of the copied Motorola chips produced in Estonia. The deadline was looming, so they tried to source original chips. However that chipset was discontinued for years at that point with no stock anywhere, neither original Motorola nor compatibles. So they had to restart production on one of the fabs in Asia, using a KGB shell company to handle transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Beginning of production: 1974. Termination of production: still in production.

Solid engineering, I guess.

<comment><USER10> > Total output of machines: 380.

> During 25 years of operation no failures of the system were noted when > working in control systems. By the production volume it is unrivalled among > space computers.

Not only still in production, but still in production with no failures reported. This is beyond amazing. Triple redundancy and hardware majorization will surely help you greatly, but no failures across those numbers is just mind-boggling.

<comment><USER11> This is the product of the Soviet Union, so take it with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER12> "Don't let the stats sway you - think of the propaganda!"

<comment><USER13> "no failures noted" != "no failures".

<comment><USER12> .. unless of course the standard application for the device is in safety- critical/life-protection systems, in which case "no failures noted" better be honest.

<comment><USER14> Why? They try to keep all information secret, especially the one that make USSR looks bad. For example, they denied existence of Level 6 nuclear accident for 30 years [0].

If the nuclear accident which had 10,000 people evacuated was suppressed and denied for 30 years, why would you trust them to publish _any_ negative information about military computer?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak#Kyshtym_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak#Kyshtym_disaster)

<comment><USER12> I mean, these systems are flying on the ISS and protecting American lives.

If its good enough for NASA, its good enough for me. Or are you suggesting that NASA also fell for the scam?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you like innovative spaceship programming tools out of Russia, check out DRAKON, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON)

(shoutout Artiom)

</comment><comment><USER16> The power consumption (280W) for the weight (70kg) seems rather low. What sort of power consumption did similar era computers, that took up a room, have?

<comment><USER17> It didn't took a room it's a flight computer iirc it's still in use on the Soyuz.

And it sounds about right for a 70's era hardened military computer.

The US used 5 AP-101s for the shuttle they where about 22kg each and the power figures I could find range from 370w to 480w.

Bare in mind that there is a good chance that a large part of the power consumption could have went into thermal stabilization rather than computation given that the system power consumption of say an Apple II was around 5w.

<comment><USER11> It was replaced by TsVM-101 in Soyuz TMA-M and later models so they can use that 70kg for payload.

Edit: Found a nice source for a lot of information including comparision between the Argon and the TsVM: [http://www.bis-space.com/belgium/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/...](http://www.bis-space.com/belgium/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/russiafuture.pdf)

The new module is 8.3kg and consumes 46 watts of power.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for that! It's interesting that Argon-16 (and its replacement) are located in the service module which is jettisoned after the deorbit burn.

<comment><USER17> No need for it in the crew compartment, overall it's likely worth bringing and additional 70kg of equipment back than a computer that can likely won't survive the landing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Was it the most deployed mobile computer?

<comment><USER20> I would say Nokia 1110. The iPhone 6 comes close.

<comment><USER19> Was the iPhone 6 around in the 1970s?</comment></comment></comment>


Why are Americans giving up their citizenship? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24135021 <comment><USER2> This has been the case for some time and has been getting worse year after year. It is pretty shameful the extent to which the US tries to attach itself to the income and wealth of people who are not even living in the country solely because they are American citizens. In some cases, compliance with US tax laws (even though not in the US) are in direct conflict with laws in jurisdictions where people actually reside. In essence, a US citizen is indentured to the US state regardless of where they live.

US law should not have jurisdiction beyond the border. It is creating a growing amount of complications for US citizens that are not within US jurisdiction but which can be held criminally liable for not following US laws even when those laws are in conflict with local laws where they actually live. The indifference of the US government to the consequences to US citizens of their overreach is typical these days.

<comment><USER3> Payment of one's taxes is not the same as, or equivalent to, indentured servitude. Or slavery.

<comment><USER4> Not equivalent to, but certainly shares similar characteristics through coerced surrender of the fruits of one's labor.

<comment><USER5> Living inside the state, you wouldn't have those fruits if it weren't for the state. Living outside of the state, tribute of fruits is the fee for belonging to the state. If someone were truly being forced to pay US taxes, they wouldn't be able to renounce their citizenship while living outside of the state. And inside the state, it's like complaining that your parents insist you buy your brother a present with your allowance, or better yet, the money you earned mowing the front lawn. The reason the US economy is so deep and liquid is because the US state is so powerful, and to stay powerful it needs to collect taxes.

<comment><USER6> > Living inside the state, you wouldn't have those fruits if it weren't for > the state

Nice theory but it's not even like you have a remote possibility to live outside of the State. Every country require you to BELONG to a State.

You'd rather look back in History how people were actually able to survive and thrive before advanced State powers even existed. The Human Race was not born with a State and Government to direct themselves. This is all a very recent creation in History. Let's not invert the logic and pretend that without State we would have nothing. This is what Socialism wants you to believe.

<comment><USER7> Oh please. Spare us the shitty history lesson. The state has existed in human history for more than 10,000 years.

The survival and thriving of the human race prior to the establishment of states is incomparable to the last 10,000 years--except to say that they evolved, survived, and propagated the species. They did not _thrive_.

The human race was hardly shit before it began establishing states in order to organize, centralize, protect, expand, and make its way in the world. Before that? Humans were nothing.

Ten thousand years of history does not qualify as a "recent creation in history" unless you're being really particular about establishing recent on a universal and geological time scale.

