ContEx: A flexible charting library for Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://contex-charts.org/ <comment><USER2> Realtime charts, this is cool stuff!</comment>


GitHub Community Guidelines Proposal - <AUTHOR> https://help.github.com/articles/github-community-guidelines/ <comment><USER2> Taken from the guidelines:

> Just realize that talking about these or other sensitive topics can make > others feel unwelcome, or perhaps even unsafe, if approached in an > aggressive or insulting manner.

"or perhaps even unsafe"

ffs.</comment>


C# Tutorials, Lessons, and Reference | Gimme CSharp - <AUTHOR> http://gimmecsharp.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> Dear ruelionheart,

I refer you to my article here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606098>

Please - stop spamming Hacker News.

And let me just add that even though I simply _love_ getting the gorgeous Russian girls on my screen, begging me for a date, showing me their assets, I won't be visiting your site ever again.

Thanks.</comment>


Blekko Finally Gets Cool As Ashton Kutcher Invests $200k - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/24/blekko-finally-gets-cool-as-ashton-kutcher-invests-200k/#disqus_thread <comment><USER2> I don't think so, Ashton Kutcher can only bring some attention to Blekko. Outside of geekdom search engines by default are not cool and may never be. Blekko should only be concerned about being a very useful tool, something better than google.</comment>


The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2017/04/the-evolution-of-container-usage-at.html <comment><USER2> Netflix seems so over engineered to me. They basically have a catalog of a few thousand movies that are negotiated months in advance of actual use. Basically, they just need to encode them and put them on a box and ship them to edge caches. Caching immutable data scales incredibly well.I would also bet that 99.99% of the movies people actually watch on Netflix, would fit on a single box.

In regard to the analytics, they have 100 million subscribers. Let's say each subscriber watches an average of 100 episodes/movies a day. For each watch you record subscriber ID, movie ID, start time, stop time and get 32 bytes * 100 * 100,000,000 = 320 gigabytes of data per day total. I am pretty sure that you could get a commercial database and and business intelligence package that could support the type of analytics you need (mainly clustering analysis) at that scale. A national grocery chain, probably has a similar amount of data ingestion and a similar analytics need. In addition, I have subscribed to multiple Netflix type services and I have never weighed the quality of suggestions very high, giving much more weight to the functionality of the client, lack of ads, and large catalog of good movies.

As evidence that this is a solved engineering problem, just look at the number of similar movie services: Amazon, Google play, Hulu, PlayStation Vue, Pureflix, Crackle, etc.

Google, Facebook, Baidu, Amazon, the self driving car companies are doing cutting edge stuff in terms of scalability and analysis, but not Netflix. The complexity of their operations, seems mainly to be one of their own doing and not intrinsic to the service they provide.

So I look at stuff like the article here and see a bunch of very smart engineers who are bored with the (solved) core problem and spend their time making cool stuff which is actually a pretty good thing.

<comment><USER3> At one point, Netflix video streaming accounted for something absurd like 20% of all Internet traffic in the country. Regardless of whether it "scaled incredibly well," I would imagine there are still novel issues with that much scaling.

Reliability also matters differently for video than it does for normal web traffic. It's one thing to shuttle 5GB (or whatever) of data over the course of an hour. It's another thing to shuttle 5GB of data _with no hiccups_ for an hour. Detecting and routing around machine or network issues fast enough that real-time video playback is not impeded sounds to me like a difficult challenge.

<comment><USER4> "Reliability also matters differently for video than it does for normal web traffic. It's one thing to shuttle 5GB (or whatever) of data over the course of an hour. It's another thing to shuttle 5GB of data with no hiccups for an hour."

Speaking of which ...

I notice that while youtube continues to buffer video while paused, netflix (and many, many other video players online) do not.

So while netflix will auto-adjust quality for you in response to a bad net connection, you can't just pause it, go brush your teeth, and come back with a big enough buffer to avoid skips through the entire video.

When did video players stop buffering-on-pause ? Why was that choice made ?

On the other end of the spectrum is whatever video player showtime online uses - it does not adjust quality and it does not buffer on pause. Basically it was built for perfect Internet connections and nothing else.

<comment><USER5> Probably too many cases where they deliver a bunch of content while it's paused and then the content never gets played. More than half the people who pause it probably end up closing the tab without finishing the video, so one can save a lot of bandwidth by only delivering the data when it's needed. A totally unsupported hypothesis.

<comment><USER6> I arrived at the same conclusion when I realised that YouTube no longer buffers the video all the way through to the end on mobile anymore. I miss being able to buffer a (long) video for offline playback when riding public transport.

<comment><USER7> Ditto, for this case I youtube-dl prior and watch on mobile VLC

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >The theme that underlies all these improvements is developer innovation velocity

I can't wait until this becomes buzzword de jour and startups start using it in their product descriptions. Then someone needs to start talking about products to "enable developer innovation acceleration" to outpace these crufty companies stuck at 25 kph.

<comment><USER9> Yup. I think further down someone will 'democratize innovation velocity and acceleration'

<comment><USER10> "unlock innovation potential"

<comment><USER11> You have to do it holistically though.

<comment><USER12> Holistically-caused emergent innovation velocity and acceleration?

...The scary thing is I think that makes sense, actually. I can understand that sentence as a thing I would want - Twiddle with your company culture so that individuals come up with (and make) new ideas, in such a way that as time goes on, their ability to do that grows...?

Makes sense to go at it from a systems view (holistic), rather than components view.

How about -

Homeopathic synergies for creative empowerment and evolution?

That sounds properly almost, but not actually, sensical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They're killing performance (one of the main reasons to use containers) and adding a massive extra layer of management if they're running containers on EC2.

I suspect Netflix are too wedded to AWS (which is weird as Amazon is their biggest threat) but Triton or Red Shift (both of which actually isolate containers using SmartOS and SELinux respectively) make way more sense for other people who want to use the blazing fast IO speed of containers on bare metal.

<comment><USER14> Or use something like GKE where the containers should be running directly on hardware, so you only have one layer.

<comment><USER15> Containers don't actually run directly on hardware with GCE - there's still a virtualization layer in-between.

I'm 99% sure that Google runs one VM per container because that's the only way to make it safe.

Anything else would be insane.

<comment><USER16> > I'm 99% sure that Google runs one VM per container

I'm 100% sure you are wrong. You might as well just use VMs.

Containers are not only about safety, you know.

<comment><USER15> I stand corrected, it's a bunch of VMs per customer but still no multi- tenancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Netflix Engineering team amazes me a lot. They literally took all the available apis, and build their own platform despite some of the features are already in the AWS offerings. I suppose they did it mainly because the native service isn't flexible and robust enough for their use cases.

BTW, their opening positions are always prefixed with "senior" title but I guess that makes sense; Netflix builds pretty much everything from scratch under time constraint.

<comment><USER18> They specifically only hire seniors, they don't want to provide positions for juniors as they would prefer to pay more for more seniors than pay indirectly for training juniors.

I think this reflects poorly on them, just as much as companies that use OSS but don't contribute anything back.

<comment><USER19> I guess "experience discrimination" is a thing now?

Seriously, if a company only wants to hire experienced folk, then so be it as long as they don't exercise REAL discrimination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _Today, we are in the process of rebuilding how we deploy device-specific > server-side logic to our API tier leveraging single core optimized NodeJS > servers_

Is this the core Netflix API ? have they moved from java - previously, their entire open source contributions were around java ([https://netflix.github.io/](https://netflix.github.io/)). Hystrix repo was updated barely a day ago.

For me, this is more interesting than the VM part.

<comment><USER21> It is a splitting of the device-specific stuff from the general coordination stuff. So the "core API" as you put it remains in java while letting the device teams write their code in node (much of our UI teams are experts in JS already).

Hystrix is important and won't be going away any time soon.

More info: [https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KatharinaProbst/the-new- ne...](https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KatharinaProbst/the-new-netflix-api)

Disclaimer: I'm on paternity leave and not on those teams, but we've talked publicly about this stuff recently..

<comment><USER20> This is very interesting. And very indicative of convergence. If someone at the same of Netflix has a strong drive towards cross pollination of talent from device to server, then I suppose the js ecosystem is far more successful than I thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > We implemented multi-tenant isolation (CPU, memory, disk, networking and > security) using a combination of Linux, Docker and our own isolation > technology.

Curious what their 'own isolation technology' does that docker doesn't.

Also, what does Fenzo do that marathon doesn't . Looks like Fenzo sits on top of marathon and sends it some sort of recommendations for scheduling. I need to find a good example of what this is actually doing.

<comment><USER23> Justifying high engineering salaries, i see this a lot in great companies.

<comment><USER24> Netflix is the last place I'd expect to do this. They're famous for letting people go when they're no longer needed.

<comment><USER25> That sounds like a great incentive to build big proprietary systems that depend on your presence...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How does this compare to k8s? Seems like it has everything plus a layer of scheduling and batch jobs on top?

<comment><USER27> Doesn't kubernetes run an overlay network (at least in some scenarios)?

