I got my AdWords account unsuspended by not giving up - mkr-hn http://www.mkronline.com/4730/i-got-my-adwords-account-unsuspended-by-not-giving-up/

<comment><AUTHOR> _"It took contacting them again, insisting on a response, to get an explanation."_

Which was...?

<comment> mkr-hn It's the opening section.</comment></comment>


The 500 Startups Index – 369 Companies and Counting - <AUTHOR> http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/03/the-500-startups-index/

<comment><USER2> It is important to understand that 500 Startups consists of two separate entities/programs: an accelerator and a seed fund. It is very common for 500 Startups (the seed fund) to invest in YC startups.

To look at the flip side, it is rare for YC to invest in companies that did not actually go through YC (it has happened before, however).

<comment><USER3> 500 has invested in ~50 YC companies to date. I believe there are about 30 or so in our first fund.

YC has invested in 2 companies that went thru 500 accelerator first (9GAG and Vayable), and also a few others where we invested at around the same time as YC (Scoutzie, Virool, Microryza, Referly).

also, we are investors in ~20 TechStars companies (including Sendgrid), and also ~10 companies each from AngelPad in SF, and SeedCamp in Europe, and StartMate in Australia.

altho we run our own accelerator program at 500, we are frequent investors in other accelerator programs, including several around the world in East Asia, South Asia, Latin America, Western & Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are any of these making any money? Ron Conway's second angel fund had Google in it and it only returned 1.5x because 80% went bust.

A rough calc of what it would take for one runaway success to payback the total funds invested;

Assuming $20k per deal, $7.4m invested.

Assuming 7% equity per deal, that would need one success to sell for $100m and have no follow on dilution or liquidation preference stacked on top. Given this is seed, assuming 50% dilution that's $200m+ just to return the money back to shareholders. For a big success of 5-10x on the fund, one of these has to hit $1-2 billion. I'm still ignoring liq pref which could be a killer.

A couple of these numbers might be off a bit, but I'm a bit sketchy on the spray and pray of a 369 (or 500) company portfolio unless you are really #1 (YC) and can effectively synthesize "the index".. and then you will only generate beta ("market") returns.

<comment><USER3> actually yes, many of our companies generate revenue, and a good number are profitable. in fact we probably have a slight bias for revenue over growth.

btw, our initial investment at accelerator or seed is more like $50-100k, and follow-on investments at Series A/B are between $100-500k. in about 10 companies we hold aggregate basis positions of between $500K-$1.5M.

500 Startups Fund I has ~256 companies, and currently Fund II has ~220 companies (and will likely be around 275 total). out of each of these funds, we aim for perhaps 50+ companies to get to Series A/B rounds led by institutional investors (in which we will also continue investing as well), and from these perhaps 10-20 may achieve larger exits of $100M or more.

as to performance & exit model expectations, our rough model expects that 5-10% of portfolio (~10-25 companies) will do 20x or better, and perhaps 10-25% (25-60 companies) do 3-5X. at a median initial entry valuation of ~$4M, 20x would be an exit of $80M, and 3-5x would be an exit of $12-20M.

so far, 500 Startups Fund I has had about 10 exits in the $5-30M range, and 1 exit at $350M (Wildfire). still private and growing are 5-6 companies that are valued around or above $100M (Twilio, Sendgrid, Taskrabbit, Makerbot, Viki, Smule). we also have about 25-30 companies valued at between $25-$75M that look promising. with luck, hopefully some of these companies will find exits at or above current valuations (tho likely not all of them).

also different from the earlier SV Angel portfolios, 500 Startups doubles down (& triples down) selectively on our top 20-30% of portfolio companies in later rounds. we believe this enables us to weight our portfolio more towards winners, rather than a pure scattershot index strategy.

in any case, it will take a few more years to see if our strategy works, but so far it looks like it's not completely irrational.

(ps - altho they are usually higher valuation, about 10% of our portfolio is YC companies. since median valuation at YC demo day is more like $7-8M, you might have to double the target exits noted above... however we also have many of our own accelerator companies where our entry valuation is more like $1-2M to offset)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the clarification on the numbers, I guess only time will tell on the distribution of exits and what the actual returns back to you would be on them look like (20x @ $80m ignores liq pref and dilution). How many are in your team now looking after all the portfolio companies?

<comment><USER3> indeed there will be some further dilution, but typically there is not dramatic liquidation preference on winners, at least that we have seen thus far. if you like, you can double the exit targets I mentioned, but regardless we are looking for ~10-20 companies that exit north of $50-100M, and 25-50 that exit at between $10-50M.

overall 500 is currently about 22 people. of those, we have ~10-12 investment professionals, each of which is making 10-25 investments per year. if we are lucky, 1 or 2 of those might be larger wins, and 3-5 might be smaller wins.

since we generally do not sit on boards, most of our team is not spending the majority of their time in future years managing a large # of investments, altho they do spend time in the first year or so helping some of them get financing from downstream institutional investors.

hope this helps explain our strategy.

<comment><USER4> Great overview, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know the story about ChirpMe? The Alexa rank seems really high (~3400) for a "beta" product:

<http://i.imgur.com/2rAlmVX.png> <http://i.imgur.com/OcTNU5s.png>

<comment><USER6> Alexa rank can be a very poor gauge of real world traffic especially with low sample sizes

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't realize 9gag was in YC _and_ 500

<comment><USER8> There are many others: Rapportive, 9GAG, Daily Muse, MixRank, Referly, etc.

<comment><USER3> as noted above, 500 has invested in ~50 YC companies over the past 3 years. we are likely the 2nd-most active investor in YC after the Start Fund / SV Angel / A16Z / NEA group... however, we pick selectively rather than indexing (altho indexing YC is likely a pretty solid strategy too).

500 is also an active investor in companies that graduate from TechStars, AngelPad, SeedCamp, Startmate, and several other programs globally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm constantly amazed at how 500 Startups came out of nowhere to become #2.

<comment><USER10> #2 at what? (Or did you mean: <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%232>)

<comment><USER9> I mean, after YC, the second best startup accelerator, by the "if I didn't get into YC, which accelerator would I consider" metric. (SendGrid still tips the scales for historical performance in favor of TechStars, I guess)

<comment><USER10> Since I've never heard my entrepreneur friends say stuff like that about 500 Startups ;-) and it's probably too soon to rank accelerators on performance, I went looking for something more scientific. This evaluation is the best I could find -- 500 Startups is #10: <http://tech.co/reports/startup- accelerator-report-2012>

<comment><USER2> I don't give that ranking any credibility.

Personally speaking from a Silicon Valley perspective (and having worked at a YC company before), 500 Startups is tied with TechStars on my list. I've never heard of any of the other accelerators on that list except AngelPad.

<comment><USER3> Thomas Korte has done a terrific job with AngelPad, and I'd rank it as highly as 500 or TechStars, perhaps even higher.

but it's true we are all chasing YC's tail currently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool! I always loved iconfinder, now I know who made it possible.

<comment><USER3> actually, the founders of IconFinder made it possible... we were quite fortunate to be investors rather recently.

<comment><USER11> I thought about how poorly that sounded after I wrote it, I've been using IconFinder for years and am thankful and happy for the founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FTR, that should be Versly / versly.com down there towards the bottom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thank you</comment></comment>


Starting salaries surge for computer science grads - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071009-starting-salaries-surge-for-comp-sci-grads.html

<comment><USER2> The thing is that inflation is outpacing these numbers. With official inflation numbers hovering around 3% and real inflation (except in housing) being much stronger than that, Actual earnings haven't increased for the majority of the workforce in roughly 15 years.

I'd hardly call a 4.5% increase a surge either. Removing the cut for inflation puts this more at 1.5% at best, hardly an increase worth mentioning.

I think Ars Technica is just trying to drum up interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm an entrepreneurship major at a business school, and starting to work for a web-based startup. I can confidently say that i'm a on par with or better than many hackers who graduate from various comp-science universities.

Having a degree didn't get me my job, knowing people who recognized my skills did.

<comment><USER4> Thats always the way. Degrees can hold doors open for you, for a while, but not much else. I would expect its more the contacts you make etc.</comment></comment>


Show HN: HTTPLab – An interactive web server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gchaincl/httplab <comment><USER2> Couldn't you just pipe a response file to netcat running on 80?

cat response.html | nc -lp 80

<comment><USER3> What's the correct command for BSD nc (on macOS)? For the `-l` option, the manual says "It is an error to use this option in conjunction with the -p, -s, or -z options".

<comment><AUTHOR> I think nc -l 80 should do it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another related tool is mitmproxy [https://mitmproxy.org/](https://mitmproxy.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> If your use cases allow for graphical apps, there's a couple that are heavily used by the web app. security testing community and have quite a bit of useful functionality for inspecting/modifying HTTP(s) requests.