Without the creation of states, humanity had and left little to nothing behind. It merely existed. You would not be here if it weren't for the creation of the state.

This is not in any way, shape, or form what socialism would have anyone believe.

<comment><USER8> I wonder if there is a libertarian-minded ant somewhere wanting to rebel against their oppressive colony. States are not unique to human beings.

<comment><USER6> Ants are not oppressed by their colony. Read the book "Les fourmis" if you want to learn more about how the actually live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" Unlike other countries, Americans are taxed not only as residents of the US but also as citizens, wherever they live."_

Huh?? Just because you are a US citizen, you have to pay taxes to the US wherever you live? Is any other country in the world having such policies?

<comment><USER6> France was also trying to do that recently, since the government there spends way more than they can hope to "steal" from their citizens. They thought it was a good idea to try to tax citizens living abroad (on top of the taxes paid abroad).

If they ever did that, I can tell you a number of French citizens living abroad would just drop their French passport without hesitation.

<comment><USER3> Taxation is not theft, it is lawful. The developed world is founded on taxes.

<comment><USER10> And war isn't murdering people?

Just because something has the backing of a government doesn't change the definition of words.

You can argue _who_ is the owner of the money being taxed, but you can't say something is or isn't because it's lawful.

<comment><USER11> My ISP insists that I must allow them to steal my money on monthly basis or they would cut my Internet!

Taxes are not theft, but a membership fee. Its perks are roads, fire department, schools, laws and law enforcement, protection from foreign armies and basically keeping the society together.

<comment><USER12> Except your argument makes no sense if you DONT LIVE IN AMERICA. If you pay US Taxes but live elsewhere, you are in fact getting robbed. Your local and government services are not provided by America, you get almost no representation from America, and yet you pay full taxes.

Complete highway robbery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are multiple issues here, and maybe one real but complicated solution besides getting rid of US Citizenship:

US Citizens are taxed on their income by the US regardless of where it was sourced and regardless of where they live. There are exclusions for foreign earned income up $97,600 in 2013 [1], but that does not exempt you from FILING the 1040 and whatever else.

In addition the US has tax treaties [2] with various countries that dictate who gets first right to tax, based on various criteria. Remember treaties trump internal law.

None of these exempt you from filing a return, even if you owe no tax to Uncle Sam.

Then there's the FBAR[3], which is actually a US FinCen form that is administered by the IRS and must be filed by June 30 of each year. It's for people who either have or maintain "signature authority" on bank accounts with a combined value of over $10,000 in the previous year.

Finally there is now FATCA [4], which imposes new reporting requirements on both US persons and Banks. If you live overseas the amount required to report is quite high, but it's still more reporting. For banks it's a royal PIA and many banks will not turn you away if you are a US Citizen (this is anecdotal, I Don't have numbers).

The problem is that the affected parties, US Citizens living abroad, have no real franchise in congress. That's because you vote in Federal Elections based on your last state of residence, which means that your Senator could care less about you.

The solution: We need about 300,000 expats to move back to Wyoming for a while. Once they decide that they no longer like Wyoming and want to move back overseas, they will vote in Federal elections in Wyoming. The expats will then have a voice in congress and be able to have some influence..

[1].[http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Forei...](http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Foreign-Earned-Income-Exclusion) [2][http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/International- Businesses/Unite...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/International- Businesses/United-States-Income-Tax-Treaties---A-to-Z) [3][http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employ...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employed/Report-of-Foreign-Bank-and-Financial-Accounts-%28FBAR%29)

<comment><USER12> _Couldn 't care less_

Could care less means they care some, and theoretically could care less than they already care. Couldn't care less means they already don't care at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing not mentioned in the article, "Renunciation of U.S. citizenship was free until July 2010, at which time a fee of $450 was established."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renunciation_of_citizenship#Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renunciation_of_citizenship#United_States)

<comment><USER15> Is this effectively a fee for having a US embassy process paperwork on your behalf, or are they actually trying to charge a fee for individuals to renounce their citizenship? It seems to me that the whole idea of renouncing one's citizenship is to sever all ties previously held to the country and assume the status of a foreigner in the eyes of that country. How they would collect that $450 if that is the case is beyond me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "1,131 cases to 189 in 2012. It's still a small proportion of the estimated six million Americans abroad"

Yes, I would say that 0.019 percent of the passport-holding population currently living abroad (presumably biased toward the more wealthy passport holders) is a small proportion indeed. What is the comparable figure for people from other countries who renounce their citizenship each year to become naturalized United States citizens? It is surely much higher.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you want to live abroad and pay no US taxes, shouldn't one also give up rights to any entitlement services from the US government during that period? Otherwise, US tax payers are subsidizing free riders. If I'm a US citizen, but spend my whole life working in another country, should I be entitled to draw social security checks from the US? This would seem to create a moral hazard, as if you could find a tax shelter jurisdiction, you could work there, pay little to no taxes, and still cost the US government to support you.

<comment><USER18> Generally, government retirement programs aren't really tied to citizenship. You have to have contributed to social security for a number of years to receive benefits. I'm a US citizen, but my income is German, so I will ultimately receive German retirement benefits.

Living abroad, there are few benefits I'm actually entitled to. In some third world nations, if I'm arrested, then I could receive help at the embassy's expense. But I live in a first world country. I receive zero benefits from the US government. I can't think of a single service the US government provides me. In fact, they hold a monopoly on many of the services I need. If I simply want to notarize a form, I have to get to a consulate and then pay $50 (something I get for free in the US). And yet I have to file taxes and sometimes PAY taxes.

