Top Next-Gen Security Firm Leaking Terabytes of Customer Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/top-next-gen-security-firm-leaking-terabytes-of-customer-data/ <comment><USER2> It's not the least bit surprising, almost every endpoint tool out there leaks data.</comment>


Checklist about Engineering Reliable Mobile Applications - <AUTHOR> https://appreliability.co/ <comment><USER2> This is adding so little value it's difficult to take seriously.

Typos on the front page:

\- ressources

\- Cliend-Side

Priority is in three different colours, but none of them correlating with the thing identified.

<comment><USER3> Well, one potential use of this checklist is when project management insists that you "break your work down into estimatable tasks" you can dazzle them with a lot of this bullshit to get them off your back while you focus on actually getting some work done.

<comment><USER4> Still, more work needs to be done for this to be "front of HN" quality.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Knockout-spa implementation of the famous TodoMVC - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/onlyurei/todomvc-knockout-spa <comment><AUTHOR> Object-oriented design that's highly composable and reusable; small footprint of framework flavored opinionated code.</comment>


Ask HN: Are gigs on Fiverr worth it in 2018? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, thought I'd test out a mobile-app-development-as-a-service idea out on fiverr first....
https://www.fiverr.com/automatetheweb/make-unlimited-changes-to-your-custom-cross-platform-mobile-app?gig_id=116741476&utm_campaign=base_gig_create_share&utm_content=&utm_medium=shared&utm_source=get_url&utm_term=&view=gig
I'd love to know what you guys think. Super eager to work long hours after a very long vacation. I've heard of varying success on fiverr. I'd be curious to hear of any other gig marketplaces or ways to earn side income. <comment><USER2> [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15GJtJ5qpk7H9Cl3xTBwv2FR8/htmlview)

I'd personally skip Fiverr though.

<comment><AUTHOR> dear mother of god....that is a monstrous list. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fiverr for development is a race to the bottom and if you are US based, you'll be competing with people who are happy making a fraction of the hourly rate you need to feed yourself. I will say in the past I have used fiverr really successfully for some things, like translations, voiceovers, recordings etc. But I'd never try to sell development services there.

Now for the MAJOR negative. I used fiverr a few months back for an image editing/creation process (cause I absolutely suck at that) and my credit card through fiverr was compromised and I had to go through hell to fix it. I know it was fiverr because of two reasons, the card number was brand new and had never been used online and only used with one local vendor whom I have used for years. When the bank did the investigation they also blamed fiverr and took care of things for me, but it was super frustrating for me (thankfully the bank was really very helpful). I don't trust fiverr has a secure system anymore. The card wasn't just billed from fiverr but other third parties trying to purchase over $5k in electronics and even furniture.

When I posted about this other places, I found out many people in the past 6 months or so have reported similar issues after using fiverr. Dunno what is going on but I sure wouldn't trust my bank details (or credit card info) with them for sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are people who have made lots of money with Fiverr - I wouldn't dismiss them right away. But for developers, there may be better options. I guess with sites like Fiverr, the trick is to come up with something unique which can also be automated (if not 100%) and just do batch jobs, for developers.

There are people charging good rates on Fiverr. One example here - [https://www.fiverr.com/news/side-hustle- school](https://www.fiverr.com/news/side-hustle-school) and there are others.

They keep 20%, which stings :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > 20%

dayum....thx for bringing that up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fiverr was never worth it.</comment>


Tesla lost $702M last quarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/24/investing/tesla-earnings-loss/index.html <comment><USER2> I've held off on buying a Tesla because I don't know for sure if the company will be around in several years and I worry about maintenance. News like this obviously doesn't help, but it makes me wonder when is a "good" time to buy a Tesla where it seems like a safer bet?

<comment><USER3> My take is if you are going to be stodgy and practical wait two more years and pick what's available then. There are lots of electric car models in development. Also with battery prices falling the price differential will be nearly gone by then.

Also if you just want a 'car' buy a Chevy Bolt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like its problem in delivery and demand has continued strong. I love Tesla and hope they get through this.</comment>


Website visitor tracking, with Zero Coding - <AUTHOR> http://weelytics.com/ <comment><USER2> How does this differ from other tool like hotjar or heap analytics?</comment>


Electronic Medical Records still look and function like 20 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jayparkinsonmd.com/post/215688770/when-it-starts-in-silos-it-will-never-go-social

<comment><AUTHOR> Key conclusions:

1\. "The present sickness industry values secrecy, not openness. Secrecy means more profits. Secrecy means owning valuable, profitable data. Secrecy means locking users in to one proprietary piece of crap software. Secrecy means not being responsible for poor quality."