OWASP ZAP Proxy - [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Zed_Attack_Proxy_Proje...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Zed_Attack_Proxy_Project)

Burp Suite - [https://portswigger.net/](https://portswigger.net/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a great tool for ad hoc testing of HTTP clients. Exactly what I often need during development of the client you use in the demo :)

<comment><AUTHOR> :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool. Any plans for HTTPS support? This could be a really powerful tool for network based reverse engineering (even more so if there was support for predefined request-response pairs so more elaborate cases could be done)

<comment><AUTHOR> definitively: [https://github.com/gchaincl/httplab/issues/4](https://github.com/gchaincl/httplab/issues/4) can u elaborate on the predefined request-response case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who'd like a GUI instead of tabbing fields, I'm a big fan of Insomnia. [1]

[https://insomnia.rest](https://insomnia.rest)

<comment><USER9> But insomnia is a http client. This is a server. Also insomnia is more expensive than Paw and is also subscription based. There is also Postman - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbifli...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbiflinjbdggehcddcbncdddomop?hl=en) which is also a great tool and free too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> good job. a similar tool called wuzz [0] was released like a month ago.

[0] [https://github.com/asciimoo/wuzz/](https://github.com/asciimoo/wuzz/)

<comment><USER11> I think I've heard of something like this as an Emacs mode. Does that exist?

<comment><USER10> it does! love it too.

[https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el](https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was looking for something like this a couple of days back. Looks cool.

</comment><comment><USER13> Heh This is pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER14> this is pretty impressive. can you add HTTPS support please.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll work on it here: [https://github.com/gchaincl/httplab/issues/4](https://github.com/gchaincl/httplab/issues/4)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Boxpx.  Photo albums for DropBox - <AUTHOR> http://boxpx.com/

<comment><USER2> The original submission has been posted by a sockpuppet account: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8059692](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8059692)</comment>


Ask HN: As a student, how can I make sure a freelancing gig is legit? - <AUTHOR> I am not trying to be a freelance developer, per se, but I found an opportunity for some freelance Rails work that would fit my schedule pretty well (as a student). I have a phone interview on Wednesday this week.
I am weary because I see scammy looking job posts on my schools CS Facebook page pretty regularly (often business students who did all the work thinking of an idea and merely need a developer to implement it), and usually ignore them. But this one was upfront about the work and the pay, so I decided its worth a shot.
So my question is this: what should I expect the "hiring" process to be like as a contractor/freelancer? What signs should I look for to make sure this isn't a scam? Obviously don't work without a written contract, but what else? <comment><USER2> Require a hefty retainer up front. The retainer should be applicable against final invoice. This means you get a check upfront, then bill against the work you've done on a regular cycle and get checks for that work, except at the end where the money you got paid upfront covers the last part of the job.

The idea is that instead of the client always owing you money, you always owe the client work. The goal is to avoid people who don't pay. Good clients recognize that you shouldn't be assuming the financial risk of their project. Good clients are also ready to write checks.

A potential client who isn't prepared to write a retainer check upfront hasn't properly budgeted for your services. Often, they never will. A potential client who isn't ready to write checks, isn't ready to start their project.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately you don't really know they're legit until their first check clears. With new clients, I'll only do a small amount of work before I see the first check (2-3 hours of setup, just to show good faith on my end). Once payments start coming in then I feel more and more comfortable making progress on their project.

You can get all the contracts you want... but if you're not prepared to enforce them in court, they're not worth anything. And even if you _are_ prepared to sue, good luck getting any money from someone who doesn't have any.

Go with your gut. Don't work with anyone you have a bad feeling about. And most importantly: be prepared to walk away at any moment if something goes bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> Even a contract doesn't really guarantee anything because it will probably never be worth it to get a lawyer and deal with suing them.

Just make sure they pay you regularly and if they want to pay when everything is finished then get a down payment. Don't let it get to the point where they owe you a lot of money because you never know if they'll pay. Try to not create a situation where if they don't pay the amount they owe you then it will really hurt you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input guys! It turns out this isn't strictly client work, but rather a middle man style "consulting agency."

If I were looking for serious work I'd probably pass, but they do seem legit and I'm more than happy to work for the pay they are offering me as a student.

</comment><comment><USER5> Have them sign a contract, there are lots of samples online.

Try to do the work hourly or set a fixed fee for a well defined scope of work (break this down in to milestones). With Rails you could probably package up one or two milestones of the auth, models, etc that you can complete quickly to show good progress, and good profit to get things started.

If they change anything from the initial scope send them an authorization to add a milestone and cost for that addition, before starting on it.

Set everything up with incremental development/review/ok/payment (even if it's hourly).

You should also require a retainer/initial payment to make sure they are serious. 50% of milestone 1 or what your first invoice would be.

Break the project up in to parts you can complete in a week or two. Then invoice incrementally, get his ok on that portion of the work and the payment then move on to the next portion of work.

DO NOT work too far ahead without sending an invoice, invoice often especially early on (for hourly I would invoice at least once per week till you're more comfortable with how easy the client pays you).

Getting their ok/payment is important, occasionally you'll get near the end of a project and maybe it's not turning out like they expected or they didn't include everything they needed in their scope and they will start trying to say it's unacceptable and start talking about a refund. That said, be prepared that they might decide not to continue the project after a few portions/milestones, which is ok, as long as they pay for the work you've completed.

Also if they are difficult to work with you might want to pull the plug on things after a couple milestones.

Also set it up so the source code resides on your hosting for his review until the project is completed. Release it on final 100% payment. (You can email send them a zip of your repo after each invoice is paid before starting the next milestone).

You can note these things in your contract.

Get an EIN number (Free from IRS), you can use your name as your business starting out. You use your EIN in place of your SSN. For your W-9 that they should request you fill out if you make over $600, regardless report all consulting income on your taxes next year whether they send a 1099 or not.

[http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employ...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self- Employed/Apply-for-an-Employer-Identification-Number-\(EIN\)-Online)

For payments you can use paypal. They could always try to do a charge back so keep that in mind.

Checks are typically ok, just keep in mind they might take a week or two to clear their bank, if they bounce those funds will be pulled back out of your account.

Typically you won't have an issue with people, most clients pay on time, occasionally you'll run in to a bad apple. Usually you'll get a bad feeling about a client, or see a red flag, it's best to pass on those projects/clients.

Good luck with your first freelance gig.</comment>


Why We're Pivoting from Mobile-first to Web-first - <AUTHOR> http://philosophically.com/why-were-pivoting-from-mobile-first-to-web-first <comment><USER3> A very interesting read indeed.

The question that keeps bugging me is that maybe this guy is blaming the platform, but the real problem was that they built something people didn't really need.

Look at <http://any.do>, these guys launched mobile first and hit millions of users in an extremely crowded market(todo lists) because they've created a great product a lot of people want and use daily.

In the end, it sounds like(and I don't know their story from close, only judging from things written in this post) they raised too much money early on because they are a YC company(raising a lot of money actually makes you much slower), launched a product with a shitty signup funnel and took a lot of time to fix that.

Apple taking their time to approve new versions isn't new, anyone(especially a YC company surrounded with top mentors) knows that a/b testing in a mobile app is a problem that should be tackled upfront.

Personally, I'm tackling that problem by testing everything I can BEFORE I even start to write code.

I'm running ads on FB/Google, testing CTRs for different value propositions/positioning, driving users to a landing page where I'm testing different mockup ideas I have for each value proposition, testing the icon, testing price, testing feature list.

I'm talking with as many customers in my customer segment I can not only to understand their needs and problems, but also to create an initial user base that likes me enough to agree to install my app BEFORE I launch it in the appstore using TestFlight.

This will enable me to discover a lot of UX problems upfront and to test a very very very important question - Is what I've built a painkiller or a vitamin, which is the most important question (I think) mobile app devs should ask since it's clear that most apps are downloaded and then forgotten in the abyss of unused apps.

If someone has read this long reply and has more ideas on how to test this question before launching, I'd love to collect more ideas.

<comment><USER4> >The question that keeps bugging me is that maybe this guy is blaming the platform, but the real problem was that they built something people didn't really need.

A thousand times yes. The market is way past saturation. It doesn't need yet another social network that will never ever be as successful as facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post seems to conflate two issues:

* Churn is high, optimising user flow is mediocre at best, and iteration speed is slow, on mobile.

and

* Free is bad because of privacy blah blah blah.

I personally view the first issue as kind of un-solveable. Life is hard, etc. What are you going to do, make a HTML5 mobile application? good one.

The second, ehhhhh. Users don't give a shit about privacy. Really. Really. Like, really. Hell: I'd rather use Facebook for free and let them "sell my data" versus pay $50 a year.

Anyway, I'll reiterate my #1 learning of how startups grow into businesses. There are _two_ ways to build a $100M company:

#1 Your users have a high LTV (=$5k+) and you can afford to spend significant (=$100+) capital on acquiring the user.

#2 Your business is massively (=10) viral, allowing you to acquire users insanely cheaply.

The reason why it is – always – very questionable to charge for a B2C user is that it's generally rather difficult to have a story that makes individual people = high LTV, ironically, without having millions of them.

You need to wrap your legs around one of these two approaches and never ever stray from it.

<comment><USER6> I am making two points, the first that we are web-first, and the second that we are revenue-first. I'm not conflating them; that's the point of the article.

