Ask HN: Books on getting rich? - <AUTHOR> Okay this does sound naive. However I have free time this weekend and want to read 1-2 of the best selling books on getting rich. Mainly to understand what kind of advice they give on finances and/or personality traits. Please suggest your favorites. <comment><USER2> How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis

A lot of the book is biographical, but that part is very entertaining. Dennis is very upfront about drive, sacrifice, and luck required. Definitely not warm and fuzzy.

<comment><USER3> The above. Also Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

<comment><USER4> i've read both and imo they are just what you're lookig for, especially How to get rich by Dennis Felix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's over a century old, but the "Art of Money Getting" by P.T. Barnum is still pretty good:

<http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Whatever you read, just don't read Robert Kiyasaki ("Rich Dad, Poor Dad") series - stay away from the Amway MLM overtones.

<comment><USER7> Well, it depends what you are after. Do you actually want to get rich, or do you just want to get a warm fuzzy feeling reading about getting rich? Because if the latter then Rich Dad is exactly what you need.

<comment><USER8> Why? What advice does he give that isn't genuine?

From what I remember, the book's premise is about using money to make more money and that true wealth is a derivative of investing wisely. Sure, maybe for you this is a no-brainer, but for the average American and perhaps the average hacker this concept can be life-changing.

<comment><USER9> The guy has never made a cent from anything but MLM and this series of books. The "rich dad" is not a real person, though he still markets it as autobiographical. Much of the specific business advice he gives is 1) provably dumb, 2) unethical, 3) sometimes illegal.

He's built a whole cottage industry around one basic premise- you get rich if you have lots of residual income that doesn't require you to put in proportional hours. If you need a series of 7 books (or even the first one) to teach you that (though I admit the board game is fun on its own merits)... perhaps your not entrepreneur material?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Others have already suggested the best overall books I'd recommend in terms of philosophy, but in terms of the nitty gritty details of actually _doing_ it, I'd recommend _Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat_ by Michael Masterson.

Not everything will be applicable to your situation but it's a pretty detailed guide to taking an idea, launching it, and building the company around it up to a multi million dollar company.

<comment><USER11> Yeah this book is more about building businesses than building personal net worth. There is however a strong correlation between the two :)

A very good book. I recommend it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Check out "The Millionaire Mind" and "The Millionaire Next Door". The book isn't really about how to become rich. More about the mind set a millionaire has to get rich and stay rich.

[http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Mind-Thomas-J- Stanley/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Mind-Thomas-J- Stanley/dp/0740703579)

[http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas- Stanley/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas- Stanley/dp/0671015206)

</comment><comment><USER13> Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich was nicely written and has a lot of supplementary stuff, mostly centred around managing personal finance well. Probably not one of the "seminal" books - it's new - but a decent read.

<comment><USER14> I'll second this recommendation. Very good for young single people. It's not a get rich quick book. It's a get rich slow the old fashion way book. What it does best is provides a framework for budgeting and saving that's easy to follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Richest Man in Babylon - Old wisdom at is best.

<comment><USER16> +1 All you need to learn about money is in this book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The best selling book is Tony Robbins "Unlimited Power" with like 9 million copies sold, but its also about fitness, so its not as targeted as you might like, although I liked it, but I'm not rich.

Another one which I liked was, "Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way" Richard Branson

It's how Branson got rich which is pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really enjoyed The Dream by Gurbaksh Chahal. He founded BlueLithium, which was acquired by Yahoo. The book goes into detail about the attitudes required to get rich and manage wealth. Here are a bunch of other books written by rich people as well: <http://www.bigwinner.org/books>

</comment><comment><USER19> Biographies of the very rich and successful who started with nothing are usually very good. I look for common themes and key points in their lives. A few of my favorites:

Carnegie by Peter Krass, [http://www.amazon.com/Carnegie-Peter- Krass/dp/0471468835/ref...](http://www.amazon.com/Carnegie-Peter- Krass/dp/0471468835/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246715621&sr=8-7)

"Titan, The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr." by Ron Chernow, [http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller- Sr/dp/1400...](http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller- Sr/dp/1400077303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246715706&sr=1-1)

"iWoz", by Steve Wozniak, [http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented- Personal-Co-Fou...](http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co- Founded/dp/0393061434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246715846&sr=1-1)

</comment><comment><USER20> I second both "Richest Man in Babylon" and "Think and Grow Rich." Both were recommended to me by a very successful VC that attributed much of his success to those books. Both are very good. "Babylon" covers many principles of wealth while "Think" is more about the psychology, so they complement each other well.

</comment><comment><USER21> Probably not what you have in mind, but The Wealthy Barber ( <http://www.wealthybarber.com/> ) provides common-sense advice for accumulating and managing modest wealth without needing corporate success.

</comment><comment><USER22> Agree with The Richest Man in Babylon and Think and Grow Rich.

I recommend: 4 Hour Work Week, Mommy Millionaire, and The Millionaire Next Door, Gorilla Marketing, and Execution.

LOL, if I had to choose two, they would be Think and Grow Rich and 4 Hour Work Week.

</comment><comment><USER23> Think and Grow Rich

</comment><comment><USER24> Think and Grow Rich Available for free here (it's no longer under copyright)

[http://www.4shared.com/file/63815169/6ed4bf95/ThinkandGrowRi...](http://www.4shared.com/file/63815169/6ed4bf95/ThinkandGrowRich.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> <http://isbn.nu/9780375503665> is good.

</comment><comment><USER26> Think and Grow Rich, old as it is, is still the best book on getting rich I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER27> Who here has become rich, you know, by reading these books?

</comment><comment><USER28> How to Make Wealth <http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Actually I read this 2 yrs back and can remember most of it still. The point that you create wealth by making things other want had a great impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> maybe if you want to get rich your best bet is to write a book about getting rich? Seems to work for schmuks like Timothy Ferriss.

<comment><USER29> Looks like I'm getting down voted for not contributing anything worthwhile to the conversation.

I'm not a huge fan of get rich books and I wonder how many rich people ever read any of those books.

Also I don't really like the idea of hoarding personal wealth - why is it that the richest in the world seem to often give away their wealth after they have accumulated it? eg Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Andrew Forrest.

I remember reading somewhere about Warren Buffett. He said that he enjoyed the challenges of making money not the money itself. He also mentioned that to be ultra 'successful' one needs to devote oneself completely to making money to the exclusion of all else. Doesn't sound like the road to happiness to me.

From where I'm standing it seems that most people who got rich found something they loved doing and were really good at (the threadless guys are a good recent example). The money was a nice side effect of their passion.

<comment><USER30> If you have a lot or the clear potential to get a lot, money seems like a pretty decent way of keeping score.

<comment><USER29> I'm not saying there is anything wrong with making money - it's the single minded pursuit of it which I think is unhealthy</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scalable and secure access with SSH - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/365787980419535/scalable-and-secure-access-with-ssh/ <comment><USER2> I found this really useful. It's lightweight, simple and powerful.

However, some pieces of advice in the article could prove catastrophic:

"You need to distribute ca.pub to your entire fleet. Remember, this is meant to be public, so complete access lockdown isn't the goal."

Complete access lockdown is vital. You need to prevent the CA's public key from being altered, corrupted or deleted across your fleet. When distributing the CA's public key, you definitely need to use a secure transport. The CA's public key is what your system of trust is built on. You need to make sure you are trusting the right thing.

"Copy the latter to the CA server and get it signed. Because this is public information, the transport isn't important. You can copy and paste, or fax it"

When copying the user's public key to the server, the transport is still important, otherwise a MITM could swap the public key and your CA would happily sign the wrong thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> For (possibly) smaller scale I wrote a self-service SSH CA: [https://github.com/nsheridan/cashier](https://github.com/nsheridan/cashier)

</comment><comment><USER4> > _We do not place SSH certificates on laptops because it is difficult to > control everything that individual employees run on them. Even though they > are centrally managed, laptops are more prone to vulnerabilities than the > bastion servers. Therefore, we do not trust them with SSH private keys._

If the laptop doesn't have an SSH private key, how do you SSH to the bastion host?

> _In your .ssh / directory, you'll see id_ecdsa and id_ecdsa.pub. Copy the > latter to the CA server and get it signed. Because this is public > information, the transport isn't important. You can copy and paste, or fax > it; just don't copy id_ecdsa anywhere._

The transfer of id_ecdsa.pub doesn't need secrecy, but it does need integrity. You don't want to accidentally sign an attacker's public key.

<comment><USER5> > If the laptop doesn't have an SSH private key, how do you SSH to the bastion > host?

 _These hosts use centralized LDAP and Kerberos installations to share account information, and they require two-factor authentication to protect against password leakage_

It appears that you use your password + some unspecified second factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought this was mostly a solved problem? SSSD or FreeIPA and a bunch of LDAP servers. Cached credentials will keep you online in the case of a transient authentication issue.

HA LDAP is pretty much a solved problem as well. Say what you want about various Microsoft server products, Active Directory is second to none in this regard, and is a highly flexible and extremely robust service.

Am I missing something specific about Facebook that makes this not an option?

<comment><USER7> We have hundreds of thousands of servers and we also run sshd inside containers everywhere, so we probably have over a million endpoints we can SSH into. Cache is only good for things you login frequently, like your workstation or a handful of servers. We don't accept the risk of not being able to login in a system. Our only dependency is a signed certificate. If things go south really really bad, we can just get the private key and sign certificates by hand.

<comment><USER8> > We don't accept the risk of not being able to login in a system.

There are plenty of ways to mitigate the risk of LDAP server unavailability. Besides, the document said that the bastion server uses it, so why isn't what's good for the bastion good enough for the rest of the fleet?

<comment><USER9> LDAP works really well until you have either too many users, or too many endpoints. Then it doesn't work at all. There's no (cost effective) way to get past all of the replication traffic flying all over the place. Eventually consistent models are awful for things like ssh keys and passwords that's exacerbated significantly when you add caching to the mix to ease the load on your ldap cluster.

Adding extra brittle moving parts like LDAP and linux clustering to a greenfield deployment just doesn't seem attractive when a CA is so easy to run, and you should already have one if you're doing config management sanely.