2\. "Very little, if any, of healthcare will change unless consumers stop supporting the current business model of the US Healthcare Industry and unless the Feds stop mandating that consumers support this business model."

There has to be an opportunity in here for startups given that the status quo is so broken. Perhaps starting with a focus on medical services that the customer pays for directly: e.g. veterinary medicine, cosmetic, lasik, 3rd party blood tests.</comment>


Official: Apple Launches iPhone 4 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/07/offical-apple-launches-the-iphone-4/

<comment><USER2> Key features that will push the whole industry forward:

super high res screen (960x640)

front facing camera with open standards for video calling

high def video camera and 5 megapixel still camera.

It may be argued that some or all of these features were available on other phones, but Apple's massive weight in this industry will force other players to step up their game or fall behind. Who knew the Nexus One would lose its luster so quickly?

One thing still to be answered: Is the open standard around video calling really open? Or is it an embrace and extend standard that will be impossible for anyone else to get behind? If Android can / does adopt this standard, between the two of them they will finally put to bed voice calling (it's served us well for 100+ years, and good riddance) as the default within a couple decades.

<comment><USER3> > front facing camera with open standards for video calling

Which, FWIW, is something that's been available everywhere outside the US for at least 5 years. Not always used much (in Europe anyway), but it's been available for a very long time.

> high def video camera and 5 megapixel still camera.

The part I found most interesting there is the mention that the megapixel race is misguided again, and that they'd boosted not only the resolution but also the size of the sensor in order to keep them balanced, rather than go with 10MPx and a microscopic sensor.

> One thing still to be answered: Is the open standard around video calling > really open?

open standard doesn't mean open source standard, fwiw.

<comment><USER4> > Which, FWIW, is something that's been available everywhere outside the US > for at least 5 years. Not always used much (in Europe anyway), but it's been > available for a very long time.

If Apple manages to make video calling mainstream through marketing, solid implementation, and by pushing a standard that is adopted by other vendors, I'd say that's a pretty serious feat. A technical marvel is meaningless if it's rarely used.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but still video chat has been pretty ubiquitous in europe and asia, I do believe it's used quite a bit in e.g. Japan, and I've seen deaf people use it in Europe in order to communicate remotely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The screen looks incredible. You know how phone ads often disclaim "screen images simulated"? Now the real screen looks as good as any "simulated" picture: [http://www.engadget.com/photos/iphone-4-hands-on- black/#3053...](http://www.engadget.com/photos/iphone-4-hands-on- black/#3053093)

</comment><comment><USER6> I want one quite a bit. Yet, the upgrade path from the 3GS seems unclear (if at all existant).

Unfortunately it seems that you have to skip every other iPhone if you want to keep with AT&T's discounts since they come out with one every year. I'm not eligible to upgrade until 3/2011.</comment>


Researchers have observed the Lyman-alpha transition in the antihydrogen atom - <AUTHOR> https://home.cern/about/updates/2018/08/alpha-experiment-takes-antimatter-new-level <comment><USER2> As an atomic physicist, it is great to see clever atomic physics experiments opening up new fields in high-energy physics. The team has been working incredibly hard for this: Jeff Hangst who leads the experiment was already working on this when he taught my undergrad electrodynamics course back in 1998!

An important piece of background info for non-atomic-physicists is that the Hydrogen 1S-2S transition frequency is probably the most accurately measured physical property in the world, thanks to the pioneering work by T. Hansch. Back in 2011 they reported an uncertainty of 4e-12, [https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.3101](https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.3101).

<comment><USER3> I thought the charge on an electron had been measured out to 10^-19? One of my professors posted the journal article from the NIST team that did so.

Here's a reference: [https://physics.nist.gov/cgi- bin/cuu/Value?e](https://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?e)

<comment><USER4> Your reference gives an uncertainty of 6.1 x 10-9

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If there is anti matter. Is there an anti gravity force if there is gravity?

<comment><USER6> Antimatter is a consequence of quantum field theory, but all signs indicate gravity can not be successfully described as a quantum field. Gravity has properties such as having its interaction strength grow with the amount of charge (energy), which is very different from the forces described by quantum fields that have constant interaction strength. To get antigravity, you need to find a way to have negative energy without it making the vacuum unstable.