In any case, they are related in my mind. In order to justify why we are switching to a paid model, I bring up privacy because I think you are trading the loss of privacy for that of cash when you choose between ad-supported and a paid model on a consumer app. As for going web-first, I think I made the reason clear.

<comment><USER7> I agree with most of what you said. Sharing needs to be #1 to have viral growth. Large audiences are required for IAP and Advertising to make sense (I'd also add freemium to that list). An intrinsically leaky funnel needs even heavier viral growth to get to those large audiences. Heavy viral growth is probably going to be at odds with privacy.

But I think you need to pay attention to what others are saying. If you can't get users to complete a series of tasks to get to your value proposition, either the (expected) value you're offering is too low, or the expected probability of getting that value is too low.

In other words, with a high enough value proposition, you should theoretically be able to get someone to do something EXTREMELY difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the points about slow and frustrating iteration on mobile are valid, which is my argument for going mobile second (<http://jamiequint.com/why-i- believe-in-mobile-second>) However, I'm dubious that the issue with mobile is a more difficult conversion funnel.

The issue is not that mobile screens are too small to show more than one step at a time. I've done many landing page experiences on the web that would have only fit on a mobile screen and seen upwards of 75% conversion (for a 16 question onboarding process) and often find that multiple steps convert much better than a single step (asking for email first, then asking for a password, for example). The key is to get buy-in, which is a combination of value proposition and the give-and-take nature of whatever signup flow you are developing. You can't just ask the user for things over and over, give nothing back and expect 50% conversion. You have to make the process feel like a game, get buy in, ask for a bit more, give value early then ask for more. This is hard if you have a social product because you have to have strong social pressure to signup or a good "single player mode" ([http://cdixon.org/2010/06/12/designing-products-for- single-a...](http://cdixon.org/2010/06/12/designing-products-for-single-and- multiplayer-modes/)) or you are dead.

<comment><USER6> Great points, your article was spot on. No, definitely that's not the main issue, although it is one. You can't keep reinforcing why the user is signing up throughout the process the same way you can on the web. All mobile sign-up screens pretty much look the same and I see a lot of users look at it and just delete the app, or delay until later at which point they forget why they downloaded it. And even when they get past it, if they see something else they perceive as a "this is going to take a while" moment, they are going to leave and delete your app. On the web, the time to signup and get use from your app is faster and perceived as faster so I think given a choice between the two, more users would do it on the web.

<comment><USER8> Most landing pages on the web look the same too. The best signup flows I've seen or created don't need to continually re-enforce why the user is signing up, they just need to lead the user down a logical path towards fulfilling the original value proposition, the reason they typed their password into the App Store and took the time to download your app in the first place.

If the user is bouncing because they think "this is going to take a while" then you either don't have a strong enough value proposition or you're making the user think too hard. Most things can be reduced to simple, one-decision steps, and when you do that things will generally convert better for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Elephant in the room is payments. Was sad to not see this mentioned. Sure, building a web app might have a better chance of onboarding folks. But now try to get them to enter their credit card number. On mobile, they tap the "Buy" button.

<comment><USER6> That's fair. I do have something data about that, however. We tried making our app paid and found that we were now trading 100 free downloads for 2 at $0.99. So now we have 5% of 2 people instead of 100. Regular people are really price sensitive and the problem is they can find something that does something similar to what your app does for free. Like I said, they will not value their own privacy when making that decision, hence they will always choose the free version on mobile. I think in that future that will change, at least that's what we're betting on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From my reading, you are going from App-first to Browser-first, and less so from mobile-first to web-first.

I think it is critical make the subtle distinctions. We are in the business of serving doctors. For most doctors, having a native app makes very little sense. And yet, having a responsive mobile-friendly website is becoming more important than the desktop websites they presently have.

<comment><USER11> I agree that it is critical, but don't think it is actually a subtle distinction. It is a huge, glaringly obvious distinction. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that so many people reinforce incorrect terminology. I find it hard to believe people seriously don't realize their phones can access web pages, and that web pages can be designed correctly so they are accessible on all platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Heh, he describes this long grueling conversion funnel, with bizarre steps like creating a group with no one in it. Their UI shouldn't even allow that. Reminds me of the founder of Path speaking at a recent conference. He said they were coming from the web and they had all these pre-conceived notions about how to interact with their users. When a user posts a photo on the web there's a whole process of getting it from their desktop or wherever, tagging where it was, tagging their friends, etc.. He said with Path they had to throw all that out because mobile users don't want that. They want a single push button remote control for their lives on their phones, and you don't put complex steps in that.

Another kind of strange comment was about how ad/virtual goods companies make most of their money from poorer, less informed clients. That's simply not true. Often half or more of the profit is from the whales in freemium games and a lot of stuff is put into the game just to support these whales. In one game with virtual goods that I write, I make a heck of a lot more money from the diehard fans that buy multiple $5 coin packs compared to the free users who slog it out earning those coins through play, or the cheap tourist who just uses the starting coins or maybe buys once and never again to try out playing with full bonuses for a bit.

<comment><USER13> Link to the path talk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Read your entire article. If you weren't so parsimonious with words, I suspect I would be reading well into the night. :-)

More seriously: It is a given that app stores primarily generate free content for the platform-owner and enhances the value of supported platforms. (Additional outlays for dev+test hardware+licensing+developer-hours add insult to injury) Surprisingly not many developers seem to care or account for. With the amount of free noise in there, it is not surprising that you guys experienced what you did. Thanks for confirming what we had deduced indirectly.

Our startup launched deliberately as a web-app even though it would've been easier to get more (initial) eyeballs with a mobile-first strategy. For reasons you develop (and more), mobile apps aren't part of our current road- map (although we do address form-factor related nuances). We did consider expending resources to go mobile a few weeks ago but it made more sense to focus on creating new "content".

Last, the level of control gained (as you allude to) by owning A-Z of the product+distribution is truly empowering. That said, there is an undeniable development and eyeball cost associated with it. We should acknowledge this.

<comment><USER6> I think you need mobile. Leaving it out is a mistake because you need to be where your customers are (to me - of course it depends on your app). I just think that mobile is the wrong place to start right now.

Sorry for the word overdose. I have a degree in philosophy and computer science; just the right combination to produce overly lengthy and verbose blog posts.

<comment><USER14> 1\. Hope you didn't keep your response short merely on account of my comment...i was only jesting.

2\. A huge fraction (imo) of the apps available in the app-stores did not need to go native mobile.

Mobile app-stores have mountains of apps that really have nothing mobile specific about them. This astounds me. Yet developers spent serious time/effort building these native apps. Why? I suspect it is the web-noise that continually dangles stats about gazzillion smartphone app downloads that triggers a greed hormone in philosophers and scientists alike, which begins to make them see mobile everywhere.

I am not suggesting that there's no need to address the form-factor issue. Only that "native mobile" of the app-store variety is frequently not a good strategy. Certainly not, as you point out, as a first-option.

Aside: You state "you need to be where your customers are". Yes, but if you define customers as those that play a role in generating revenue (either by paying directly for services rendered, or by permitting you to arbitrage someway), is mobile the place to be? This is obviously only a rhetorical question...you address this in your original article. I am just a bit outraged that the ios store has a million deluded worker bees building apps for it when they won't see a penny. Instead, they could've leveraged their work by owning the entire stack.

<comment><USER15> It's easy to make money on either the App Store or google play - <USER2> freelance for other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So Nigerians get the jab again.

Dear HN, how do we get rid of this reputation?

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I have great proposition to help you rid this undeserved reputation. To begin, please mail me soonest your telephone contact and address as well as account number so I can deposit funds to assist in our work. Once this has been obtained by me we will work together greatest outcome deserved.

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<comment><USER18> That was kind of insensitive considering the positive question hat he asked. Nigeria is a huge vibrant economy.

<comment><USER17> I guess I was just trying to illustrate in a creative way why people keep bagging on Nigeria. Once the spam stops people will forget all about it. And it's not just email spam, eBay and Craigslist are overrun too.

Sure it's a bit unfair as all countries have spammers. In fact, US and UK outrank Nigeria for scams, but those are two huge places and have a lot of other notable things, and Nigeria is #3.

So I think if Nigeria boosts its economy and provides alternatives for people to make money then the spam dies down and people forget all about it.

<comment><USER18> Well I'm just pointing it out : he's a tech entrepreneur and I'm sure he's really sick and sad to have that brought up all the time.

As punishment I ask you to go check out the tech hubs and the start up scene there <http://cchubnigeria.com/about-cchub/> [http://techloy.com/2011/06/27/5-reasons-nigeria-needs- tech-i...](http://techloy.com/2011/06/27/5-reasons-nigeria-needs-tech- innovation-hubs-right-now/)

:)

Nigeria has 175m people, GDP grew 6.5 pct since last year. They have huge amounts of oil money and they are the financial hub of west Africa. Large middle class, skyscrapers, online shopping, massive film industry.

One day soon you will probably be trying to optimize your on boarding of Nigerian middle class users.

and 419 scams are an old tradition dating back to the 60s when they would write letters. So don't knock traditional culture ;)

<comment><USER16> Ha! Nice punishment. Thanks man.

