UN calls for investigation into Crown Prince involvement in Bezos phone hacking - <AUTHOR> https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25488 <comment><AUTHOR> It's written in diplomat, the technically most interesting parts are the annexes [https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Expression/SRsSumexFr...](https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Expression/SRsSumexFreedexAnnexes.pdf)</comment>


SMT Solving on an iPhone (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~bornholt/post/z3-iphone.html <comment><USER2> Hah, funny to see my blog referenced. Yeah, cache misses are a huge part of SAT solving (modern solvers have prefetch code specifically for this loop, some seemingly following the code I wrote). And SAT solving is about 95+% of SMT solving. So, yeah, cache is where it's at.

I once had an old, but "enthusiast" i7 that had a 3-lane mem setup, and "upgraded" to a consumer dual-lane i7 that was 2-3 gens ahead. It had the same performance(!) for SAT solving. Was pretty eye-opening.

<comment><USER3> At the end of the day, cache miss latency should be bounded by the speed of light and the distance to memory. It's entirely unsurprising to me that by putting main memory on the same board as the CPU, as well as the optimizations that come from allowing a custom communication protocol between them, better performance is possible. I wonder what a desktop machine designed for cache and memory latency would look like.

<comment><USER4> It's SRAM vs DRAM not the speed of light. Go take a look a DRAM CAS values as clock speeds have increased. The ns/fetch has stayed pretty static(~10ns) since DDR first showed up.

There's been slight improvements but nothing like the order of magnitudes you seen in other areas.

If you want to pay the power and cost of SRAM it can be done but it doesn't usually pencil out beyond what you see in caches today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apple Silicon has been pretty impressive as it outperforms many laptops and desktops in benchmarks.

This guy even used the A12 chip from 2018. The A13 is even faster and ships on all iPhone 11's and even the $399 iPhone SE 2nd gen.

I am eager to see how Apple Silicon will do in the upcoming MacBooks.

<comment><USER6> It's going to be awesome to see chips that actually utilize the board space specifically for the functions the end-device is used for. I get general- purpose boards are the defacto to suit the masses and it's favoured by OEM's because they're easier to ship, but I think we're past the point we need that, adoption is no longer a problem.

I signed up for the Apple DTK, hoping they approve more people abroad..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that this sort of software can be extremely sensitive to cache arrangement.

Not only actual performance but also small details such as data arrangement, line size, replacement model and coherency model.

Source: I worked on performance improvement for a related piece of software.

<comment><USER8> [https://emeryberger.com/research/stabilizer/](https://emeryberger.com/research/stabilizer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Smt solvers and other 'old a.i.' workloads depend mainly on memory performance under unpredictably branching workloads, which the iPhone chips seem to be strong in. Compare that to 'new a.i.' workloads that eliminate branch misprediction almost entirely.

<comment><USER10> I have a hard time putting SAT, SMT, and at least some linear algebra algorithms into the AI category. They are all logic, just of a sort that's far more mind-numbing than our usual data processing workflows.

I know the AI people get grumpy about all of the problem spaces that have been harvested or "stolen" and called conventional code, but in this case I'm not so sure that's accurate.

It feels more like a bunch of people who wanted to use advanced math and logic jumped on the AI gravy train while it was going past, and then hopped off again when they had their fill.

<comment><USER11> SMT, SAT, etc are absolutely AI. In fact, Machine Learning is just another field inside AI (albeit a famous and successful one). As someone that got his PhD doing his research in "classical" AI, it's surprising that nowadays most people think that AI is just machine learning.

<comment><USER2> +1. I am always surprised that they used to do (and of course still must do) proper full-on formal verification of e.g. train track scheduling systems, so train accidents, and consequently 100s of deaths don't just happen because "sorry for the bug, ver 1.2 fixes it" \-- but people are happy to sit into a Tesla going at 120km/h and allow a well-tested, but not formally verified deep learning system to make decisions. BTW, I know it's not formally verified, because formally verifying deep learning systems is a currently very much unsolved problem for anything but toy examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am always amazed how the user experience of an iPad mini (~USD 400) is much better than a top end 13" Windows based notebook (~USD 2700). I know I am comparing apples with oranges in term of running processes and multitasking but the foreground app experience is much better.

<comment><USER13> My uninformed hunch: There's likely a lot to be said for 1) requiring all apps to use a single modern GUI toolkit, and 2) optimizing that toolkit for the use case of touch. Rather than having a single codebase that's supposed to solve all use cases in addition to 30 years of baggage.

<comment><USER14> Most of it is running a single app at a time, with far less complexity than a desktop system.

<comment><USER15> Note that at any given moment there's usually a couple dozen daemons running in the background on iOS. And while iPhone will only show one app at once, iPad can do a handful.

<comment><USER16> iOS optimizes here too, by limiting how much CPU/IO background apps can use. It's frustrating to use Chromecast (for example) on iOS since it's always disconnecting from the receiver.

<comment><USER15> I'm talking about background daemons from the system, which have different resource limits.

<comment><USER17> the background daemons are mostly memory-limited, not processor-limited.

<comment><USER15> Fair. And to be honest, many of them are present on macOS too, without Jetsam around to kill them ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really want to see the Apple Silicon under some real world load running a current gen AAA video game in 4K ultra settings while streaming with OBS, playing music, and having Chrome open with 100+ tabs. Because that's what my current PC does for example so I'm really curious about everything (performance, temps etc.)

To some extent it's just hard to believe that the iPhone CPU is better in every thing compared to the current gen top of the line Intel and AMD desktop CPUs.

<comment><USER19> This. While I can appreciate that Apple is taking a huge risk in creating their own chips, I cannot believe that the performance of the chips will be on par with current x86_64 chipsets based on Apple's past. In all honestly, the vast majority of Apple's clientele for computers are businesses, who basically just use them for basic web browsing/office work, which isn't a high bar to meet the needs for.

<comment><USER20> I don't know of a single employee of a serious actual business that has been issued an Apple anything. Not a laptop, desktop, or phone. I don't know of a single person that, when given the choice of what to use for work, has chosen Apple _unless_ they already were entrenched in the Apple ecosystem.

The vast majority of Apple's customers are Apple fans, people who merely wish to think different, nothing more, nothing less.

Edit: Don't downvote just to disagree. Comment and state your reasoning on why you think I'm wrong. If you work for a company that only issues Apple devices, please speak up with your experience on how this went, and, if possible, why the company didn't go with Windows or Linux computers instead.

For the comments that try to bring up software development roles: most software developers I know either use Windows or use Linux on the desktop, and loath OSX worse than I do. Very few prefer OSX.

The few people I know that prefer OSX (and will die on that hill) are frontend developers.

<comment><USER21> When I was at Facebook the majority of employees used Mac Book Pros for work (I was an exception because I worked on VR stuff which was Windows only). It seems like the majority of Silicon Valley big tech and unicorn startups have a large (if not majority) population of employees using Apple products for development. I understand that many employees prefer or need Linux or Windows, however.

<comment><USER20> That seems to be the only places where MBPs are almost part of the dress code to work there. The HN community has a disproportional representation of such employment, and sometimes the Apple echo chamber shows up strongly because of it.

It even happened at Microsoft until the Surface program was finally given a proper go ahead by Nadella. A lot of former MBP users seem to love the Surfacebook, so they succeeded in making a functional yet veblen good in the same vein that a MBP is.

<comment><USER22> Apple's A12Z Under Rosetta Outperforms Microsoft's Native Arm-Based Surface Pro X:

[https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/29/apple- rosetta-2-a12z-be...](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/29/apple- rosetta-2-a12z-beats-surface-pro-x/)

<comment><USER20> Yes, but how well does it perform against something that isn't what might be their slowest (but thinnest and most portable, but somehow not cheapest) model?

Apparently, a Surface with a Ryzen 4800U exists and is coming out really soon.

The comparison isn't realistic because Apple's acquisition of PA Semi was a brilliant move, and no one makes an ARM that is anywhere near that level of performance, not even Qualcomm. I agree with Apple's decision to put their ARM on the desktop as their answer to the Intel dilemma.

In this case, an ARM vs ARM comparison is not an apples to apples comparison, Apple does not license their design to anyone else, ergo, the only way to make a fair comparison is to use the best commonly available part, which currently, is Zen 2 parts.

I expect a Zen 2 to crush a 2 year old Apple ARM, but I also expect a future Apple desktop and laptop design to keep up with Zen 3. I actually hope Apple can win the fight, but I also wish Apple would license their CPU to other manufacturers to promote the general adoption of more architectures in this space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are smartphone architectures really this amazing, or is Intel just dropping the ball so hard that they're getting lapped by mobile hardware?

<comment><USER9> Intel has focused most on data center performance, where you are operating at scale and frequently using entirely different algorithms than people usually use on a PC or Phone. For instance

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column- oriented_DBMS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column-oriented_DBMS)

dominates the competition for ad-hoc analytics under "enterprise" conditions. There the point is to maximize the use of memory bandwidth and never stall the pipelines, to turn a commercial data processing job into something that looks like HPC to the memory bus.

(Actually columnar organization improves performance reliably for small data; video game programmers in the 1980s knew that it was better to put the x coordinates of all the spaceships together, then put the y coordinates together, then put the sprite id's together, ...)