It's most typical to describe gravity as dynamical spacetime, not a field existing in that spacetime. The closest people have come to a quantum theory of gravity has been to show that in certain toy universes gravity in a bulk space is the dual of strongly-coupled field interactions existing on the boundary of that space-- that is holography. Information-theoretic approaches have have also suggested that gravity emerges as the 'hydrodynamics of entanglement.' All this suggests gravity is not a fundamental force, but is far from a coherent real-world theory at this point.

The closest to an "antigravity" in general relativity is the cosmological constant, thought to explain dark energy. Its tiny (10^-122) positive value behaves like a constant negative energy attributed to the vacuum itself, driving the exponential expansion of space.

<comment><USER7> _> all signs indicate gravity can not be successfully described as a quantum field_

That's not quite correct. The quantum field theory of a massless spin-2 field was developed in the 1960s and 1970s and is perfectly well-defined. The problem with it then was that it is not renormalizable; but today basically all QFTs are viewed as effective field theories anyway, which means not being renormalizable is not a showstopper.

The real issue is that we have no prospect of measuring any quantum aspects of gravity now or in the foreseeable future, so there is no way to test the QFT that has been developed against experiment.

 _> Gravity has properties such as having its interaction strength grow with the amount of charge (energy), which is very different from the forces described by quantum fields that have constant interaction strength._

This is not correct either. The coupling constant of the massless spin-2 field is just Newton's gravitational constant (modulo some constant factors that depend on your units). The fact that the total interaction in a specific case varies with energy is no different from the fact that the total EM force between two charged objects varies with the charge. Energy is the source for gravity just as charge is the source for EM; the source is not the same as the coupling constant.

 _> To get antigravity, you need to find a way to have negative energy without it making the vacuum unstable._

Agreed. And as far as we know that is not possible.

 _> All this suggests gravity is not a fundamental force_

This is quite possible, yes, but even if it were true it would not necessarily make the spin-2 massless QFT I referred to above invalid; it would just make it an effective theory that emerges from whatever is the next level down. (Which, as I noted above, is basically how we view all QFTs today anyway, including the Standard Model of particle physics.)

 _> The closest to an "antigravity" in general relativity is the cosmological constant, thought to explain dark energy. Its tiny (10^-122) positive value behaves like a constant negative energy attributed to the vacuum itself, driving the exponential expansion of space._

No, a positive CC does not have negative energy. It has positive energy and negative pressure. The effective source in the Friedmann equation is the energy density plus three times the pressure, which for a positive CC is negative (because the negative pressure outweighs the positive energy density).

<comment><USER8> > massless spin-2 field

>> To get antigravity, you need to find a way to have negative energy without it making the vacuum unstable.

> Agreed. And as far as we know that is not possible.

Which part are you agreeing to?

Spin-2 essentially means that like charges attract and unlike charges repel. Matter with the opposite gravitational charge from all the matter (incl. antimatter) in the universe we know about could have segregated in the early universe. Opposite-gravitational-charge matter (incl. antimatter) is unobserved, but not in-principle unobservable.

Vacuum instability doesn't arise since m_i stays the same as m_g changes sign under gravitational charge changes.

<comment><USER6> 1) They meant there's no way to get negative energy particles which could be the source of antigravity. That would destabilize the vacuum because it would allow you to keep lowering the energy without bound.

2) Intuitively if antimatter is regular matter travelling backwards in time, then at the start of time, wouldn't it all go the other way? Kind of like one huge quantum fluctuation.

<comment><USER7> _> if antimatter is regular matter travelling backwards in time_

It isn't. More precisely, while the mathematical trick that this phrase refers to (which also, btw, requires reversing all charges and flipping parity) works as far as making calculations simpler while still getting the right answer, it doesn't correspond to anything physical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I skimmed and didn't find it. Is the frequency the same as hydrogen?

<comment><USER10> From the abstract of the paper: [http://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0435-1](http://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0435-1)

> _The transition frequency at a field of 1.033 tesla was determined to be > 2,466,051.7 ± 0.12 gigahertz (1σ uncertainty) and agrees with the prediction > for hydrogen to a precision of 5E−8._

I.E. It's the same for all practical purposes, but there may be a extremely tiny difference.