<comment><USER8> Your premise would make sense if LDAP replication were expensive, but it isn't. LDAP database modifications are relatively rare: you only make them when a new user is added; a user's credentials change; or a user is deleted (which should be never for various post-termination accounting reasons). Even at Facebook, the change rate should be relatively low.

Also you're making an assumption about the need for consistency, when as a practical matter there's rarely a need for it. Caching is effective and practical for this use case and you'd have to make a very strong case that it should be thrown out.

Finally, it is my experience that people grossly misjudge the difficulty of securely and scalably running a CA. Most such comments come from those who have never actually operated one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The implementation seems quite novel, but I can't shake the feeling that its a bit over-engineered. The additional complexity of this over a standard solution (eg FreeIPA + SSSD) may introduce other issues that need to be mitigated.

The approach of using certificates over a cache like sssd is just shifting the issue from cache expiration over to certificate expiration. With certificates, you are likely to set some period where the user certificates expire, and if u have an expired certificate and CA is down u still cannot log in. If you dont expire your certificates u have a security risk.

With FreeIPA you can also map public keys to specific users and have sshd pull authorized_keys from SSSD instead of the actual file. So if a user leaves the system, his keys get removed. So no need to worry about old keys lingering on your servers.

As somebody already mentioned, LDAP (which FreeIPA uses as backend) has a battle-proven HA capability. With some sane configurations of the underlying servers (separate physical equipment, networking, etc), you don't need to worry about your backend mysteriously going down.

</comment><comment><USER11> Tangent: _" When designing a security system, regardless of purpose or protocol, you need to think of authentication and authorization separately. Authentication securely verifies that the client is who it claims to be, but does not grant any permissions. After the successful authentication, authorization decides whether or not the client can perform a specific action."_

These two operations are often abbreviated _" authn"_ (for autheNtication) and _" authz"_ (for authoriZation) in security frameworks.

<comment><USER7> In fact, we use a lot the terms authn, authz, authnz and AAA at Facebook. :-)

<comment><USER12> When I was doing security work, AAA stood for "authorization, authentication and audit"

<comment><USER8> The last one was also known as "accounting."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you manage what servers clients trust?

I've seen a few SSH CA projects for signing user certs, but not for the server side certificates.

When you're running containers, if they're spawned frequently, that can mean a significant amount of known_hosts file churning. It sounds like everyone funnels through a small set of bastions, so you'd only need to update them there, but I'm wondering if anyone else uses an SSH CA to solve that side of the equation?

All the ingredients needed are in `ssh-keygen`, but that doesn't feel super awesome to me.

Solving server identity is why I built [https://github.com/square/sharkey](https://github.com/square/sharkey)

<comment><USER14> You've not seen that?

It's HostCertificate in sshd_config. Then in known_hosts:

@cert-authority *.example.com ssh-rsa AAAAB…

[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- crea...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-an- ssh-ca-to-validate-hosts-and-clients-with-ubuntu)

Edit: Oh, you mean for making them more short lived.

<comment><USER13> You can trust a CA easily enough. So do you just glob some shell scripts around ssh-keygen?

Short-lived is one solution to limiting their lifetime: the other is to use a CRL format.

Either way, you need software to manage the issuance and later revocation.

I suppose you could build this into your host imaging profile, or use config management software. I'm just interested in what people do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks very similar to Netflix' BLESS package[1]

[1] HN discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11746425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11746425)

<comment><USER16> Yes, I was coming to post the exact same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another promising solution that uses these principles is Teleport ([http://gravitational.com/teleport](http://gravitational.com/teleport))

</comment><comment><USER18> If I'm reading this right, it looks like this improves over Netflix BLESS IIRC. My concern with something like BLESS was that it allows you in to root or some deploy/app user based on a cert trust chain, but doesn't seem to trace back to the actual user who's making the changes and/or differentiate between two users logged in at once. This embeds the user information in the cert. Looks nice.

</comment><comment><USER19> How do they handle revocation? The problem I had with this approach in the past was no CRL support.

<comment><USER7> We can use RevokedKeys for that, but in fact we normally issue short-lived certificates. If we ever have a mass certificate leak, we'll just rotate the entire CA.

<comment><USER7> Also, we bind certificates to the hosts that requested them. If a certificate and its private key move somewhere else, they will be useless.

ssh-keygen -O source-address=18.104.22.168...

<comment><USER19> Interesting, so I'm assuming this wouldn't work for staff that roam with laptops?

<comment><USER7> We only do that in bastion servers. It would be a bit trickier with laptops, but doable I guess.

<comment><USER19> Makes sense. I missed that section, much clearer now, thanks. Any plans to release more details on how the bastion hosts are configured? Seems like that would be the complex bit to get right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How anticlimactic. Nothing new or internal, just "hey here's what's in the OpenSSH manpage: TrustedUserCAKeys and AuthorizedPrincipalsFile".</comment>


NASA proposes new propulsion to cut Mars voyage to 3 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-02/22/laser-propulsion-system-mars-in-3-days <comment><USER2> back-of-envelope:

conservation of momentum: 2 _(num photons)_ h/lambda = (100 kg)*(c/3), so 5.9×10^36 photons needed to propel a 100 kg object to 1/3 speed of light. 1.5×10^18 joules of energy, which is 11% of the energy output of the US in 2001 (according to wolfram alpha). That's a 5.8 Tera Watt laser running for 3 days straight.

I haven't even gotten into dispersion of a laser beam.

The ludicrousness of this proposal is left as an exercise to the reader.

Edit: here's their proposal with physics. Just to be clear, I don't doubt the theoretical possibility, I doubt the economic and experimental reality. [http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/A-R...](http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/A-Roadmap-to-Interstellar-Flight-15-h.pdf)

<comment><USER3> How would it slow down at the other end?

<comment><USER4> Aerobreaking could net you some gain. Obviously, this requires a more engineeered vehicle, including possibly an ablative shield.

Even at that, however, you'll be skimming very close to Mars' surface and incurring very high temperatures.

Perhaps (and this is a big perhaps) we could engineer lifting body surfaces to increase the time-in-atmosphere and dissipate heat better.

This is why I love playing Kerbal Space Program.

<comment><USER5> Aerobraking from .3c would require materials many orders of magnitude more heat-resistant than known to humanity.

<comment><USER6> Yes. Stopping from 90000km/s in 100ms (more or less earth radius) might prove to be a bit hard :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Lubin supposes that the system could propel crafts to an "unheard of" 30 > percent the speed of light._

> " _There is no known reason why we could not do this_ "

Yeah, no. There is a known reason. What do you think happens to a spaceship hitting something at 30% c? What do you think happens to the front of a spaceship or craft hitting something the size of bead or pebble at 30% c? The ship will disintegrate.

Granted, the ship could be shielded or employ some sort of plasma/magnetic deflector technology (still in proof of concept stages of development), but now you're talking technology that's just as far away, if not further than the propulsion system they're talking about using. It's also why things like project Orion really never got off the ground or are feasible in their current forms. Sure, we can get up to those speeds, it's surviving at those speeds that's the challenge.

Also, they talk about the weight of a ship being ultra light. If you had to shield it to survive the impact of tiny particles and other space debris you'll inevitably encounter on your trip, it's no longer going to be ultra light.

<comment><USER8> Not sure its that bad. This thing would be mostly akin to a big mylar sail. A micrometeorite at high relative velocity will punch right through making a nice cutout. As long as it doesn't hit the (small) payload I don't think it should disintegrate. But I would worry about all the atoms and ions hitting too. Space isn't empty!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Jane, Stop this crazy thing! or in other words, how do you decelerate the spacecraft once you near Mars orbit. You'd need either a ton of conventional propulsion fuel , or a mars based laser there too. Worse is that you have a limited energy sources and no one to mine them. Solar might help, but it'd take a helluva alot of planning to install them via some automated system.

<comment><USER9> Regarding slowing down upon arrival, could they enter a low orbit and skim the atmosphere of Mars to reduce velocity?

<comment><USER10> Definitely not. Back of the napkin shows that to get to Mars in 3 days would need a speed in excess of 200 km/s. That is an order of magnitude larger than Mars escape velocity. Your only chance of being captured by Mars is by pancaking.

<comment><USER11> Make the first vehicle nothing but a giant mirror, crash it into Mars and then reflect the laser off the debris to slow down the second vehicle?

<comment><USER12> I think you're having trouble grasping exactly how fast 200km/s actually is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For context, some of the numbers here:

c: 300,000 km/sec,

1/3c: 100,000 km/sec

Fastest man-made thing in history by far, Voyager 1: 17km/sec

Time it took most recent Mars mission to get there (Mars Science Laboratory, 2011): 254 days

Closest Mars-Earth: 182 light-sec

Farthest Mars-Earth: 1342 light-sec

These scientists are proposing to send something at about six thousand times faster than anything man-made has ever gone in history. At this scale, the energies involved become absolutely insane. Guess what would be the energy of a tiny one-gram pebble floating in space hitting this spacecraft? Ten terajoules. That's approximately equal to you walking along on your way to work and getting hit by, oh, I don't know, the International Space Station (13 terajoules) or a sixth of a good sized atomic blast (63 terajoules). Space is a busy place. If you hit even one thing, you're over.

But, you argue, you won't get hit by any pebbles. I'd imagine that you're wrong, but let's humor you. You argue that the largest thing to hit you would be a microscopic 0.001g object. Let's say that your microscopic object is standing perfectly still in space, somehow, even though that's incredibly unlikely.

You hit this object, and instantly your craft is subjected to a ten gigajoule blast. Let's put that into context: at an incredibly small point somewhere on your craft, rocketing along at just north of 223000000 mph, you just experienced a hit equivalent to one hundred million large caliber (.45) bullets. Let's say the scientific payload of your craft is one gram, and the rest is armor. You'd be safe right? No, unfortunately 99.999kg of armor doesn't seem so strong in the face of one hundred million bullets.

I don't think it's possible.