Most muggles though go with the row-orientation that comes with structs, classes, record types, and don't care. Pythoners know their language is slow but they know enough to use 'pandas' which is an object-oriented interface to an in-memory column store.

Intel has sold it's performance on the basis of what a sophisticated organization could get out of complex programming. For instance, the AVX-512 instructions can nearly double performance for some workloads. If you are a cloud provider that will rack 1000s of identical machines that run the same software, it can be a big win. The average PC user runs software that has to run on a wide range of hardware and may be supported by lower-tier organizations. They will rightly privilege having a trouble-free product and low support costs vs giving every user the highest performance possible.)

<comment><USER24> Columnar is just a specialisation, like graph or document. It's not a general- purpose improvement on relational.

<comment><USER9> From the viewpoint of relational it is an execution strategy. Many columnar databases return row wise results via odbc or some similar interface and they look like relational databases.

The difficulties of doing columnar style queries for document and graph databases led at least one person I know to tell a certain three letter agency that they couldn't have the panopticon machine they wanted.

For online transaction processing rows are good, but for OLAP it is not even competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Both systems ran Z3 4.8.1, compiled by me _using Clang_ with the same > optimization settings.

Hypothesis: LLVM's AArch64 backend has had more work put into it (by Apple, at least) than LLVM's x86_64 backend has, specifically for "finishing one-off tasks quickly" (as opposed to "achieving high throughput on long-running tasks.")

To me, this would make sense—until recently, AArch64 devices were mostly always-mobile, and so needed to be optimized for performing compute-intensive workloads _on battery_ , and so have had more thought into the _efficiency_ of their single-threaded burst performance (the whole "race to sleep" thing.) I'd expect, for example, AArch64-optimized code-gen to favor low-code-size serial loops over large-code-size SIMD vector ops, ala GCC -Os, in order to both 1. keep the vector units powered down, and 2. keep cache-line contention lower and thereby keep now-unneeded DMA channels powered down; both keeping the chip further from the TDP ceiling; and thus keeping the rest of the core that _is_ powered on able to burst-clock longer. In such a setup, the simple serial- processing loop may potentially outperform the SIMD ops. (Presuming the loop has a variable number of executions that may be long or short, and is itself run frequently.)

x86_64 devices, meanwhile, generally are only expected to perform compute- intensive tasks _while connected to power_ , and so the optimizations contributed to compilers like LLVM that specifically impact x86_64, are likely more from the HPC and OLTP crowds, who favor squeezing out continuous aggregate _throughput_ , at the expense of per-task time-to-completion (i.e. holding onto Turbo Boost-like features at maximum duty cycle, to increase _mean_ throughput, even as the overheat conditions and license-switching overhead lower _modal_ task performance.)

<comment><USER26> The LLVM x86_64 backend just gets as much work, and HPC is just one of the reasons. The NVIDIA PGI compilers for example use LLVM as a code generation backend, and that's one commercial option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > So, in a fit of procrastination, I decided to cross-compile Z3 to iOS, and > see just how fast my new phone (or hypothetical future Mac) is.

> I bet the new iPad Pro's A12X is even faster thanks to the larger thermal > envelope a tablet affords.

iirc Apple intends to complete transition to Apple Silicon within three years (and they often tend to be conservative with their estimates) so I'd imagine the 2023 or 2024 mac pro will be interesting given (I'd assume) it won't have the thermal constraints an iPhone has. Thoughts?

<comment><USER28> They are planning to complete the transition in 2 years: [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces- mac-t...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac- transition-to-apple-silicon/)

Makes your question even more interesting though, what will a Mac Pro look like running Apple silicon inside 2 years from now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting. Is it possible that this particular workload takes a big hit due to the Spectre/Meltdown mitigations?

<comment><USER30> Yes. Mitigations drastically increase the cost of branch mispredictions, which has always been expensive on x86 and has gotten even worse. See also the sister comment.

Cache misses have the same problem.

<comment><USER31> I highly doubt the author compiled Z3 with those mitigations enabled, because they are opt-in compiler options. Perhaps if the program makes frequent system calls then the kernel's mitigations would introduce overhead.

<comment><USER29> My impression is that the mitigations that would hit hardest are Intel microcode patches that load at boot time, and it may not have been obvious to revert those. Or perhaps not wise to, depending on the production environment.

<comment><USER14> Why? If performance matters, don't browse Reddit on your lab machine.

I don't run antivirus on my microwave oven. There's no need.

<comment><USER30> Support for most hardware depends on applying latest patches for HW and SW. Only if you explicitly bought as HPC or Lab environment with the appropriate contract specifying performance you might get around that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >Indeed, after benchmarking I checked the iPhone's battery usage report, which said Slack had used 4 times more energy

>than the Z3 app despite less time on screen.

</comment><comment><USER33> The a12 has about 3-4 times the number of transistors as i7-7700k. I know there are a lot of other on than the SOC core than the cpu for a12, but they still have a pretty large transistor budget. It was made with 7nm transistors vs 14nm that intel was using at the time when 7700k came out. Apple did a good job designing the chips, but TSMC is a huge part of why these chips are so good. For the longest time Intel manufacturing process was way ahead of anyone else which reflected in their performance. If I give you way more transistors I can probably make a better chip.

If I give you more cache, decoders, execution units etc. I can make a faster chip.

Also if you used all cores for sustained amount of time the intel would win out just because it can handle all that heat.

<comment><USER34> I think the dimension you're missing is that the a12 also consumes significantly less power. While we don't know exact numbers, the author speculates it draws about a tenth of the power as the i7.

<comment><USER35> It's the cache that makes this fast, not the higher clock higher voltage cores on an older process.

Not that x86 particularly in 2018 is the pinnacle of perf per watt but the power dimension is non linear on some of these variables and this particular benchmark doesn't happen to gain much from it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> (2018)

<comment><USER37> Makes me wonder what the article would look like today, or next month when the new generation iPhone hardware comes out. I guess benchmarks like geekbench can give us a general picture

<comment><USER36> The author's code is open source[0] if anyone wants to take a look.

[0]: [https://github.com/jamesbornholt/z3-ios](https://github.com/jamesbornholt/z3-ios)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> On the topic of the portability of Z3, does anyone know why this example runs fine on native amd64 but fails to solve when built with emscripten/wasm?

[https://github.com/sielicki/z3wasm](https://github.com/sielicki/z3wasm)

Do a build by running, "mkdir bld && cd bld && emcmake cmake ../ -GNinja && emmake ninja"

</comment><comment><USER39> Not particularly apropos to the thrust of the article, but I want to apply SMT to some tricky infosec use cases. Is there a good place to start for someone without an academic background in math/logic/etc?

<comment><USER7> I suggest you start with this paper:

"SMT Solvers in Software Security", Julien Vanegue, Sean Heelan, Rolf Rolles

[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot12/woot12...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot12/woot12-final26.pdf)

<comment><USER39> Looks perfect, thank you!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For anyone trying to reproduce it in an Android phone you don't need to compile anything. Just "apt install z3" in Termux. It will probably be pretty slow but it will work.

<comment><USER7> Z3 is not available on termux (I am pretty sure it has been before).

Back to the issue at hand. It is possible z3 is faster on arm64 due to the aarch64 bitfield instructions, but I find that unlikely.

<comment><USER40> It was recently merged but it is available.

[https://github.com/termux/termux- packages/tree/master/packag...](https://github.com/termux/termux- packages/tree/master/packages/z3)

<comment><USER7> Sounds it, thanks. Had to update the yermux app first to see it.

Yes, z3 performs slightly betteron aarch64. But performance seems to be mostly cache dependent.

Also, z3 is threades which would favor Apple with their fewer but faster cores compare to others with more but weaker cores.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm... I think my autocorrect had a meltdown.

Hopefully people can figure it out anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's very fun suggestion to put an iPhone in the cold water. Imagine cluster of iPhones working under-water for math problems :)

</comment><comment><USER42> When Apple releases ARM Macs I think we are all going to be really impressed. Take these phone chips, beef them up a bit with more cores and maybe more cache, clock them a bit higher, and give them better cooling so they can sustain higher speeds.

If it goes how I think it will go, X86 is done. People will really start wanting ARM on servers.

<comment><USER30> People have been wanting ARM servers since the first ones were announced. But there are two big problems. First, there is no unified boot- and device initialisation-standard. So you cannot just put in a bootable USB stick and expect it to work. Second, you can not reliably order any hardware, just very small series just above prototype stages...

<comment><USER26> > First, there is no unified boot- and device initialisation-standard.

There is. UEFI + ACPI.

> So you cannot just put in a bootable USB stick and expect it to work.

That's how it works today for Arm servers. Windows on Arm platforms also use UEFI + ACPI, and ship with the bootloader unlocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18383851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18383851)

</comment><comment><USER44> Could be Apple arm chips have certain instructions that are more optimized

</comment><comment><USER45> Beware: Apple devices are not general purpose computers. Whether you can use them as such may be subject to change.</comment>


Algebraic patterns – Semigroup - <AUTHOR> http://philipnilsson.github.io/Badness10k/posts/2016-07-14-functional-patterns-semigroup.html <comment><USER2> I think of these programming constructs as Monoids rather than semigroups. A monoid is just a semigroup with an identity element:

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Monoid.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Monoid.html)

Most of his examples have an identity, giving a monoid.