<comment><USER28> An overlay network is not a requirement. The only requirement is that pods (collection of containers) should be able to communicate with each other directly without NAT. Each pod gets an IP address in the container network.

Overlay network technologies (flannel, weave, calico, etc) are popular but they aren't mandatory. You can implement it using hardware switches and VLANs if you wish.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, but what are you inferring by hardware switches? Something not an overlay? Something that switches VXLAN in hardware?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > In each of these examples, a key to the success of Titus was deciding what > Titus would not do, leveraging the full value other infrastructure teams > provide.

This. So much this.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is some amazing scale:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

We run a peak of 500 r3.8xl instances in support of our batch users. That represents 16,000 cores of compute with 120 TB of memory. We also added support for GPUs as a resource type using p2.8xl instances to power deep learning with neural nets and mini-batch.

In the early part of 2017, our stream-processing-as-a-service team decided to leverage Titus to enable simpler and faster cluster management for their Flink based system. This usage has resulted in over 10,000 service job containers that are long running and re-deployed as stream processing jobs are changed. These and other services use thousands of m4.4xl instances.

While the above use cases are critical to our business, issues with these containers do not impact Netflix customers immediately. That has changed as Titus containers recently started running services that satisfy Netflix customer requests.

</comment><comment><USER30> "We run a peak of 500 r3.8xl instances in support of our batch users. That represents 16,000 cores of compute with 120 TB of memory."

I get that they are bragging about their implementation, but what number for peak batch processing instances would they be embarrassed to divulge?

</comment><comment><USER31> What has happened to HN? This thread is so filled with misinformation it is clear there is very little understanding of container.

A container is just a process. Really no different than any other. So cache and shared libraries, etc all the same with just a little care.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm looking at Netflix repos at [https://github.com/Netflix](https://github.com/Netflix). 5 pages x 30, that's a lot of repos.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is anyone else having issues accessing this?

        $ curl http://techblog.netflix.com/2017/04/the-evolution-of-container-usage-at.html
        <!DOCTYPE html>

        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
        <title>Access Denied</title>

Access Denied

        You are attempting to access a forbidden site.

        Consult your system administrator for details.

<comment><USER34> Work filtering out netflix.com? Old place use to do it and it would bug me I couldn't read their techblog at work.

<comment><USER33> Yup that appears to be it. Didn't even realise my workplace filtered anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would've imagined Netflix had their own hardware, both compute and storage.

<comment><USER13> I've heard they're looking at 'architecture in a box' solutions, which would allow them to abstract designs from specific cloud providers and perform cloud arbitrage; eg, if Cloud Provider X can run the app at 14c/hour, and Cloud Provider Y can run the app at 22c/hour, then they can just deploy the entire architecture on Cloud Provider Y.

<comment><USER36> Why would they choose the more expensive one?

<comment><USER13> Because, er, I made a typo and it's too late to edit. Good spot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder how this compares with the recently launched AWS Batch.</comment>


The Census Bureau's data file  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/2008/01/29/

<comment><USER2> Yes census data is interesting when you dig into it. There are thousands of columns and the schema definition itself is hundreds of pages long.

The interactive site is easier for most people who just want quick answers.

\- <http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html></comment>


My first Chrome Extension. Looking for constructive criticism and advice - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/musicality-music-player/fjiolbglibkahkipcdgeepdfdgfkdbee

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the permissions are overbearing. The reason it requests permissions for all sites instead of just the supported players is because of the way Chrome updates extensions. If I were to go that route and at some point add another player (which happens often), Chrome would disable the extension for everyone until they re-approve the changed permissions.

I believe there is a way to do it dynamically and allow the user to choose which players they want to allow access to, and then accept the changed permissions. However a majority of my user base will not care, and would actually prefer the one click install ease of use. At least that's my reasoning.

For those of you really concerned, you can download the source and modify manifest.json to change where the contentscript is injected for peace of mind. [https://github.com/kkamperschroer/Musicality](https://github.com/kkamperschroer/Musicality)

<comment><USER2> Chrome forcing the user to re-approve the extension when it tries to access more data is a feature, not something to work around. That alone is reason enough for me to say "thanks, but no thanks"

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. As a privacy-conscious user of Chrome extensions, I'm glad Chrome does things this way. There are too many horror stories out there.

I'll continue to look into ways I can deal with this without blindly asking for everything. I haven't found a good solution yet, but that doesn't mean there isn't a better way to do it out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Right off the bat, I spent 5 seconds looking at the plugin page and wasn't immediately sure what the plugin does. There's a list of features starting with "Playback Controls" and "Now playing information"... I assume it's a music player maybe? I'd suggest working up a short, succinct sentence that explains in very simple terms what the plugin does and make sure it's the thing I first see!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. That was one of my concerns. I was hoping the screenshots were self explanatory, but that's probably a bad assumption.

I'll work on refining the title and description. It's really a quick-and-easy controller for online music players.

Thanks. :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone looking for a new lab/business partner? - <AUTHOR>

I have a lab, looking to move it soon but - I want to collab with some smart person(s) who are extreely motivated. I have had a hard time finding people who have the extreme motivation that matches mine. I like coding (scala is my first choice), quantu topics/science, battery development, hardware, etc. I also like machine learnign but I'm more of a noob with ML so that would be a nic skill to complement mine.
I like AWS, like to try new things too. I am into pilosophy, discussions, linuz, new operatin systems, ASICS, new microarchitectures, lasers, aerodynamics, optics, etc. Anything fun.
my twitter is @newmycf
Post here if you're down or want to hassle me - would be down for a ground of 3, possibly 4. I am also in Soutern california BTW, and am willing to move to northern california but probably not anywhere else <comment><USER2> How much do you know about permanent batteries, Stan Meyer type water fuel systems, atomic hydrogen furnaces, and spiral coil generators? What kind of lab do you have?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also very into the idea of new consumer tech from quantum topics.

I actually have 3 distinct types of display concepts, 2 of them I have very basic working prototypes for. Looking very far ahead I'd say that I see a lot of potential in new branches of organic electronics - the OLED display is amazing in its simplicity - I love to model things after biological systems regardless, whether or not I'm working with organic components.

Then there's thousands of other concepts that I've only written down. I start to research something new and then the flood of ideas comes - then I keep learning based on those ideas and some of them still make sense after a while and others don't - then it seems like after exhaustively studying all those other little 'sub ideas', they kind of come together and sometimes form a larger concept that I start to design experiments for. Anyway that's my process right now but I am always open to evolving it. As for the topics you mentioned I would love to learn more about them and shoot around some ideas.

Anyway - what do you see as your major value to an ongoing research partnership with a few motivated people? I'm also open to joining an existing group - I'm not looking for any stipends as compensation, just a fair part of anything that comes from my contributions. I'd also be down to move into a warehouse/lab and live there full time - I kind of have to live where I work.

<comment><USER2> Just messaged you on Twitter. Send me your email.

<comment><AUTHOR> you can just email firstname.lastname@example.com - just forwards to my real email address which I'll respond with

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rmena123 at gmail dot

Not sure what I can do, but I am a designer, not in northern California yet, but I'd like to go one day. Email to chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm down to chat with anyone who's extremely motivated int heir field - I will make a point to email you this week.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry - been 11 days and have not contacted you - I'm preparing another submission regarding a collaborative venture and will send you a reminder to check it out - thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> also I'm aware of all the places I can post this to on Reddit, thanks in advance lol</comment>


Google+'s Numbers Aren't as Impressive as Everyone Thinks - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2011/07/google-s-numbers-arent-as-impressive-as-everyone-thinks/242375/

<comment><USER2> Nice to see some objective reporting here - goes ahead to call Paul Allen "clearly a Google+ fanboy" and tries to relate 750 million to 1 billion.

"[I]s it as big a deal as people are making it out to be? Yes, Google+ might end up being the fastest growing website of all time, but Facebook and Twitter primed the pump."

"[U]nless you're counting Friendster and MySpace and all of those other networks that have since failed, Facebook is the pioneer in social networking; it's slower growth is understandable. The fact that it grew as fast as it did, actually, is kind of unbelievable."

First, we're just going to ignore companies that fail now? Hindsight is 20/20, MySpace was a _huge_ competitor at the time. More importantly, I don't really see how having existing competitors in a space IMPROVES your chances of adoption. Google+ isn't "that newfangled social networking thing", it's that "new Facebook thing," and if anything the adoption effect is reversed.

What I don't get is this author's apparent agenda against Google+ - he even says "No matter how you measure it, 20 million or so visitors is a lot of visitors." so the article is really about downplaying how important 20 million is. I'm all for criticizing Google+, and it'll be interesting to see if the same exponential growth associated with social networks will occur when there's a big existing competitor. Let's just find more important things to criticize?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Google+ making it nearly impossible to import Facebook friends"

Uhh... no. Try "Facebook making it nearly impossible to export your friends". How could it possibly benefit Google for them to make it hard to import your friends?