<comment><USER14> New Horizons is fastest chemical rocket taking 78 days to cross Mars orbit. (You'd use a different, longer path for Mars orbital/lander insertion.) New Horizons crossed lunar orbit in 9 hours, or about six times faster than Apollo flights.

<comment><USER13> Sure, but my points in the article only really apply once you change the velocity in a significant way. ke=mv^2, so going 100 times faster means ten thousand times the KE and thus ten thousand times the destruction.

For an example, New Horizons was at Mars around 13km/s. At 13km/s, the impact of that microscopic object, instead of being one hundred million bullets, is now 169 joules, barely a tenth of a bullet's energy. Still harmful, but with New Horizons being car-sized, slower moving, and armored, that repeated tenth- of-a-bullet impact is a problem that can be dealt with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the "Mars in 3" days comment is just for scale, not a serious proposal.

This is more about getting probes to whiz past other solar systems. As obviously, you can't stop the craft.

<comment><USER16> _you can 't stop the craft._

Zubrin and someone devised a way to use magsails to decelerate starships without using onboard fuel. That's magic, as you're not subject to the rocket equation. (Really, it was a failed attempt to develop a Bussard ramjet, but they figured out you'd never overcome the "friction" with the interstellar medium. So they were like, let's go with the friction!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Whenever I read a story about using sails for propulsion in space I'm reminded of the short story Sunjammer by Arthur C. Clarke

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

</comment><comment><USER18> To reduce travel time from 9 months to four would be incredibly helpful to sending people. To halve that again to two months even more so. But after that, faster has lessened benefits. One month makes it easier on the human body, less than that is more convenience than anything. We'd be better served putting our money elsewhere. An Earth-Mars cycler would be a great start. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler)

And for unmanned missions, faster is of marginal benefit.

If I were setting up such a system for planetary flybys and extra-solar missions, I'd put the laser on one of the lunar poles .

</comment><comment><USER19> A practical near-term application of this tech is precision formation flying of satellites -- Young Bae has been developing test systems for over a decade: [https://www.nasa.gov/spacetech/niac/2013phaseII_bae.html](https://www.nasa.gov/spacetech/niac/2013phaseII_bae.html)

(It must be annoying when the researchers studying pie-in-the-sky mission architectures get all the clickbait headlines)

</comment><comment><USER20> Okay, so what I read from others is that stopping is gonna be a PITA -- so maybe Mars isn't the best target.. Why not send some huge telescope in the direction of that solar system that looks like it has an Alien Megastructure- - get as close as we can to that thing and take closer pictures of it to find out what's really going on (and other parts of the galaxy) -- imagine having a telescope like a couple solar systems away sending back data to us? -- we may to create some sort of galactic internet though - maybe using lasers and relay stations? (I honestly have no clue... we'd want to get data back and it to NOT take 50 years per data dump.) ..

<comment><USER21> It's likely very much easier to build a telescope array in this solar system than to send a telescope "a couple solar systems away".

KIC 8462852 is 1480 light years away. At 10% light speed it would take over 10,000 years to get within a few solar systems of the star.

On the other hand, a space-based interferometer with a baseline of 15 AU would have an angular resolution of:

      1.22 * 500 nm / (15 AU) = 2.7E-19 radians

giving the ability to see things at KIC 8462852 which are

      1480 light years * 2.7E-19 = 3 meters across

That's also fantastically advanced, but working backwards, to see objects 100km in size:

      (1.22  * 500 nm) / (100km / 1480 light years) = ~100,000 km

I think we can pull that off within 1,000 years, much less 10,000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another back of the napkin thing - if one manages to maintain +1G acceleration for the first half of the trip and -1G for the second half, one can get to Mars in 1 to 3 days, with the top speed of about 1000 km/s.

<comment><USER2> Which does provide the interesting feature that if we could method of propulsion that gets to c/3 in a day or two, we could just use the acceleration of the ship to provide artificial gravity on-board, and flip the ship around mid-trip to provide artificial gravity during the deceleration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As much as I love the idea, it is fairly impractical for the reasons that other commentors have noted. Call me greedy, but within the constraints of a balanced budget, I would like to see an increased portion dedicated to science (be it a 'cancer moonshot' or an actual marsshot) vs social programs ... maybe we could find some real solutions to these issues. In my own life I have a tendency to skimp on the 'now' in the name of investing in the future, so this is probably just me applying my own financial philosophies at a larger scale.

<comment><USER24> > Call me greedy, but within the constraints of a balanced budget, I would > like to see an increased portion dedicated to science (be it a 'cancer > moonshot' or an actual marsshot) vs social program

Note that this basically happened already. As Apollo wound down, the War on Cancer wound up [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Cancer)

Turns out it's far more difficult to cure cancer than to reach the moon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can't pulse nuclear (Orion) get there in about as close to practicality as exists? 133 years based on what I've read.

And that doesn't do antimatter-catalyzed fusion, which seems near-term practical.

<comment><USER26> Orion is pretty great, but still suffers from the rocket equation. Well, you could get around that by keeping the bombs back at home base and throwing them to catch up with the craft... I wonder if anyone's worked out that variant. Too complex to be worth it, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> See Larry Niven's Mote in God's Eye (1974) for details..

<comment><USER28> Did Mars figure prominently in the plot? I read the book exactly six years ago and loved it, but I have no idea why you are quoting it here.

<comment><USER29> No, but the aliens were discovered because one of them built a ship based on this idea ("solar" sail with a ground-based propulsive laser) and happened to arrive in a human-inhabited system.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=lKt5laoj1coC&pg=PA55&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=lKt5laoj1coC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=mote+in+god%27s+eye+laser&source=bl&ots=QTucO9WK2p&sig=fwQ9HNOZjtl4at5mi9aWZpuKpQs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDva2m8YvLAhVEpx4KHWz0BfsQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=mote%20in%20god%27s%20eye%20laser&f=false)

<comment><USER28> Thanks, I wasn't aware that this was the exact type of propulsion that NASA was proposing. Mote In God's Eye is a classic book! I'm going to have to re- read it sometime soon. Getting a nostalgia kick just thinking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So please help me out here. The article suggests a craft could be accelerated to .3c; surely this would not be for a Mars intercept!?

This is just an example of the potential, right? Otherwise slowing down a craft at relativistic speeds for Mars capture sounds... difficult to say the least.

EDIT: OK, after thinking it through further at .3c the trip would only take about 50 minutes, roughly. So clearly that's not what the article meant.

<comment><USER31> Sounds like Kerbal Engineering at its best... :P

<comment><USER30> Relativistic litho-braking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "if it works"

between parenthesis, in the title ...

so I'm not a scientific but even if it works at the tech level, even if the deceleration problem is solved, even if not colliding with something along the way is solved

what about the impact of travelling at 1/3rd the speed of light on the human body ?

<comment><USER33> Nothing, you'll feel only the acceleration which is is equivalent to a gravitational pull. If it's 1 G you won't feel any difference from being in a room on Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> You probably need to manufacture the terawatt class space lasers from asteroid materials, at least the majority of mass. One can't afford to lift them from any deep gravity well.

This is the major reason why asteroids are in total much more important than the moon or even Mars.

</comment><comment><USER35> So over-under on this being viable before fusion power? Nice idea, but we are years away from this being viable. If we visit Mars it will be with chemical rockets first? This may be viable for some sort of highway system when travel is more common.

<comment><USER36> > _So over-under on this being viable before fusion power?_

There's nothing magical about human-built nuclear fusion power generation that'll give you noticeably larger or cheaper power output than nuclear fission.

Therefore, commercial fusion power will not bring us any closer to viability of this concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> See also: Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson

[http://www.amazon.com/Aurora-Kim-Stanley- Robinson/dp/0316098...](http://www.amazon.com/Aurora-Kim-Stanley- Robinson/dp/0316098108)

</comment><comment><USER38> Shooting a 100kg mass off at 30%C wouldn't be taken lightly by whoever it hit!

Planet killer?

<comment><USER39> Not quite.

Considering an inelastic collision, the impact would dissipate roughly mv^2/2 worth of energy, so...

1/2 * 100kg * (10^8 m/s)^2 = 5 * 10^17 Joules of kinetic energy.

In contrast, the amount of solar energy that impacts the Earth each second is 10^17 Joules.

For a more relevant comparison, the Tsar Bomba (50 megatons) released ~2*10^17 Joules. So, worst-case, the probe would cause the equivalent of a ~100 megaton explosion. Hardly a planet-killer.

<comment><USER40> But still pretty impressive.

I say we start flinging these things at all the extra-solar planets we've discovered. Think of it as grafitti or an art project. Leaving our mark on the universe.

<comment><USER31> That sounds like the kind of art that Black Hat Guy from XKCD would aprove of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Could you make any meaningful observations if you flew through a neighboring stellar system at that speed? Seems you could reach Proxima Centauri in between 10 and 20 years that way but you could not slow down.

</comment><comment><USER42> How long would it take to catch up to the Voyager probes?

</comment><comment><USER43> So if it take an array of laser to get there, how do you get back? Bring lasers with you?

</comment><comment><USER44> Very light on details

<comment><USER45> Yep, that is wired for you. As far as I can tell, this plan was first proposed in the '80s. The technical challenges of a 1.21 jiggawat laser, and a gigantic sail have led to it never being attempted even though it is probably theoretically feasible.

<comment><USER46> So what changed?

<comment><USER45> Nothing as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How to stop a spacecraft propelled by a laser?</comment>


7 Alternative Buyers for T-Mobile USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392204,00.asp

<comment><USER2> > Google's successful Android business relies on it not competing with its > customers, and becoming a wireless carrier would make conversations with > AT&T and Verizon just too uncomfortable.

How is this different than Google's purchase of Motorola? Won't that make conversations with HTC, Samsung, and all the other hardware manufacturers uncomfortable if and when Google produces its own hardware?</comment>


Korea's Internet Is Mired in a Microsoft Monoculture - <AUTHOR> http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/10/27/2009102700899.html

<comment><USER2> To be fair, Microsoft invested a lot more into catering for Korean users than anyone else.

Just three years ago, I set up Firefox on my Korean friend's computer, and found out that he couldn't properly type Korean in his webmail program, while IE worked fine. You can guess what browser he decided to use.