        * (string, concat): identity ''
        * numbers with addition/multiplication: identity 0/1
        * numbers with min/max: Numbers in computers are
          finite, so this is quite useful.  stdint.h defines
          INT32_MAX, INT32_MIN, etc.
        * booleans with && / || : true / false
        * function composition: identity function f(x) = x
        * frequency map: {} or {A: 0, B:0, ...} depending on
          how you define it

Comparators: Is this a bug in the post? It doesn't seem to follow the pattern because the arity of the functions is different. In a semigroup or monoid all the elements are supposed to be drawn from the same set.

Other examples I can think of:

        * Python's dict with respect to member .update()
         (if you think of it as an operator rather than
         mutating member).  Identity is {}
        * Unix Pipes: identity 'cat' (note that the shell
          supports point-free programming)

<comment><USER3> As you say, most semigroups are just monoids where you forget the identity. Here's an MO thread on examples of monoids that aren't trivial restrictions:

[http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/460/are-there-any- in...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/460/are-there-any-interesting- semigroups-that-arent-monoids)

<comment><USER4> Even with these examples, the absence of an identity can be useful. e.g. Non- empty lists form a semigroup.

<comment><USER5> > e.g. Non-empty lists form a semigroup.

If I take everyone's meanings correctly, what you describe (a monoid with the identity _removed_ ) is different from what cottonseed ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12110936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12110936)) describes, which is a monoid with the identity _forgotten_. That is, it's still there, but we don't require it to be there axiomatically.

Note that _every_ monoid is a semigroup (because it satisfies a stronger collection of axioms), but not every monoid with identity removed is a semigroup (because it's possible to combine two non-identity elements to get the identity element): consider, for example, the integers without 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure how useful this is in practice. For example, addition in actual computer languages isn't necessarily associative and compilers often can't treat them as associative.

Floating point numbers added in the wrong order can result in catastrophic cancellation. So for example, as far as JavaScript is concerned, numbers aren't associative.

Integers may overflow. Twos-complement addition is associative, but only because if you get the same bogus answer in the case of overflow. If you actually detect overflow, you may get overflow or not depending on the order in which you add the numbers.

Oftentimes we ignore these issues, but it seems like if you're talking about taking advantage of associative rules to reorder calculations, you have to think about it. Thinking in terms of semigroups instead of concrete datatypes seems like a likely source of bugs when your model makes assumptions that aren't actually true.

<comment><USER7> Is unsigned arithmetic non-associative?

<comment><USER8> Integer addition is associative, even for fixed-bitwidth integers (which constitute "the integers modulo 2^ _n_ " for some bitwidth _n_ ; e.g. 8-bit bytes under addition form the group of integers modulo 2^8 (i.e., integers modulo 256)).

Note that both the full integers as well as the integers modulo _n_ are groups under addition. As groups are more restrictive than semigroups, all groups are also semigroups (groups are semigroups that also have an identity element and where every element is invertible).

Integer multiplication also forms a semigroup (and in fact a monoid, due to identity), but not a full group due to zero not having an inverse. So, it's usually said that "the non-zero integers" form a group.

<comment><USER5> > Integer multiplication also forms a semigroup (and in fact a monoid, due to > identity), but not a full group due to zero not having an inverse.

Wait, what? Very few integers have multiplicative inverses (in the integers). If you meant to speak of modular inverses, then even that is false for composite moduli like 2^n (with n > 1), which may be why im4w1 ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12113934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12113934)) asked if you meant to work modulo a prime.

<comment><USER8> Ah, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wish the applications section had more detail or perhaps an "editorial". I don't really follow the consequence of a frequency map being associative.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, the application section is pretty poor. The number one large-scale practical application of semigroups (and, more often, their extension the monoid) is in parallel and concurrent systems. Associativity says that order of operations doesn't matter, which in turn implies you can distribute computations however you like across multiple machines and still get the correct result. This is the big idea leveraged in systems like Summingbird and other big data frameworks (e.g. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.7544](https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.7544)) and in CRDTs.

<comment><USER11> This is a good reply and I'll add to it.

Note that CRDT stands for Conflict free Replicated Datatype and there are a few sub-acronym expansions: Convergent Replicated Datatype and Commutative Replicated Datatype.

[EDIT] I wanted to add that CRDTs were mentioned here because in order for them to provide the kind of guarantees they do they _must_ satisfy the law of associativity (or, be a semigroup), commutativity, and idempotency. So, technically, you have to go further than semigroups with _commutative semigroups_. [/EDIT]

At Plum we made _heavy_ use of CRDT's on-top of an eventually consistent whole-state replication technology called Plumtree, no relation to the company's name, just coincidence, within the internet-connected dimmer we built called the Lightpad.

The primary design goal was to enable advanced configurations: Arbitrary groups of Lightpads could be controlled from any other one on the same network by binding it to a specific finger gesture. We also did not want this configuration to be dependent upon any single master, they had to be truly master-less.

In-general, Eventual Consistency is pretty scary when you're deploying it to embedded internet-connected devices where you can't immediately shell onto the device like you can with a server in a data center. I have lots of stories here I'll write about sometime of the pains I encountered while developing this solution and how I ended up on CRDTs.

Strong Eventual Consistency (typically, CRDTs deployed on-top of an eventually consistent substrate), though, is very safe and provides a lot of guarantees about the concurrent behavior of the algorithm as it acts upon your data.

Using a CRDT (specifically the ORSWOT - Observed Removal Set Without Tombstones) eliminated the majority of our pains and concerns with data-loss, conflicting concurrent writes, and integrity in the face of flaky consumer- grade home networks (Plumtree is highly-available and partition tolerant - perfect for our needs where we have to be able to continue moving forward even if a _majority or more_ of the Lightpads go offline and never come back up).

<comment><USER12> It's always good to hear about IOT companies using CRDTs because it seems like the perfect fit for it, yet you don't hear very much about it. Also interesting hearing you mention you were using plumtree for your replication backend.

To elaborate more on your point, CRDTs are super helpful while trying to distribute a lot of devices, but they only get you so far. While building Lasp[0][1], a distributed data-flow language using CRDTs, we found out a lot of scalability problems with naive usage of CRDTs. We are aiming to reach 10k-20k nodes in the near future, so we are focusing a lot on reducing network usage.

State-based CRDTs send their full state to all their peers, which works ok when your states are small, but they introduce lots of overhead in any other case. Operation-based CRDTs only send the actions performed on it (add 1, or rmv 2, for example), but these are not idempotent and require a lot of guarantees from the underlying distribution backend.

We are focusing on using Delta CRDTs, that combine the low network usage of operation-based structures, with the idempotence of state-based approaches.

Using plumtree for your backend makes it resilient to network failures, but using the default full membership protocol makes it almost unusable when you're dealing with a big number of nodes. Using alternative protocols like Hyparview greatly reduces the number of protocol messages in your network.

Finally, since Lasp is a data-flow language, we are applying control-flow analysis to select and remove unused or intermediate values in the program, thus also reducing network usage.

[0]: [http://lasp-lang.org/](http://lasp-lang.org/) [1]: [https://github.com/lasp-lang/lasp](https://github.com/lasp-lang/lasp)

<comment><USER11> Yeah I'm excited to see what you guys come up with on delta CRDTs.

Our node cluster sizes are fairly manageable so we can tolerate the inefficiency right now but it will be nice to have a solution in-place when we want to optimize.

I did not know about HyParView. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Might be slightly off topic but in the recently released Glasgow Haskell Compiler, semigroups are now built into the base library. No more dependencies when using it.

<comment><USER14> How does that work in Haskell? Is the user of a semigroup somehow guaranteed that its operation is associative?

<comment><USER15> The person who implements Semigroup for a data type must ensure that the laws hold.

<comment><USER16> Which is where property based testing really shines. Still requires the implementer to be a good citizen and write those tests though.

<comment><USER17> AKA QuickCheck. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickCheck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickCheck)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Incidentally the typical mathematical curriculum does not even bother with monoids and semigroups when it comes to the initial introduction. The introductory material jumps right into the definition of a group and then mentions on the side that removing a few key pieces leaves you with a monoid and a semigroup. Same with fields, rings, rigs, etc. The most constrained piece is introduced first and then dropping requirements leaves you with something less constrained for which you can prove fewer theorems.

I learned groups and fields first and then learned about the more relaxed versions. I'm not sure which approach is better though. Groups are certainly more fun to play with but monoids probably show up in more contexts.</comment>


Facebook Investor: "Social Is Over" - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/roger-mcnamee-video-2011-7#ixzz1StIabZxB

<comment><USER2> "Social is "done", it's now a feature, don't go do a social startup."

= now is the BEST time to reinvent social as everyone thinks they have it figured out...

</comment><comment><USER3> mp4 video: <http://m.fora.tv/v/c13752>

</comment><comment><USER4> This guy is rather brilliant, methinks.</comment>


Background on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile and Russian Spy - <AUTHOR> https://www.wikileaks.org/Background-and-Documents-on-Attempts-to-Frame-Assange-as-a-Pedophile-and.html <comment><USER2> They're coming on thick and strong with attempts to discredit the source, rather than deny the authenticity of the material.