And here's an even worse bit: I get exempted from paying on the first ~$90k of foreign earned income, great. But in order to get that benefit, I'm not allowed to spend more than 30 days in any year in the US. That just means I'm not going to visit my home country at all, because if I visit family for 29 days, and later in the year I need to come back home for a funeral or other emergency, well, that would be a trip that could cost upwards of $20k in US taxes.

<comment><USER17> That seems true in the general case, but not in the specific. One can still obtain SSI if you never worked a day in your life, assuming you can shelter your income to pass the means test, and then return to live in the US. It's not a very likely scenario, because if you have the wherewithal to live abroad and shelter income, the paltry SSI isn't worth the effort.

Still, it begs the question if citizens have some obligation to pay some minimum level of taxes, albeit small, for the basic services and protections one would still expect as a citizen: the right to vote, the salaries of your representatives, courts and foreign service, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So the US has no concept of tax residency?

<comment><USER20> It does. However, in principle all US citizens are obligated to pay US taxes no matter where their residence or tax residence may be. There are a couple ways to be credited for tax paid abroad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Guys over the pond... time for another tea party? 'taxation without representation'? ...'taxation without services'?

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Whoa, whoa, US can tell other countries' financial institutions to report to IRS "or else"?

I think the world should be shelling DC, I mean, forget Iran and Syria, right?

<comment><USER3> It's a diplomatic issue what countries report to each other. And your suggestion is mass murder?

<comment> guard-of-terra Well, now you agree Iraq invasion was a mass murder?

Once USA extort money going from country A to country B for failing to comply, it's no longer a diplomatic issue, that's an international crime. And it was from the day one - USA threatening financial institutions in other countries, giving orders to them directly, that's audaceous.

<comment><USER22> As I understand it, the only way the USG can enforce those orders is if the financial institution has a branch/subsidiary in the US. If they don't, I think they are free to ignore the requirement.

<comment><USER23> I heard it tries to go one step beyond that. If Deutsche Bank has operations in the US, it falls under FATCA. BUT it is also required to not do business with some small German bank that has no operation in the US that does not comply with FATCA; i.e. DB is used to coerce the small German bank with no US operation to report its American customers in Germany to the US.

<comment><USER22> This is really evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This doesn't make sense to me. If you give up your citizenship, then presumably you have citizenship elsewhere, so why not just open a bank account under your foreign citizenship? How is the bank to know?

The only thing I can think of is that maybe people are avoiding taxes in the US and their adopted country as well. After all, many countries Americans move to have such high tax rates that after deductions, their US tax liability would be quite small.

<comment><USER25> Replying before reading the article just wastes everyone's time.

PS - The answers to all of these questions is contained within the article.

<comment><USER24> I read the article. It talks about Facta and then tries to link it to people complaining about how expensive it is to file tax returns, but the two aren't linked unless you weren't reporting your real income. Americans have always had to file taxes while living abroad. The tax laws have been extremely complicated for decades. Facta isn't changing that.

FTA:

 _" Fatca provisions impose no new obligations on US citizens living abroad... US taxpayers, including US citizens living abroad, are required to comply with US tax laws," he says._

No, this sounds more like people who might have fudged some numbers now worrying that the IRS is going to find out and realizing that their citizenship isn't worth the yearly bill.

<comment><USER26> _It became so complicated to do her tax return that she turned to professionals, at an annual cost of nearly $2,000 (£1,250), with the prospect of Fatca raising the price to $5,000. Also, fewer tax lawyers were taking on American clients, she says, and some banks were even turning away American money._

I don't see any mention of tax-dodging in the paragraph above. Which part of paying $2000 (and maybe soon $5000) to file taxes, and banks turning away American customers, don't you understand?

<comment><USER24> See this is what I don't understand. Facta does not change tax law. It should have no bearing on the cost of having your taxes done. You already had to declare foreign bank accounts to the IRS, so really all the law is doing is getting them declared automatically. Now fewer tax lawyers certainly will raise costs, but that has nothing to do with Facta.

<comment><USER27> What it changes is that it requires (non-US) banks to keep track of which of their accounts are owned or co-owned by someone who may have a (dual) US citizenship, and may have made an error in their tax returns, or risk having some of their US assets seized. Some banks just prefer not to take the risk.

The non resident citizen tax returns can become very complicated in the situation where the non resident US citizen is married to a non resident foreigner. The tax forms don't even support this configuration - the spouse must have a social security number. The foreign spouse must then apply for a special "non resident alien" social security number, for the special purpose of being able to file taxes in a country they are not even allowed to enter without a visa.

And how exactly do you determine the value of your shared assets in dollars? Have you made capital gain every time the dollar fluctuates against the local currency? Since we bought our home, our property has dropped significantly in value in the currency we earn our wages in, but theoretically gained a bit in dollars, so how can we be sure this doesn't add up to exceed $50,000? The only way to be sure is to hire an expert figure it out for you, for several thousand $. They are now charging more for their services because of the higher risks and responsibilities involved.

The net amount we have to pay in that country one of us isn't allowed to enter without a visa has always added up to $0 because the extremely high taxes we already pay locally (50+ percent income tax, 20+ percent sales tax, 80+ percent excise tax on fuel etc) can be deducted.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://philip.greenspun.com/humor/eecs-difference-explained <comment><USER3> Hardware solutions can be quite beautiful in their simplicity. HP's first product was a precision oscillator. To get the necessary precision, they needed a negative feedback mechanism to stabilize their oscillation circuit. They used a lightbulb. As the circuit drew more current, the lightbulb element heated up, causing its resistance to go up and thus acting to reduce the current through the circuit.