That particular problem is fixed now, but the simple truth is that Microsoft got into the game way ahead of everyone else.

<comment><USER3> This, this, a thousand times this.

Things are getting better these days, but up until _very_ recently the default OSS stance towards internationalization was "Unicode is hard, let's go shopping". It is hard to get managerial approval to deploy a system which can't run on his computer without corrupting display of the characters he inputs and whose documentation his engineers can't read.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's just the FOSS projects I hang around, but I really haven't seen this. Firefox for example has large amounts of resources expended on localisation.

<comment><USER5> IE8+Vista is still the only combination which can display traditional Mongolian script web pages properly. (Granted this is rather more obscure than Korean, but it's still useful to about 5 million people + every Qing dynasty historian.) All the others:

1\. don't implement/misimplement joining/shaping behaviour

2\. don't support vertical left-to-right layout

Though to be fair, for the better part of a decade MonTex was the only solution for anyone who wanted to write a document in Mongolian/Manchu/Dagur/etc.

[http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2008/10/vertical-layout-in- ie...](http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2008/10/vertical-layout-in-ie8.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I find most interesting about this article is the following irony: All of the security software in use causes users to habitually click Yes on any dialog any that comes up.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apparently it was (is?) a legal requirement to use ActiveX

[http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/07/activex-law-in- kor...](http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/07/activex-law-in-korea.html)

<comment><USER8> Weird, I was under the impression that South Korea was a free market type place. And why would they only allow ActiveX to used? What would happen if a sited decided to use something else to offer the same functionality? Would they get fined?

<comment><USER9> Monopolies are a natural phenomenon in unregulated markets. Not sure why you think this situation could not arise in a free market.

<comment><USER10> What free market? Intellectual "property" IS a government-given monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sounds like what could have happened everywhere had AJAX and web 2.0 not happened. I remember the early 2000s when ActiveX seemed like one of few options to deliver functionality that wasn't thought possible with just HTML and Javascript - and it was even reasonable to go ahead and use it because everyone was on IE6 anyway.

Dark days.

Edit: Oh, it's actually law! Oh my...

<comment><USER12> XMLHttpRequest is an ActiveX control in IE6...

<comment><USER11> Sorry I was referring more to the cultural or mindset change that made it cool and trendy to build Web 2.0 style apps. Events like the coining of the term "AJAX", as well as things like Google Maps and Gmail really pushing the boundaries of what everyone perceived could be done with just HTML/CSS/Javascript.

My theory was that the mindset shift didn't happen in South Korea for whatever reason, meaning nobody moved away from ActiveX - but as it turns out, that reason is legislative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That was exactly the situation in Brazil, 7 years ago, the dark age of the Brazilian internet, some users using Macs and Linux boxes (and also some Netscape fans out there that were using Windows) and web developers, myself included, "took back the web" with a couple of other browsers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is there any explanation as to why? Are other vendors not internationalizing sufficiently to get traction in Korea?

This doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that would spring up without reason.

<comment><USER15> It looks like classic vendor lock-in. Some bank starts requiring ActiveX to log in at a time when IE had over 90% of the marketshare, soon all banks require it, and all Koreans that wanted to use an internet bank switched to IE because that was easiest.

And then everyone else designing web services in Korea knows that since everyone uses IE, they don't bother optimizing or even testing their web sites in anything but IE.

So when Firefox appears on the market, none of the bank websites work, and plenty of regular websites don't work or look like shit in it, so users never bother with it. It's a negative spiral.

Contrast that with the development in Sweden where I am: I switched banks in 1999 to one with a really good internet bank that used standard client certificates. It worked in all browsers on all platforms. Some other banks had mediocre internet services, some had services that required the users to install something proprietary windows-only, and some banks used a hardware authenticator. The ones with bad compatibility, the ones that didn't work on Mac or in Netscape got a lot of flak from consumers, and the ones with compatibility won all the awards and got a lot of good press and goodwill.

That was instead a positive spiral, and today the technologies that survived are standard client certificates or hardware authenticators, and it doesn't matter with OS you're running or which browser you're using, all internet banks here are usable by everyone.

<comment><USER16> _it doesn't matter with OS you're running or which browser you're using, all internet banks here are usable by everyone._

If only the same where true for the government websites. Taxes and various social services webpages are still more or less impossible to log in to without windows and IE (don't know how it is with Macs though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if there's a market for something which automatically sandboxes ActiveX controls. Isn't there a YC company which is doing something for applications which might be able to be reused?

EDIT: Of course, doing the marketing to convince people they need it is probably more challenging than the technical work.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's basically the same in China, although more Mac stores are opening up. Linux is virtually unheard of.

<comment><USER7> what about <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux> ?

<comment><USER18> Almost nobody uses it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Like to discover how it feels to live without a choice. Maybe without even knowing what is a choice.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice case study of what happens when delivering software is left solely to corporations.</comment>


Ask HN: What frameworks are you using with PHP? - <AUTHOR>

What frameworks are you using with PHP in your startups ? Do you prefer frameworks for PHP ?  What other tools due you use besides PHP ? <comment><USER2> I much prefer frameworks using with PHP, I find the language frustrating without one. I'm currently using the Appleseed framework, but I've also used Joomla, Drupal and CodeIgniter (my preference, besides Appleseed) for recent professional projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kohana for php. I use HeidiSQL to manage my MySQL databases.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've come to enjoy using Zend Framework.</comment>


Opinions on Ionic framework for mobile apps? - <AUTHOR>

Have any mobile devs used Ionic to build apps? If so what was your experience like (& would you recommend it)? <comment><USER2> I'm in the midst of using Ionic to build a simple app that consumes a JSON API and am finding it very good to work with. It seems pretty solid for a beta product. I'm new to Angular but it seems like you can get a lot done without knowing all that much about it's inner workings, which is great.

I would suggest sitting down and seeing what you accomplish using it for a few hours. I did this to compare Ionic and jQuery Mobile. The app is far from complete, but I'm liking it so far.</comment>


Show HN: We put together a messaging app over a beer brainstorm - <AUTHOR>

https://itunes.apple.com/dk/app/id880331892
One of those side projects that turned out fun, but have absolutely no idea on how to get people using it. (we keep sharing it on our social networks, and got close to a 100 downloads)
Funny story about the name is that we made up a name before we knew what the app was going to be. It was just a fun exercise we indulged in at the pub, a bunch of laughs over silly app names for imaginary projects. <comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear thoughts and feedback.</comment>


Intel and AMD shouldnt panic yet but this Chinese vendor has repacked a Xeon CPU - <AUTHOR> https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-and-amd-shouldnt-panic-yet-but-this-chinese-vendor-has-repacked-a-xeon-cpu <comment><USER2> Well this was done in "partnership" with Intel. I don't think they had a choice in the matter (other than loosing more money)

But China is continuing to improve it's home grown x86</comment>


Tl;dr, need summary of "Celebrities and Shoes on the Female Brain" - <AUTHOR> http://www.rsm.nl/portal/page/portal/8B8297D5BCA1ED3BE04018AC8A0611F3

<comment><AUTHOR> So it's not just me ... there is now scientific evidence that women are just nuts.</comment>


Structuring Legal Documents with Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://blog.doctrine.fr/structuring-legal-documents-with-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article, but it's not really clear to me what the actual application is (and this is coming from someone who started my career in law, and was recently working on using ML for contract review automation).

As far as I can tell, it's intended to classify each paragraph as one of "facts", "pleas", "grounds", etc. On its own, this doesn't seem particularly useful. I assume it feeds into the broader Doctrine platform (litigation search and case summaries perhaps?). I jumped to their website but couldn't say for sure as I don't speak French.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's totally right. In our original dataset, 45% of decisions have no explicit titles splitting categories, so it's quite difficult to read them.

We classify each paragraph as one of "facts", "pleas", "grounds", etc. in order to generate a table of contents and help users read a court decision more easily. For example, one may want to directly jump to the operative part of the judgement: he just has to click on the "Operative part" of the table of contents, instead of having to read all the decision and guess when that part actually starts.

It's indeed intended to improve our users experience on Doctrine's website [https://www.doctrine.fr](https://www.doctrine.fr) (legal search engine).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In reading the webpage, I must have missed the explanation for the purpose of this system. I know nothing about the domain, so the following questions are newbie.

What is the tool's intended output? Is it a discrete classification of documents (or their problem spaces) into predefined categories? What's the number of categories (and some examples)?

What's the cost of simplifying/ignoring most or all of the contextual details in each case? Wouldn't that make a small number of output classes dysfunctionally procrustean?

98.5% accuracy sounds pretty good, but how does system performance compare to the state-of-the-art alternatives that use more traditional probabilistic tag- based methods? Does it tend to fail consistently, perhaps on specific topics or complications?

<comment><USER4> > Our goal here is to detect the structure of decisions on Doctrine (i.e. the > table of contents) to help users navigate through them more easily.

A legal document from France seems to have come common topics, structured, but as lawyers are free to write in any fashion, the simple fact of finding where in the document is a specific part is time-consuming enougth

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is interesting. I graduated in Law and did an MBA, master degree and PhD in IT, using ML (and then deep learning) to extract meaningful context of legal documents. Our documents are structured more or less like the French ones, and the main difficulty is the use of synonyms and expressions instead of objective, direct words.

In our case using Doc2Vec achieve better results, will try the wang2vec to see if it improves something.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a band aid. Isn't it time lawyers start using a formal language instead?

<comment><USER6> To what end? This isn't like indexing EBay listings, where using standard structures and fields would help you categorize a large volume of low complexity information. Categorization and search of information are not tasks that take up much time in the law.