Edit: Comparing the numbers with the results for Hydrogen in an article someone else linked here

      Anti-Hydrogen:      2,466,051.7 ± 0.12 GHz
      (Normal)-Hydrogen:  2,466,061.413187035(10) GHz

So they measure a tiny difference, and looking at the error estimations the difference is significative. I'm not sure if that is an expected difference or a unexpected difference or just an error in the experiment.

<comment><USER11> That would be more than a 5 sigma difference which would definitely be significant but that number you're quoting for normal hydrogren is the 1S-2S line.

This measurement is the 1S-2P line which has an average frequency of ~2,466,051.625 GHz (there's actually two levels). Which agrees to within 1 sigma - i.e. good agreement.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the correction. I just assumed that the other article was about the same transition and I forget to check the details.

PS: If someone else wants to know why the 1S-2S and the 1S-2P transition have almost the same energy, but no exactly the same energy, it's an interesting weird story [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_shift)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A step closer to unlocking the secret origins of matter itself. Some deep background on the anti-matter imbalance as well as famed Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov's conditions:

The Mystery Of The Matter Asymmetry

[https://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/panvini/babar/sakharo...](https://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/panvini/babar/sakharov.pdf)

<comment><USER13> I read this entire article with some interest, but made the (naive) assumption that it would actually speak about the conditions under which Sakharov made his contributions to matter/anti-matter imbalance. Instead I learned something new, which is that there exist a set of conditions Sakharov identified that must be accounted for in any theory that addresses this imbalance. Don't read it expecting to learn about Sakharov's life. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always wondered how they put atoms in magnetic traps, isn't hydrogen 1 positron + 1 antiproton? It should be neutral?

<comment><USER15> It's electrically neutral, but it still has a magnetic moment.

<comment><USER16> Because electron is moving and proton not ?

<comment><USER15> The magnetic moment of an atom comes from the orbital motion of the electrons about the nucleus and also the rotational motion of each electron about their axes (called "spin"). In the case of a hydrogen atom there's one electron that contributes to the magnetic moment, which is how you're able to magnetically capture an electrically neutral atom.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JSON Schema the new black for solid Webservice & API building - <AUTHOR> http://www.salesking.eu/dev/coding/api-building-json-schema

<comment><USER2> See also <http://json-schema-api.org> for more use cases.</comment>


Ask HN: Should you bother hiding your website's secret sauce? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a cofounder, so I end up explaining my project to a lot of people. People wonder how I will accomplish it, but it only becomes obvious after I explain it (or show the demo)... I hear "Ohhhh... or that's interesting" and that freaks me out. I feel like I just gave it away.
I know I sound like every other paranoid freak, but I'm learning as I'm building so it's very slow. And I'm sure someone else could build it while I'm still looking things up.
Wracking your brain over nonsense like this comes with the territory, but I'll take any advice I can get. <comment><USER2> The way I've heard successful start up types describe this is issue is like so.

Keeping your idea a secret is only going to hurt you and the project because it doesn't have the opportunity to grow with the criticisms of potential users and people who think differently than yourself. So in general you should talk to people about your idea.

That is unless, your 'secret sauce' is something on the order of Tungsten being the secret to light bulb filaments. That you would want to keep a secret.

I tend to agree with this assessment.

<comment><USER3> When I invent something this is exactly what I do. I have no problem explaining everything up to the 'key' that no one else would be able to replicate without me explaining/showing them.

Even then I have no problem telling them 'the secret sauce'... I just don't show them how it works or how to do it.

Now you also have a type of secret sauce called operational knowledge. For example I know how to take an idea, prototype it, and produce it in days. I could explain to someone exactly how to do it and they would still fail because you need the experience and breath of knowledge. In those cases I rarely hold anything back, unless it involves a piece of equipment/technology I've designed that revolutionizes a process.

<comment><USER2> Despite the fact that Operational Knowledge can be hard to replicate with the efficiency of someone who has more experience. I find talking to more senior engineers about their development process (or even just pair programming with them) to be very insightful.

Even if it's just a matter of how they have their key bindings set, terminal aliases, window management, testing integrating, etc. Stuff like that is nice to pick off of people who have honed it over some time.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I was referring more to manufacturing,production, and logistics knowledge. Most of my experience revolves around combining software with physical products, working with partners around the world to get them to a stores shelves. Since there are only a hand full of people with the breath of knowledge to design, prototype, and manage every step combining both software and the physical I tend not to worry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If keeping it secret is that big of deal it's probably going to fail anyway. If something is so easy to copy that you can't tell anyone then it's not worth pursuing. IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a legitimate argument, but you could say Groupon was pretty easy to copy.