Did the author even think before writing this?</comment>


Show HN: Just built a quick app in 30 mins - <AUTHOR>

Some hours ago, MG Seigler of Techcrunch wrote about a formula tweeted by a twitter engineer that help you calculate your rank. I used the formula to help others quickly check theirs. Soon going to add a rank table so you know how you are doing.<p>Check it out and get your rank at twitranking.me <comment><USER2> Nice, but the link from your name misdirects, and the image there is also labeled as <http://twitranking.me/twitter.com/images/getrank.png>, so it doesn't seem to work properly (because of the extra twitter.com in there). It also doesn't degrade 100% gracefully when given malformed input (like <'>, etc)

But cool! I tried it out and it's a handy tool. Add some stats to show off.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of stats would you like to see. Thanks for the feedback. The problem has been corrected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice implementation! But I am sure there is much more to their ranking than no. of followers that they won't reveal for obvious reasons.</comment>


In defense of the IPO, and how to improve it - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2020/08/28/in-defense-of-the-ipo/ <comment><USER3> Excellent breakdown with the proper theory. However

> In an institutional fundraise, all buyers must get the same price

Isn't that the basic problem? Don't we have tons of auction theory on how to _not_ sell all at the same price? presumably that auction theory also properly doesn't confused the varying unit price vs total money raised (it's integral).

<comment><USER4> I believe this is partly due to long term relationships aspect of the IPO process.

During roadshows, underwriters are essentially leveraging their rolodexes. These relationships constitute a significant part of the value they are bringing to the table.

If there would be a different price for each investor, some would get a better price than others, and those that got a worse price would not feel very good about it, likely deeming it unfair (there are still people behind the processes, and people can't help but experience emotions of fairness and a lack thereof).

As a result, relationships would likely suffer due to this human aspect to it, and weirdly enough, these grudges can easily get absorbed in the 'institutional memory' and linger there long after the original human protagonists have left the organisation.

A way to address this, would be to introduce rules like first-come-first served, which would imply giving up a degree of control by underwriters and the company. This, however, introduces risk for the company which, after all needs that control in order to maximise value.

It's not a simple problem to solve, but maybe there is a better solution somewhere out there...

<comment><USER5> If they want the most accurate price (doesn't move much from the initial IPO) a blind second price bidding strategy is useful.

If the company wants the highest price they would do an auction of successively increasing lot sizes.

However, the pool of investors for something like this is small enough that you'd be trying to fight out-of-band collusion. Similarly the underwriters don't want you to have the highest price. They want the investors to get a price better than the stock is actually worth so that they continue to show up to deals the underwriters organize.

I too think there must be a better way but I suspect you may need some regulation and enforcement of this market to actually see it through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting points they are making, it would be interesting to see how much of the IPO volume gets sold out in the first week or month to see how much of the price is being driven by just a few shares.

I looked at Zoom's IPO, the trade volume on IPO day was around 26M with closing price of 62. If for simplicity we disregard the same shares being traded(trading strategies, HFT trades). This is about $1.5 B in volume, they raised $0.36 B in IPO. So, the point that the article makes about the value being driven by just a small set of "gamblers" and not the value of the whole/majority of IPO block probably needs to be looked at with data.

Is there any way to determine the big institutional trades on a particular day to see if any of the IPO subscribers ended up selling in the first few days of listing?

</comment><comment><USER7> I've read countless articles on IPOs. This is the first time I appreciated the mechanics and economics. Excellent article.

</comment><comment><USER8> This makes sense from an investor's perspective. My objection to IPOs is not so much financial, but more about what it does to a company's internal culture. Having been at a company that went through an IPO, I saw how that culture shifted - almost overnight. You had employees that once cared about doing their best at their jobs to ones that focused only on how their contributions would affect the public stock performance (which can overlap, but often doesn't). Every time the stock price took a (short-term) hit, employee morale suffered. It was as if a large LED stock ticker were installed on every desk, constantly reminding employees that _this_ is the new key indicator that matters above all. It was obvious even among upper management; discussion went from big picture, somewhat ambitious ideas to short-term thinking, centered on how to show good numbers in the next quarter with obvious, incremental adjustments (like pushing more ads rather than developing more interesting products and features).

The funny thing is, the company didn't actually _need_ the funds raised in the IPO. They had an almost endless supply of interested private investors pouring in money regularly, and the company's CEO (in private) admitted that they never wanted to do an IPO. It was only necessary in order to appease the expectations of early employees who had been promised a big payday for the shares they were offered instead of competitive salaries. I understand why that was done in the company's early days, but there ought to be a better way to reward/incentivize early employees that doesn't rely on the fickle and myopic nature of publicly-traded stock.

<comment><USER9> > I understand why that was done in the company's early days, but there ought > to be a better way to reward/incentivize early employees that doesn't rely > on the fickle and myopic nature of publicly-traded stock.

The IPO is the carrot that you're dangling ahead of early employees many years prior to getting to that point.

When you've gotten to a state when you're ready for an IPO, they are expecting to _actually get_ that carrot. You have no leverage or new incentives that you can give to an early employee after you IPO. If they are sticking around after, you're either drowning them in money, or they are doing it as a courtesy.

So, your alternatives are to ask them nicely, or give them a boatload more money to stick around.

> They had an almost endless supply of interested private investors pouring in > money regularly

It sounds like they were interested in pouring money in to grow the business, not to reward early employees. (Which is perfectly reasonable.)

This is why you're finding the two things at odds with eachother. As an employee in a pre-IPO company you have a much smaller small amount of leverage for any sweat equity you put in, compared to someone who paid real dollars for their equity. Your interests aren't aligned with your investors, and their interests aren't really aligned with yours, outside of one thing - you both want to get to a point where you can cash out, via IPO.

<comment><USER8> > The IPO is the carrot that you're dangling ahead of early employees many > years prior to getting to that point.

Yes, that's essentially what I'm saying, but I wonder if there aren't some better alternatives to incentivize early employees when cash is scarce. Maybe (just off the top of my head) something like a contract to pay the employee a set dollar amount (with interest) at an undetermined point in the future, and it must be paid _before_ any profits can be distributed to owners (there could be other triggers as well). This would be in addition to the employee's salary, which is likely to be at below-market levels when the company is still young.

It could come with additional features similar to a vesting schedule, but essentially it would (1) give the employee a _known_ dollar amount of compensation contingent on the company's future success, (2) allow the company to remain private (if desired) while still delivering the "carrot", (3) avoid the need for an option pool, and (4) avoid the issues I described in my earlier comment. After some or all of that amount is paid to an employee, the difficulty in keeping the employee around is no different, but at that point (where profitability allows for the payout), a company is more likely be in a position to offer/renegotiate competitive salaries in the first place.

Then again, a lot of founders/owners probably don't want something so concrete because _of course_ they benefit from being able to attract talented people at a discount by offering a tiny bit of equity and the dream of becoming a millionaire when the company IPOs or gets acquired. Heck, I've been there - <USER2> both sides of the conversation. But the truth is, a lot of people are realizing that equity isn't usually worth what a founder thinks it is, so that's becoming a less effective bargaining chip as time goes on.

<comment><USER9> Hollywood does this sort of thing. It's a complete and utter scam.

Films that bring in hundreds of millions of dollars from the box office _consistently_ manage to post up zero-dollar profits. (Screwing anyone who lacks the leverage to have demanded a percentage of revenue, as opposed to a percentage of profits.)

And yet, somehow, the funders keep bankrolling 'profitless' sequels after sequels.

As bad as the 1/9/90 split of outcomes for startups is for employees (1% of a good exit, 9% of slight profit/break-even, 90% of a loss), transitioning to your model will destroy the upshot of the 1%, and make the 9% even more contingent on your employer and funders not engaging in Hollywood accounting.

What you propose creates a colossal incentives for investors to turn the 9% case into an (on paper) 90% case - because otherwise, they'd be on the hook for a very large number of backdated salaries - the obligations for whom magically disappear if you structure the 9% case as a profitless exit.

<comment><USER8> I'm familiar with how residuals work (and sometimes go unpaid), but in my opinion that's not a flaw in the idea itself, but rather a question of regulation and/or better legal work (in the contracts) to prevent studios from exploiting loopholes.

Earlier in my career, I was the victim of similar shenanigans when it came to startup equity (promises of equity that never materialized), so it's not like the traditional path to IPO precludes deception and exploitation. My point is, with proper legal boundaries, a system of compensation with _increased transparency_ is fairer than the current one that essentially uses a startup lottery to attract employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The counter argument in favor of direct listing: [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/invest-like-the- best/i...](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/invest-like-the- best/id1154105909?i=1000451016956)

I'm not sure anyone is arguing SPACs are a better idea for the private company?

SPACs can offer some certainty in what may be an uncertain market, but their entire point is that the SPAC creator is selling this certainty by finding an undervalued company they can take over on the cheap. I think a SPAC is a really bad way to go public unless you're someone like Nikola where your company is basically a fraud ripping off the SPAC, in that case probably a good way to go for the founder.