I just had a trial which turned on a couple of sentences in a contract. I could have a paralegal pull every relevant legal in a couple of hours, through "dumb" terms and connecters searching. More than a year of litigation boiled down to applying a rather small volume of law to a large volume of human facts. Even in appeals, which are case law heavy, the process of finding and categorizing the law takes vanishingly little time compared to synthesizing it into a legal framework, and applying it to a large volume of facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is the original data freely available on the net ? I mean the courts make this public on the web ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, not all this data is freely available on the net. Doctrine has actually established partnerships with many French jurisdictions to collect court decisions and publishes them on [https://www.doctrine.fr](https://www.doctrine.fr) :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> AI providing legal analysis assistance? Taking legal decisions in court? Great!</comment>


Are HN submissions dominated by a small elite of users? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering the same thing when I recently saw this blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956690
I thought it would be easy to find out how karma is distributed among users using the HNsearch API.
Unfortunately, it's not that easy because this API is not optimized for fetching massive amounts of data. What I could do was looking at the 1000 users with the most karma. I separated those into ten chunks and looked at the total sum of Karma per chunk of 100 users. This is the result:
http://www.chartgo.com/share.do?id=6cca3d09aa
(Data:
[ (0, 2941707),
  (1, 1314760),
  (2, 936226),
  (3, 745944),
  (4, 636533),
  (5, 557441),
  (6, 493996),
  (7, 449999),
  (8, 413963),
  (9, 384491)] )
So as you can see the 1st chunk is pretty dominant but then it kind of flattens out. So are HN submissions dominated by a small elite? It obviously depends on your definitions, but I guess not.
It would be interesting to have better data available. Did I miss a better way to query the API? Here's the Python script which I used to query the API: https://gist.github.com/johannes-gehrs/77a92284e3509f2ae960 <comment><USER2> If you're talking about submission karma, clearly no. I follow the submissions of a selection of HN users I've known for awhile, all of whom are karma leaders, and their submissions are often as not buried on page 4 or 5 with 2-3 votes.

If you're talking about comment karma, clearly yes. I could write a comment consisting of randomly chosen names from the Chicago phone book and someone would upvote it. Name recognition has that effect, as does a small group of people who seem to follow my comments deliberately (as I do for the list of people in my profile).

<comment><USER3> grellas posts are particularly buried because they often don't subscribe to the hivemind, but they are always enlightening.

<comment><USER2> 'grellas comments are (justifiably) routinely stapled to the top of the threads on which they appear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep in mind that karma includes both submissions and comments (unlike reddit, where they are separate).

For comments, at least, there is a clear bias where comments from users with higher karma tend to stay at the top of the comment page longer, regardless of the votes for other comments. This is intentional and definitely contributes to the effect

<comment><USER5> Sort of a "founder effect" built into a site for founders. How meta.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suspect that you'll find it to be some kind of power law distribution, which implies that measures like Standard Deviation won't be so useful. A quick look at the top 1000 that you provided suggests this might be the case. But the top 100 users don't dominate the top 1000, let alone the entire population. There does seem to be some leveling off, though it's unclear how steady that will be.

Net - domination is too strong a word. Dominated might imply 20% of the karma in 20 users, and this clearly isn't the case. Even defining the Elite as 100 doesn't get us this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, take a look at the "new" page. On it you'll see 30 recent submissions, most of which are just as appropriate as those on the home page. But, they don't get any votes, why not?

I don't think it typically matters whether the submitter has name recognition or karma, but rather how many friends and colleagues the person can rally to their cause. All it takes is about 10 points in the first hour to get to the front page and then it can "ride the wave" from there. This is an easy threshold for people with large professional networks, companies, with friends in SV et al. Many people here know each other. Yes, there are some technical counter-measures, but there is only so much that can be done.

This is not to say that a user acting alone has no chance of reaching the home page. However, after a few years of frequenting this site, I believe that most of the posts hitting the front page have had a boost such as I described above.

My personal experience anecdote is that, over several years (also considering prior accounts), working as a "loner", that I've never been able to get more than a few meager votes on a submission. Even if they were highly on topic, even if I got up at 6am Pacific, supposedly the best time to do it. Maybe I'm unlucky or my submissions suck, but I rarely bother any more.

<comment><USER2> My impression is that suppression of voting rings, which is what you're describing with your "group of 10 friends" example, is something that the HN maintainers actually spend a lot of effort on; I get this both firsthand from the maintainers that I actually know, and from the fact that I feel like I regularly manage to do (innocuous) things that trip the detector.

<comment><USER8> HN voting is a trivial example of selection bias. If frontpage was determined by a random sampling of the user base (weighted by karma or age if you like), instead of whoever may go looking for the post, it would be more fair. One of the reddit devs suggested something like this recently, putting a New post on every page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_\(Internet_culture\))

</comment><comment><USER10> A little late to this, but for my Hacker Newsletter project I keep track of of the number of times a user gets on the top three pages:

      337 shawndumas
      312 ColinWright
      298 iProject
      291 Libertatea
      214 danso
      197 llambda
      165 Lightning
      163 tokenadult
      158 sethbannon
      147 mtgx
      144 evo_9
      120 DanielRibeiro
      115 denzil_correa, jonbaer
      111 lelf
      102 001sky
      101 dmor
      98 coloneltcb
      97 Tsiolkovsky, craigkerstiens, dsr12, mh_
      95 ssclafani
      90 jseliger
      89 jamesbritt
      87 JumpCrisscross
      85 Garbage
      83 wallflower
      82 luu
      81 antr, protomyth
      77 anigbrowl, codegeek
      74 aaronbrethorst
      73 jgrahamc, pg
      71 uladzislau
      70 sinak, steveklabnik
      69 RougeFemme
      68 cleverjake, derpenxyne, swohns
      67 _pius
      66 jamesjyu, rosser, wslh
      64 Pr0, eplanit
      63 Brajeshwar, sk2code, uptown
      62 bane, stfu
      61 teawithcarl
      59 ghosh, joeyespo, ph0rque
      58 gnosis
      57 r0h1n, scholia
      56 AndrewDucker, cpeterso, ohjeez
      55 bpierre, cyphersanctus, gruseom
      54 conductor
      52 nikunjk
      51 Suraj-Sun, kirillzubovsky
      50 lispython
      49 MikeCapone, WestCoastJustin, co_pl_te, duck, robin_reala
      48 Anon84, ca98am79, taylorbuley
      47 fraqed, morphics, nkurz, rpm4321
      46 jmduke, kumarski, nreece
      45 georgecmu
      44 daegloe, rdl
      43 donohoe, kunle, olivercameron
      42 tanglesome
      41 austengary, ck2, jnazario
      40 interconnector, rnyman, sonabinu, wikiburner, zoowar
      39 cdvonstinkpot, pwg, revorad
      38 1337biz, hepha1979, jeffbarr, mhb, zdw
      37 fogus, kjhughes, vectorbunny
      36 Cbasedlifeform, DanBC, DiabloD3, Reltair, acremades, geetarista
      35 AndreyKarpov, jessaustin, mxfh, prostoalex, raganwald, rbanffy
      34 wglb
      33 CrankyBear, cryptoz, hackhackhack, kposehn, nvk
      32 MarlonPro, bcn, npguy, qubitsam, techinsidr
      31 Ashuu, Baustin, caffeinewriter, drucken, edent, iamtechaddict, ilamont, mariuz, mikecane, rmah, rohshall, shill, whoishiring
      30 eguizzo, eksith, gklein, lukashed, talhof8
      29 Sami_Lehtinen, ari_elle, cwan, espeed, gwern, jacquesm, mitmads, sgdesign, superchink, velodrome, wyclif
      28 Quekster, X4, clicks, esalazar, iamwil, jaf12duke, javinpaul, laurent123456, recoiledsnake, vanwilder77, zt
      27 6thSigma, ValentineC, aespinoza, ananyob, anu_gupta, awwstn, bavidar, dave1010uk, ekm2, pajju, rkudeshi, sdoering, yapcguy
      26 DanielBMarkham, bitsweet, brudgers, hornokplease, jcr, tptacek, whalesalad
      25 EzGraphs, Hirvesh, adventured, albertzeyer, barredo, johns, jpadilla_, kevin_morrill, kmfrk, mmastrac, mooreds, mrb, niggler, ot, prateekj, saurabh, shrikant, tambourine_man, thibaut_barrere, tjaerv, usaphp
      24 amerf1, coffeemug, dangoldin, neya, qiqing, signa11, twapi, w1ntermute, zrail
      23 Dekku, Shivetya, duggieawesome, ingve, jalanco, mikeevans, ninthfrank07, npalli, olalonde, playhard, rachbelaid, rb2e, subsystem
      22 adamnemecek, amarsahinovic, aritraghosh007, chmars, colinprince, ctoth, dutchbrit, eranation, jashkenas, jmacd, joshfraser, kine, lowglow, mike_esspe, muratmutlu, napolux, redDragon, rrhoover, tareqak, youngerdryas, yread, ytNumbers
      21 T-A, akandiah, anon1385, breck, dpaluy, glazskunrukitis, gridscomputing, homakov, ianstormtaylor, jusben1369, kunai, mindcrime, msvan, onosendai, peterkchen, prajjwal, pron, schrofer, sp332, treskot, ttunguz, urlwolf, ximeng
      20 BerislavLopac, BruceM, Jaigus, a3voices, abdophoto, angersock, boh, brandnewlow, chinmoy, chrisacky, cperciva, fekberg, ivoflipse, jasonshen, julien, llamataboot, mjn, mmahemoff, platz, shakes, smit, soundsop, speeder, tmoretti, tocomment, vellum
      19 RobAley, SanderMak, WadeF, bencevans, bitcartel, clarkm, declan, experiment0, gasull, goronbjorn, hartleybrody, jejune06, jkuria, k-mcgrady, kevingibbon, mijustin, minimaxir, njoglekar, obilgic, ohadfrankfurt, pclark, rainmaker23, robdoherty2, rubikscube, sciwiz, stevewilhelm, tdrnd, timf, twakefield, wamatt
      18 10char, ForFreedom, Pasanpr, aynlaplant, bsg75, cs702, deviceguru, dotmanish, ezl, jheitzeb, jstreebin, julien421, orrsella, pain_perdu, philfreo, polskibus, rblion, ridruejo, rmason, sew, swombat
      17 MaysonL, ananddass, barmstrong, bconway, bergie, crabasa, dmmalam, dsego, dshankar, equilibrium, fejr, ferdo, gebe, jkopelman, josephby, mikeleeorg, mkrecny, nashequilibrium, petenixey, petercooper, petrel, profquail, ra, replicatorblog, songzme, spking, taytus, ujeezy, wrongc0ntinent
      16 Adrock, Impossible, LiveTheDream, StavrosK, aashaykumar92, afshinmeh, ajaymehta, cdl, choult, damian2000, danboarder, daw___, electic, esolyt, followmylee, franze, giis, greenyoda, gregpurtell, hunvreus, jdorfman, jdp23, jellyksong, jorde, jordn, karamazov, linux_devil, lleims, mahmoudimus, maskofsanity, mjhea0, narad, nate, p4bl0, peter123, rfreytag, sciurus, sebg, sharkweek, spindritf, stevewillensky, tosh, tshtf, xmpir, zengr
      15 Ataub24, FredericJ, MIT_Hacker, Mithrandir, adulau, apress, areski, austenallred, babawere, bhauer, bitops, bmmayer1, bradleybuda, ckelly, cooldeal, czr80, dan1234, danielpal, gits1225, grey-area, groundCode, hamidr, hawkharris, jeffreyfox, lucb1e, mayop100, mikeknoop, pdknsk, relation, robbiet480, rodriguezcommaj, rpsubhub, sasvari, sheri, smacktoward, thejteam, thinkcomp, vinhnx, xtraclass
      14 0cool, Alex3917, ComputerGuru, Peroni, SparksZilla, amazedsaint, anons2011, apoorvamehta, bifrost, blacktulip, bradly, brandonb, bslatkin, c-oreills, carlosgg, charlieirish, chwolfe, codelion, davidroberts, dbaupp, dendory, dennybritz, draegtun, dsl, e1ven, edwintorok, enneff, glazemaster, grej, harryzhang, ishener, ivankirigin, japhyr, jarederondu, jkaljundi, johndcook, joshuacc, justincormack, kamaal, kanamekun, lisper, mathattack, networked, nickmain, pjvds, pragmatictester, pykello, robg, sabalaba, samspenc, sinnerswing, technologizer, ternaryoperator, thewarrior, timr, titlex, watermel0n, wlll
      13 6ren, AlexMuir, CrunchyJams, DavidChouinard, Kopion, acav, alter8, asanwal, benjlang, bra-ket, brettcvz, bryanh, bussetta, chrismealy, cinquemb, cpleppert, creamyhorror, cwilson, davidw, detcader, dfc, digisth, ekianjo, endtwist, gatsby, glaugh, gulbrandr, ics, jfaucett, jlongster, kn0thing, larrys, lenkendall, libovness, lukaseder, mactitan, marban, mgunes, michaelrbock, neeee, noinput, palidanx, paulschlacter, plessthanpt05, porker, pytrin, rjsamson, rohin, rpledge, samsolomon, sebkomianos, selmnoo, sethev, smaili, srathi, t0dd, techaddict009, tellarin, tilt, tlrobinson, tomasien, trendspotter, turoczy, vyrotek, waffle_ss, waterlesscloud, weu
      12 31reasons, ChuckMcM, CrazedGeek, DaNmarner, Ecio78, Fletch137, GuiA, ISL, IgorPartola, JacksonGariety, Kilo-byte, Rickasaurus, RockyMcNuts, Sealy, SteliE, aaronpk, abraham, achalkley, akos, alexholehouse, ankitoberoi, anujkk, bberson, bcl, bjansn, bjonathan, brianchu, btilly, bwertz, casca, cgi_man, changdizzle, chaz, chriscampbell, cocoflunchy, cramforce, d4vlx, daigoba66, dandrewsen, dctoedt, deusclovis, dmoney67, doh, dwynings, eladgil, enmaku, evolve2k, feelthepain, flippyhead, ghshephard, googletron, gz5, hansy, hkmurakami, hornbaker, irollboozers, jnoller, joxie, juliangamble, kareemm, kitcar, metajack, microwise, mindstab, mmariani, morisy, mpweiher, negrit, nekojima, nqureshi, paraschopra, pascal07, pauljonas, pbiggar, pearjuice, peterkelly, poissonpie, robheaton, seminatore, sherm8n, spooneybarger, stesch, taigeair, thegarside, theoutlander, tikhonj, tnorthcutt, uvdiv, vog, vu0tran, weisser, yeleti, zan2434
      11 Amadou, BIackSwan, Cieplak, Swizec, TDL, adrianhoward, aelaguiz, afschwartz, alok-g, aram, benhowdle89, benwerd, cstross, darxius, davidsmith8900, dboles99, decklin, devx, diggan, dkasper, dohertyjf, eduardordm, edw519, eibrahim, ekpyrotic, elleferrer, epenn, fatiherikli, frankdenbow, friism, guiseppecalzone, haven, hudibras, iand, igrigorik, immad, infoman, jacoblyles, jamest, jbaudanza, jdmitch, jgv, jipumarino, johnjlocke, jordanmessina, jpmc, judegomila, kloncks, knes, kogir, ldayley, leephillips, lest, lettergram, luigi, marcieoum, mazsa, memoryfailure, moonboots, morefranco, nbashaw, ndesaulniers, nonrecursive, nsns, nsp, null_ptr, octopus, oleganza, patrickaljord, pavel_lishin, philip1209, rasengan, rdemmer, remi, rfnslyr, rvivek, salimmadjd, sgrove, shared4you, sillysaurus2, simonreed, spdy, speednoise, stollercyrus, swannodette, teamgb, thehodge, tippytop, tlongren, tomse, tortilla, trevin, twog, ukd1, whit537, willvarfar, wiradikusuma, xijuan, yitchelle, zachinglis, zhs
      10 AirbnbNerds, Avalaxy, CaptainZapp, Danieru, JanLaussmann, MattRogish, Maven911, Mitt, SonicSoul, Xcelerate, andreiursan, andrewnez, antman, austinhallock, bdehaaff, bearwithclaws, bevenky, binarybits, blackhole, brown9-2, ceeK, chaostheory, cheeaun, chewxy, chrislloyd, clarky07, cobrausn, cyang08, dazbradbury, dcope, denysonique, dhotson, diminium, dirkk0, dmitri1981, dsowers, dylangs1030, dz0ny, edtechdev, fecak, felipebueno, fmavituna, giorgiofontana, gkuan, gregman, hboon, hippo33, hodgesmr, imkevinxu, jacobwg, jashmenn, jayadevan, jazzychad, jballanc, jf, jkarneges, josh2600, jpatokal, jvns, jwallaceparker, k33l0r, kafkaesque, kinlan, kintamanimatt, krat0sprakhar, kyledrake, lukedeering, maccman, malloc47, marojejian, matt1, maudlinmau5, mdturnerphys, mecredis, milesf, misiti3780, mjfern, molecule, mparramon, mschonfeld, nathanbarry, nileshd, ovechtrick, pavs, pearkes, petethomas, phenylene, philk10, pkrein, r4vik, radley, ramisms, robhawkes, rocky1138, rsobers, sidcool, siong1987, smanuel, stefan_kendall, sw007, swah, swampthing, swanson, sweis, techdog, thingsilearned, timjahn, tylermenezes, ukdm, will_brown, wsieroci, yesplorer, yonasb, zacharyvoase

<comment><USER8> Can you post a windowed version over say the last 3 months? Some of those accounts are very old.

<comment><USER11> I'm away from my computer right now, but I'll post something like that in a day or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Look through the submission list of each user whose posts make it to the top, or of all of the users submitting to new. You'll see if the stories each user posts gains lots of points; if they don't, it's all comment karma.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any Karma measure analysis would be biased since Karma is accumulated through both Links and Comments (in contrast with Reddit, which splits both measurements).

"Dominated" is a flawed qualifier since Karma is not a zero-sum game.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's a book you should read called "The 80/20 Principle". It might help you understand better how this sort of thing naturally happens, and why it is to be expected and nothing wrong about it.

</comment><comment><USER15> No, they are dominated by the common denonimator and that is a massive flaw of vote-based user input. You will only see politically correct, left winged and in-tone liberal opinions and support everywhere. Mutual backpatting is encouraged and because of these traits, the circle continues.

<comment><USER16> echo chamber depending on first (maybe most numerous) adopters that self- reinforces by driving away dissenting voices. I agree 100%</comment></comment>


Emacs Go-mode - <AUTHOR> http://kai.system7.de/2009/11/24/ubuntu-910-and-the-google-go-emacs-mode/

<comment><USER2> Dammit! I thought it was a game!</comment>


Facebook to Show Users Which Russian Propaganda They Followed - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-22/facebook-to-show-people-the-russian-propaganda-they-followed <comment><AUTHOR> The disappointing part, despite saying

>"It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election,"

Facebook is not planning on showing the actual content of those pages, leaving it up to Congress to decide whether or not to show the content</comment>


Why Reddit's CEO Invested in the Weed Startup Meadow - <AUTHOR> http://www.thekindland.com/meadow-s-ceo-on-why-reddit-s-ceo-invested-in-1269 <comment><USER2> I wonder how they celebrated ;)</comment>


Introducing Mapbox Studio - <AUTHOR> https://www.mapbox.com/blog/announcing-mapbox-studio/ <comment><USER2> Fun trick with the background video at the top of the page: Right-click and select "Unmute" to hear some employee chatter.

Might have been a good idea to drop the audio stream altogether to make the download a little smaller.

<comment><USER3> Direct link for the lazy: [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/assets/studio- launch/header.webm](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/assets/studio- launch/header.webm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been waiting for this, will probably be able to remove some scripts that I made around mapbox-gl, however, after logging in and clicking through the intro, I have to confirm my password and get a "Oops, something went wrong. Please wait 60 seconds before logging in again." anyone else seeing this?

<comment><USER4> Created a new account and that seemed to have solved my problem

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really cool! Nice to see the use of MapboxGL!

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems to require a mapbox account. Can I not use it locally like tilemill?