Like magic tricks, the magician is like the first one to discover an idea is possible... I mean in general. I'm not calling mine magical.

<comment><USER5> Groupon -is- very easy to copy, hence the hundreds of Groupon clones making money hand over fist.

However, even with the clones, Groupon seems to be doing just fine.

<comment><USER6> I knew there were hundreds of clones but didnt know they were making cash hand over first. Any operating in a country that groupon operates in you can point me to? Just interested.

I chatted with some of the groupon guys a short while ago and was shocked by just how much cash they spend on aquiring business. I wonder how many groupon type companies a city can hold, and for how long?

<comment><USER7> By acquiring business you mean acquiring users? Acquiring companies that will offer deals on them? Interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

\- Howard Aiken

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> For me, execution is everything. Knowing an idea alone is nothing compared to knowing what to exactly do with the idea.

<comment><USER11> Well said. Everyone has great ideas but its entirely the execution of a TEAM that will make or break a huge idea. Struggling with telling people your baby is certainly hard but recognize most people just want to help you. All good ideas will be replicated, its just how do you make yourself hard to imitate thats going to separate you from the rest.</comment></comment>


Under the hood, Groupon is declining in Boston - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/06/03/groupon-ipo-boston-yipit-decline/

<comment><USER2> I cant see their costs coming down anytime soon. Their customer acquisition costs are $1.43 for every $1 spent. And now, with "Real time groupons" launched in Chicago, imagine the amount of deals they will have to line up that would require for them to keep me interested. I dont deny that they are attacking a problem that I do have - "Where should I go out to eat tonight?" and target me with real time deals based on where I am now. But in order to seed enough deals, they have an uphill task on lining up enough businesses (on top of the 50k they currently have) and enough deals. Even with the several thousand sales folks they currently have, its a gargantuan task. I want them to succeed, but I think they bit off too much.

<comment><USER3> The sad thing is that with Google's backing, they would have had immense resources to eat FourSquare, LivingSocial, and Facebook's lunch for these kind of local advertisements.

To me, Groupon's leadership were idiots for passing up the Google $6B buyout... and it will be readily apparent to everyone in a few months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect this may be true, but if you're Groupon, you're not just sitting around waiting for the daily deals business model to become more and more saturated, you're hard at work on your "next thing" and your next "big thing."

Look already at the flash mob deals they're doing that are location based, the deal they just struck with expedia, the deals with national brands they're starting to do more of. Those are just derivatives of their core idea but also all bring in serious cash.

But then there are things they're likely working on that will go beyond the deal space and in to other services for the tens of thousands of businesses they now have relationships with. Think cross-business loyalty cards, point of sale systems, reservation systems, etc. If you think of a small business' "stack," they're just at marketing right now with the deals stuff, but there's no reason why they can't inject themselves further on down the business stack successfully. Deals will always be a part of their business I suspect, but in 2-3 years not their core business model, just an accepted concept in a much larger offering to businesses.

<comment><USER5> I think the Expedia-Groupon deal bodes very poorly for both companies. Expedia is worried about their core business and is throwing money at Groupon (in the form of subsidizing deals) in order to associate itself with a company that is perceived by many to be up and coming. Groupon gets to look like it's innovating, when all it's doing is taking money from the nerds for the ability to hang out with the cool kids for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lacking detail, but an interesting piece nonetheless. The novelty has probably worn off, and if you can't get beyond things most people never buy, like spa treatments and luxury items, then it's going to be tough to keep the momentum going.

<comment><USER7> if you are looking for more detail, definitely read the entire case study (link also in post): [http://blog.yipit.com/2011/06/03/groupon-s-1-reveals- busines...](http://blog.yipit.com/2011/06/03/groupon-s-1-reveals-business- model-deteriorating-in-oldest-markets/)

reader beware: the case study is a pain to read

<comment><USER8> Why is it a pain to read? (Always trying to improve our writing)

<comment><USER7> Take this with a grain of salt (I am no skilled writer myself): I found the organization to be fragmented. Instead of digesting one theme straight through, I found myself having to refocus on each main point. Hope this helps in any fashion

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Groupon is eventually going to have to end up creating a self serve product for business' and send out a daily digest to subscribers of the relevant deals in the area

<comment><USER10> They already do. Groupon Stores allows businesses to create their own offers that get approved and then scheduled by Groupon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like how the anti-bubble articles are now pinpointing the specific weaknesses of the companies. Well, the stories following LI's IPO were more about how the investors pumped up the value, than anything criticizing LI itself. But yeah, are we due to see critiques of of any other high-profile startups that are going public? Because I want to see what's wrong with Pandora.