Ironically, the former actually serves as an authentication of the material itself.

As Tyrion Lannister would say, "when you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say".

Edit: to clear up confusion, by 'source' I mean wikileaks and Julian Asssange, how it seems they're pulling out all the stops to try and discredit him, with 'they' being whoever is afraid of what he has to leak.

<comment><USER3> They're coming on thick and strong with attempts to discredit the source because the source is seriously lacking in credibility. I'd already spotted and commented on the bizarre UN shenanigans earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12737648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12737648) The fact that the sole source is a dating company press release in which they claim to be a United Nations signatory and member, and that they accuse the UN of conspiring with Assange and the Bahamas police, should've been enough justification not to take everything as gospel. Unfortunately, Daily Kos are keen to attack Assange and not so keen on fact checking and research, as are Mrs Clinton's Twitter supporters.

<comment><USER4> >They're coming on thick and strong with attempts to discredit the source because the source is seriously lacking in credibility

the way they could do this correctly is to contradict assange's claims with evidence... do that, and if their evidence is valid, assange's claims collapse.

but they aren't doing that; they can't do that.

here is the recipe upcoming from the clinton campaign:

1\. attack source

2\. escalate attacks on source

3\. deny claims of source categorically

4\. deny context of facts that source puts forth

5\. deny specifics of facts that source puts forth

6\. deny involvement of high level people

7\. throw scapegoats

8\. deny witting involvement of high level people

9\. admit item numbers 3 through 8, sequentially, as separate steps

10\. media "loses attention" of the story before reaching the point where high level people admit that the allegations of the source are correct

this cycle will take a while, maybe a year or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one somewhat concerned over the absolutely blatant declarations that Russia is now our enemy again?

You've got a one presidential candidate claiming that the other is Bad Guy because he might have ties to The Russians.

It sounds like something from McCarthyism, or from the height of the cold war.

And now the mainstream attempts to discredit what is effectively a whistleblowing service seem to center around The Russians.

It's creepy.

<comment><USER6> Russia has been behaving as, if not an enemy, an actor whose interests align with our enemies (see: their partnership with Iran, their support of Assad, and their annexation of Crimea).

And while it's ironic to watch the media that could not have been more supportive of Wikileaks when the reveals focused on Bush-era scandals (at least some of which deserved the attention as abuses) now discovering that Assange is as self-interested as they come now that his dumps concern Clinton, who they're clearly much more supportive of than Trump (justifiably), but he's been known to despise Hillary for a long time now, and the recent dumps have been far less carefully redacted this time around. Wikileaks should be a whistleblowing service. Unfortunately, Assange won't let it be that simple.

<comment><USER7> When did Assad become our enemy?

<comment><USER8> When he started chlorine and barrel bombing civilians?

<comment><USER9> > When he started chlorine and barrel bombing civilians?

I would suggest to you that the world is more complicated than the soundbites vomited to you by the as of lately, largely discredited media and Obama administration.

The accusations against Assad change as necessary. It used to be Sarin, until that was disproved, for example. Bottom line, they just really want Syria to be destroyed like Iraq and Libya were, and will make up accusations as necessary. Did he drop some barrel bombs (home made bombs)? Probably. Did some of them hit civilians? Probably. The US has killed it's share of civilians also, hasn't it?

You don't know anything, but you want a nuclear war with Russia. Seems appropriate.

[https://off-guardian.org/2016/07/25/assad-the-tyrant/](https://off- guardian.org/2016/07/25/assad-the-tyrant/)

<comment><USER6> Wait, are you actually defending Assad?

EDIT: just want clarify that I don't necessarily disagree that Iraq and Libya were disasters, and that the Syrian situation seems to have devolved into a no good options situation, but that in no way excuses Assad's human rights violations.

<comment><USER10> As the previous posters have stated, it's complicated.

If Assad's regime falls, the Al-Queda and ISIS affiliated groups move in. I'm not sure America wants that. Do we want that? Hard to say!

Saudi Arabia supports the Assad regime falling because the Assad regime is not Sunni.

If we set up a no fly zone in Syria, we are then in direct conflict with Russia's forces. It's no longer a proxy war.

I hope there's a way to be against US intervention in Syria(if only because of grim realpolitik reasons) and simultaneously not defend Assad.

I fully recognize that the Assad regime is terrible(I can pummel you with New Yorker articles). I don't quite believe the Assad people used poison gas, I think the jury is still out on that.

<comment><USER6> As I mentioned, Syria seems to have spiralled into a "there are no good outcomes" territory. But the fact that deposing Assad could (is even likely) to create a new enemy doesn't negate the behavior that has landed Syria on the state sponsors of terror list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So they're saying Assange is a dangerous sex offender who also likes to try and fuck kids over the internet via dating agencies, while taking Russian bribes.

It all reads like the lowest budget attempt at framing someone possible.

<comment><USER12> Well, it may be two independently launched plans.

<comment><USER13> Ahaha, I'm thinking about "Burn Notice" right now :D

<comment><USER14> Jeffrey Donovan and Bruce Campbell should make an appearance in the next House of Cards season.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Big winners of this election cycle:

Trump - If he wins, it's big. If he loses his brand is immensely toxic and no business/brand will want to do business with him. He'll have to go the Glenn Beck route and create his own media network and try to sustain and leverage the alt-right movement.

Alex Jones - Getting a lot more mainstream penetration in my view. He'll be selling a lot more seeds and prepper gear.

Julian Assange - Got a new lease on life after he started fading from relevance, especially after Snowden outscooped anything Wikileaks did.

<comment><USER16> Not sure, Assange / wikileaks went from "impartial leaked docs hosting service" to "at the whim of founder's grudges" for me. Releasing the dem emails is fine, timing it for maximum damage to Dems election prospects isn't.

<comment><USER17> Anyone who ever thought it was the first was deluding themselves. Assange has always has an agenda. It's just that his old supporters don't like the new flavor of his Koolaid.

<comment><USER18> If Assange had 'an agenda' (how nebulous) then why would he have been successful at interviewing the world's most cited academic, Noam Chomsky, and other high-level thought and political leaders? What exactly is the 'agenda' he is supposed to have? You are spreading fallacious FUD.

<comment><USER17> Are you really implying that Chomsky doesn't have an agenda? He's more famous for his political nonsense, e.g. being a far-lefty who supports people like Castro and Chavez, than his actually (very good) linguistics research.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I am.

Chomsky publishes his research and backs his arguments with innumerable facts, the man is practically a walking encyclopedia of US foreign policy, human rights violations and hypocrisy over the last 100 years.

The difference between an academic and someone with an 'agenda' is that one is interested in the truth and publishes cited analyses, the other is only motivated to impress a particular opinion.

Chomsky is voted by the global community of academics as a valued member of that community. Against that shadow, your assertions are valueless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So far the only link to Clinton seems to be post-hoc (this happened around the same time as the Podesta etc. emails) and guilt by association (the accusations were reported on DailyKos and "pro-Clinton Twitter accounts"). Weak. Is there really anything more, or is this just Assange being Assange?

<comment><USER20> If there's one person that doesn't stand to gain from lots and lots of attention being drawn to Julian Assange, it's Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton doesn't want you to be researching into this Julian Assange guy whose apparently been the victim of a scheme to accuse him of accepting Russian money and chatting up infants in the Bahamas, both via the same dating website (which is obviously a totally plausible cover story that a real conspirator with near unlimited resources would definitely choose as the best avenue to set him up) but also has a very interesting website with a lot of very awkward statements linked to at least one of the candidates for the presidency.

If there's one person that stands to gain _most_ from a reported attempt at a hatchet job on Assange that's far too silly to have any basis in truth, it's probably a person who would really, really like you to (i) visit Wikileaks.com, preferably before November 9th (ii) not believe a word of all these - actually quite possibly not true - rumours floating around about Russians being prime movers behind Wikileaks.com (iii) not think too much about that interview he just postponed again because obviously allegations of sexual impropriety against Julian Assange are just part of a fiendishly stupid conspiracy.

Funnily enough in the last couple of weeks this person has also had his internet cut by a state actor... wait for next round of stories.... not the state actor you think... wait for next round of stories.... just kidding, it was American influence all along, _and_ had to cancel a widely publicised balcony announcement because of apparently unanticipated security concerns.

(I can actually think of a second person that might benefit from people visiting Wikileaks before November 9th and people tending to suspect that all allegations of sexual impropriety should be treated as politically motivated until proven otherwise, but I think Ockham's razor and his campaign team's preference for blunter instruments rules that one out...)

<comment><USER3> Except that it was almost entirely Clinton supporters pushing this on sites like Daily Kos, Twitter, HN, etc. Wikileaks were really late to the party on getting a press release out about this, with Buzzfeed dismantling the whole thing shortly before they got their press release out and rendering it almost moot, and the attack was timed when the internet connection cut limited their ability to respond effectively. The fact that the whole hatchet job was ridiculous didn't matter, because Clinton's supporters just ignored this and accused anyone who pointed it out of being pro-pedo, and it got almost 24 hours of being spread around the internet unchallenged. Not only that, countering it tied up a bunch of time and resources that could've been used to post things damaging to her instead.