I'm still skeptical of the a16z arguments defending the IPO pop. When you have banks doing lots of transactions and founders doing only one or two the transactions will likely be skewed to benefit the banks along with a really compelling narrative of why they're not.

The simpler answer seems more likely here, I think Matt Levine is probably more correct.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-06/it- s-a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-06/it-s-a-good-and- bad-time-for-ipos)

<comment><USER11> I've always been confused by DPOs. Isn't it essentially a money-grab by initial investors waiting to cash out if you don't need the capital infused by the IPO?

<comment><USER10> It gives liquidity to employees as well as initial investors and it gives the public the ability to buy shares.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Excellent article - goes into some detail on the myth of oversubscription (well, inflation of reality)

</comment><comment> rebase-vc the much bigger problem than pricing is timing. retail investors don't get a chance to buy in until the company is already valued at $1-$10B because institutional investors hoard all of those gains.

the other issue is VCs using public markets as a dumping grounds for shi... I mean not so great companies like blue apron or lendingclub, and leaving retail holding the bag.

software is eating the world and capitalism is eating itself. i say this as someone that has benefited from software and capitalism but also knows that the system is extremely flawed

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a breath of fresh air in comparison to HN's typical ignorance on IPOs. I can see why it wouldn't be popular here.

A mix of the theoretical grounding of the activity with the on-the-ground realities of filling up a book and mechanics of how it happens. The IPO isn't perfect, and is in need of a software-defined overhaul, but does have clear value. We'll see if Carta's Xchange product can live up those goals.

<comment><USER14> Please don't sneer at others in HN comments, including putting down the rest of the community. Believe me, I understand how annoying widespread ignorance can be, but the only thing that has a chance at helping is patient explanation. Adding more poison only makes things worse.

If you know more, the thing to do is to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. You've done this in previous comments, which is great.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a standalone pi-hole device? - d--b I figure it would take me at least 3 hours to setup a pi-hole at home. I just don't have the time to do this.
I'd likely pay $50 for a pre-configured pi-hole I could just plug in my router.
I have seen subscription services for this, but I don't like signing up for another service while I am trying to reduce my online footprint.
Is there someone who's making pre-configured pihole boards and selling them online? <comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I often thought about creating such a device, I mysqlf had the same pain. I just can image how many non-tech guys struggle how to setup pi- hole. Time's the problem here though...

This is the only one i know as of today but it would not work in my setup here... I would prefer a "plain" pihole device: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eblocker/the-first- plug...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eblocker/the-first-plug-and- play-privacy-solution-for-all-y)

</comment><comment><USER2> > I figure it would take me at least 3 hours to setup a pi-hole at home. I > just don't have the time to do this.

Lol, no. Takes 20 minutes max.

That said, some companies are selling hyped "network protectors" or whatever. I wouldn't trust them though, they're usually not running FOSS and you don't know what lists they use or how often they're updated or if they collect your data themselves.

Just set up a pihole or ask a friend to do it.

<comment> d--b I know it's not very hard to do, but 20 minutes from unboxing the pi to a fully running pi-hole is unrealistic for someone who's not used to setting up pis.

"just ask a friend to do it". Exactly, you and I don't live in the same circles...</comment></comment>


Microsoft Calls for AI Face Recognition Software Regulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-13/microsoft-calls-for-ai-face-recognition-software-regulation <comment><USER2> Dupe [1]

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523620)</comment>


The End Of The Acqui-Hire? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/17/the-end-of-the-acqui-hire/

<comment><USER2> Seems like sour grapes to me. If the startup is only worth pennies on the dollar, why should the investors get more than fair market value? This seems an awful like new city bankers who are all in favor of unrestrained free market capitalism, until their ox gets gored, at which point they are first in line for a government handout.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr Acqui-hires are are turning into just hires. Companies just want the talent from failed start ups. The acquirer lowballs cost of buying out equity and but keeps high retention comp to employees. In short term this is good for start up employees, but writer argues this will hurt seed ecosystem because investors don't like being burned.

<comment><USER4> And to follow on, what was a specifically interesting:

Reports that the premium was less that 1/3 salary per FTE being offered by the "Acquirer".

That is, these so-called "M&A deals" were valued at <less than> a mass-head- hunting contract.

(That being said, the submitted article reads more like an OP-ED than a more mainstream piece of journalism.)

<comment><USER5> It's techcrunch, not journalism.

<comment><USER4> Author is not a TC staff-writer / employee

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The startup idea failed and the founders do not have another idea / the seed investors do not want to give the founders any more money than what's already invested. So then you should let the markets decide what the price of the assets are. The assets of the idea and the assets of human capital.

1) The investor can still say that they had an acquisition exit and make their portfolio seem better than it is.

2) If you don't have strong enough connections where the strategic players will throw you a bone for a long-lasting relationship with your fund then you don't deserve the bone.

3) Investors gave founders education but the founders also gave investors education that they can leverage lessons in future investments.

4) Investors frequently say that they're investing in people but at the end of the day, they investing in people to execute the good idea and they would not hesitate to replace another set of people to execute that good idea... so in essence, they're investing in a good idea. What kind of investing are you doing when you invested in a bad idea and expect to get paid PAR for making the wrong call. A zero downside early stage investing but 1000x upside seems like a fantasy market that, even if it lasted for a year or two, would have never worked out in the long-run.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's pretty low to disguise "more money for investors" as a half-assed argument for better employee outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER8> I agree with the author, but I feel they should not be in this position to begin with.

VCs can ensure their money back using paperwork. 500 Startups' seed specifically says they can block any acquisition that lowballs 500. This is reasonable because they take the risk.

I was hoping for an interesting article about acqui-hire trends and predictions, but instead I got a complaint about VCs not getting paid back. A reasonable perspective, but not particularly insightful.

<comment><USER9> Except, in the case of an acquihire, there is no "acquisition", per se. If 500 startups were to block such a deal, then the founders/employees could simply fold up shop and go to work for the new company.

What the investor is failing to recognize, is that in the case of an acqui- hire, the company has failed - it has zero value, and needs to be shut down gracefully. A good acqui-hire ensure that customers and vendors are paid up to date, and the employees are given a new place to work.

This VC is confused as to the nature of an acquihire, and, furthermore, seems to be ignoring the fact that 99% of the return on their investments come from the two or three companies out of 100 that are very successful. The other 98 to 97 are just a cost of doing business, and worrying about getting back their "investment" on a company that has gone under is just a distraction from the real business of making sure that the two-three companies are very successful.

<comment><USER10> > worrying about getting back their "investment" on a company that has gone > under is just a distraction from the real business of making sure that the > two-three companies are very successful.

That, and why are they hoping to extract value from the learning experience of the founders to begin with? People working _at many different companies_ usually learn lots of things and can increase their value just as much as any startup founders.

As an investor, can't you just ignore any hopes that you'll extract any value from an "acqui-hire" when you negotiate the valuation of the company?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr Z grade "seed investor" doesn't have the network to make acqui-hires happen. Top tier investors have no such problem.

<comment><USER12> After reading this comment, I misremembered the VC fund's name as "third tier capital" and had to go back to the article to recall the actual name :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> These statements need a whole lot more clarification

->"The amount they were willing to pay beyond salaries and stock to those hired? About 10 cents on the dollar invested."

->" we'd receive less than a recruiting service that merely introduced the same level people in exchange for 30 percent of their first-year salary."

Funding a company's success is very different that just presenting candidates. With so many startups receiving large valuations and focus being on user acquisition, the return on on acquihire is probably going to be lower than expected.

If the startup were burning through their investment / bleeding money through losses why would a company think they need to recoup those losses for an investor?

Then there's the 30% fee calculation. This sounds like the author was simply comparing 10% for the aquihire vs. 30% agency fee. What should be compared is the % of total cash comp the team would receive as the fee. This goes back to the difference of funding a company vs. just presenting candidates.

Given the info of seven engineers:

\- if each engineer is paid out 150k (fairly high end of market cash rate, not including stocks).

\- then a 30% fee would be based on $1,050,000.

\- in this scenario, any investor putting in more than $1,050,000 would receive less than the 30% agency fee. Given how much money can be poured into startups it's easy to see investors hitting the $3 million mark and only receive 10% on this deal.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the most honest statement I've read about the founder myth yet.

Dear engineer, you are the product.

</comment><comment><USER15> If investors want a cut from these people being hired, they should make that part of the terms of the investments.

For example, "we get X% of the company for $Y, and if the founders get hired, Z% of their compensation for N years."

<comment> bjelkeman-again That is a contract I would never sign.</comment></comment>


"Markets Today Are Not What We Believe" – The Façade of Competition - <AUTHOR> https://promarket.org/big-data-competition/ <comment><USER2>
      "If you want, run an experiment this evening. Instead of
      using your MacBook, use a PC, you will get a cheaper price.
      Leave your house, go to a different house, book the same
      holiday or buy the same product, you will get a cheaper price."