<comment><USER12> I strongly believed that LinkedIn was overvalued, but I didn't think it was a basket case.

LinkedIn has loyal users, and it is moderately profitable. It just has to figure out how to best monetize them.

LinkedIn has some potential if it can figure out an effective monetization strategy. People keep coming back to LinkedIn without LinkedIn paying hugely to attract them.

Groupon is highly vulnerable to competition and even now it is very not profitable. Insiders are also cashing out to a huge degree.

I think Groupon is unique in its current position. It is in a much worse position than LinkedIn in my opinion. LinkedIn is a viable business, although it may not grow to be absolutely huge (although it might), but Groupon could easily go to zero and quite quickly.

<comment><USER11> So Groupon may be a MySpace that will be doomed by its Facebook, you mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having own mailing lists in the past, I can say this is most likely true. Think about it - most deals Groupon sends are not of interest to you. Because of that, you're gonna ignore more and more of their emails, and eventually you're gonna stop opening those emails. The open rate of a Groupon email will just keep decreasing, and as such as the value of a subscriber base is gonna deteriorate.

<comment><USER14> It seems like they could benefit from offering better filters/subscription methods to their members, e.g. I want to receive only restaurant deals as a simple filter. Sure it'd decrease their overall coverage but it could help retain the value of the emails sent... I think we've all gotten to that ignore point with certain senders.

<comment><USER15> Definitely. One can only stand so many spa and skin treatment discounts per week. Then again, I wouldn't imagine hackers to be the main target group for the majority of groupons.

<comment><USER16> I've heard that their main target group is young professional women, which makes the spa/skin stuff a lot more sensible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm confused at why the summary of a detailed case study gets upvoted. I think pg needs to adjust voting again.

<comment><USER18> Don't worry, anything that the hivemind likes for the moment will rocket up, no matter how shitty. Groupon=sucks iz goood, no matter if it's worthless meta.</comment></comment>


Cassowary – A Constraint Solving Toolkit - <AUTHOR> http://constraints.cs.washington.edu/cassowary/ <comment><USER2> You should use this nowadays: [https://github.com/nucleic/kiwi](https://github.com/nucleic/kiwi)

Kiwi is an implementation of the algorithm based on the seminal Cassowary paper. It is not a refactoring of the original C++ solver. Kiwi has been designed from the ground up to be lightweight and fast. Kiwi ranges from 10x to 500x faster than the original Cassowary solver with typical use cases gaining a 40x improvement. Memory savings are consistently > 5x.

<comment><USER3> I had good experiences with this one too: [https://github.com/Nocte-/rhea](https://github.com/Nocte-/rhea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is an implementation for Qt/QML that we use at Ableton:

[https://github.com/AbletonAG/aqt-cassowary](https://github.com/AbletonAG/aqt- cassowary)

Edit: Anyone interested in modern implementations and participating in the community of library implementers and users can check this website: [http://overconstrained.io/](http://overconstrained.io/) :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> You should probably point out that this repo is a much better JS version: [https://github.com/slightlyoff/cassowary.js/](https://github.com/slightlyoff/cassowary.js/)

</comment><comment><USER5> For python + qt version check enaml - [https://github.com/nucleic/enaml](https://github.com/nucleic/enaml) \- it was posted here from 28 days ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677375)

</comment><comment><USER6> The React Native people looked at this and stuck with Flexbox. [https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/561941079038390273](https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/561941079038390273)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a huge fan of constraint programming, but everything I've read about layout problems makes me think that LP or MIP is a better fit for the domain. Solving systems of linear equalities and inequalities is what LP solvers do, and they've got decades of research into how to do it extremely fast. Most commercial solvers can solve systems with tens of millions of constraints in mere seconds.

Is there a reason why cassowary took the constraint solver approach other than the fact that it is called constraint-based layout?

<comment><USER8> (I worked on autolayout at Apple)

Cassowary is LP - it's just the Simplex method. Constraints become equalities and inequalities in the tableau, and the objective function is constructed from non-required ("best effort") constraints.

The novel contribution from Cassowary is its incrementalism technique. It can add, remove, and edit constraints without having to re-solve the whole LP problem over again. So it's well suited for interactive applications.