<comment><USER4> Using a light bulb as a non-linear element in a circuit dates back at least to Western Electric and its 1915-era Panel switch: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_switch>

(By the way, if you're near Seattle, interested in electronics and history, and can spare a Tuesday morning, you might enjoy going to visit the Museum of Communications in Georgetown: <http://www.museumofcommunications.org/> . I volunteer there when school's not in session.)

<comment><USER5> I believe some audio compressors work like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is just zero-insight flamebait.

<comment><USER7> Exactly this is stooping incredibly low. Here's a different story: A king called an electrical engineer and a computer scientist together and gave them a task best suited to an electrical engineer (something which the computer scientist very well realized). He then tried to execute the computer scientist for the inferior design. But the computer scientist ran away and started a search engine and provided people with cryptography. These helped in getting information to the people who realized that being ruled by a king who executes people is stupid so they overthrew him and built a democracy of entrepreneurs where engineers and computer scientists worked together on cool products for the mutual gain of all. It was a vibrant society with free speech, which unfortunately meant there were a lot of stupid Internet trolls who had to be ignored. Luckily computer scientists designed systems of information aggregation where the trolls could be downvoted from serious forums of discussion. Unfortunately those left without the power to downvote had to try to find amusing ways to get other people to do it.

<comment><USER8> Hold on a minute - that isn't fair. I am an Elec Eng who works in CS. Had to go back and learn stuff (who doesn't). And I can't blame the king for executing a CS for bad inheritance based OO design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not a good example of the two professions. Give the CS person hardware constraints, and he or she would design an equally good system.

\+ Both people here are fundamentally asked to solve a hardware problem. Of course the CS person does not know how to design complicated hardware, so of course he or she will just stick in an arduino and write code ...

\+ The CS person easily also could have said "it's a toaster" and then would have an almost identical solution to the EE (or vice versa). Keep in mind that EEs are limited because of manufacturing expenses ... again, we seem to be penalizing the CS majors because they would ignore hardware manufacturing costs!

\+ Hardware is redesigned every few years to accommodate needs, just as software is.

<comment><USER3> EEs write code too.

<comment><USER10> I've always been a little interested in this. How competent are EEs at general programming? This is a serious question -- the only EEs I know that program wrote some really crappy assembly code for a robotics project I helped on (don't even get me started on their C).

<comment><USER11> I'm a EE in a day job. I design processors. I write programs in hardware descriptive languages such as Verilog and Object Oriented languages such as SystemVerilog. I write Perl, Shell scripts too.

Every day, I write code.

I build websites in the part-time too. I write all PHP, CSS, MySQL, Javascript on my own, and build beautiful websites like <http://shopalize.com>.

Every night, I write code too.

So trust me, we're competent.

<comment><USER5> _So trust me, we're lot competent._

Ironically, this needs editing.

<comment><USER12> " > So trust me, we're lot competent.

Ironically, this needs editing."

Agreed ( I didn't say it) but so does this

"I saw some EE student C code once"

(from your earlier comment) ;-)

<comment><USER5> Sorry, but that's a valid sentence. Thanks for displaying your, "lot competent."

<comment><USER12> You say "I saw some EE student C code once" is grammatical?

How about "I saw some American woman English speak once"? ;-)

I wonder who is "lot competent" here!

Look, it is all right to make minor mistakes in grammar, especially if you are not a native speaker (the "lot comment" guy seemed Indian).

I was just pointing out your hypocrisy in using that as a marker of competence and ask for editing, when you write more ill structured sentences yourself. He who would be a Grammar Nazi should first write grammatically correct sentences.

Relax and let live.

<comment><USER5>
        You say "I saw some EE student C code once" is grammatical?
        How about "I saw some American woman English speak once"? ;-)
        I wonder who is "lot competent" here!

Your example is wrong because "code" in my sentence is a noun, not a verb as you assumed.

Is English your 1st language? Thanks for showing us more "lot competent."

Hint, if you're wrong, but mistakenly try to come back and tell me I'm wrong, I'm going to let you have it with both barrels.

<comment><USER13> You are wrong, as it happens - if not strictly (though I am not sure it _is_ strictly correct) then in usual use.

EDIT: if you're using it as a noun, by the way, you are wrong - I think student needs to be possessive. e.g.

"I saw some EE students C code once"

But that's immaterial - _why are we attacking people's grammar_. It's irrelevant to the discussion!

<comment><USER12> "if your'e using it as a noun, by the way, you are wrong - I think student needs to be possessive."

Exactly. And you need an apostrophe to indicate that if you want your readers to parse the sentence properly.

"I saw an EE student's C Code once" (student is singular) or " I saw some EE students' C code once" (students are plural). I've seen some grammar books recommend an extra s anyway for the latter case as in "I saw some students's C code once" though I suspect that is unused these days. [1]

"why are we attacking people's grammar. It's irrelevant to the discussion!"

This.

Speaking or writing 100% grammatically correct English (assuming such a beast exists, which is a separate discussion) or making a typo here and there is irrelevant to someone's competence as a programmer.

Using minor grammatical errors to judge people as incompetent is, at the least, foolish.

I don't think strcredzero is incompetent because he missed an apostrophe or wrote an ill formed sentence. But by the same token I don't think Aditya is incompetent as a programmer (which was the topic under discussion btw - <USER2> students being good programmers or not) just because he said "lot competent". Give the guy a break.