It looks like Ecuador have also just published a press release about cutting his internet connection that's perfectly timed to distract from this too. So Clinton's in no way losing out here. She benefits from people believing that Assange is a pedo and no-one hears about part where it's an incompetent frameup. The taint from this will stick to anything Assange says about her in future.

<comment><USER21> Clinton doesn't need a conspiracy to win, it's as simple as that. She's polling at +8 nationally, if the election were held today she has at least a 75% chance of a landslide election (320+ EVs) if the election were held today, and there's zero indication that Trump's numbers have any upward mobility whatsoever at this point. In fact, the Republicans will be lucky to hold onto the House if things keep going the way they have the past couple weeks.

There's no reason to do a dumb attempt at stinging a has-been like Assange. Literally all it could do is hurt her (if it backfired and people took Assange seriously).

[http://election.princeton.edu/todays-electoral-vote- histogra...](http://election.princeton.edu/todays-electoral-vote-histogram/)

Hanlon's Razor says that if it looks like some dumb idiot ("small business owner") who thought he could hire Assange for his TV commercial and then got his jimmies rustled that Assange said no then it probably is that instead of an international conspiracy. But even if we're moving into conspiracy territory, Clinton doesn't have the motive here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just today someone was posting the Todd and Claire website links to hacker news stories on Assange. Sucks to be targeted like this constabtly.

First post of this to hw news that I saw: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736247)

I noticed this post because it was pretty shitty source for such strong accusations.

</comment><comment><USER23> Was this "Todd and Clare" site created by Assange himself?

Seriously, what the hell dating site claims to be "the first dating site ever to be integrated in a United Nations program."?

<comment><USER20> Read the article and it's even better. With gems like

"The UN Declaration on Human Rights talks about citizens being able to live without state-level interference, yet here the UN is today, delisting and blocking a small company because we criticized their support for Julian Assange"

Which is a little odd form of argument, not only because it's an unusually highbrow line for a dating agency to take, but also because it doesn't make sense as the UN isn't really "state-level" and the UNDHR doesn't use that word either.

Almost like the person drafting it had interference by "state-level actors" on the brain. Wonder if anyone tweeted something which also used that rather rather arcane term to their 3.7M followers recently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> tldr: Recent events have been suggestive of a plot to frame Asange for sex crimes. If it pans out, it could become the strongest evidence that false allegations are being made against him.

First, the backstory on this bizarre entanglement: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-bizarre- story-o...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-bizarre-story-of-how- a-tiny-online-dating-site-accused-j)

Second, who is the mystery Google engineer tied into this?

</comment><comment><USER25> > Under US law, Mr Assange and Wikileaks' threats amount to terrorism against > an American citizen (ToddandClare.com) by a foreign entity

Really.

From [https://www.toddandclare.com/datinglife/online- dating/united...](https://www.toddandclare.com/datinglife/online- dating/united-nations-statement-julian-assange-wikileaks/)

> The UN wants to have its headquarters in our country, but at the same time, > doesn't want to acknowledge its own American member's constitutional rights, > like freedom of speech.

Quite a political statement coming from a mere dating site :/

And

> Like the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention's misguided support for a > fugitive rapist

Well he has had that _allegation_ hanging over him well before T&C started signing deals with him they are now trying to sue him over.

<comment><USER26> > a mere dating site

Kinda making me think its not? Don't the 3-letters routinely buy or start companies like this to use for their own purposes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So here is a report on toddandclare.com / T&C Network Solutions.

[https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/final_report_t_c_17_oct_2016-2...](https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/final_report_t_c_17_oct_2016-2.pdf)

Does sound pretty sus.

But I was also interested in the quote they have from Noam Chomsky on the KATIA project...

"Very worthwhile project." —Noam Chomsky on KATIA, 5/11/16

Can't find him mentioning it or anything like it online. Just circular references and none that lead back to Chomsky.

All very odd indeed.

</comment><comment><USER28> So we have what appears to be a full-on hot propaganda war between an apparently independent "hacker" and the leading presidential candidate.

I'll say it again: just move all those old 80s cyberpunk novels into the non- fiction section. Pretty soon we'll have Rastas in space.

<comment><USER29> as long as i get my knight visions and redneck katana!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apropos nothing it occurred to me there is an excellent property of encrypted drives, even if you can be forced to decrypt them, illegal data can't be added to the drive by physical capture alone until you are forced to turn over the password.

</comment><comment><USER4> this seems like pretty good proof that the dirt on clinton is real, legitimate, and devastating... why else would there be such a sudden and intense effort to shut him up (push ecuador to cut off his internet) discredit him, shut him down, and smear him as an enemy spy?

seriously, if the allegations were crazy, they'd just say "nope, and here are the facts that are correct". all hands on deck for discrediting him speaks volumes about what is really going on.

the pedophilia smear is very predictable, also... i believe assange himself may have predicted this years ago.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wikileaks team: If there is any need for further research from within the UN I have a very high-level friend within that section.</comment>


Pause and Effect: The past and future of punctuation marks - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/pause-and-effect <comment><USER2> One interesting recent development in punctuation is the effect of emoticons/emoji. The classic example is the :) at the end of a parenthetical, but more generally, _any_ punctuation mark abutting an emoticon is unfortunate. Consider a winking emote prior to a semicolon ;); or an em dash :|—the adjoining mark causes ambiguous parsing. Personally, I have taken to placing the emote _after_ the period, like so. :D This seems to parse somewhat better, despite the emote "technically" being part of the next sentence. (Also note that, for single-sentence missives, as are common in instant messaging, the period is often omitted.)

Emoji objectively improve upon this situation, because they are pictures, not punctuation. There is no ambiguity in an emote before a semicolon ; nor an em dash —so no sentence-rearranging gymnastics are necessary. As a matter of taste, though, I still prefer the visual look of emotes. :)

(EDIT: apparently HN eats emoji. That seems appropriate.)

<comment><USER3> Your real problem is that you're mixing levels of formality--punctuation doesn't belong to emotes in the first place, of either type. That's a hallmark of old-person-typing :P</comment></comment>


Macron Vowed to Make France a 'Startup Nation.' Is It Getting There? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/business/emmanuel-macron-france-technology.html <comment><USER2> I run a machine learning company in France. Call it a startup or not, doesn't matter. Most of what I read in the comments here is not exactly true nor relies on statistics (sound like my story is...).

For companies acting within the science or innovative space, France is a haven. CIR is a tax return that covers 30% of R&D personnel, JEI is a status that halves the taxes on personnel for 8 years, and nullifies gov taxes the first year, halving them the second year. Add to this the region and gov backed projects that match 50% of your investment in a project.

The truth is it is much much cheaper than in the US, and probably unmatched in Western Europe. Now, all this preexisted Macron.

Some hurdles remain investment, low margins for companies around 20 employees and 2M yearly, they get stuck at that stage and lack of transparency.

One major pain is interacting with large French corporations, with payment delays unheard of in the US. This slows many startups down when it does not kill them. Once bootstrapped it seems to get better.

I'm not sure what a startup nation is not whether I'd like to live in it, but France is certainly in good position to fuel early small innovative & scientific companies, not more but not less :)

<comment><USER3> CIR is a huge joke, it doesn't help small companies that much. Big companies are far better at collecting it than start-ups.

On paper, CIR is for research and development efforts, basically it's for efforts that improve the state of the art.

But in practice CIR is a tax break/subvention in disguise for medium to big french companies like Orange, Thales, bnpparibas...

Just to give you an idea, at one of my former job, an email was sent to every employee of the division. This email asked us to provide our CV rewritten with "research terms" (ex: replace implementing by prototyping, debugging by experimenting, etc). We were CIRing projects in pure maintenance, we were CIRing the same thing over and over each years. It was clearly abusive.

I've heard stories that are even worst than that, like banks CIRing an overall of their website.

<comment><USER4> The fact that big companies are using CIR as a mean to get money from the government does not imply that it does not work for real research companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hiring and firing people in France is particularly hard. Most companies do not scale beyond 10 employees as after this threshold the regulatory burden increases dramatically.

Taxes on small to medium businesses are downright confiscatory.

Most French people still see business owners as exploiters of their workers.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how big the contractor market is in France. I mean, contractors are easy to hire and fire so it could be a good compromise (at least in the short term).

<comment><USER7> Not living in France, but Belgium (similar market to some extent): 99% of people don't want to work as a contract. They want a long term, "indefinite" employment contract.

<comment><USER8> This, exactly. France (and Belgiul as it seems) is a country where most people goal is to work for a government job, or equivalent.

The status of a job for government is tha tyou CAN'T be fired ! Whatever stupid thing you do, whatever you work or not, you can't loose the job.

It's also less payed than a job in a private company, and you almos know exactly what will be your income on the last year you'll work, but it's safe.

And for big companies, the union are mandatory, so it's almost the same. Hard to be fired.

And that's why beeing an entrepreneur in France is so hard and not understand by most people. Why take risks ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just sharing another experience:

I am a technical manager at a small-size big data company. We opened a new office in Paris three months ago and our largest struggle by far is recruiting talent. Despite what other comments here are writing, the startup scene is booming. Station F[1] is huge. The four WeWorks are full and they are opening two more soon. Global companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Naver are growing their presence. New companies are popping up all the time. Despite the academic strength of France in Computer Science, there is simply not enough supply of senior engineers in France to meet the demand. A couple of years ago Paris was lukewarm and we managed to open up in the midst of frying heat. I have met both Berliners and Parisians who say that there is more happening in Paris than Berlin right now.