I actually joke about it sometimes but it is really messing things up for legitimate people.

The fact we do not have other renowned stories makes the spam one stand out so much.

<comment><USER18> Rocket Internet did an online clothing store in Nigeria. Not sure how well its done. They are famous for cloning sites into different foreign markets. German company. Not the most honorable business model just to clone, but it pays the bills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > you can test easily, cheaply, and fast enough to make a difference. > You > can fix a critical bug that crashes your app on load 15 minutes after > discovery (See Circa). > You can show 10 different landing pages and decide > in real-time which one is working the best > for a particular user. You can > also close a viral loop > . . .

I've always been skeptical of mobile-first, but so many people love their phones, I'd say if you know how to solve any of these problems (or the others listed in that paragraph), then _that's_ a business right there. What an amazing list of pain points for anyone who wants to sell shovels!

</comment><comment><USER20> _I'm certainly not clicking that many Google ads per year and neither are you._

Are you sure? I used to think that, but I wrote a chrome plugin to test the hypothesis and found I clicked at least 1 or 2 ads most days.. I do 30+ searches per day. As a heavy internet user, you may click less on a particular ad, but you see a lot more because you search a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER13> "I usually know where content stops and ads begin, partly because I've had access to the Internet longer than others. I think ads target the same audience that Nigerian scammers do"

It is hard to take someone seriously when they begin by claiming that ads are not useful to any party, and then gives a treatise on ads. But what's most offensive the fundamental assumption that only stupid people click on ads. (see references to "lower income" and "lower education"). Not to mention switching between the personal and the accusative ("We retain 5%" / "you're really paying $20").

My summary, I continue to be amazed at how important advertising is to the Internet economy, but that said, I understand it very well. Smart people click on ads. Smart people buy ads. Smart people build ads products and smart people measure and validate their effectiveness. If you go in to the ads or an ads- funded business with these assumptions, you will not attract good ads, and will get the incredible low RPMs you believe exist.

<comment><USER21> I am thinking along the same lines.

If OP reads this I would like to challenge him to count how many ad supported sites or apps compared to paid he uses and from the free ones how many would he stil use if they all become paid.

Also this comes from someone that has not run an ad based business. I wonder what happens if paid app model doesn't work out and they pivot again. Suddenly free becomes the greatest model ???

Things are never white and black when it comes to internet business, every business model has it's own place. Let's not forget that the no.1 web company uses ads for monetization. Would people pay to have google ads free? Do you think they feel taken advantage off because of the ads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, why not build mobile SAAS apps and charge for them? It seems like companies like Evernote, Remember The Milk, etc. that charge a premium for mobile as a value add are making money there.

My guess is the next big wave of mobile-first startups will be charging monthly subscriptions through IAP to small, but loyal users. Like 37Signals, but mobile.

<comment><USER23> It would make sense, but for now Apple is restricting monthly subscriptions through IAP to only Newsstand magazines/publications

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The real pivot here is pivoting from free to paid. The medium isn't an inherent shift in the business model.

<comment><USER25> Agreed - a natural shift (somewhat mirroring what App.net is doing vis-a-vis Twitter). Curious to see how it turns out.

Separately it looks like this argument carries more water when talking about digital-only/communication products? Because when considering apps/services such as Uber, HotelTonight and Cherry (I hate picking exceptions) that provide an offline product or service, mobile first seems to have worked just fine. Perhaps the true underlying argument is that mobile first works best when the LTV of your customer is massive.

<comment><USER24> Perhaps. Every startup, mobile or web, start with a non-existent customer base, so I don't think one way or the other spells "more successful" necessarily.

That said, mobile-first companies are certainly unchartered waters compared to their traditional web brethren. I think they're a bit ahead of their time.

One distressing thing I can see happening: traditional web going the way of the newspaper industry. We're already seeing it with Google. They took a hit in this past quarter's earning's report because their traffic skyrocketed via mobile, but advertisers wouldn't pay the same CPM they were paying on the traditional web.

Sound familiar? Newspapers hit the same dilemma. They went from getting easy $30k tickets for single-run full-page ads to $3k/month online ads (to $300/month mobile-only ads).

Of course, this is a pure advertising model, which is separate from the OP. So... I'll stop here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It all comes down to what you are building and how your target audience will interact with it. Being mobile first is definitely hard when you are trying to penetrate into a sea of tough competition in the market especially if there is better use case to be web-first. For you, I feel you gained enough traction and very positive response by being mobile-first. I am sure that helped you get 1M or so users quickly on board and now that you want to go from 1M to 10M, you obviously need to think of entering new markets and platforms while maintaining your lead in mobile. This becomes hard and frustrating. We are a mobile-first startup trying to bring business cards onto mobile. It wouldnt make sense for us to be web-first, hence we are mobile-first.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think you have a point with the registering user retention problem. Nothing is more painful than typing a password on a phone (especially if you use strong enough passwords).

But this very first step (I'm talking about choosing a nickname and password, not the social connection step) is clearly something derivated from what we do in browser apps. We could do that better on mobile apps.

For example, launching an app for the first time could generate some random login and password, and let the user instantly play with the app. When we consider he had enough time to get the picture, we notify him he must choose a password to be able to login from other devices, and he should probably choose a nickname to customize his experience.

That would be way more mobile friendly to me.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think many of the people who are deploying through the app store would be better off deploying through the browser. Mobile web apps are surprisingly capable. I've ported one of my desktop web apps to mobile using appcache for offline support, and it works great. Especially on iOS where a homescreen web app launches chromeless there's almost no difference to a phonegap app except for the hardware / api access, which i didn't need because as pointed out i was porting a web app.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, I kept reading down to see where he would clarify that by 'web-first' he meant 'mobile-web-first' but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The tools for building mobile web apps aren't as good as they should (and hopefully will soon) be but it's certainly possible and gives you the flexibility to rapidly iterate, get the user up-and-running as fast as possible, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I do not understand how the author's words relate to the topic.

Mobile first design is designing core functionality og websites for small screen, big target devices first and using techniques like progressive enhancement / responsive design to scale up for desktop experiences.

Mobile first already means web. Are they going from mobile first to desktop first?

Or do they mean mobile apps to web apps?

These terms have established meanings. By sticking to them we help simplify our discussions.

</comment><comment><USER31> I agree, not with every point, but with your conclusion.

My company (PicDigest) is betting on a paid web-first model and planning a mobile app as a companion, even in the crowded space of photo sharing where incumbents supposedly have the market sewn up. Yes, it's a long-shot play, but the wager is based on the assumption that many people will pay a little money for what I'm offering.

</comment><comment><USER32> The statement "I've had access to the Internet longer than others" sure reads funny coming from someone born in 1988

<comment><USER6> Even if that wasn't true, which it is (there are still billions of people without internet access), I've spent the majority of my time on the internet and I think I can tell the difference between ads and content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Making this required reading for startups before they talk to me again about mobile and other non-revenue ideas.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why not build an HTML5 site? You'll be device- and platform agnostic, and you can still iterate quickly.

<comment><USER35> Didn't FB try that?

<comment><USER36> Yes, but don't jump to conclusions.

....

As others have been pointing out feverishly on Twitter: the problem wasn't them betting too much on HTML5. Their problem was developing piece of shit apps that happened to use HTML5. They tasked amateurs who didn't know what they were doing into building a hybrid native app container which in turn embedded HTML5 content. Plenty of other developers (Instagram and LinkedIn come to mind) have figured out how to do that right, and in a way where it is seamless to the end user and for all intents and purposes feels exactly the same as a native app. I'm not saying that it's an easy problem. You have to find the right balance between which components should be native or not. It's clear from the other problems that Facebook's been able to solve that they know how to hire top-notch developers. They just failed to do so for their mobile efforts, which just reinforces the stereotype that they don't "get" mobile.

-<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4507960>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The term "pivot" has clearly "jumped the shark".

I've also viewed "mobile first" as thought/design methodology that doesn't mandate you must then "build" mobile first.

</comment><comment><USER38> What's with the word "pivoting", anyway?

I think I've seen it used more often on HN in the last month than in many years before that...

</comment><comment><USER39> It's a matter of what your product is, really. If you have an innovative product that solves a specific problem or need , then it can work. It doesnt work for all products. Mobile development wether it is native or a web app , is hard ,and yes you have to go through all these processes on some plateform. Is there some money to be maid ? i definetly think so , but it is not really an el dorado with easy money. It is easier to make money on the "desktop" web than on mobile right now. Things may change in the future.</comment>


Are Women More Selective at Dating? - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/culture/090929-women-dating.html <comment><USER2> This was covered at LessWrong and the headline turned out to be false.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/127/an_interesting_speed_dating_stud...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/127/an_interesting_speed_dating_study/)

See this comment from ciphergoth:

 _It doesn't result in a reversal of the normal results, exactly. Male sitters appear to be about as selective as female sitters, but male rotaters are much less selective than female rotaters._

And this comment from me in response:

 _Wow, this stuff is pretty awful. I just read the paper to verify your claim, and the paper turned out to be not any better than the NYT article: mostly composed of PC fluff about "social construction" and how "Western civilization" is this and that. The only informative part is the figure on the last page of the PDF (buried after the references, no less!) which confirms your conclusion completely, but the text doesn't even hint at it anywhere._

PDF link to the study: [http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/eli- finkel/documents/Ro...](http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/eli- finkel/documents/RotationMS_FINAL.pdf) .