[1] From Strunk's "Elements of Style"

"Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles's friend Burns's poems the witch's malice

This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press."

<comment><USER5> Who ever said anyone was a bad programmer? This is the same irony as the "qualaty" initiative from Dilbert. At that point it was an ironic and relevant quip. It's you guys that turned it into ego bashing -- while displaying grammatical incompetence even as you incorrectly criticize my grammar.

Incidentally you're still wrong. Ambiguously parse-able English sentences are still grammatically correct if one of the possibilities is correct.

Oh, and you assumed student was a noun when it's an adjective in your analysis. Sheesh! Is English your 1st language? "Student code" where student is a noun acting as adjective is a commonly accepted pattern of use in North America and Britain.

<comment><USER12> "you assumed student was a noun when it's an adjective in your analysis. Sheesh! "

Well that reflects on how well you structure your sentences as a writer doesn't it?

Why take the attitude of "my sentence looks completely ill structured but it has multiple possible parses and I know _one_ of them is right and I leave you to figure out which one vs writing clearly in the first place and meanwhile I'll "ironically quip" on some other fellow's minor errors vs sticking to the argument at hand"?

"Is English your 1st language?"

I already said it wasn't. And I don't need to have it as my first language to show you your sentence structure is sucky. Everyone who has English as a first language doesn't write it well. Conversely some people who have English as a their n-th language speak or write well. So what?

" "Student code" where student is a noun acting as adjective is a commonly accepted pattern of use in North America and Britain."

And "lot competent" is Indian English. again, so what? Who said adherence to "North American English" is the metric of programming competence of EE students (which was what Aditya was talking about) and you explicitly pointed his sentence as "ironic"?

I quote

"Aditya:- So trust me, we're lot competent.

StrcredZero: Ironically, this needs editing.""

It is hard to read your "ironically" as anything other than "you are not as competent as you claim and your sentence structure reveals it" . What was the "irony" here?

Bigotry and irony are different.

But, whatever, I tire of this bickering and this thread is overlong. I rest my case and yield you the field and the (dubious) victory! [Exit thread]

<comment><USER5> _It is hard to read your "ironically" as anything other than "you are not as competent as you claim and your sentence structure reveals it" . What was the "irony" here?_

Apparently you have a penchant for jumping to conclusions, then behaving defensively when your shortcomings are pointed out. Thanks for revealing yourself so cheaply and easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "this looks like something i've seen before. i can get you a better one by tomorrow." mark it up by a factor of 2 to buy a toaster someone else built and sell it for profit. assure the king you can massively produce the toasters, but you must retain the licensing rights to sell to other countries. you buy the rights to the toaster and make millions.

</comment><comment><USER13> As an engineer; the engineering solition presented here is very poor. It ignores the problem domain almost entirely and focuses on only one minor (and hard to quantify) variable.

The cs solution is banal too - but it appears thisis down to the writers bias.

<comment><USER5> Lots of assumptions are being made that might not apply to the kingdom. No one asks if people want toast done on one side or both. Does everyone even have electricity? The best solution might even be wire racks to put over gas burners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Software "engineering" != CS. I know Greenspun knows that, and I know the CS label is just for the purposes of the joke, but still. Java has already been harmful enough to CS. :-p

<comment><AUTHOR> Greenspun didn't write it, he just posted it on his website.

<comment><USER16> The earliest I can trace it back to is this post to comp.lang.ada in 1994:

[http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/msg/7a96d45d5cc...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/msg/7a96d45d5ccc1ea3)

I like how he opens with "I felt like wasting bandwidth" so here's a funny story. Little could he imagine it would become #1 link on Hacker News, 15 years later :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a software guy, and I'd just use a bimetallic-strip thermostat with an adjustable spring, whose tension is controlled by the knob.

Off to the patent office...</comment>


Why You Should Not Build a Recommendation Engine - <AUTHOR> http://datacommunitydc.org/blog/2013/05/recommendation-engines-why-you-shouldnt-build-one/

<comment><USER2> I think the author of this article makes a compelling argument for why building a recommendation engine is not an efficient strategy in creating an MVP. I've been working on an e-commerce startup for over a year now (eep!) and after spending countless hours arguing over this exact prioritization with my co-founder, I had to finally call it quits, because we just never got anywhere. Recommendation engines sound sexier when pitching ideas, but at the end of the day, how do you pitch a product that doesn't exist to customers that only exist in theory?</comment>


Preventing Tracking Prevention Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/9661/preventing-tracking-prevention-tracking/ <comment><USER2> Some of the people I've talked with over the years study things like nuclear weapons arms control or cyberwarfare. The most paranoid of the bunch have resorted to having Virtual Private Servers screen shot websites with headless browsers once it loads and pipe it back to their research machine. I can't remember if it's a table of PNGs or just one big one, but either way it's sent back over a SSH tunnel and when you click the server knows what you're trying to click on and preforms the action for you, and will randomly forward the click to a new VPS.

It's not perfect because the IP blocks make it obvious that it comes from DigitalOcean, AWS, etc, but it's sure better than loading untrusted PDFs or JS locally. Still vulnerable to a network attack, though.

<comment><USER3> How does this stop something as simple as user-unique URLs for each link? A new VPS that fetches a unique URL is trivial to tie to the same user.

<comment><USER4> open multiple browser sessions for the user, and randomly choose one of them as the 'result' (but still click on all of them, even if the resultant page isn't viewed).