Um... no? The Mac/PC pricing thing was _one_ travel site, and to my knowledge, this practice is limited to travel booking sites. Amazon prices may often be algorithmically adjusted, but _not_ per-user. There is an entire industry of price trackers and deal blogs that would not exist if online retail used travel-booking-style real-time price discrimination adjustment.

<comment><USER3> > The Mac/PC pricing thing was one travel site, and to my knowledge, this > practice is limited to travel booking sites. Amazon prices may often be > algorithmically adjusted, but not per-user.

Yeah why worry about it if it's only happening on travel booking sites? I mean, these practices would never be taken up by big companies with lots of data to _really_ tailor prices per-user.

<comment><USER4> There's too much same product price comparison available for online retail to do such things without being noticed. It's not that they couldn't do it and have some level of results, it's that people would quickly become aware of it.

<comment><USER5> Exactly, noticing things like this is just too easy - Friends and I frequently discuss it when comparing prices, usually it turns out to be that one of us found a product from a vendor via the search and one found it via a sale page.

You'll get caught all the time if you're doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Today almost all the prices that you see online are actually designed for > you. Dynamic pricing is the art of squeezing every dollar out of your > pocket."

Is "almost all" actually true? I know that dynamic pricing capability is being built, and I have detected a few cases of it myself, but right now the actual prevalence seems really low.

<comment><USER7> In my experience, the basis of the article is not true at all. However, I have noticed that if you add something to your cart, and leave it there, then you quite often get an email from the merchant with an offer of a discount for buying the item.

<comment><USER6> That's interesting, although I almost never give my email address to a merchant before committing to a purchase, it just invites an inbox full of spam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's what worries me about things like Alexa and Siri, they turn just about every market into winner take most. Siri I'd like a pizza.

"no problem I have a Domino's pizza delivered with your favorite toppings."

I was in the mood for pizza hut.

"No problem...wait domino's is having an alexa preferred partner special...would you like $4 off?"

<comment><USER9> and of course, this is to amazon's benefit. the more concentrated their buying power, the more leverage they have over the vendor, the more profits they can squeeze from the entire supply chain, because shit rolls downhill.

most vendors of course will dive head-first into this arrangement with their eyes wide open, because most of them don't think long-term, they want that revenue _now_ cost-be-damned, and quite frankly they're just not as good as the executives running amazon.

see: walmart from 10 years ago. wonder how many of those nice folks made the move from arkansas to seattle recently...

<comment><USER10> I find it interesting that Dell decided to take the company off the stock market so they could focus on the long term.

You get all these perverse incentives towards the short term via the board and the CEOs they pick (never mind the whole stock option bonuses etc the CEOs are offered).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Makes you wonder, is Ethics even a required course in a typical software engineering curriculum?

<comment><USER12> It doesn't matter how many ethics courses are offered and taken.

The only thing I ever retweeted on my otherwise completely empty and unused Twitter account so that I could copy and paste it when needed:

 _" For evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to respond rationally to incentives."_

You learn all your basic ethics during early childhood, not in university courses. Most of the rest is the quote above. University classes talk to and train parts of the brain whose involvement in the ethics of your decisions is minimal.

<comment><USER13> >You learn all your basic ethics during early childhood.

The ethical questions a software engineer (or almost any professional) faces are not "basic". More specifically, the "basic" ethics we learn as children relate to direct interpersonal relations and small group dynamics (including excessive deference to authority, which "good" ethics must unlearn).

These lessons to not prepare us to deal with questions that involve millions of people whom we know very little about.

<comment><USER14> Truth. Most people I have worked with know how not to be dicks. And if you put them in a situation where the human impact of something is obvious, they'll have the right reactions.

The challenge is to have the right reactions when you are sitting in a comfortable office and the moral dilemmas inherent in your work are entirely hidden by metrics, and all your bosses ask you to do is to drive the graph up and to the right.

<comment><USER12> > _The challenge is to have the right reactions when you are sitting in a > comfortable office and the moral dilemmas inherent in your work are entirely > hidden by metrics, and all your bosses ask you to do is to drive the graph > up and to the right._

And that is where I refer back to my comment: Pretty much _nobody_ will become the whistleblower or the guy who prevents their company (or their country) from landing that billion dollar arms sale or from raising drug prices to levels unaffordable to many sick people even if they are perfectly well aware of how bad it is. There is one Snowden outlier for a million other people. "If I don't do it somebody else will" is just one of numerous rationalizations (and it even is actually correct).

Statistically speaking the impact of ethics education vs. incentives is like 1 : 1 billion or worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This already happened circa 1780.

In Europa merchants were taking advantage of the numerous measure of length, weight, volume to make customers unable to be comparing.

There was 117 measure of length used.

So as a result, Louis XVI who was influenced by the early liberal set on course the project of the international system. The idea was a market is more competitive if states regulate the obigation for merchant to make measure comparable.

Hence came the meters, kg, liters and the decimal system.

It was adopted by the republican after the king was overthrown because they were also willing for a fairer competition...

It has always stroked me as weird that USA never saw the inherent liberalist advantage of simple measurement system.

<comment><USER16> > It has always stroked me as weird that USA never saw the inherent liberalist > advantage of simple measurement system.

I read a claim somewhere that the pox of different measurement systems wasn't as much of an issue in Britain and it's American colonies so they stuck with archaic but consistent units a lot longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's always been true that prices and service offered to you in person are influenced by your dress, manner, the car you drove in by, the words you use, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wonder why there isn't something like ebates with a paid plan. Finds best price with affiliate money as a rebate.

</comment><comment><USER18> the obvious elephant in the room is: who's gonna fix markets that are not what we believe? Do you have any solutions, beyond pointing out examples of what's wrong? How do you see crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others playing a role?

<comment><USER5> If you look at the post they're just talking about price discrimination tactics employed by big data companies. Crypto-currencies have nothing to do with this and no role to play.

Deal and comparison sites are the solution here basically, and they're readily employed by people who actually use the market and don't just blindly buy from 1 seller.

tldr: If you want a good deal, go looking for one, if you don't, you get screwed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Incredible; not one mention of how this 'facade of competition' lowers costs of living and caps inflation, keeping rates low, making markets go higher and prices cheaper by making our lives easier.</comment>


Facebook employees revolt over Zuckerberg's stance on Trump - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/facebook-employees-revolt-over-zuckerbergs-stance-on-trump/ <comment><USER2> I can't count the number of times we've heard this happening. Even Facebook's board members have been said to object to Zuckerberg's leadership.

The end result has been (and will be) nothing. Zuckerberg doesn't care about feedback from anyone. Any public display of personal growth seems to be PR and is immediately contradicted by his actions.</comment>


Say goodbye to the information age: it's all about reputation now - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/say-goodbye-to-the-information-age-its-all-about-reputation-now <comment><USER2> > the 'reputation age', in which information will have value only if it is > already filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others

Isn't this just a return to form? This sounds like what newspapers, publishers, academics, etc have been doing for hundreds of years. Even 'fake news' is nothing new; there have always been disreputable publishers willing to endorse wild conspiracies.

The novel thing is that the filtering and evaluation has become decentralized. The article implores us to ask "Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities?", but increasingly we depend on our friends and likeminded crowds to approve information through sharing rather than engaging with an authority by subscribing to a newspaper or feed.

Since the most exaggerated interpretations of a situation are almost inevitably the most shared, just checking the reputation of the source isn't enough. Consider the amount of mainstream media coverage on the "golden shower" aspect of the Trump dossier, when it was the least supported accusation. Or how Cuddy's provocative speech on body language went viral, despite other reputable researchers casting doubt. The structure of social media rewards stripping out context and nuance.

So instead of questioning authority figures, question your tribe. Does it sound too good to be true? Did you learn something new, or just confirm existing beliefs? Have you taken the time to see how the other tribe thinks about this issue? You can only escape your filter bubble if you make a conscious effort to do so (I'm still trying).

<comment><USER3> I think this is all too true. I think a lot of what's going on in the world right now is explainable through the death of ubiquitous, reliably-sourced information.

Growing up in suburban Illinois, we had a local paper. It was nothing special but at least had a commitment (in theory) to report things accurately. In a world where most people get their news from social media, people are driven by their incentives/dopamine conditioning toward a lot of behaviors that promote neither truth, nor engagement with opposing views.

What I find interesting, and absent from the conversation, is the social class dimension of this. The rich have always paid for reliable information, whether through newspaper subscriptions, magazines, or other high-quality private newsletters, some of them absurdly expensive (hundreds/thousands of dollars/year). As I get older, I find myself much, much more discerning about what I read. I've completely stopped using facebook (5-6 years ago), but now read The Economist, The SF Chronicle, Stratechery, and a handful of blogs from authors I trust. I don't know for sure, but I suspect "willingness to pay for good information" is a pretty strong correlate of wealth worldwide. I just have no idea whether it's causal, or a side effect of having disposable income, or what.