</comment><comment><USER3> Intuitively the cost to a guy in pre-societal times of getting a girl pregnant was negligible compared to the cost of a girl getting pregnant and as such women should be more selective.

The effect that societal influence may have had on this (the guy gets a bad reputation hurting his future chances at offspring) is something to consider but I'd doubt it's anywhere close.

Having said all that, the article does try to dispell all this by reasoning that the partner "being approached" is more selective, and that societal conditioning has led to this being the woman.

I would counter that when someone approaches in a dating scene (as in the study) they are immediately demonstrating lower value ("I have come to prove myself"). The person sitting has also established this little space as their domain, and gets to assess the value of the person coming to them. This allows for the results of the study, but also explains, in conjunction with the first theory above, why on average, even during the study, women are more selective.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well ... I was never ...rotated at a speed dating event, but yes women are more selective. This has roots in evolution. When I choose the wrong girl my mistake might cause me losing some time. When a woman chooses the wrong man, she might be left holding the baby for years.

<comment><USER5> That contradicts this evidence. Men sitting were as selective as woman sitting.</comment></comment>


President Donald J. Trump Is Building the United States Space Force - <AUTHOR> https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-building-united-states-space-force-21st-century-military/ <comment><USER2> Could someone with expertise explain how this is different than just breaking off the part of the US Air Force that handles space? My understanding was the USAF was already our 'Space Force'...

<comment><USER3> This constitutes the main critique of the idea. Besides pacifist arguments against militarization of space as a commonwealth for all of Earth.

21st Space Wing out of Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs already bears the brunt of the duty. With a dedicated total staff of approx 20K air men and women.

DoD recommendations remain to be seen for a sixth branch. But I believe the design is for a much bigger and permanent institution. Space based communications comprise GPS systems, navigation, timing, broadcast and a whole lot else. Russia and China already have tested ground to orbit based missile capacity. And space systems are inherently fragile: only a few satellites need to be taken offline for there to be wide disruptions in service.

The big question is can it be done with the efficiency we are now witnessing in private sector New Space enterprises. Or will we see the same bureaucracy that is plaguing the F-35 rollout.

Personally I feel if it can be done "ahead of schedule, and under budget". It could provide security for all of humankind's peaceful expansion into the stars.

<comment><USER4> >It could provide security for all of humankind's peaceful expansion into the stars.

US Military and the word "peaceful" is an oxymoron. There's no such thing as "under budget" when talking about the US Military either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can only assume he's been reading Ryan North's Galaga comic:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/zf9lx](https://imgur.com/gallery/zf9lx)

</comment><comment><USER6> The cynic in me says this is an attempt to weaken NASA, which has been increasingly under fire from conservatives for its engagement in projects not associated with space exploration. Say you can separate out that aspect into the military. Then there's no need for NASA at all.</comment>


Is HackerX worth attending? - <AUTHOR> http://hackerx.org/<p>Is it good for employees? Is it good for employers? <comment><USER2> i did a hackerx in Denver, about a year ago. Not worth it. Too many hackers and not enough employers, also even though it was a "back end" developer event, the potential employers were mostly looking for front end developers. Weird.</comment>


Show HN: Setsale – generate a checkout page for any file - <AUTHOR> https://www.setsale.app <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to create something that would help people get paid for creating the things they love.

I thought this was especially helpful during this pandemic!

Let me know if you have any questions.</comment>


Online Code School Bloc Raises $2M For Web Development "Apprenticeship" Program - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/online-code-school-bloc-raises-2-million-for-its-web-development-apprenticeship-program/

<comment><USER2> For me this is WAY too expensive, it costs more than a post graduate certificate from the University of Washington!

<comment><USER3> They should offer and option where 2-4 apprentices are paired up with a mentor and split the costs.

2-4 is an optimal size for tutoring/apprenticeship.

As an experienced developer would be more than happy to drop money for private 2-4 person courses on specialty subjects.

i.e. 2x to 4x per week for three months on subjects like:

machine learning distributed systems database design hardware product hacking and design devops

etc.

On top of that, I think there are many companies that would be happy to spend money to train their employees this way. It would be awesome if for example, you knew your startup had a need for machine learning stuff in the next few months. Just pay to train 2 of your employees with a mentor, where they go meet with the mentor 2-4 times per week in the evenings after work.</comment></comment>


Flat Structures: Should Business Consider Ditching Hierarchies? - <AUTHOR> http://room4debate.com/debate/flat-structures-for-businesses-should-we-consider-ditching-the-traditional-model

<comment><USER2> There's a Dilbert cartoon from the 1990s. Consultant comes in and says "centralize!" Later, after that's done, the consultant comes back again and says "decentralize!"

For what it's worth, there are many journal publications on flat vs. tall organizations, dating from at least 1950 with Worthy's "Organizational Structure and Employe Morale". See [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22flat+organization%22](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22flat+organization%22) for some of the publications.

As I learn more about history, I grow suspicious of statements like "The problem with a hierarchical structure is that it increasingly doesn't fit the needs of modern businesses." How is modern business in this regard any different than businesses of the 1960s and 1970s? Is the author following a current fad or is it based on a deeper historical understanding?

For example, [http://www.psgoodrich.com/pc/docs/ARTICLES/HumanSideOfEnterp...](http://www.psgoodrich.com/pc/docs/ARTICLES/HumanSideOfEnterprise.PDF) from 1957 talks about "In this connection, the flat organization of Sears, Roebuck and Company provides an interesting example. It forces "management by objectives," since it enlarges the number of people reporting to a manager until he cannot direct and control them in the conventional manner. JOB ENLARGEMENT: This concept ... encourages the acceptance of responsibility at the bottom of the organization ..."

That's nearly 60 years ago. Why did those fail to produce sufficiently flat modern organizations? How can that failure be avoided this time?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think context is important. What was the context back then vs. today? I would argue that what the author is saying about business environment changing so quickly, especially because of technological advances, makes sense. It might not have made sense back then, but today it probably makes a lot more sense.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comments. I encourage you to debate the author directly with your views.</comment>


Google to Remove Chrome "Close Other Tabs" and "Close Tabs to the Right" Options - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-to-remove-chrome-close-other-tabs-andamp-close-tabs-to-the-right-options/ <comment><USER2> _> This is 6% of actions taken in a menu that is triggered very rarely (I forget the stats, we went over them in the mute/unmute discussion, but it's like 2% of users). So your 0.1% figure is actually pretty close," said another Chrome developer._

These Google engineers are short-sighted. People who use the "Close other tabs" and "Close tabs to the right" options are also much more likely to disable sending usage statistics to Google (which is why its usage appears to be so low).

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I use those features multiple times per day, along with "bookmark all tabs" which shows even lower usage so they'll probably do away with that feature as well.

Like you, I imagine most who use those features are using chromium and not sending those stats to Google.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to monetize your ability to write secure code? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I've got a bit of a problem:

    - I know how to write really secure code.
    - I know how to identify security vulnerabilities in other
      peoples' code.
    - I don't know how to make a living doing this. (I'd like to.)
 I've tried to break into "consulting" as per the advice patio11 gives people, but I'm fucking up badly and not getting a single lead. (I don't have an existing professional social network to fall back on either. Most of the people I know are poor college students and independent artists.)
I already publish plenty of stuff on OSS Sec, Full Disclosure, etc. and I'm active on Github helping to identify and close vulnerabilities in open source projects. (All of this is under a different identity than the one I'm currently using on HN, for reasons.)
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Can you write tools that help others to write really secure code?

I.e. something like a linter that helps to identify insecure code? Or maybe a design process or set of design restrictions that would help avoid insecure code?

(I'm particularly interested in the state of safety / security for networked embedded sensor systems -- i.e. cameras or other sensors in mobile robotics, security/analytics etc... and I'm trying to produce a set of tools to help make the development of such tools safer and more secure as well as faster and more efficient).

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me give you some advice, from the perspective of someone who runs a successful security firm.

Have you worked as a consultant at one of the larger firms, like Optiv, Bishop Fox or NCC Group? What professional experience do you have? Have you found serious vulnerabilities and published them? Any bug bounties?

Without a network to draw on it is very difficult to start your own practice. You need referrals, introductions and people to vouch for you. Failing that, you need to be "infosec famous" or very close to it (this is why so many people publish for publicity in the security world).

My recommendation is that you join an established firm if you really have the technical skills. If you've already been at a serious firm for two or three years or so then you'll understand the business processes inherent to running a successful consultancy. Without understanding how _that_ works you won't know how to leverage your skills and turn them into a reliable income on your own.

Forget certifications. You don't need any to be successful if you can just demonstrate the ability to find vulnerabilities. The CISSP (as an example) can be helpful for a certain subset of clientele, but it's not useful enough to pour your energy into instead of e.g. getting CVEs on your rèsumè and establishing a network.