Or, just don't use the website if they do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want this in Firefox you need to tweak an about:config setting. I really hope it becomes the default at some point.

        # Only send the origin cross-domain.
        network.http.referer.XOriginTrimmingPolicy = 2

This alone is a pretty liberal policy. People in this crowd probably want even more which can be found here: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer)

<comment><USER6> Why does this header need to exist in the first place? Seems like a huge privacy breach. Why can't 0 be the default setting?

<comment><USER7> I can't speak to why it was originally defined, but since the Referer [sic] header has existed for decades, many sites depend on it to function. The Smart Referer extension whitelist[1] and bug tracker[2] have several examples.

1\. [https://gitlab.com/smart-referer/smart-referer/blob/gh- pages...](https://gitlab.com/smart-referer/smart-referer/blob/gh- pages/whitelist.txt)

2\. [https://gitlab.com/smart-referer/smart- referer/issues?scope=...](https://gitlab.com/smart-referer/smart- referer/issues?scope=all&state=all&label_name\[\]=Old%20Whitelist)

<comment><USER8> > I can't speak to why it was originally defined, but since the Referer [sic] > header has existed for decade

I can remember my Dad getting a mail from someone he linked to that was about to move his website and politely contacted his neighbors on the internet to allow them to update their links.

Very useful at that time.

<comment><USER9> It can still be useful for that kind of thing. When I notice an unexpected spike of traffic on one of our sites I'll often look at our analytics to see where it came from and then potentially drop in there to answer comments and such. Not to say that's worth the privacy trade-off though, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Origin-Only Referrer For All Third-Party Requests

This is going to break a lot of things. Things that probably _should_ be broken, but it will cause headaches nonetheless.

<comment><USER11> Luckily if a big browser makes this the default, these things will probably be fixed.

<comment><USER12> Conversely, if a big browser makes a new default that ends up being the wrong decision, that default might spread to other browsers and things will definitely be broken.

The css value `100vh` meant the height of the viewport of the browser, until it didn't.

<comment><USER13> > The css value `100vh` meant the height of the viewport of the browser, until > it didn't.

Huh, what's it mean now? Is there some subtle difference, like it doesn't include the horizonal scroll bar or something?

<comment><USER14> Mobile devices interpret it differently because of the hide/show browser UI they often have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope there is a light at the end of the tunnel for all of this. It seems like there will always be a cat and mouse effort to be just one step ahead of the other. Like how many websites have those popups now where they ask you to turn off ad-blocking. Intrusive ads and website tracking should both be a problem by default. I guess not all ads can be a problem, but I am unsure if the same could be said about tracking...

<comment><AUTHOR> We're willing to play the cat and mouse game indefinitely, if that's what it takes. Widely deployed trackers are limited in how fast they can try new tricks. And in practice, we know that ITP is working pretty well to block cross-site tracking: [https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/12/09/the- information...](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/12/09/the-information- ad-tracking)

<comment><USER16> > Widely deployed trackers are limited in how fast they can try new tricks.

How so? Tracking scripts are often included by a script tag that points at a website. Can't the code be updated, "deployed" to websites immediately, and take advantage of the relatively slower release cycle of Safari?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I should have said that some tricks are slow to deploy.

Sometimes the publisher only embeds an image form the tracker (the famed "tracking pixel"). Getting lots of sites to change that to script is a pain. Sometimes they need to deploy new server-side tech for a workaround. For the recent CNAME cloaking trick, they have to get sites to modify their DNS and change what URL they embed script from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > ITP now downgrades all cross-site request referrer headers to just the > page's origin

What is meant by cross-site here? Does it mean a different eTLD+1, or a different origin (as used by CORS)?

Specifically, if I make a request from [https://www.example.com/path?query](https://www.example.com/path?query) to [https://api.example.com](https://api.example.com) will the referer header contain the "/path?query"? or will that get blocked as well?

</comment><comment> core-questions Trace buster Buster BUSTER!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw3G80bplTg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw3G80bplTg)

</comment><comment><USER18> So what's next? Tracking the Prevention of Tracking Prevention?

Honestly, this shit gets confusing, can someone please ML us out of it? Or maybe we just design a sane and understandable First-Party only policy?

<comment><USER19> It's impossible to build a perfect system, even ML could have a bias towards a certain solution or the badguys could ML a way to track us again.

<comment><USER20> Its funny how our brains have a kind of built in adblocker named banner blindness. There have been a few times I was unable to understand a UI because the important part was rectangle and too prominent so I ignore it entirely without realizing it.

<comment><USER21> Why do you think advertisers moved to moving ads, ads that fade in over the page once you scroll a little and can be assumed to be focusing on the page, reading? Autoplay video that moves down to the picture-in-picture corner? The more annoyingly distracting the ad is, the better. Or so advertisers think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why can't a browser solve this (except for IP) by simply having an option to not leak any data? Make audio and GL calls constant time, and don't persist anything past the tab / window / site? No fonts or cache reuse beyond the host? No referrers etc.

What's the hard problem here that prevents major browsers from having an option like this?

<comment><USER23> Firefox has an about:config preference called "privacy.resistFingerprinting" to enable some of Tor's mitigations against fingerprinting. Tor is based on Firefox code and Mozilla merges some of Tor's code changes into Firefox to make updating easier for the Tor team.

More details in this ghacks article:

[https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/01/a-history-of- fingerprintin...](https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/01/a-history-of- fingerprinting-protection-in-firefox/)

</comment></comment><comment> kube-system Of course, Google suggests modifications that would hinder their competitors, but not themselves. I wonder what percentage of browsers have a first-party cookie from Google?