<comment><USER4> > but now read The Economist, The SF Chronicle, Stratechery, and a handful of > blogs from authors I trust. I

I'm the complete opposite. I've gone from being a subscriber to the economist, nytimes, npr, etc and accepting them as gospel to seeing them for agenda pushing institutions.

> but I suspect "willingness to pay for good information" is a pretty strong > correlate of wealth worldwide.

I think you are missing the point. The wealthy don't read the economist. The wealthy hire the people to write in the economist.

Ultimately, social media is ( or at least has been ) the "people's" propaganda. The economist/etc are the wealthy elite's propaganda. It looks like the elite want to take over social media and make it part of their message platform as well.

<comment><USER5> I come across reverence for these publications regularly but I don't say anything because I fear bipartisan reactionism would label me a conspiracist before I have a chance to defend myself.

I actually get most of my news filtered through HN comments and from independent podcasts by journalists I trust.

<comment><USER6> I treat news like it was an claim about nature by a scientist. Do other (independent) experts agree? If not, then I'm not ready to accept the claim yet. But if so, and the argument seems sound, then I'll tentatively consider believing it.

Or if opinions on the proposed news/idea are mixed or absent, I'll look at how bold the claim is and how disruptive the consequences of accepting it. Bold claims must offer more compelling support (or more undeniable) than mild claims, be that support evidentiary or logical.

Without sound support, at most I'll consider a claim to be plausible and perhaps intriguing. But it's not really trustworthy yet as news, and certainly not as science.

<comment><USER7> I love this outlook, and I share it. I'd add that I like to take patterns of claims into account, past and present. Patterns of claims can be illuminating as to the reality of underlying motivations, even where claims are true. Sometimes claims are accurate, but by presenting only one segment of a story the reader's conclusions are moulded a specific end. For example claims that video games cause violence recur in predictable ways, as do PR submarines.

Another useful filter is to identify which of Logos, Pathos, or Ethos is being employed most. Is an article trying to support its claims with citations, original research, and sound logic? Or is it just calling everyone who disagrees with it immoral?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Critical thinking skills have never gone out of style. _Where does it come from? Does the source have a good reputation? Who are the authorities who believe it? What are my reasons for deferring to these authorities?_ I was taught these questions in Sunday school decades ago.

<comment><USER9> The Sunday school portion caught me off guard. Aren't these types of questions the enemy of religion and conformity?

<comment><USER8> That depends if your Sunday school is about religion and conformity, or a personal belief and relationship with God. As the apostle Paul said, "If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone." [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+15&version=HCSB) In other words, there's no point gambling with your eternal soul. Better make sure you know the truth!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So instead of the information age its now the "credibly-sourced information age"? Disinformation has been a problem forever (hello Salem witches). Applying a blanket "reputation" solution is dangerous, because ultimately no information source is infallible, and all information sources deserve your constant skepticism. This is true in science and every other source of information we are exposed to on a day-to-day basis.

</comment><comment><USER11> I generally agree, but I think the article goes a bit far:

> Such questions will help us to get a better grip on reality than trying to > check directly the reliability of the information at issue. In a hyper- > specialised system of the production of knowledge, it makes no sense to try > to investigate on our own, for example, the possible correlation between > vaccines and autism

There is middle ground between trusting a source because of its `reputation' and conducting trials yourself. Relying too much on reputation is also known as the "appeal to authority" fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER12> > In the reputation age, our critical appraisals should be directed not at the > content of information but rather at the social network of relations that > has shaped that content and given it a certain deserved or undeserved 'rank' > in our system of knowledge.

I don't agree.

For one thing, it's overkill for the vast majority of cases. With most conspiracy theorists we're talking about people who don't understand units of measure; use glaringly inappropriate unit of measure; don't understand significant digits; sometimes don't use any units at all; make multiple statements of fact that contradict each other; attempt to make implicit changes to constant values in the course of the discussion; and/or, most importantly, exponentially explode the bounds of the discussion to avoid ever saying, "I'm getting the feeling I don't know what I'm talking about."

I don't need much of a reputation to realize that _their_ system of knowledge is of such low quality that I can either reject it out of hand or simply reserve judgment.

For another, suppose my mortal enemy sends me hacked email evidence of my fiancee rigging the courting process with all kinds of unethical behavior against another suitor. In fact, my fiancee siphoned fuel from the vehicle of that person, constantly tried to get their electricity turned off, and wheeled-and-dealed with my family to get them to approve of my fiancee and disapprove of the other suitor.

Suppose my family confirms the veracity of the hacked emails.

I would say the most significant problem I have is between my soon to be ex- fiancee and me. But if I understand the upshot of the article, the author is claiming the most significant problem is between my mortal enemy and me.

Worse, the leaders of the Democratic Party in the U.S. seem to agree with the author.

Edit: clarification

</comment><comment><USER13> This seems like a Hot Take from 2003[1], when the media first caught on that reputation matters on the internet just as it does in most contexts.

It was important way before then, too. Google was arguably successful because they figured out a way to base SERPs in part on reputation. And I know that reputation certainly mattered on the BBSs I used to frequent.

Ironically I have no idea whether Gloria Origgi has a good reputation as an authority on the topic, but this excerpt/ad makes the book seem like a lightweight, new-to-the-internet-thinking-party treatment.

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

</comment><comment><USER14> The only new thing the Internet has brought, in regards to information, is the ease at which any moron can find a platform.

That barrier to entry used to be very high. Now it's almost non-existent. That's the cause of the symptoms that a number of other commentators have mentioned, such as "the death of ubiquitous, reliably-sourced information".

The flipside to this is that it's also a threat to propaganda from those who had the resources to create their own platforms when that was actually an achievement.

Also, as other commentators have said, critical thinking was always important, it's just a bit more important now because, as above, every moron has a platform. Or, maybe, the more things change the more they stay the same.

Tangential relationship: Music used to be a rebellious form of expression. It has been forcefully moulded into another tool of conformity once the powers that be worked out how to profit from it and boil off everything but the hooks that attack human evolutionary weaknesses.

The powers that be have already used Social Media to asset some amount of influence on the US election. That's a big proof of concept.

</comment><comment><USER15> I worry about the ability to fabricate false evidence. To prove authenticity of facts, we may need to build a trail of evidence for non-repudiation. This dovetails somewhat with reputation. Being able to prove authenticity of a document, audio, or video clip as of a certain date (not generated after the fact) is one useful application (side effect?) of blockchain technology.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've noticed this problem, but I wouldn't call it a reputation age as much as I would call it an opinion age. People form strong opinions about which they've done no personal study based on the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy.

Take author's moon landing example. If you really care, there are mirrors on the moon. If you want to know we've been there or not, you can devise an experiment, fire a laser at those mirrors, and get a reflected beam back.

People now call things like "climate change" a science (and it's settled!), without doing the fundamental thing science requires: An experiment with a control group. Climate models are statistical correlation, not an experiment with a control group. It is not proof of causality.

<comment> dane-pgp If the models have parameters which are tuned purely based on data available up until a certain point in time, and can predict outcomes based on data that is observed after that point in time, then those models can be said to be good predictors.

For example, if a model is trained to calculate the average Earth surface temperature based on recorded CO2 levels up to the year 2000, and then it correctly predicts the average surface temperature of all subsequent years, with just the CO2 levels as input, that would be a very helpful model for deciding what would be a safe level of CO2 to have in the atmosphere if we want the Earth's temperature to have less than some particular amount of warming.

<comment><USER17> Except that it doesn't work for them. They have continually changed their models to predict the current behavior. They even started calling it "climate change" instead of "global warming" because of that.

To be clear: I'm not saying it isn't happening. (It is.) I'm not saying it's not caused by humans. (I think it probably is.) I'm saying that they have been terrible at proving anything. Everything from modifying the data and then _deleting_ the original data to creating models that fail to predict the future.

<comment><USER18> These discussions devolve quickly when you use the word "they" as if scientists, politicians, etc are all one big group of people. The same thing occurs when people talk about big tech, big business, politicians, advertisers, homeless people, etc.

My point is that there is no "they" so assigning behavior makes to "them" makes it impossible to counter-argue. You say they did it, but you can't even define they, so how would I prove they didn't do that?

(Which is related to the article - "they" doesn't have a reputation, except for the negative one you just insinuated on the spot)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should you choose NPM or yarn? - <AUTHOR> https://javascript.christmas/2019/10/ <comment><USER2> I recently switched to yarn since it handles workspaces wonderfully. By default, Lerna will use the npm client. Having lockfiles in each subpackage was causing issues. So I disabled lockfiles in subpackages. That reduces your ability to create reproducible builds. Yarn workspaces will make a single lockfile at the root that captures all of your subpackages.