<comment><USER7> Nope, it ties into ~75 backend APIs and needs to run in a browser. You might look into building a single-site "app" for its URL though, with something like [http://fluidapp.com](http://fluidapp.com).</comment></comment>


Almost 1 billion trees planted, in a single day - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8257563.stm

<comment><USER2> To put this in perspective, the daily wage for planting and protecting these trees, 100 rupees, can buy a weeks worth of vegetables. If they offered a similar plan in the US i would want to participate :)

<comment><USER3> To put that in perspective: The daily wage for planting trees is roughly $2 US. Or that vegetables are ~$0.70 per day.

It slightly unfortunate, but I doubt it could scale to work in the US. That would come out to paying each individual ~ $30 per day (guessing that an equivelant amount of vegetables would be roughly $5 per day, not based on any hard numbers), so this project would cost some place in the range of $1 million per day, before any kind of overhead, just for paying all of the people.

<comment><USER4> Also, in the U.S., the poor wouldn't buy vegetables, they'd buy fast food.

Maybe there's a "do-gooder" entrepreneurial opportunity: show poor people how much fun vegetables can be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly, planting trees does little to help with the global warming problem. Flora are only temporary sinks for carbon; as soon as the tree dies it will go back up into the atmosphere. Since we're releasing carbon from fossils, what we really need to do to restore the carbon cycle is put the carbon back into fossils. Sadly, this takes a really long time.

<comment><USER6> _as soon as the tree dies it will go back up into the atmosphere_

That implies combustion which doesn't occur.

<comment><USER7> Plus a lot of a tree's mass is in the roots. Wouldn't be surprised if it would be over 50%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder over say 10 years how profitable this is. Fruit bearing trees can't really be a bad bet, and considering how low the pay is... In a few years the income from this might completely finance it - which is probably what they should aim for from the beginning. Over all, a very nice scheme.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hope this spurs some entrepreneurial growth in the affected areas, such as gardening services.</comment>


YC: What No Means - <AUTHOR> http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2007/10/what-no-means.html

<comment><USER2> Years ago when Garage.com was starting up, I applied and was rejected. No big deal as I was expecting it, but it did get me a signed rejection letter from the big "Guy" himself.

As a beta tester it was a very nice gesture, to receive that letter with the comment "Prove us wrong!" hand written as a P.S. to the form letter. That letter hangs in a frame and every day I use it to remind myself that the only person that needs to believe in me, is me.

Today, many years later, I thank my lucky stars for that rejection. I went it alone, no co-founders, no frigging investor BS, and did not take a dime from anyone.

This year the 17 employees of MY privately held company drove our sales to 61 million dollars in online transactions.

The satisfaction that comes with proving investors wrong can't be bought, only earned.

Those that can, DO. Those that can't, find an investor.

<comment><USER3> "Those that can, DO. Those that can't, find an investor."

..You mean those that can't such as Google and Youtube?

<comment><USER4> They DID too. It's just that an investor eventually came around and noticed they were DOING, then gave them money so they could do it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "OK, you may not have the same structure, advice, networks and extra cash that Y Combinator provides, but maybe that shouldn't stop you."

Everyone always talks about the mentoring and the connections from Y Combinator, but no one ever mentions the story. I think YC itself has a compelling story, one that's authentic but also fun to talk about. If you get funded it's the kind of thing that makes for 'sparkling' conversation at cocktail parties, as a way of talking about the program but also indirectly talking about yourself. Which is probably why YC is quickly becoming a household brand. Even my mom read the article in Newsweek.

<comment><USER6> I think whatever YCombinator does to help startups is covered under NDA.

<comment><USER7> Why do you think so?

<comment><USER6> For one, Demo Day is definitely NDA-ed. Other stuff, the business and marketing help that JL provides or the technical help that PG provides, those would also be considered under NDA, unless it's generic enough that sharing such information wouldn't hurt the startups.

YCombinator's interest is in the exit of the companies it funds. It's from that money that they can continue to do this year after year. Giving away everything in the farm doesn't help them do that. As much as everyone makes sharing and collaborating such a big deal, here in Silicon Valley people are actually pretty mum about their plans. Put it another way: if someone insists on talking to you about startups and whatnots around here, it's cause you're getting pitched.

<comment><USER8> We don't have any NDAs. We ask people in the audience at Demo Day not to write about the startups that haven't launched yet. I believe that is the only thing we ever ask anyone not to talk about.

Some of the startups may have their individual secrets. We try to keep them if they do. But they decide that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to block traffic coming from TOR - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brianhama.com/2014/04/07/how-to-block-web-traffic-coming-from-the-tor-network/

<comment><USER2> It's a difficult decision. Do you block all Tor users to solve spam/crap post issues, or find a way to block spam/crap posts?

I'd be interested to know what HN and Reddit do.

I can't access Tor's site from where I am right now, but they also have a post about blocking traffic from exit nodes.

IRC servers also have to make the decision whether to block or not - I'd also be interested in opinions on this from IRCops.

<comment><AUTHOR> We came up with this solution in response to all the problems we were seeing from problem users on our social networking app called Nearby. For us, it was worth alienating the small number of legitimate TOR users. The results for us have been overwhelmingly positive. I definitely agree that it isn't for everyone though and is something that should be carefully considered before implemented.</comment></comment>


Zero load time file formats - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=123 <comment><USER2> Too bad this guy never took a data structures course. Binary search on an array is O(log N) in the DAM model, while search in a B-tree is optimal: O(log N/log B).

Note that if your elements are english words, let's be extremely generous and say they are 12 bytes on average, with a 4-byte offset, that's 16 bytes per element, with a disk block size of 512K (and it's usually more), that means B is 32K, and my B-tree is 15 times faster than your array.

Of course, if your data set is only 11MB, who cares? You can read that in under the time it takes you to seek to the file.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, this post falls into the category "things that people often rediscover". Using storage optimized data structures and algorithms is very, very old.

[ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_sort#Use_with_tape_drives> ]

<comment><USER2> funny you should bring up merge sort: in my first google phone screen, I was asked "why is merge sort good" and I gave "it's asymptotically optimal and stable" and couldn't come up with anything else, the interviewer eventually conceded that I was too young to know that it was also better than other sorting algorithms on tape :)

<comment><USER4> CS professors always bring up the tape example, but it's true for any medium where linear access is faster than random, which becomes applicable as you move down from L1 cache -> memory -> local disk -> network.

Linked lists, too :)

<comment><USER2> of course, only years later would I understand the proof of why: M/B-way merge sort is optimal in external memory

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An aspect to keep in mind if you do this is (file) portability. Since it's tied to the data structure you could inadvertently tie the data format to a specific architecture -- e.g. endianness, integer sizes, 32 vs 64 bit, etc.

<comment><USER6> That's certainly a problem that exists, but isn't one that's terribly hard to solve.

Network programmers have had this problem from the beginning, with distinct machines communicating. The same techniques can be used when writing to a file instead of a network stream: Explicit integer sizes and endianness fixes this.

<comment><USER7> ... but then you don't have a "zero load time file format", at least on systems that have different endianness than the file was generated. (At least, unless you are willing to have the entire program not assume the endianness of its own internal data structures, which would be kind of insane.)

<comment><USER8> In the gamedev world, typically little endian is "the fast one", and big endian is where conversion is required.

(This is merely because Windows is the dominant gamedev platform.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://cmph.sourceforge.net/>

Pretty much read-only format (you can't modify file, only create new one from scratch), but it's darn fast at O(1). Also very compact.

Used the PHP wrapper around it once: <http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.chdb.php>

<comment><USER2> see also cuckoo hashing

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't necessarily true.

A file is divided into 4096-byte "pages" on disk, I think. Each page can be stored in a different physical location, completely disjoint from one another. So you would have to wait while the harddrive seeks the correct location. (Or get an SSD.)

However that's probably a pedantic observation.

<comment><USER10> They're called sectors, not pages.

You're describing worst-case fragmentation, which filesystems work very hard to prevent.

In general, the fastest thing to read off a disk is a single large file, assuming minimal fragmentation. Even SSDs have much better sequential read performance compared to random-access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since when was disk access instantaneous?</comment>


Ask HN: Picking your next project - How do you test ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Following on from the post yesterday "Always a starter, never a finisher" - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753680
I looked at my projects more closely. While some projects got left because of lack of cash or expertise, I'd say most got left behind because I found that they were fundamentally flawed to start with.
How I can focus on the better ideas by validating/eliminating early on?
The thing I've come to realise with this whole starter/finisher issue is that just because the infrastructure to start something is there, doesn't always mean I should. It's ok to have an idea and NOT implement it. As it results in more time, focus and energy for the ones that do make it.
What tests do you run on your ideas before you start?
What results do you have to get before you decide it's a good idea? <comment><USER2> I am prone to have zillions of ideas. Some are good, some are terrible. They all seem amazing the first time, but after a while they lose the shine and I leave them incomplete.

So, the first test for me is to write down everything I come up with. Then leave it and revise it again after a week/month. If it still sounds amazing, then I pay some more attention to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think a good test is to see if you keep thinking back to the idea without having to be reminded. If it appears in conversation or the problem you are fixing is mentioned frequently - it's probably an idea that will have impact!

<comment><USER2> Yep, that is another good sign.

For the record, some ideas I thought a couple of years ago keep coming back from time to time. Sometimes it's just not the right moment or you're not on the right mindset, even if the idea is good. What I mean is, what matters after all is the execution, not the idea itself, but to do it properly there needs to be a planet alignment of sorts (the right person, in the right moment at the right time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Create a landing page, put it up on forums like hackernews, reddit, quora and see what kind of conversion rate you get for the concept alone. Talk to people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've done that a few times and it got good results. Taking it to the next stage of finding a regular audience is hard though!

I really like Unbounce for building landing pages. Unfortunately Google refuse to run Adwords campaigns for them though, which is a shame.

<comment><USER4> How do they refuse to let you run adwords for them? What is their reason?

<comment><AUTHOR> They suspended the Adwords account and said "We've determined that your site doesn't comply with our Landing page and Site Policies. Any ads promoting this site have been disapproved"

I could understand if it was just a lead gen site collecting e-mail addresses, but I was selling a gift product, with product photos, plenty of info and secure payment processing too. So who knows! I've completed the form to get them to re-review the site but I doubt they'll do anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote about my process recently:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3721015>

<comment><AUTHOR> That post is very useful. Talking to customers is VERY scary so we put it off until the very last thing only to find out they don't want what we made!