<comment><AUTHOR> If Google had any motive besides research and responsible disclosure, it would more likely be to persuade us that ITP is not viable. But I think their issue was fair and submitted in good faith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > We'd like to thank Google for sending us a report in which they explore both > the ability to detect when web content is treated differently by tracking > prevention and the bad things that are possible with such detection.

Its interesting that Google being an ad-tech company is doing something against their own interest.

</comment><comment><USER25> They have an app store they earn money from. They have ads system. For them websites are competition. Because people loose time elsewhere than in apps. They click other ads than theirs.

How should anyone believe these actions are for privacy? And not against competition? Against the Internet?

Have you seen any consideration how it will impact website owners? I didn't. It seems they really don't care. And it is very dangerous.

It looks like the path to break the Internet.

<comment><USER26> Apple doesn't have an ads system, unless you mean the App Store ads that only show up in App Store search (and thus are completely unrelated to Safari). They had an ads system at one point but it was shut down over 3 years ago, and was for in-app ads anyway, not browser ads.

<comment><USER16> Apple also runs ads in Apple News.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the difference between a Startup and a Small Business? - <AUTHOR>

So I've never been really clear on this.
What's the difference between starting a startup and starting a small business?
Is it just what you call it? Or is there some definable criteria? Does a startup have to have investors and a plan to sell the company? I don't think so. But then what's the difference? <comment><USER2> The difference between a shrub and a redwood seedling. A startup is a company that is just passing through small.

<comment><AUTHOR> So is a bootstrapped company that isn't taking investors and never plans to be sold but is planned to eventually grow to several million a year in revenue a startup?

Edit: Several can be up to 10 to 20 million. Technically this is more than the pay off to the founders of most successful startups, I believe.

<comment><USER3> Another way to look at is the "Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon" model:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html>

Sounds like you're more or less in the B&J camp.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great article. Thanks!

I am definitely in the B&J camp, and this article really got right exactly what that means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe Paul Graham once defined the difference as: a startup wants to (but doesn't necessarily) have "a significant exit," it either goes public, or gets acquired for a large amount. A new small business that aims to be sustainable, profitable, grow, etc, isn't a "startup," without the significant exit. Unfortunately I remember hearing this in a video or audio interview, so it's hard for me to search for this attribution.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say this is the defining quality of a startup, but it is an almost inevitable consequence of the defining quality, which is growth. A fast- growing technology company will get acquisition offers, whether they seek them or not. And one that grows sufficiently large will have to go public, whether they want to or not.

<comment><USER5> _And one that grows sufficiently large will have to go public, whether they want to or not._

I'm curious, what is your reasoning here? Because it will be acquired by a public company (e.g. Microsoft or Google)? Or just because investors will want a means to exit?

<comment><USER2> There's an SEC rule that effectively forces you to go public once you have 500 shareholders.

[http://news.cnet.com/SEC-rule-may-nudge-Google-toward- IPO/21...](http://news.cnet.com/SEC-rule-may-nudge-Google-toward- IPO/2100-1030_3-5119504.html)

<comment><USER6> You can get an exemption for that though...

[http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc200...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc20081120_566312.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> the term startup tends to refer to growth-oriented new businesses. they can be small businesses, but they're small businesses actively trying to become not small.

</comment><comment><USER8> A startup is a small business that has recently started up (duh), especially in a technology sector, that is capable of scaling into something big.

<comment><USER9> The point about _scaling_ is key. If the business can't easily expand to handle more than a limited number of customers, and/or can't meaningfully be sold to someone else who can carry it on while the original owners lounge around on a beach in Argentina, it's not a startup.

That helps us to see why my consulting company, the (independent) pizza place on the corner, and your dentist's LLC are not considered "startups" -- and, indeed, why the majority of small businesses are not startups. On the other hand, once the pizza place starts selling franchises without limit, it becomes much harder to distinguish it from a startup (although people probably wouldn't use the word, because it's a tech sector word).

<comment><USER10> 37signals considers itself a small business, and has the scalability thing licked.

<comment><USER9> Well, yes. Perhaps I should have explicitly mentioned Rule Zero: "You can call your company whatever you want. It's yours." :)

I'm not sure it's possible to objectively identify a _startup_ , except perhaps in retrospect. To borrow PG's fun metaphor for a moment: You can look at a tall redwood and conclude that it was once a seedling, but you can't look at a seedling and conclude that it is destined to be a tall redwood. And that's not just because some seedlings get eaten by beetles before they can grow tall. Sometimes seedlings end up living for many years as bonsai trees, where they are carefully pruned and tended in their tiny indoor pots.

<comment><USER10> You're right, but I wish we could get past the value judgements.

A startup is a company that just started.

A small business is a company that is small.

A large business is a company that is large.

Why do we have to build a speculative growth curve into the term "startup"?

<comment><USER9> _Why do we have to build a speculative growth curve into the term "startup"?_

Presumably because, if the _average_ small business with no net profits went up to a VC and asked for $3m on a valuation of $100m, it would be laughed out of the room.

I'm inclined to agree with you, but AFAIK the word "startup" was _invented_ by small companies which desperately wanted to convince investors that they were absolutely determined to become large companies. So I'm not surprised that it still carries that connotation... the real surprise is that the connotation is wearing off. We're getting to the point where your proposed definitions sound more and more reasonable. Because it no longer takes five years of advance planning, an enormous staff, office buildings, multiple factories, and all the other big-company trappings to scale up a small company, if that company is on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some examples of small businesses that aren't startups might help clarify the issue. When I visited a local small business advisory centre (in the hope of learn something to help my startup, before I understood this difference) the other founders who I met were selling (purportedly) gourmet dog food and therapeutic massage. Most small businesses are like that: providing goods or services to localities. Tradesmen, delis etc are other examples.