The language divide is definitely a thing. We are an international English- speaking company and that works both for and against us.

(We're called Kaiko[1] if anyone reading this wants to reach out and connect)

[0] [https://stationf.co/](https://stationf.co/)

[1] [https://www.kaiko.com](https://www.kaiko.com)

<comment><USER5> Correction, there are enough devs but the salaries are too low, so they go elsewhere like I did. I am not going to work 40+ hours a week or more to make 2500 euros and pay 1000 euros of rent in Paris. Whats the point?

Also, Paris is a crime-ridden city that is way overpriced.

<comment><USER10> Exactly, there's a lot of cool stuff going on in Paris, but seriously it's underpaid for the price you have to pay to live there.

From where I live I could work in Paris with the same commute time than I do by working in Luxembourg, but I get a better paycheck.

Renting a 2 bedroom costs 700€ a month where I live, in Paris it would cost 2 to 3 times this.

I don't get the "there's not enough engineering available", this is just not true, reality is that people will earn a lot more in London, Luxembourg, Switzerland, so they chose that.

<comment><USER11> >I don't get the "there's not enough engineering available", this is just not true, reality is that people will earn a lot more in London

Not by much [1][2], and rent is worse in London[3]. I think income tax is fairly comparable.

From personal experience the same salary goes further in Paris and quality of life is better than in London, although I never officially worked in Paris so can't comment too much. The nightlife is certainly better. Also Switzerland is crazy expensive so even if you're earning more it won't matter, pretty much everything you buy day to day is about 2x as expensive compared to anywhere else.

[1] [https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-software- enginee...](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-software-engineer- salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,24.htm) [2] [https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/paris-software- engineer...](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/paris-software-engineer- salary-SRCH_IL.0,5_IM1080_KO6,23.htm) [3] [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=France&city1=Paris&country2=United+Kingdom&city2=London)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know much about the startup landscape in France (or anywhere in the EU), but I've always heard that it is difficult to incorporate a small company and hire employees due to large regulatory/bureaucracy hurdles. The "move fast, break things" pattern of setting up a Delaware LLC and getting an angel seed in a matter of days/weeks really just doesn't work.

Can anyone comment on this? Is this way off base?

<comment><USER13> Recently helped a friend launch a French subsidiary. It is a pain.

First, you must pay a lawyer or formation agent to write and register your by- laws. Next, you must seek an introduction to a bank manager. With that secured, you get to draft a book report of a business plan. This is tedious and pointless. Once completed, the bank manager reviews it. (They will also ask for lots of personal documents, each requiring expensive notarization.) If they approve, you get a business bank account. Into this account you must deposit no less than €4,000. Unfortunately, these funds are frozen until you get your _extrait Kbis_. That won't happen for at least two weeks.

Now you have to buy an ad in a French newspaper. These are expensive. After a week or two, papers will arrive in the mail. You take these to the Commercial Court, where a bunch of agencies on different floors will stamp them. With those stamped papers in hand, your €4,000 will be unfrozen. (Usually. On the next business day.) Finally, you have to appoint a French accountant. They continually monitor your business and continually charge you fees. Now you can business!

Meanwhile, in Delaware, 24 hours and a few hundred dollars buys you an LLC. A bank account, set up online or in person, can get you going the next day.

<comment><USER5> And that is not the worst part. When you sell your company, you may have to wait between 6 to 9 months to get your money!

Basically, taxes are always delayed and to calculate the exact amount that you owe to the diverse government agencies, it takes an army of accountants.

Even sometimes the accountants do not know what is going on as the tax laws are always changing, sometimes at the last minutes. Meanwhile, you have sold your asset, your money is stuck in escrow for more than 6 months, you have no revenue and no money. Welcome to France!

Source: my parents sold their business in October last year and just got their money a week ago.

<comment><USER13> The advice I was given, by a competent European lawyer, was to set up a Luxembourg S.A. which, in turn, was to hold asset-light subsidiaries in each country. (This is how Spotify is structured.)

<comment><USER8> The problem is, when you're resident, it looks like you try to avoid taxes.

And government doesn't like that. At all. So if you're small, they won't miss you when they backfire at you :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To those who talk about the administrative & HR issues in France: these are definitely true.

However, the government is running two programs that will try to improve these elements[1][2].

For instance:

\- the French Public Investment Bank (BPI) will receive more money in order to create a better leverage for fund raising, co-investing with private funds in startups;

\- France will work with European Union to create the european equivalent of the DARPA challenges;

\- France Expérimentation will provide exemptions to some startups trying new business models;

\- new APIs will be provided to help accomplishing administrative tasks automatically;

\- public contracts will have lower entry barriers;

\- public aids (which are really important in France) will be simplified;

\- the HR thresholds will be reviewed in order to promote startup growth;

\- a study will be conducted on "renting contracts" for startups (most contracts have a 3/6/9-years engagement clause, which is not adapted to startup growth);

\- corporate tax will be lowered;

\- ...

This is not perfect and we are indeed accustomed to a lot of rules and administrative work, but still: it is good and motivating to see that the government is trying to do something.

Moreover, we have great landscapes and food, so let's give France a try :).

[1] [https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/actions-startups/elements- de-p...](https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/actions-startups/elements-de-portee- generale/) (in French)

[2] [https://www.pacte-entreprises.gouv.fr/](https://www.pacte- entreprises.gouv.fr/)

[edit] styling

</comment><comment><USER15> It has historically been difficult to fire employees in France, compared with the US. Apparently they considered relaxing this policy on 2016 [1], but IDK whether their efforts were successful.

Considering the Silicon Valley mantra of "hire slow, fire fast", it will be interesting to see how things evolve in France. Will they relax their labor laws/customs, or will they find a different way for startups to grow?

1: [https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-13/france-employers- reso...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-13/france-employers-resort- harassment-drive-employees-away-not-much-longer)

<comment><USER16> There has been an "Auto Entrepreneur" status created a few years ago (2010?) that is used by many startups (mainly gig-economy like drivers/delivery/...) which has helped a lot to get started. It's not an employee status, more like a contractor status. It's easy on the company, but not like freestyle though as abuse could be re-qualified as a regular contract ("CDI" ie. employee contract) by a judge.

Regular employment is still much protected for the employee.

<comment><USER8> Yes. If you have only one client, it's considered as desguised employment.

The difference is that the wellfare taxes as Auto Entrepreneur are very low compared to en employee, for the same service in hospital or doctors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I doubt that France will be able to do this - they have many disadvantages comparing to USA:

\- high taxes

\- a lot of buerocracy

\- language burden to attract high qualified foreign employees

\- lower salaries

\- fragmented political system in the EU

\- much lower population in France comparing to USA and if you want to cover the entire EU, you have to support many different languages, currencies, etc...

<comment><USER18> As a French, it saddens me a bit to say that but you also missed one point: culture. My background includes some grad school experience at a _top_ French university and then at a _top_ US university. One big difference, which became even more obvious to me after I crossed the Atlantic, is that there is (almost) no _hustle_ culture in France.

Make fun of the stupid apps and the copycats but so many undergrads at my American alma mater were trying something, and that is already so much more than what I saw in France. I have seen some undergrads in America make _serious_ money through their side projects and big companies are more often seen as a stepping stone towards something else. In France, the holy grail is to get a _CDI_ (permanent employee contract) at a big company and that's often pretty much it. They can be great employees but making money within a structure simply does not require the same resourcefulness. I don't know if the culture is contagious once you arrive in a country, or if universities attract different profiles (probably both), but I thought it was also interesting to note that the immigrants were often resembling the locals in both countries.

In my opinion, even the best version of Macron's plan is bound to produce underwhelming results. While French taxes and bureaucracy might not help entrepreneurship, I do not think that's why France isn't a startup nation. Rather, it's the fact that France isn't a startup nation that explains why bad policies and bureaucracy have been tolerated for so long. Understand me well: my comment is the opposite of an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of French entrepreneurs, who exist and face higher administrative hurdles than their American counterparts, but is simply written to share some observations on campus culture and entrepreneurship at two _top_ schools.

<comment><USER19> > In France, the holy grail is to get a CDI (permanent employee contract) at a > big company and that's often pretty much it.

Well, there are reasons for this. Good luck getting a loan for your next house / car / whatever if you don't have a CDI.

<comment><USER20> The question is, why are these based on CDI? I believe the parent is making a good point: if this is a cultural thing, the first question that comes to your mind is "why are not being as conservative as everyone else and not just going for an easy employment?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I understand why a small percentage of startups could benefit from being in San Francisco and similar and want to enjoy the ecosystem, hire people, etc.

However, I have no idea why any early-stage startup would go to France and last 3 months, while with the same money they could go to Poland and enjoy the same level of support from the government, availability of highly-skilled tech people, and twice-4 times the buying power compared to any other similarly attractive country in Europe.