Basically, using yarn has made the administrative tasks of monorepo management simpler.</comment>


Ask HN: Jenkins – tracking quantitative (error rate) test results - <AUTHOR> I'm using Jenkins to manage a CI pipeline.
Some of the tests I'm running return a quality indicator (specifically, a numeric bit error rate) alongside the pass/fail indication. This is to get a measure of how well a decoding and error correction algorithm works.
Now I'd like to keep track of the trend -- did a branch make the "noisy channel" performance better or worse?
Before I run away and write a log parser and report generator which spits out a HTML page -- does anyone know of an existing Jenkins plugin which can do this sort of parsing and trending/graphing? <comment><USER2> Disclaimer I work for Humio. You can use the Humio Plugin and a free Humio cloud account to track anything. You just have to print it as part of you test and the find the result in Humio. It pretty much does away with the need for any other Jenkins plugin. You can find it in the jenkins plugin list.</comment>


Ask pg: "&#x2F" considered harmful? - <AUTHOR> https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%26%23x2F&sortby=create_ts+asc&start=0

<comment><AUTHOR> It appears that trailing slash characters on URLs are showing up as an encoded entity (amper-hash-x-hex-hex) in links since sometime on June 7, 2013. Many examples in the search posted, here's a simple example:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5845372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5845372)

On a related topic, I've seen mention of people adding a bare '#' hash to URLs to avoid duplicate link detection. No idea if that can be handled well in software.

<comment><USER2> _I 've seen mention of people adding a bare '#' hash to URLs to avoid duplicate link detection. No idea if that can be handled well in software._

pg could attempt to hash the head or meta tags from the remote url (though that would require making a request for every submission), and pay closer scrutiny to urls with common domains and paths. Just adding cruft to a url would seem to be something you'd be able to detect easily.

Of course I say this having no clue how difficult that would be to do in Arc. To say nothing of having to follow redirects, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The <title> appears to be double-encoded.</comment>


Seven databases in seven weeks (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://db.cs.cmu.edu/seminar2014/ <comment><USER2> "The Future of Databases is Not a Database" \- isn't it a funny concidence that this one has been cancelled?

<comment><USER3> Maybe they were busy flirting with Apple at that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great book with the same title: [https://pragprog.com/book/rwdata/seven- databases-in-seven-we...](https://pragprog.com/book/rwdata/seven-databases-in- seven-weeks)

Explains different approaches / benefits and drawbacks

<comment><USER5> That's the older edition of the book which covered Redis, Neo4J, CouchDB, MongoDB, HBase, Riak and Postgres. At the time this was published I was already using CouchDB, Redis and PostgreSQL so we bought a (small) crate of these for my new department's employees.

The new edition can be found at [https://amzn.to/2KpxOqU](https://amzn.to/2KpxOqU) and covers Redis, Neo4J, CouchDB, MongoDB, HBase, Postgres, and DynamoDB. I think the most interesting thing about the new edition is that it drops Riak in favor of DynamoDB. They're both K/V stores but trading an open source database for a DBaaS shows me how entrenched the Amazon ecosystem has become in the last 5 years.

Interestingly, one of the authors answers the question of how they chose which databases to cover with "We did have some criteria, if not explicit. The databases had to be open source—we didn't want to cover any databases that would tie readers to a company." I guess that's not a strong part of the criteria? I guess a database experimenter could still complete the book's exercises using Amazon's free tier?

<comment><USER6> Or, the bit of how they chose the databases was left over from the first edition, and missed in editing the new one.

<comment><USER7> second edition editing seemed pretty laser focused on the chapter changes, with specific editors focused on specific databases whereas first edition seemed a bit more cohesive with editors focused on the book as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The CMU Database Group and Andy Pavlo are great. They have some great courses on their YouTube channel [1], anything you might ever want to know about databases. Such as their series on hardware accelerated databases [2] (Kinetica, MapD, SQream DB, BlazingDB, Brytlyt, Swarm64)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnBsf2rH-K7pn09rb3qvkA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnBsf2rH-K7pn09rb3qvkA)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjbjOyrcqgE6...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjbjOyrcqgE6_lCV6xvzffSN)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm interested in VoltDB. Anyone who can share their experiences working with this in production?

</comment><comment><USER10> It will be interesting to see how quickly this becomes completely obsolete.

<comment><USER11> Challenges encountered when building systems, and the resulting lessons learned, rarely become obsolete. The specific product that resulted from the efforts may fade, but the knowledge abstracted from the efforts does not.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Viktor NV-1 Synthesizer - <AUTHOR> http://nicroto.github.io/viktor/ <comment><AUTHOR> I would like to thank everyone for the kind words. You guys are absolutely amazing! In my wildest expectations, I didn't see such a warm response and wide audience. Thank you!

I am sure there are people who deserve that much and more attention, but aren't getting it, so I would like to say something to you guys, working tirelessly, day in and day out, on your projects - keep doing what you love!

I am not always talking about synthesizers or music, but you can follow me in these places:

      * Twitter: https://twitter.com/@NikolayTsenkov
      * Ello: https://ello.co/tsenkov
      * Facebook: https://facebook.com/NikolayTsenkov

I am also looking into job opportunities (or even if you just want to connect) so here is my LinkedIn: [https://bg.linkedin.com/pub/nikolay- tsenkov/38/754/955](https://bg.linkedin.com/pub/nikolay-tsenkov/38/754/955)

Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER2> I find the quality of the Synth amazing. Over the years I have tried out many Synth plugins for Reason 5 e.g. and I have never come across one, in which all the settings sound sooo good. I instantly wanna compose something with it. Good job @author!

<comment><USER3> I was just coming here to say something similar. Really beautiful sound, the vibrato is so milky smooth

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a very cool piece of work! I recorded a brief demo using a MIDI controller - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU8FE9xLBdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU8FE9xLBdM) and the lack of latency is fantastic.

Question - is it possible to do polyphonic sounds?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome! :)

I am going to implement polyphony, I just decided to release early, since monosynth is still a playable instrument.

And it definitely will be a switch option (mono/poly), because I just love the monosynth style of playing.

Did you see you can save patches and Export/Import your entire custom library?

<comment><USER4> I did :-) If all plugins exported in JSON...

<comment><AUTHOR> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just recently looked at the Web Audio API and the Google Moog Doodle ([http://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th- birthday](http://www.google.com/doodles/robert-moogs-78th-birthday)) and I'm seriously impressed by what you did there. Congrats, Sir, keep up the good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I also used the Minimoog as my primary source of inspiration. Robert Moog was a brilliant man. And so modest, too... He changed the music, forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My first impression was that this was rendered with WebGL, and I couldn't believe that this could be done with web. Kudos!

I didn't think this was possible, since audio editing was long claimed to be a desktop only solution (VST, Juce, Cubase, ProTools).

Very cool indeed!

(And good learning material for me, an ex game C++ tools developer -> web backend/frontend java/gwt now).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words.

I must admit that I was pretty sceptical about it, all the way up to when I wrote a couple of lines to connect a few nodes, then I wrote a very simple pair of noteOn, noteOff functions (no envelopes, no nothing) and a tiny function to parse the MIDI key number... And when I started playing that... single sine wave without any flavor on it or effects... I loved it! The latency was great, the oscillator produced such a pleasant sound and above all... I (couldn't make this "capital-enough") have built this teeny-tiny (for me - uber-cool) instrument. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The filter does not appear to keytrack, thus it gets more or less powerful depending on which notes you play(this is sometimes desirable but usually not).

It is possible to make the filter hoot at low cutoff and maximum emphasis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Filter doesn't have keyboard tracking, yet. I've seen it on many synths and I definitely want to have it on the NV-1.

Oh, you're right! On a very low C, full emphasis and cutoff at 1. Is this bad?

<comment><USER7> It's bad if your synth is aiming to be a virtual analog. The correct behavior of extreme resonance, at least in a Moog-type filter, is self-oscillation [0], but actually achieving that through digital subtractive techniques remains CPU-intensive and a cutting-edge filter design challenge, because all the action is taking place at the top of the spectrum, where sampling rates start to matter.

A generic "clean digital" filter sound that can do typical resonant sweeps would be acceptable for a web synth, and a purely additive emulation like that of IL Harmless would be good enough for almost everything. There's no such thing as a totally worthless sound, but some sounds are more immediately useful for musical purposes, and letting the filter break usually indicates a low attention to detail. Low-quality digital resonance tends to have a "dentist's drill" timbre to it, even when it's not broken.

A last thought: I don't know how your envelopes are made right now, but they matter a great deal to the timbre. The curvature matters, as does the speed. You can use a generic filter with poor resonance performance, but the overall result will still sound pretty good with quality oscillators and well-tuned envelopes.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVgIf71uWB4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVgIf71uWB4)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

This is very useful. I am not using my own filter, right now. It's the default LP one in the Web Audio. I think it is probably one of the "not-so-good" parts of it. I don't want to offend anyone from the guys that made the spec, they did more than anyone expected with this API, but I do notice this "dentist's drill" timbre. I always feel it like... "pixelated sound".

As for the envelopes - I spent quite some time tuning them. Yet, this is the first time I work on such a project, so I don't know exactly how bad or good they are.