<comment><USER12> Selection bias.

Most small businesses _that visit their local business center_ are like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would argue startups are a specific subset of businesses that initially are "Small Businesses" with the defining quality being the capability to scale to something much larger, obviously when faced with a market opportunity that allows it do so (whether that market is existing or is completely new).

Of course, the "term" startup is often used loosely but most often is used to define the usual: Tech-oriented, "innovative" businesses seeking to raise millions of dollars and eventually become companies that can make hundreds of millions of dollars (or billions) and can make the large exit (as PG pointed out above).

</comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/hacker-vs- engineer...](http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/hacker-vs-engineer- know-the-difference/)

</comment><comment><USER15> There is no difference

If you think your startup isn't a (big or small) business - you are missing the point.

</comment><comment><USER16> A startup is legitimately an investable opportunity for a professional investor. (Just because 37signals doesn't want money, doesn't mean that they're not a good candidate for a VC investment.)

<comment><USER10> 37signals actually took funding.

<comment><USER12> But in a very, very different way than every other business that gets talked about here.

They were profitable first, became very profitable over time, and they took funding years later when their revenues must have been in the millions/year (while still being only a handful of people) - and the only reason they took it (they _claimed_ ) was to get access to Jeff Bezos, the investor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A small business is making money... :o)

<comment><USER18> "A small business is making money."

If you mean generating a profit you're correct. Anything that's not generating its own profits is nothing more than a hobby. Twitter is only a hobby. So is Facebook. Neither are generating their own profits, they exist solely on funds provided by investors -- and that's not a business, it's a privately funded hobby.

When a hobby starts generating more income than expenses then maybe it has earned the right to be called a 'small business' or even a 'large business' depending upon where you draw the line in terms of scale, but until then it is in no way a business.

A startup is anything that's being started. Whether it's still a hobby or a business does not matter in the least. Some people may delude themselves by calling hobby startups 'businesses' but that doesn't make them businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The difference often manifests itself like this: startups make something people want; small businesses make something people want to pay for.

</comment><comment><USER10> Startups grow for the sake of growing.</comment>


A digital sundial whose holes cast a shadow with the current time [video] - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2016/02/09/a-digital-3d-printed-sundial.html <comment><USER2> Discussion from a few weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11094274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11094274)</comment>


Show HN: CodePorn - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vangav/vos_backend <comment><USER2> Stop with the stupid linkbait titles. That just gets your submissions banned.

Even the uppercasing, ASCII art and baseless claims ("save your STARTUP $1M in dev cost") are already against the guidelines [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment>


Laugh at High Gas Prices With a 282-MPG VW - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/07/laugh-at-high-g.html

<comment><USER2> I'm actually relieved no one has commented on the weight being unsafe, like in the wired comment thread.

I'd just like to point out that some titanium alloys have the same strength at only one-eighth the weight of the strongest steel alloys. However the titanium alloy only carries one-eighth the kinetic energy and would greatly increase road safety if used extensively in cars.

I mean if a pickup weighs 4,000 lbs, and it can carry 2,000 lbs of materials before it doesn't have enough torque, reducing the trucks weight by 50% and not even changing the engine would mean it could carry 4,000 lbs of materials before it doesn't have enough torque.

That's a highly simplified explination, but the general principal is there. Any weight not wasted on the chassis, means the vehicle can tow/carry more at the same fuel consumption rate. What's even better is, like the 1L, if you make your car lighter you increase fuel efficiency greatly.

I mean I wonder how many Ford F-150's are out there that spend half their time wasting fuel as they're pulling around 2,000lbs of chassis they could do without, and could do with another 2,000lbs of extra carrying capacity when they are working.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't matter how strong it is, if it weighs sod-all then you're going to come off pretty poorly in a collision with something much larger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's great if you want to spend 40k on it. And if you're spending 40k on a 1 seater car, why are you complaining about gas prices?

<comment><USER5> It seats 2, but the passenger sits directly behind the driver bobsled style, which is kind of cool perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the direction the automobile industry needs to take. Instead of trying to make the same old cars run on different energy sources like ethanol, electricity, etc., design new cars that will run on existing sources of energy more efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER6> You'll laugh until people see what you're car looks like.

<comment><USER7> It's got a cool look to it. Like a little rocket.

At only 660 pounds though sitting a 350lb American in it is going to seriously degrade that mileage figure. There is a point coming in the near future (with these ultralight cars) where being a bit on the tubby side is going to directly impact your commuting costs!

<comment><USER8> They must know how to eat right in them parts where you live if 350 lbs is "a little on the tubby side".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm laughing at high gas prices from my bicycle.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hm, with an 8.x horepower engine, how well can the thing handle?

<comment><USER11> With the carbon fiber chassis it'll weight pretty much like a motorcycle, meaning around 250 kg with the driver. A standard car is easy 5 times as much, so it has the equivalent of a 40 hp engine on a normal car. Not much, but enough. And if they upgrade the engine before going into production it could go to the equivalent of 60hp - or about as much as my Fiat Punto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Doubles as a coffin.

</comment><comment><USER13> Until then make use of your bicycle and work more often from home.

</comment><comment><USER14> 235 MPG.</comment>