While I've never even come close to creating an even barely successful anything, I would think that being able to survive for 6 months can make the difference compared to running out of money after 3 months. I mean, the 3-months guy would totally miss a big contract at month 5.

<comment><USER22> The risk of going to Poland is that the government of Poland is currently expressing views that are extremely hostile to the EU, and therefore you must take into account the political risk that Poland might try to pull a stunt like Brexit -- at which point you find that you have been building a business on the assumption that you are inside of the EU, and now you suddenly find yourself outside of the EU.

I have thought about setting up an office in Krakow. I've been impressed with every software developer I've worked with from Poland. But settling there has some serious political risks.

Poland seems to have the best of both worlds, with an independent currency, but otherwise inside the EU. It is worrisome that the Poles feel the desire to destroy this.

<comment><USER21> You believe what you believe because you read European newspapers, which are anti whoever doesn't comply with what Germany says.

Poland is absolutely NOT hostile to Europe, on the contrary (sorry, I couldn't find a source right now). Italy and other countries are a huge percentage more against Europe than not Poles.

Poland simply doesn't need to lower its wages like Germany did, and has therefore no interest in letting in any of the extra hundred of thousands of migrants that hang around across Europe thanks to Germany opening the borders to them. That would significantly increase crime--which is virtually not- existent in terms of personal safety in Poland--like it happened in Italy and I assume other countries, and cost a ton of money that is currently put into much better and more productive use.

The government is extremely stable. If you read about extreme Catholic-based laws, it's just because that's what they believe in, and after a few years of "West no matter what" following their independence from the Soviets, they are now trying to find their own identity--which is like it or not extremely Catholic and nationalistic. I don't necessarily love those laws, but I'm not Polish and I have different values. The US has it even worse, with laws dictating what sexual positions are legal and which ones are illegal in many states--and no one is complaining.

From a business point of view, I have a company that I opened in 1 day. You have the right to issue invoices from the minute you apply, the government has 1 week to send you a tax ID # (I got mine via email after 3 days). Everything is done electronically, via a trusted profile like your bank account. It's extremely efficient. Taxes are a joke compared to what I'm used to (Italy at 45%): 19% flat. My accountant is EUR 40/mo., but you can find cheaper ones (by comparison, my accountant in Italy cost me EUR 120/mo. because of the bureaucracy involved).

Many people don't know a lot about Poland, and what they know is pretty far from the truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My experience as an anglophone, non-French entrepreneur living in France is that the regulations and business climate reflect the belief system of the population. There is a fairly widespread acceptance, even among well educated French people, in several of the following beliefs:

\- Companies are exploitative of their workforce and should be strongly regulated to protect workers;

\- Excess company profits are a sign of unfairness and abuse, and maximum profits should be controlled to protect against such unfairness;

\- The role of an organisation is to provide employment;

\- Unemployment can be reduced by making it more difficult to fire employees or make their positions redundant;

\- France's international uncompetitiveness, especially vis a vis Germany, could be solved by making other countries similarly uncompetitive by imposing similar burdens.

My partner is French and a Human Resources consultant to medium and large organisations. The horror stories she recounts would make most entrepreneurs run a mile.

My business is online and I can locate it anywhere. I've chosen Ireland for a variety of reasons. Eurozone, English speaking with good multilingual talent availability, good international transport and relatively light touch regulation. Tax rate wasn't a significant factor because the effective rate of tax (after factoring in state subventions) is relatively similar between the two countries.

France is a great place to live but a terrible place to run a business or to hold capital assets. The high taxes pay for a very good public health system and a good transport system. Unfortunately, they also pay for a huge amount of public sector waste.

France for startups works well if you're well connected, in which case you're made. Connections are, however, largely forged early in life, in Lycees and Grand Ecoles, so connections and networks are much more difficult for an outsider to penetrate.

As an example of French business mentality, my friend's business (online/social) has few actual users and no paying users and is 100% supported by a mix of grants and supports from a myriad of government organisations, and by large corporations who are obligated by government to set aside an annual budget for supporting such endeavours. My friend's business is considered a success in France. I consider it a personal success for him, insofar as he has navigated the system quite well. But it's not my definition of business success.

<comment><USER24> I am French, but what you wrote is exactly how I feel the French mindset is. Thanks for writing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not real. If it was, YC should be involved (because they are the best at that). It's a old story because he needs to talk about something.

The previous governement created a fund for that. It is nearly totally unaffected ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bpifrance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bpifrance)).

He does nothing because there is nothing to do. France destiny is sealed by european threaties. To change something the treaties must be broken but people are afraid by that. France is in a waitstate until something happens at a global scale (like a war).

</comment><comment><USER26> I'll go ahead and be 'that guy' and say it: I don't want my country to become a startup nation. I don't want management methods and labor laws to be reformed, or modernized, or to mimic those in the US. I don't want corporation-friendly tax rates to be enacted. I don't want regulations to be lifted.

There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Not everyone among these 65 million is fit to 'move fast and break things'. Not everyone wants to be flexible, adaptable or able to sell themselves in a world of fast hires and firings. Not everyone is a young and dynamic entrepreneur full of 'innovative' ideas (whatever that means). In short, not everyone is a twenty-to-thirty- something with a moderately high level of education and relative affinity with the tech world.

On the other hand, _everyone_ needs a steady job to make a living. _Everyone_ needs the healthcare, retirement plans and other benefits our current labor laws entail with that steady job. In short, _everyone_ is a human being with basic human needs.

Startups have one thing in common - they tend to fail. Maybe your average HN reader will be able to endure the typical working conditions with no guarantee of a stable income in the future, but they are the exception, not the rule. It is preposterous to imagine that an entire country's labor laws and regulation should align with the needs of such a narrow demographic so that foreign investors will _maybe_ deign to notice it and shower said demographic with money.

Yes, there are many things wrong with our current labor laws. Yes, maybe some regulations are needlessly tight and stifle the growth of blooming startups full of bright people. No, that does _not_ mean the US as a 'startup nation' is an example to follow. And if that means the next Facebook or Instagram won't come from here, so be it. Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them.

<comment><USER27> > There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this > number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most > abject poverty seen in the developed world.)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

<comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States) 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth.

<comment><USER29> > 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth.

The only objective number mentioned in wikipedia's article is 43 million, but apparently that figure appears to be made up, as it is based on a single citation of an obscure and unavailable document published by an organization that calls itself Talk Poverty.

Nevertheless, even if we take that 43 million number at face value, that means that OP's exaggerated number would have an absurd margin of error of around 50%.

<comment><USER30> Cry me a river.

It's data from the US Census Bureau, it took me 7 seconds to find the correct reference: [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-256.pdf)

It does not matter the guess was a bit off, the argument still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I seriously doubt it. There are just too many hurdles to get over. Even trying to get staff from another EU office to come and work is a pain the arse, as my previous place of work discovered when they tried to get one of the devs to move to Paris for a few months.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am curious about the real number of founders in this thread? It seems that most of the replies are focused on system criticism… and it's a completely false statement. Creating a startup in France is really easy to do if you do it well. Take an accountant and he will handle almost everything for you, from the creation to the run. Man Power is cheap compare to the USA. The only limitation seems to be the motivation… and to become a founder you are going to need a lot of motivation !

So what are the difficulties: 1\. Market 2\. Money

The initial market is small. This means that you need to go directly to international business. We have Europe but the point is that Countries are a little bit too patriot. From this point, addressing the USA market is really difficult without having a headquarter there, even with fully digitalized services and English native commercials. Don't know why but you can read Criteo founder's feedback on this point. Addressing China is almost impossible. So here is the point: to address Europe and USA you need huge funds.

Money is easy to get at the beginning and you have a lot of public helps on this phase. Then it's more difficult (>2M€). VC market is clearly not as developed as in the USA. That where most of the startup ends… Best case, you will raise money in the USA and move there. Otherwise you are looking for an exit.

That will be my conclusion. France is a very cheap place to buy a startup ! (An no such bureaucratic barriers).

<comment><USER32> Well, I'm a founder... French paperwork is incredibly stupid (beyond any necessary explanation), and, for no employee, I pay my accountant 2800€ to handle said paperwork.

Second, tax deduction and grants... There are full companies whose job is to get grants for others. But if you don't know the right law or the right grant, you pay the higher tax. I've lost at least 150.000€ with that on my first 8 years, although I did have an accountant to advise me on this, which means I struggle on my first employee.

Last, the marxist culture. As long as you earn money, you're assumed to be an asshole, so you constantly have to remind people how much donations you make and how much you've worked to earn the right to earn your own money. It's quite unhealthy to say the least. For 100k€, I give 63k€ to accountant and various taxes, donate ~1k in money in average (and 1% products) and participate to local education. Yeah, I'm flagged as a selfish guy by outsiders (not interns, my interns love their job, my internships are way above average).

Besides, Macron said there are too many white males in IT, so you're welcome to leave. Just to set the expectations.

<comment><USER31> Well 2,8k € per year (small startup) or per month (half time accountant) is nothing. How much will you pay in the USA?

Regarding fiscal stuff. I am afraid to say that this is the same in all countries... You better know the fiscal laws or request help from someone who knows. In any case, you are refering to 19k per year... It's not what we can call a strong showstopper!

Regarding 2 last points, it's clearly your point of view and I don't share it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm seeing a lot of arguments in this thread against starting a business in France, so my question is this: outside of the US where would you start something?