Can you find every single vulnerability outlined in _The Web Application Hacker 's Handbook_? How about the trickier ones that crop up in Black Hat presentations? It's not enough to be able to find CSRF or XSS in a bug bounty, you need to be reliable, consistent and thorough when working as a consultant. This is one of the reasons bug bounty participants are rarely qualified to join consultancies, even if they find vulnerabilities. They often lack the professional maturity to find more than a certain subset of vulnerabilities.

Your first few clients will be the most difficult. Here is a rough outline of what you can do to get a pipeline of work:

1\. Join a reputable security consultancy and develop your skills. Polish them from "I can find vulnerabilities" to "I can model a large software project for design flaws, implementation vulnerabilities and operational vulnerabilities, then thoroughly find everything" (within reason, given a finite testing timeline). Your track record for finding vulnerabilities must go from "more often than not" to "virtually always" for each application put in front of you.

2\. Do independent security research. Subscribe to security alerts from large vendors. When a CVE is issued, check it out, try to reproduce the issue and learn from it. Start finding vulnerabilities just like it in widely used software frameworks and libraries. Build up a track record and a personal brand of security formidibility.

3\. If you have done #1 or #2 already, or once you have, then leave and start your own practice. You won't be allowed to solicit your past employer's clients, but you can leverage your network. Talk to past colleagues and coworkers and put yourself out there. Try to subcontract out to various security firms (it's an open secret that most firms will do this if they have a surplus of work).

4\. Aggressively pursue referrals for every single client you work with. Master the business side of running a consultancy. Consultants at large firms don't earn as much as successful independent consultants or founders because their margin is spread thinner. Conversely, your own practice will not have salespeople or account managers. It will be you and you alone.

You must be able to communicate exceptionally well, maintain deadlines on your own, support a plethora of payment methods from clients (checks in mail, third parties, ACH transfers), survive under uncertain payment timelines (large clients love to languish accounts payable forever) and manage all your clients and sales pipelines on your own.

Your technical ability must be exceptional, yet it will only be half of your ability to make a good income. I built what I have now by folllwing my own advice here and reading all of patio11 and tptacek's comments on consulting.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Have you worked as a consultant at one of the larger firms, like Optiv, > Bishop Fox or NCC Group?

No I haven't.

> What professional experience do you have?

Over 14 years of web programming experience. Plus a few years of open source security research.

> Have you found serious vulnerabilities and published them?

I've found and disclosed security vulnerabilities in basically every popular PHP project (at the very least, every popular framework and CMS). On top of that, several Android and Java app vulnerabilities.

Some of them were sev:lo (timing side-channels in application-layer crypto), but a few were sev:hi (trivial remote code execution).

> Any bug bounties?

Yes, but I've stopped doing them. They aren't worth the time investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's tough because infosec is a terribly inefficient market.

The vast majority of end users don't care about security _until they are impacted by it_ , at which point they blame the vendor and scramble for a quick fix and then quickly go back to not caring. As a result, end users are rarely customers for security. (Or privacy, which really is just a form of security.)

The vast majority of vendors do care something about security, but the knowledge and skill of actually understandings security is rare. Therefore most of the actual customers for security are _ignorant customers_ who are looking for something that will make them _feel_ secure.

Ignorant customers tend to fall back on secondary indicators of status such as name and brand recognition and the opinions of those who are deemed experts in a given field.

This makes security a bit of an in-club, where experts recommend each other through their expert advice. It also makes security a field where snake oil can get a lot of traction if it can correctly mimic these secondary signals or can piggyback on them. All fields with ignorant customer bases tend to be somewhat status-indicator-driven and anti-meritocratic.

I'd advocate focusing your efforts more narrowly at breaking into this market on the positive (non-snake-oil) side. There are three ways I can think of to do this:

(1) Try to get a job with a highly regarded security firm.

(2) Look for the things that vendors use as secondary indicators such as certifications, and try to get at least one of those. Then use that to break into the market and start building a reputation.

(3) Target a specific popular software product (e.g. OpenSSL, nginx, Apache, etc.) and identify a real vulnerability. Then "market" this vulnerability with a catchy name that will get you some recognition as its discoverer. Then use this as a credential. But be sure the thing you identify is real enough to impress those who do understand security or this could backfire a bit.

For #3 I would highly suggest wading into the probably very shark infested waters of NodeJS and popular NPM packages. Node is the Hot New Thing and development has been progressing rapidly and chances are popular Node security and authentication packages are riddled with non-obvious holes. It's likely that you could identify a single insecure programming practice that is systematically encouraged by the nature of the JavaScript programming language and then bag dozens of vulnerabilities based on it by searching code bases for that pattern. "Eval" or any form of it has been a likely candidate in the past but that one is mostly common knowledge today, so you'll probably have to find a less obvious one. The core Node code might also be a fruitful place to look, since we (at my venture) recently had to delve into it a bit and it's a chthonic blob of C code if I ever saw one. Start with libuv, but keep some eye bleach and religious iconography handy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, I'm actually doing some work in the Node.js + Electron sphere right now, but that's under NDA.</comment></comment>


Inspection of King Tut's Tomb Reveals Hints of Hidden Chambers - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150928-king-tut-tomb-door-nefertiti-archaeology-egypt/ <comment><USER2> Direct link to the paper: [http://www.egyptology-nz- review.org.nz/Reeves.pdf](http://www.egyptology-nz-review.org.nz/Reeves.pdf)

The images show how much the paintings can obscure the surface detail, as otherwise it's rather clear that part of the wall looks different in texture.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing how they haven't already figured out a way to quickly validate these claims.</comment>


Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/why-every-entrepreneur-should-self-publish-a-book/?grcc=88888Z0 <comment><USER2> Missing from this article: you have something worthwhile to say. Honestly, I don't think I have anything to justify a book length treatment at this time. Okay, I'm not an entrepreneur, just an engineer at a startup, but I don't see the founders having all that much time to be sitting around writing books either.

<comment><USER3> Oh, if editors and publishers would apply this to submissions more often!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I _knew_ this would be an article by Altucher by looking at his title. He's a great writer too, always great reads.

<comment><USER5> As a contrary opinion, I nearly didn't read this exactly _because_ it's by Altucher. I almost always get to the end of something he's written and think - well, there's 5 minutes of my life I'll never see again, and which gave me absolutely nothing.

This, however, actually has useful, actionable information. It's the first thing I've (knowingly) read by him that was worth the time it took.

<comment><USER6> _there's 5 minutes of my life I'll never see again, and which gave me absolutely nothing._

This reminds me of the following story: Euclid of Alexandria, when asked by one of his students of what use was the study of geometry, asked his slave to give the student a threepence, "since he must always make gain of what he learns".

<comment><USER5> Except that I've tried, _really_ tried, to find something of value in his writings, and while it's well-written and possibly entertaining in a _schadenfreude_ or car-crash way, it adds nothing of worth to my life.

Maybe it's me, but after years of clicking on the links, reading carefully, trying to find anything vaguely relevant to me, and then rueing the wasted time, I'm giving up.

Please, if you think I'm wrong, point me at stuff you think is worth reading, not just as a way of spending time, but as a way of profiting from that time. At least the study of geometry gives problem-solving and analytical skills in return for the time spent.

<comment><USER6> _Please, if you think I'm wrong, point me at stuff you think is worth reading, not just as a way of spending time, but as a way of profiting from that time._

Well, from James stuff what I got was a glimpse of how (at least some) business deals (investing, selling your company) are done in the raw, what the other side might bluff about and in what ways, etc. Things you don't easily find elsewhere as candidly.

As for the stories about his childhood, affairs etc, those are not "to profit from" in the way you want, but are fun in a more "literary(-ish)" way.

 _At least the study of geometry gives problem-solving and analytical skills in return for the time spent._

Sure, but note that the point of Euclid (in the story above) was that it is beneath someone to want to always profit from what he studies.

He wanted one to study math for the "fun of knowledge" itself, so to speak, not as a means to gain problem-solving and analytical skills.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for your response - I appreciate the insight.

 _... a glimpse of how (at least some) business deals ... are done in the raw, what the other side might bluff about and in what ways, etc. Things you don't easily find elsewhere as candidly._

I've read several of those and never learned anything. I've never played in the stakes he talks about, but I've had sufficiently similar experiences, so I guess I'm just the wrong audience.

 _As for the stories about his childhood, affairs etc, those are not "to profit from" in the way you want, but are fun in a more "literary(-ish)" way._

Each to his own - I find them less than entertaining, amusing, engaging, or interesting.

 _... the point of Euclid (in the story above) was that it is beneath someone to want to always profit from what he studies._

I disagree. I believe the point is that the profit is not always in the immediate use of the learning, nor in the direct application, and if you can't see that then you might as well go do something you're better suited to. Studying geometry has the potential to make you better, to give you skills. I did a Ph.D. in Pure Math, and I certainly didn't do it for the direct profit. I did it to make me better, and because it was interesting. I learned, I grew, I gained skills. There was value.