I'd be interested in reading the follow-up to the article on ways of finding customers!

<comment><USER5> thanks - coming next week.</comment></comment></comment>


HN: I need help getting to launch - <AUTHOR>

I am bootstrapping my startup, however I live in Jamaica. I have been teaching myself Rails and all the web languages necessary (jQuery, html, css, etc.) to get this thing done (for the last 7 - 8 months) the way I need it and am very close to launching.
I have spoken to customers, gotten feedback, validated the idea, built everything out, and have the marketing site ready to go.
Where I am stuck is billing and actually accepting payment.
I started going down the path of using something like 2checkout and have been approved for an account - but none of the recurring billing management solutions (recurly, chargify, spreedly) will work for me because I am not from the US.
So I had to resort to building that functionality on my own. Given that I am literally learning Rails while I am doing this, the more I dug into building billing/subscription functionality is the hairier it got, the more frustrated I became. To prevent me from giving up altogether, I gave up on that path.
I have decided that it might just be better to incorporate as a US entity and get a US bank account and deal with a US gateway, and use their API, etc.
My Jamaican registered company has a US issued EIN, but nothing else.
Ideally, I would want the US based company to be a wholly owned subsidiary of my Jamaican company.
Can anyone help/give suggestions on how I can navigate these waters and get to an amicable solution as quickly and cheaply as possible ?
I am SOOO close, this is the last MAJOR obstacle before launching. Oh, and I need to have payment in place because I need to start making money. As I said, I am bootstrapping, so having cash flowing in is of utmost importance.
I always see you guys help out other startups, and I know that this might be a gargantuan task - but if you can contribute in a little way, then hopefully the cumulative effect will be enough to get me through the launch.
For those interested, the app is: www.compversions.com
If you need any more info, let me know and I will gladly provide.
I am SOO close, and would love if the community could help me get there. You guys are my board of advisors :) <comment><USER2> Setup a secure payment page on your site which collects credit card information and saves it to an encrypted file on your server. Then when someone tries to pay upgrade their account automatically just as if you were processing their payments in real-time. As far as they are concerned your site and payment systems now work perfectly.

Have your server email you whenever this happens so that you can login and process their payment manually through Paypal's premium merchant service. That provides a virtual terminal which accepts major credit cards and costs something like $30 a month. You will occasionally have trouble processing a payment and have to take the hit or come up with an excuse to get another card from your customer.

This isn't a long-term solution but it will tide you over until you have a real processor and 99.9% of your users will never know. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I know this is a 'quick and dirty' solution, but it just screams security flaw. I am nervous about accepting credit cards period - much less collecting it into a file and trusting myself to encrypt it and secure it properly.

I agree with the thinking and sentiment though, and appreciate the suggestion.

<comment><USER2> You have to judge the tradeoffs for yourself. That said, whatever you do remember that anyone with access to your server has full access to all your payment data regardless of how you process the actual payments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://www.compversions.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's wrong with 2checkout's recurring billing solution ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that...it's the integration with my app - that is lacking. i.e. being able to put a user on a trial account, then have the app send an 'upgrade token' to 2checkout when their trial expires.

Then also automatically renewing every month - and allowing the user to be able to upgrade and downgrade as they see fit (from within the app).

The integration is very lacking for 2checkout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey! why not try paypal recurring payments!</comment>


Bill over encryption could prevent Apple from selling iPhones in California - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2016/01/21/california-bill-encryption-iphone-sales/ <comment><USER2> Here's a better article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10945964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10945964)</comment>


Update on a "Braintree for the EU"? - <AUTHOR>

I've read a lot of old HR posts about online payment processing services (merchant accounts, payment gateways, recurring billing) all of which seemed to say "use Braintree". Unfortunately Braintree still hasn't expanded out of the US. Does anyone have an updated recommendation on which online payment system to use for a small EU (specifically German) based start-up? <comment><AUTHOR> Someone just suggested Adyen - does anyone have any experience with them?</comment>


Founder Sold His Startup for $575M in Cash and Gets to Keep Every Penny (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/248468 <comment><USER2> The most impressive thing about Markus Frind is that for years and years his startup was just one person working a few hours a day to manage a few servers. At one point he managed to become a top-20-in-traffic website while still running doing everything except customer support by himself:

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/my-scaling- hero/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/my-scaling-hero/)

[https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2012/10/](https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2012/10/)

[https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/32-billion- ima...](https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/32-billion-images-a- month/)

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes- rol...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling- in.html)

[https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/2008-was-a- goo...](https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/2008-was-a-good-year- now-13-in-the-us/)

[https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i- started-...](https://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i-started-an- empire/)

</comment><comment><USER3> As the title implies, it is rare to read about a multi-million dollar exit these days without VC's getting their claws in the majority of the spoils. Good for him. And a personal thanks to him for helping me find my spouse.

<comment><USER4> Mine too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That type of exit is incredible and really goes to show the potential for companies who take no, or very little, money. There simply is no need for a billion dollar exit if you own the vast majority of the company, so you can focus on more sustainable business models and smaller markets.

</comment><comment><USER6> Saw the clickbait-y headline and thought, "ok, so how did he escape paying taxes? some clever trick"?

I assume the tax on the deal was hefty so while nice payout it certainly isn't "every penny".

<comment><USER7> Well tax is applied anyways, whether it all goes to a single person or is split among multiple founders. Every penny is hyperbole, but gets the point across; he didn't have to split the profit with anyone else.

<comment><USER8> OP was just pointing out that the title is inaccurate/misleading. He didn't get to keep every penny as he will have to pay about $137M in tax if my calculations are correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft loved Plenty of fish. I remember there wasn't a single Microsoft sponsored ASP .NET talk that didn't mentioned POF in some shape or form.

<comment><USER4> Is that because there aren't a whole ton of serious .NET backend sites out there? I can only name two, POF and SO.

<comment><USER10> LinkedIn I think?

<comment><USER4> Nope. Just checked with a bud there. They're 99pct linux and java and 1pct solaris. They might have some .net on internal desktop apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone else happen to have a link/data on people that took little to no VC funding <1MM and exited for > 100M ? the number has to be tiny .

<comment><USER12> Not quite in that range -- but Veeva Systems took a single, $4M round[0] and went public. Current market cap is $5.2B (and was about 15% higher immediately after their IPO). The founder's shares were worth north of $500M at that time. [1]

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/veeva#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/veeva#/entity) [1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexmorrell/2013/10/19/who- got-r...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexmorrell/2013/10/19/who-got-rich- this-week-a-cloud-software-ipo-and-some-friends-of-elon-musk/#6cb2bfed41c0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if employees got any equity, and the article just leaves that out since "every penny" is more engaging than "every penny except for options/stock granted to employees".

<comment><USER14> > He has retained complete ownership of the company

From the article it sounds like no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When they say in cash, they mean a bank transfer? or is it literally cash?

<comment><USER16> > Founder Sold His Startup for $575M in Cash and Gets to Keep Every Penny

Clearly it was paid in pennies.

<comment><USER17> There was a funny rumour along those lines a while back in relation to Samsung/Apple.

[http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/samsung.asp](http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/samsung.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we amend the title rule to allow replacing clickbait headlines with concise, detailed titles instead? Fuck these clickbait headlines.

"Founder Sold Plenty Of Fish to Match for $575m Cash, No VCs Involved [2015]"

Needs a 2015, too.

<comment><USER19> I feel like click baity titles need to intentionally withhold information to be evil. Get's to keep every penny is kind of assumed to be No VCs involved as well as there were no other founders employees with a large equity stake, which your title does not allude to.

<comment><USER20> But it does withhold information: he's not keeping every penny because he'll have to pay taxes. No VCs involved != keep every penny.

<comment><USER21> I think on this site it's understood by most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Frind, who was a developer before he founded Plenty of Fish, built the site > without any venture-capital funding. He has retained complete ownership of > the company, which has 75 employees.

So he gets rich while his employees get nothing. Good for him, I guess.

<comment><USER23> Way to assume the worst of someone without knowing anything about him, or any details of the situation.

I have good friends who work there, and they received generous bonuses when the acquisition happened last year, as well as having been treated well all along previous to that.

<comment><USER22> Just out of curiosity, what is a "generous bonus?" Competitive equity for an early employee on a $600m acquisition would have been, at a minimum, $600k. Did the employees receive even 5 figures?

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure what was shared with me should be public knowledge or not, but based on how the numbers were come up with, I think most employees would've received high 5's to 6's. Not sure about early employees, or if there really are any. Marcus had already made it quite big already (millions per month in ad revenue) when he was just a one man show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> He doesn't get to "keep every penny". There is such a thing as personal income tax, and in Canada is going to be over 50%.

Hopefully, the deal was structured with some stock, or paid to a corporate entity. Because if he received a cheque made out for $575M, most of that money went to tax. If it was made out to his personal corporation, he'd just have to pay corporate tax on it, which is about half as much. But would still be over $100M.

<comment><USER25> Nobody pays a marginal rate > 50% in Canada. However, this will be counted as a capital gain, since Match almost certainly bought his shares in the company. That means 50% of the proceeds will be added to his taxable income. He'll pay around 25% of his total proceeds in tax.

His employees probably owned ~10% of the company, so let's say he sold his shares for $500M. He probably walked away with around $375M after tax.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review our app - TicketPounce - <AUTHOR>

We have just launched this web application and would love to hear some feedback from the community.
http://www.ticketpounce.com/
TicketPounce is intended to be an easy, lightweight, and fast support ticket manager.
Edit: Feel free to sign up for an account (free trial; no payment information is required) so that we could get some feedback on the app as well! :) <comment><USER2> Looks well designed and the prices are very competitive. However the site feels empty. More content, like a demo account or a video, would fill the site up a little more.

<comment><USER3> I agree that it looks good and prices are competitive, but I disagree that the site feels empty. Its perfectly simple.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback thus far; much appreciated!</comment>