<comment><USER23> Ireland - Eurozone, English speaking, light touch regulation, strong IT and customer support culture. However the high cost of accommodation in the cities, particularly Dublin, is starting to make recruitment difficult. I've anecdotal evidence of several 20-30 year olds looking to emigrate because they can't resolve the high cost of accommodation with their after-tax salary.

<comment><USER20> Good luck hiring fast against the large IT companies over there.

<comment><USER23> There are a lot of good potential employees who don't want to be a part of the "burn 'em and churn 'em" practices employed by some of the larger IT companies. But, I agree, it's always a struggle in any country for small businesses to compete in the recruitment process with large corporations.

<comment><USER20> Ireland is an entirely different matter: it's hard to find people on LinkedIn for example, since many of them are only in Ireland due to being hired by corpos with huge offices over there.

That's not the case for London as people don't generally move to London purely for a better salary as companies don't get a tax discount over there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How far has he gotten with labor law changes? I some HR folks complain at a company I worked for a while back. They complained that if someone in France was going to be fired there were three different government departments that may choose to get involved and sometimes each had a different idea on how the situation should be handled.

<comment><USER35> Do you mean fired for cause or redundancies over a certain size - the USA has that procedure as well (WARN Act) you know.

<comment><USER36> Holy excluded middle, Batman :-).

Most of the US[1] are in "at will" employment states, in which individuals can be fired without cause. This is probably what the grandparent was comparing France's law to. The WARN act probably doesn't bear a great deal on the US's place as a "startup nation"...

1: by area, population or state count, including California but excluding New York

<comment><USER35> I think your missing the point you can get fired for gross misconduct quickly even in states in the EU with stronger employment laws.

If at will makes it so easy why are US employers including startups terrified of firing people - look at all this obsession with not making a bad hire if it was truly easy to fire this would not be the case.

<comment><USER36> > terrified of firing

They aren't. From experience, startups have no problem firing people for simply not being exceptional.

Startups _are_ worried about wasting time, though -- the cost of a bad hire is taking longer to get someone good to do the job, because it's going to take time to realise they aren't performing, and it's going to take time to do the search again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe start-ups as groups created in large companies that take on copying emerging US enterprises? Small companies are not supported in the EU because of regulatory hurdles, excessive taxation and employment laws one size fits all. Most businesses are grant driven - that is you write a business plan that satisfies bureaucrats, get money and hope to stay afloat for year or two so you don't have to give it back. Rinse and repeat. There is no room for innovation. In some EU countries entrepreneurs are treated as potential criminals until proven innocent.

</comment><comment><USER38> what does "startup nation" even mean?

<comment><USER39> Israel is an example of a "startup nation".

Edit: Downvotes!? Israel has the most startups per capita of any nation. Look it up, not doing homework for you.

<comment><USER40> Israel has so many start-ups and so much VC, solely because of the vast capital investment flows from the US. That's hardly a reasonable example for a large nation like France to work from.

It'd be like pretending Ireland's $70,000 GDP per capita is organic, rather than the result of US corporate giants using it as a tax device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why does the concept of "startup region" even exist? Given that work has become more and more intellectual rather than physical, and products more virtual than physical, I would expect that geographical location matters less and less.

Is it based on superstition of investors?

</comment><comment><USER42> Politicians are weird. The start-up idea itself is slowly dying and now they start to really become active about it in politics. What's the point? Merkel also was in Shenzhen in her China trip.

</comment><comment><USER43> Most of startups fail miserably. Some become extremelly successful.

That's what Macron wants for the country he manages?

</comment><comment><USER44> Culturally it can't happen. They need their own version of Trump to erase 3 regulations for every new one. In addition the youth have zero ambition due to the strong safety net.

<comment><USER45> I'm curious, are you arguing that the US was not a "start-up nation" before Trump's election?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> does anybody know how the France Tech Visa thing going on?

</comment><comment><USER47> I actually looked into this with the local France Business startup organization. At the time, I was young (30, I am now 31) and started learning French with hopes of trying out a alternative to Anglo culture.

But reality hits hard. I don't know how I would be able to adjust from living in a multicultural and laws where minorities are protected and enforced to a republic where it is not. Once you are in France, you are expected to become fluent to the point of having no accent, because god forbid if you come from Quebecois speaking region you will get bullied and made fun of.

So it's like wtf???? Here I am learning your culture and trying my best but it won't mount to shit if it's not French.

Very dangerous to set elusive set of criterias based on ethnocentric ideas and see what sticks.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQzR6zKpbKQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQzR6zKpbKQ)

The most crazy part is that it's other minorities attacking other minorities in France.

<comment><USER48> This is just outrageous. The republic tries to protect everybody. If you expect us to drop our wit and our views on a proper lifestyle to be more inclusive, indeed please move along. Globally we still despise politically correct as a poison to our freedom. And most of us are fine with that. Little anectode here: in IT I've worked with people of all backgrounds and never saw any issue. Young people's pride can turn them into divas...

<comment><USER49> Not outrageous at all; France really has specific problems dealing with multicultural society. The meritocratic republic is such a great idea, that people fail to see that it doesn't always work out in practice. Fighting racism (for example racial profiling by the police) becomes a low priority, because there isn't supposed to be any!

As a white foreigner working in France, it remains pretty benign, but quite visible--i.e. the boss laughing about your accent.

<comment><USER48> Racial profiling by police is indeed a non issue. Was born and raised in the suburbs, the most dangerous ones, and the profiling is done according to the attitude and the clothes, mainly. And thats the experience from my friends, with différent backgrounds. And boy do people in the suburbs have a bad attitude ! Quit providing excuses for criminals, it is a disservice To them. And overestimating the racial issue is the best way to isolate groups according to race, and in the end, create a hate able to cause civil wars

<comment><USER47> > And overestimating the racial issue is the best way to isolate groups > according to race, and in the end, create a hate able to cause civil wars

holy fuck

<comment><USER48> Indeed it erodes solidarity, little by little.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Top-5 Lessons I've Learned from Product Hunt Launch - <AUTHOR> http://duefocus.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Launch at 00:00PST, we've launched at 02:30 and were 50 upvotes behind 2\. Make a video tutorial 3\. Don't underestimate communities(Slack,Facebook,etc.) 4\. Think about UVP on your website 5\. Be on the first page in 1 hour after launch</comment>


Have you cut sugar out of your diet? How? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to cut sugar out of my diet. Today I ate at least 150g and the daily recommended amount is 36g for men and 25g for women. I've gone a week or two without eating anything with added sugar, but I invariably return to it. Have you figured out a way to stay away aside from just having more willpower? I'd appreciate any tricks you have <comment><USER2> Rather than going cold turkey, a more sustainable way would be to find a good replacement for sugary foods. Every time you feel like snacking on something sweet, choose a healthier option like nuts instead.

In the early stages, it can also help to have "cheat days" for every sugar- free period. It's more a marathon than a race, and it's important to take regular breaks as needed.</comment>


On gathering requirements - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@KiwiCoder/on-requirements-gathering-d270d078bbac

<comment><USER2> Interesting article, and something close to my heart.

My startup, UsableHQ, went through the Ignite100 accelerator, got funded, and then failed because no one wanted to buy our product, was all about requirements management. We built an app that helped you gather the requirements (clever Apache Tika integration for pulling things out of tendering docs in different formats), manage the process of keeping track of how the requirements change though the project (lovely Node and Backbone single page app), and then export the final requirements document at the end to pass on to acceptance and testing QA teams. We spent about 2 full years thinking about how best to stop requirements getting out of hand, putting a stop to scope creep and gold plating, and making project less prone to failure.

Unfortunately we forgot to prove that there was actually a market. At the top end when you're designing an aeroplane there are huge enterprise apps for doing this stuff. At the bottom end a decent project manager can keep it all in their head. In the middle, there's a few project management apps that make a nod to requirements, but not much, so we thought we could sell to that segment. We were wrong.

The problem is that the cost of failing to manage change in a project isn't actually very big. The project might be a few weeks late, or $5000 over budget, or it fails to do something that was in the list of requirements, but that's not really a big deal to either the client or the team implementing it. No one's job is on the line. There aren't any penalties. It's just 'oh, we should fix that I guess'.

Gathering requirements, and keeping on top of what changes, is never as important as the project as a whole, and it turns out that a lot of projects just aren't very important to the people doing them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think your experience is at odds with what I'm saying. There are practical, real-life issues that will always trump the mechanics of product development.

<comment><USER2> I wasn't disagreeing with you. Quite the opposite. Doing a good job of gathering requirements can be the difference between success and failure. I think my experience shows that there's a lot of education necessary before the software industry as a whole realises how much time and money a project can save with requirements. That will happen though, in time. Usable was about 5 years too early.</comment></comment></comment>


Healthstone Monitoring System - <AUTHOR> http://healthstone.ca/

<comment><USER2> Thought this was Hearthstone related and I got really excited for a moment there.

<comment><USER3> Have at it :)

[http://hearthsim.info](http://hearthsim.info)

[https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/](https://github.com/jleclanche/fireplace/)

[https://github.com/hearthsim/](https://github.com/hearthsim/)</comment></comment>