I find James' stories uninteresting, and I don't feel that they're making me better in any way at all. I don't demand that what I read is instantly actionable, or immediately applicable, but I like to feel that I'm learning something, and that somehow it's making me better.

And I don't. As they say - "À chacun son goût" - each to his own taste. I'm pleased you get something out of them - I just wanted to point out that there are people who feel differently. He is not "my taste."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Related to this, what are good book authoring tools? Or at least the ones you use for writing stuff that can be exported to pdf, html or printed out. I'm talking things in the line of Tex, Docbook, etc.

<comment><USER8> I love Scrivener. You can export to mobi, epub, PDF, Doc, and a bunch of other formats.</comment></comment>


John B. Goodenough - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough <comment><AUTHOR> Getting close to 100 years old, and after a Noble prize in 2019, he's currently working at a new battery technology. Amazing.</comment>


Copyright Math: a quantitative reasoning master class by Rob Reid - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/copyright-math-vies-with-string-theory-for-most-complex-profitable-potentially-ridiculous-theory-vid.ars <comment><AUTHOR> Video: <http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html></comment>


Google Cloud Datastore simplifies pricing, cuts cost for most use-cases - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/03/Google-Cloud-Datastore-simplifies-pricing-cuts-cost-dramatically-for-most-use-cases.html <comment><USER2> I'm struggling to find the percentage change for reads and writes.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a percentage change, it's a structural change so it depends on how you use Cloud Datastore (largely around indexes). There is an example on the pricing page near the bottom: [https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/pricing)

"For example, in the current pricing, writing a new entity with 1 indexed property would cost 4 write operations. In the new pricing, it would cost only 1 entity write. Similarly, deleting this entity in the current pricing would cost 4 write operations, but in the new pricing it would cost only 1 entity delete."

<comment><USER3> I think it's great, I considered to move away from Datastore but now its probably more cost efficient to stay.</comment></comment></comment>


Your Scientific Reasoning Is More Flawed Than You Think - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=your-scientific-reasoning-more-flawed-than-you-think

<comment><USER2> _Worse than simple ignorance, naïve ideas about science lead people to make bad decisions with confidence._

This is the reason these articles capture my attention.

A related problem not discussed in the article is the tendency to use so- called "scientific" explanations to a non-scientific area of life. A better understanding of the scientific method itself in education is essential. Simply prefacing a statement with phrases like "it has been scientifically proven that..." or "statistics show..." is used to lend a vague scientific credibility various claims. It shows up in a slightly more sophisticated form in political diatribe and in educational settings as well.

Although of course there might be a flaw in my scientific reasoning about the article ;).

<comment><USER3> Quite a bit of the accepted "scientific" knowledge is wrong, and a lot of people will fight for it vigorously without noticing, or otherwise thinking. Even here on hacker news, and other scientifically minded forums, I've been called a quack for pointing out that:

\- the "calories in - calories out" (and especially the carb=4kc/g, protein=4kc/g, alcohol=7kc/g, fat=9kc/g and nothing else matters) is fragile, based on a chain of unproven assumptions, and has countless counterexamples (in other words, scientifically wrong, even if it is somewhat useful for ~80% of the population).

\- dietary cholesterol was NEVER shown to be correlated with anything bad. serum cholesterol was shown to be correlated with heart attacks and higher probability of other events, but dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol are almost uncorrelated.

\- sodium intake is correlated with high blood pressure only for 20% of the population. For 80% of the population, sodium intake does not raise blood pressure.

\- you need water, but if you are healthy, you can skip food for 40 days with many benefits and no irreversible damage.

\- you do not need B12 in your food if you are healthy (and your intestinal cultures are healthy), and animals can't make it any better than humans can, so this argument for requiring meat consumption is utterly wrong.

\- red, yellow and blue do not constitute a "primary color" basis with respect to addition - you can't even make green! (red green and blue almost do; no 3 colors can cover the whole human eye visible gamut, but specific red. green and blue maximize this coverage).

I've had a chance to talk to Danny Shechtman (nobel laureate in chemistry, awarded for discovering and documenting the quasi-crystal structure). It turns out that this "make bad decisions with confidence" is not limited to "naive ideas and simple ignorance" - the greatest minds of the century, first among them Linus Pauling, refused to consider his discoveries. (In fact, the definition of what a crystal is was revised to account for quasicrystals, but this was done only after Pauling passed away). There are horror stories behind the nobels given to McClintock ("jumping genes"), Warren (helicobacter pilori is the immediate cause for stomach ulcers), Shechtman, and I would assume many other great discoveries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given a multiple choice True/False test with the statement "people turn food into energy", I would have had to spend some time deciding on what to answer, not because I have to question whether or not the statement is true, but because I'd have to wonder in whether or not the test writer understands the nuanced implications of that statement.

The way I see it, people don't turn food into energy -- they simply move energy around and transform it by breaking the chemical bonds in the food and forming other chemical bonds using enzymes to keep the activation energies low enough to make a net gain despite losses to heat. So based on the conservation of energy, people don't turn anything into energy. The energy was already there -- they simply transformed it.

But then with the conservation of mass-energy, we know that some mass is converted to energy when chemical bonds are broken. So technically the statement is true in a sense. But the amount of energy created from mass is so small it can't even be measured or detected, so for all practical purposes, the statement is false. You have to be breaking nuclear bonds before you see that.

The article's author says the statement is true, using it as an example of a statement that's consistent with our preconceived ideas, but instead of explaining it, he simply does some pseudo-scientific hand-waving -- digestion, respiration, metabolism, and all that. This suggests the author somehow considers energy as something that is created and used up on a regular basis.

Which makes you wonder, what if the writer of the statement was an expert biologist whose major focus isn't understanding the concept of energy or the chemical underpinnings of microbiology? What if they also saw energy in the same way as the author of the article? What if the answer on the answer key is true, despite being arguably false? In that case, the answer is true in the sense that that's what the writer of the test wanted you to answer.

I think a better test would give the option of adding a statement or two to qualify or explain your choice on the test. I know that would allow me to finish such a test sooner, especially if it was computerized and I could type my explanations.

</comment><comment><USER5> _the authors found that participants who had best mastered scientific concepts (determined by their overall accuracy) were especially slow to verify inconsistent statements_

I would expect that it's the other way around ie the people who take longer time to think stuff through will have a higher accuracy. Which doesn't make their results all that surprising

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a System 1 vs. System 2 conflict: [http://www.amazon.com/Thinking- Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow- Daniel- Kahneman/dp/0374275637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345778519&sr=8-1&keywords=thinking+fast+and+slow) And not even a particularly interesting or surprising one, really.

<comment><USER7> Can you go into more detail? Specifically, how does this differ from the second page if the article, where it discusses (somewhat refutes) learned concepts that override naive concepts taking longer just because the pathways aren't as strongly connected?

I have no idea what System 1 vs System 2 thinking is, much less how it applies in this case.

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory#Systems>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surely the "inconsistent" questions are the ones that initially seem to be possibly tricky or subtle questions. This is not the same as contradicting the intuitive answer. For example, if you ask whether two masses fall at the same speed in air, that would probably trigger a careful response in the same way that asking whether two objects fall at the same speed in a vacuum would, even though in the first case the correct answer ultimately matches natural intuition. That's my guess as to what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems to me to be as much "you have a hard time replacing what you know works in some (indeed many) cases with something that might be harder to apply in simple cases but is always correct" as it is "you have a hard time learning correct things."

That is, the ideas (that this piece mentioned) that people had a hard time leaving behind seemed to be those that work as decent guidelines, even if they are not accurate. Speed of processing is a value in our minds as much as it is in a computer. If you have a rule of thumb that works rather well, why abandon it?

</comment><comment><USER11> The reason people persist with unscientific conceptions of the world even after learning the scientifically correct explanation is because scientifically correct explanations often have little benefit in our day to day lives.

The heliocentric model of the solar system, for example, has no effect on our normal lives, and thus by Pierce's Pragmatic Maxim is of little value.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim>

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm going to bet they used something like harvards implicit to run this test. If you have never seen it, the results are surprising given how simple the tests are (measure your time of response)

<https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/>

the warning statement alone should make you interested:

      I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations
      of my IAT test performance with which I may not
      agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone interested traveling even further down the rabbit hole I recommend Kuhn, Lakatos & Feyrabend.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean this ?

[http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/wuthrich/teaching/...](http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/wuthrich/teaching/2011_145/Lect06_PopperEtAl.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a great deal of examples of this in economics, and this is not just a theoretical problem-- it causes bad electoral outcomes.

For instance, the idea that "government spending stimulates the economy" is a naive concept. It sounds good- right, because they are spending money, that means it is creating demand and the goods and services they are buying increases economic activity.

The scientific reality is, this naive concept is ignoring the cost of that government spending. All of the money government has comes from two sources- inflation and taxes. Whichever way they raise the money, they do economic damage.

Thus government spending, like Obama's so-called "stimulus" plan, actually hurts the economy.

This is why, for instance, the unemployment rate ended up being higher than Obama claimed it would be if his plan wasn't passed.. even though his plan was passed.