Great info! Very useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds incredible. Would be awesome if you could add an arpeggiator or basic step sequencer. It's a bit difficult to fiddle with the nobs while pressing down the keys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Arpeggiator is on my radar. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Latency seems quite low! Seems to sound quite good too from my laptop speakers :) WELL DONE!

Is latency known / have you measured?

<comment><USER10> Should be the same latency that you get when working with your own DAW. It's just translating your system's internal audio APIs (so for me on Mac, it's Core Audio) into something that can be used on the Web with JS.

The Web Audio API is pretty awesome. I've been trying to pair up with some folks to see if we can build some kind of web DJ software. Imagine being able to JIT download songs from Spotify, Soundcloud and Youtube and DJ with them :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a pretty cool idea! Where can I follow?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is an inspirational thing to see on the web. My, we've come a long way. Thank you for bringing this all together.

How are the waveforms rendered? Are these few or single cycle samples? I noted that, with slight detuning, I was getting inconsistent tracking for the detuning. Higher notes yields wider pitch differences than lower notes.

I was unable to get consistent results with really short envelopes. e.g. 0-4-0-0 AEnv for percussive sounds or synth blips. Similarly, fast filter envelope.

Would you be able to consider an alternate data entry? e.g. Toggle a mode where you can type parameter values in vs. using the sliders & knobs?

I pulled it up on my Surface Pro 3 and, with some zoom, could play it via touchscreen. It would be nice to be able to get bigger keys, touch spots, etc.

Definitely the sort of thing that makes me want to see it grow and continue. Excellent work. Keep it up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

I honestly don't know how are they rendered. I use the default four waves and add a couple of custom forms from here: [http://chromium.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/audio/wave-...](http://chromium.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/audio/wave- tables/)

About the detuning issue - I don't hear it. The step is 100 cents (a semitone). I tried on the Clean Sine patch, pressing G# on the 4th octave, when only oscillator 2 is enabled and detuned max to higher (+8 semitones), is the same as pressing C on the 4th if only oscillator 1 works without detuning. The issue here, for me, is that it's set on semitones, while it should "continuous".

For percussive sound, the primary Envelope should probably be more like 0-0-4-2, than 0-4-0-0. My envelope is a bit unstandard, though, as you are probably used to have the Decay always start from 1 (or 1*1/noteVelocity), where mine starts at where the Attack has ended.

Other inputs make sense, I am logging this one up.

I want to make a rendering especially for mobile. This is on my backlog already.

Thank you very much for the kind words and the great input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good job! I'd add a social patch sharing, record buffer, and upload-to- soundcloud as your next priorities - this is as good as many starter softsynth plugins, so make the most of it and become a fixture in the inevitable Web DAW paradigm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Haven't even thought about upload to SoundCloud, yet. Interesting idea.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great work. You should totally bake that into an installable chrome app. Hit me up if you need any help ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I might hold you on that promise. :)

<comment><USER13> No problem. I am tinkering with them anyways. My github handle is @pascalopitz

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Eventually someone builds a DAW... Well, I wouldn't expect native performance, but imagine the power of having a open javascript interface! Hope something interesting come out of this...

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there are a few emerging ones. Soundtrap pops to mind. I'm sure it already does. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Heh, you can create layers by opening multiple tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed you can! :)

This has a down-side, though - when you try to clean up a sound and there still seems like a couple of oscillators are running...arghhhh, I have another tab playing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice smooth sound, low latency - good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is very nice, has some great sounds!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I have played on an M-Audio keystation 61es, the whole time I've worked on it.

Just saw how many knobs and sliders you have on that thing... man, I have a lot of work to do. :) On that note I am thinking about allowing people to assign knobs and maybe have a set of pre-written "drivers"... Will think about it.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How do I enable keyboard input?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi TeeWEE, if you are talking about a QWERTY - sadly I didn't have the time to get to it. But it's coming!

If you mean MIDI - only Chrome (latest - 43) supports Web MIDI without a flag. The procedure is - plug your keyboard, turn it on, restart browser (not just the tab, the whole browser).

I hope you'll like it.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Waits on loading something from platform.twitter.com for me :/

<comment><AUTHOR> The Tweet button. :( Did it load?

<comment><USER19> Proxy issue; probably not a big deal for most of your users :)

Nice job with the synth. I've got lots of recreational software synthesis under my belt (csound) and appreciate what you've built. Well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That is goddamn amazing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> so awesome

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

<comment><USER21> Productivity of HN users worldwide will hit rock bottom thanks to this.

Any intention to allow the import/export of midi files?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Guilty as charged! Sorry! :)))

Well, not at the moment, no. Once there is any form of automation allowed, probably yes. Or if it is to become a part of some web DAW, this would not be handled by the instrument, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While I think this is nice work, it's a shame it can't be plugged into a DAW. A nice toy but kinda useless for some of us</comment>


KnightOS – An open-source OS for calculators - <AUTHOR> http://www.knightos.org/?sneaky-repost <comment><USER2> I'd just love to see a solid open-source standard graphing calculator app for the common tablets - something like a more user-friendly version of gnu octave or something. The vendor lock-in by the education industry and TI is absurd.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, the few times a month I need to crunch numbers I reach for my phone, then get frustrated and just use Google because my TI83's batteries have been dead for years. I don't know what it is but I haven't seen a touch calculator interface anywhere near as good as a standard graphing calculator for just banging out some computations.

<comment><USER4> [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.supware.ti...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.supware.tipro)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish there was an open-source OS supporting phones like Nokia 1202 [http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1202-2573.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1202-2573.php) or cycle computers [http://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/bikecomputer/topline_w...](http://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/bikecomputer/topline_wired/bc1106/?punkt=details) \- tiny devices with dot matrix displays and traditionally limited capabilities.

I thought it's never going to happen (unless I get wealthy and support creating such a device, of course) but this one is close.

<comment><USER6> Rockbox is also sort of close: [http://www.rockbox.org/](http://www.rockbox.org/)

I guess it already supports more chips and screen sizes than something aimed at TI calculators would.

<comment><USER5> But can it really be called an operating system?

<comment><USER6> I think so. There's a gameboy emulator in there:

[http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/PluginRockboy](http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/PluginRockboy)

I guess it would be more applicable to the bike computer use case than a phone. But who knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat. I sold my TI-84 Plus in favor of a HP RPN calculator: It's not really comparable, but there are more open source projects around calculators like the WP34s[1] project which turns a cheap HP business calculator (HP 20b/30b) into a RPN calculator with a lot of features.

[1] [http://sourceforge.net/projects/wp34s/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/wp34s/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Holy heck, an in-browser demo. I've always wanted to try KnightOS but the TI- Nspire steadfastly refuses to run it.

<comment><USER9> You're in luck!

www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/z80e-for-nspire/

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the ?sneaky-repost ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Ha! Preemptive multitasking and a rotating cube as a demo. Nice work. Would love to see this ported to something else constrained like the Pebble Watch.

</comment><comment><USER9> If anyone here is interestd in helping with the project, we just made this tool inspired by Mozilla's "What can I do for Mozilla" tool:

[http://www.knightos.org/contributing/what-can-i- do.html#!/pr...](http://www.knightos.org/contributing/what-can-i- do.html#!/progornoprog/support)

It's not just assembly!

</comment><comment><USER12> This makes me so sentimental. My parents did not let me have a computer when growing up, but they did let me have a calculator. So I did what I had to do to buy a ton of them (TI82, HP48GX etc). At some point I purchased a TI92 but when reading about that now I see it was classified as a computer and not a calculator.

</comment><comment><USER13> @Sir_Cmpwn, you should document somewhere that at least the TI-83+ ROM will run fine on Android using the Andie Graph emulator. :)

<comment><USER9> Send a pull request! We're very open to them. Also accepting patches on the mailing list as of today if you prefer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can see this being used to cheat in exams ;)

<comment><USER15> The facilities of the TI are generally usefull for that.

Which is why TI added a key combo that erases the memory.

<comment><USER16> Except most teachers only cleared the RAM because they didn't know any better, so you could "archive" whatever you wanted in the flash...</comment></comment></comment>


LEGO Logic Gates - <AUTHOR> http://goldfish.ikaruga.co.uk/logic.html

<comment><USER2> Coincidentally I was just checking out a v8 air engine someone made: [http://jalopnik.com/391187/lego-maniac-blows-minds- with-1440...](http://jalopnik.com/391187/lego-maniac-blows-minds- with-1440-rpm-mindstorms-v8-lego-engine)

Also a sudoku solver out of Lego: [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94177-Swedish- Hack...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94177-Swedish-Hacker- Builds-Sudoku-Solving-Lego-Robot)

Equally impressive :)

</comment><comment><USER3> A new law shall be coined: If it can be built in LEGO, it will be... eventually.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps with the corollary: Yes, it can be built in LEGO.

<comment><USER3> I wonder when we'll have Lisp in LEGO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's another Lego adder, done with pneumatics: <http://www.kclague.net/PneumADDic%20II/index.htm>

</comment><comment><USER6> Who said Moore's law was dead?</comment>