But it is not very hard to find people who believe that some other thing caused unemployment to be higher.

In fact, both the Republican and Demcorat parties, and their partisan's ideologies, reject the science of economics and embrace pseudo-science.

In my lifetime, I've seen a great increase in embracing pseudo-scientific concepts or even anti-science positions, most recently and alarmingly, by people who insist that they are right because "science" agrees with them.

Another example: Glaciers are getting smaller because of global warming. This belief is completely unscientific-- there is no way to know how many glaciers there are on earth, let alone whether they are getting smaller, and nobody has even tried to guess whether more of them are shrinking than growing.

Another example: The idea that the TSA protects us against airplane hijackings. Or that somehow the government is protecting us against terrorism. Or that mass shootings would be worse if guns were less regulated (the stats: 9.2 is the average number killed in areas where guns are banned, but only 2.2 people die in areas where the intended victims are allowed to be armed.)

Politics' natural enemy is science.

<comment><USER15> Hmmm, a very political comment...

Firstly confusing Economics with a science rather than pseudo-science (or at least very bad science in that in most cases the assumptions required for the mathematical models are unrealistic and instantly forgotten), then stating as a fact some simple controversial (among economists too) statements which if true at all have a great deal more subtlety behind them and a number of which I believe to be flat out wrong.

I think trying to tackle the points would go way off topic but in my view the parent post gives a good example of some naive beliefs (although economics is insufficiently scientific to be able to prove them inconsistent with reality).

Edit: Changed 'post' to 'comment' and 'unrealistically' to 'unrealistic'.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Practice Java 8 - <AUTHOR> At work, we recently started moving to Java 8. I feel I need some practice thinking/writing Java 8 code.I want to know if you all have any resources to practice writing Java 8 code. My original plan was to read a book cover to cover but I realize that is not giving me enough hands on practice. <comment><USER2> Start with this: [http://winterbe.com/posts/2014/03/16/java-8-tutorial/](http://winterbe.com/posts/2014/03/16/java-8-tutorial/)</comment>


Kowly – the social network for those, who want to change the world - <AUTHOR> http://kowly.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Today we launched our startup. Kowly is a social network with the clear focus on inspiring quotes and media. Check it out and get inspired!</comment>


Detailed study of fatalities and litigation involving police use of stun guns - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/usa-taser/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me that the takeaways from stun-guns in the hands of police are simple and easy to observe:

* The instances of their use as a substitute for lethal force are vanishingly rare. So much so that it's hard to find a case by googling. They're always and only used in a lower stage of the use-of-force continuum than as a substitute for a firearm.

* They're often used completely inappropriately, with no self-defense component at all (ie, used as a way to torture people into complying).

* They're sometimes used purely as a torture device against people who are restrained, already subdued, or even already unconscious.

* They cause a lot of lasting injuries and some fatalities.

It's been an interesting experiment, but it's time to end it. Let's just remove them from the police arsenal (like we have mostly done with nunchaku, which were a less-lethal fad in the 80s and 90s).

I'm of the mind that police force needs to be more black and white, just as the law needs to be more black and white. If there is serious cause to use lethal force, the police need to use (and be trained with) dependable firearms. If there's not, then I don't really want them using weapons at all.

Let's treat failure to comply with lawful requests as a civil matter. You can continue non-compliance as long as you want, but you'll be liable for all the costs incurred by your doing so. Let's not torture or injure people on this basis.

This middle-ground / gray area in the use-of-force continuum creates a strange mindset for everyone involved. Are the police simply dispassionately enforcing discrete laws? Or are they forcing their own will or an unwritten will of the state?

<comment><USER3> The problem that stun guns are designed to address does exist. There is a place in use-of-force continuum between shouting and shooting. You can't really require police officers to get into fistfights, especially when they are at a disadvantage because of weight, age, gender, etc.

Like any technology, stun guns can be misused, and oftentimes are. It's important to recognize this problem and address it, through raising awareness, improving training, etc. If you simply take stun guns away, the police will simply shoot people with real guns more.

<comment><USER2> Can you give me (or via comment or a link) an example of a hypothetical scenario in which force is required, but unarmed force won't do?

<comment><USER4> A combative 6'2", 215# body-builder high on PCP or methamphetamine, acting aggressively in a public place.

If that's not enough, give him a bat or a knife as well.

<comment><USER5> A friend was actually high on PCP, trained in martial arts, had a baseball bat, and was beating on a row of expensive cars. It took 6 cops to restrain him, but frankly the cops where never in significant danger so that was a rational response on their part.

Granted, he was not 215 lb, but it's still close to what your describing and nobody got shot. Just raw physical force and handcuffs from several well trained cops.

PS: He also just got probation, but that's the rich, white, clean record advantage in action.

<comment><USER6> Why are you friends with this person?

<comment><USER5> Well we group up together. But, you are also jugging him from one incident. He also volunteered regularly and was generally just a nice guy who sometimes did really dumb things.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for answering. I guess I didn't mean my question to come off as a condescending or rhetorical question. I was hoping he had redeeming qualities. But getting high on PCP and busting up people's cars and getting into rows with the police is still pretty anti-social behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1005 fatalities during which a stun gun was used at all in the encounter; 153 where the medical examiner listed the stun gun as a cause or contributing factor in the death since 1983.

153 in 34 years is 4.5 per year. Even the higher figure (where a subject might have been both Tased and shot) represents under 30 per year.

I'm fairly sure that less-lethal weapons/tactics like stun guns have saved more lives than they've cost. I don't mean to diminish the suffering of families who are in the 153 or 1005, but the numbers tell me that this is a good addition to police spectrum of force rather than a bad one.

<comment><USER7> That makes sense if police are using stun guns instead of pistols. The concern is that they are using stun guns instead of defusing situations verbally, or using stun guns instead of billy clubs, allowing them to punish/torture people without leaving marks.

You could say our drone warfare technology is creating that same sort of problem. On one hand they are much cheaper and do not risk a pilot being shot down in some enemy country. On the other hand, that makes it cheap and relatively risk free to drop bombs on people, so why not use them all the time?

<comment><USER8> "Don't tase me, bro."

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

My opinion on that incident is that the police over-reacted.

Police in the US seem to be sorely undertrained in defusing situations, and in fact often are the ones escalating. They certainly (in my experience) do not like to have their authority challenged. They are the professionals - shouldn't the onus be on them to maintain calm?

That said, there are thousands of police/citizen interactions every day that don't end up in the news. Maybe the bad apples have biased my opinion.

Disclosure: white middle-aged middle-class male. I've had maybe a dozen interactions with police, mostly traffic incidents, mostly when I was much younger. I can think of two incidents in particular where the officer became verbally abusive with no obvious provocation on my part, and I had to de- escalate through calm and submission.

<comment><USER9> This reminds me of driving home from the eclipse. The Missouri Highway Patrol may not have created the 90-mile traffic jam, but they did their damnedest to make it worse. They didn't post alternate routes (which I took most of the way, but I had to get back on the main highway to get where I was going and was met with more bumper-to-bumper). They didn't wave traffic through the three stoplights (on the whole hundred miles of mostly-limited-access) that were causing most of the problem. Instead they continually zipped up and down the median and shoulders of the road in their own giant traffic machines, regularly pulling people over for minor offenses (no one was speeding, that's for sure) and finding other reasons to jam their cruisers in and out of traffic.

It's as if police never stop to think about the purpose of their jobs. I guess they're like many other people that way...

<comment><USER10> >It's as if police never stop to think about the purpose of their jobs. I guess they're like many other people that way...

This. If you're gonna take the guy to the station and have the vehicle towed then why not stick the guy in the cruiser, wait for the truck and conduct your search in the impound lot where you're not clogging up traffic and at risk of getting hit by someone on their phone.

The problem is that there isn't pressure from the top down to be efficient.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitTorrent explained - <AUTHOR> http://advogato.org/article/994.html

<comment><USER2> Git seems to be torn between centralization and distribution. For large projects you always seem to fall back to the SVN style single repository even if Git allows effortless decentralization.

There are projects like Google's Gerrit [1] which tries to push towards a centralized usage of Git. On top of being a useful code review tool it's currently used to manage all the contributions to the Android source tree.

Then there are projects like this, focusing on pushing Git even further away from centralization.

One of the stated advantages of GitTorrent is intimidation due to "centralized" Git repos. Services like Github have essentially enabled trivial forking of "centralized" repositories, so I don't think GitTorrent holds a strong advantage there.

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/>

<comment><USER3> The point with Git isn't to not have a central repo, it's that you can have any structure of repos you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty lofty target... and in the end, bandwidth and connections will be the constraint.

Sounds like some fun, but it also sounds like something that would be nasty to troubleshoot in real life.

Anyone remember how slow freenet was? Remember who used it the most?

<comment><USER5> Also, it seems that the project is pretty dead... All contributions are from 2006-2008. It's a pity, I'd have loved to see where this went.</comment></comment>


Rigel Engine: A Modern Re-Implementation of the Classic DOS Game Duke Nukem II - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lethal-guitar/RigelEngine <comment><USER2> trying it atm</comment>