An example is dragging. You establish a constraint that sets the position of the dragged object, and then modify that constraint during the drag. Cassowary can re-use the old computation to solve the new one very efficiently.

<comment><USER9> @ridiculous_fish: Hi, I just found that you are worked on autolayout, I have a little question about autolayout. There is a simple view as follow, a subView with some Constraints, they are all UILayoutPriorityRequired,when superview frame change, system will break the subView's height Constraint(300), but the top||bottom Constraint(30). they are all UILayoutPriorityRequired, why the system did things like this, and how does AutoLayout work (what's the calculate order? superView->subView->subviews'subview?),and where can I find the docs about this? :)

|</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----| | | | | 30 | | | | |-60-[subView(height:300)]-60-| | | | | 30 | | | | |</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----| (maybe this case is not much suitable,because I should remove or change some constraints, I just want to use this case to explain the question)

<comment><USER9> shit, I use characters draw the constraints, but the Comment removed the \n characters, Add the "\n" by yourself:\n |</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----|\n | | |\n | 30 |\n | | |\n |-60-[subView(height:300)]-60-|\n | | |\n | 30 |\n | | |\n |</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----|\n

</comment><comment><USER10> There is also a Dart version: [https://github.com/domokit/cassowary](https://github.com/domokit/cassowary)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not really sure why we're talking about this now, as it's been some time since it's seen a major update and there are other more active projects now.

In any case, I think the title is a bit vague and should more complete stated; such as:

Cassowary - an incremental constraint solving toolkit for linear equation systems.

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://gridstylesheets.org/](http://gridstylesheets.org/) is built on Cassowary

</comment><comment><USER13> Since nobody mentioned it yet: iOS autolayout has its roots in Cassowary.</comment>


Creating a Common Lisp implementation, part 1 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa81OJnlsoI <comment><USER2> I can testify to a lot of the difficulties Robert Strandh talks about here. We implemented a Common Lisp in C++ that interoperates with C++ ([https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp.git](https://github.com/clasp- developers/clasp.git)). I ended up implementing a lot more C++ code than I wanted to and then replacing much of it with Common Lisp versions (during startup) because it's easier to maintain and we can use type inference to improve the performance of Common Lisp code while C++ code is 'stuck' with the types you compile it with. Bootstrapping is hard.

<comment><USER3> I like what you're doing, but I really wish you'd provide debs and rpms for x86 and arm; I use common lisp on machines with very little ram, and compiling is too much of a hassle. FWIW, ecl and sbcl are my go-tos.

<comment><USER2> Thank you. So debs for debian? I have great collaborators working with me now that could do this. We have one for Arch I believe. I just haven't prioritized this yet.

<comment><USER3> Debian and its derivatives, yes; I do most of my lisp from raspbian these days, but it's Debian compatible.

<comment><USER4> Cool, I'm curious, what do you do with lisp if you can share it?

<comment> phoe-krk Is that a general question, or a precise one?

In case it's the former, I have a ton of personal projects and small libraries in it, plus wrote a book on it that will get published by Apress[0].

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23843525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23843525)

<comment><USER4> It was a precise one, but thanks! :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is part of a series that keeps happening in the Online Lisp Meetings that are held (bi?)weekly since the last ELS.

Today there's one!

[https://mailman.common-lisp.net/pipermail/online-lisp- meets/...](https://mailman.common-lisp.net/pipermail/online-lisp- meets/2020-August/000027.html)

<comment> phoe-krk Online Lisp Meeting coordinator here for a shameless plug.

If you have or do anything that is related to Lisp (any dialect, _not_ just Common Lisp) and that you find interesting and would like to talk about, please let me know about it - this is precisely why the Online Lisp Meetings happen.

I'll be glad to host your prerecorded video on Twitch while chat happens along the way and questions are asked and answered during the video - that's the formula that we've tested during this year's European Lisp Symposium (ELS) and what we've found to work rather well.

Afterwards, the videos end up on YT on the aforelinked channel.

Also, the meetings are held roughly bi-weekly, where the roughness means that there's a week or two of slippage now and then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > communication between programs uses pipes, requiring transitions through the > kernel

Not if you use shmem.

> it's fairly primitive, because all you can pass is a sequence of bytes

Assuming you have abi sorted out, you can generally write objects directly to a pipe. If you have indirections in those objects then, again, use shmem. (If you want synchrony, you can write the objects over the pipe but share the memory referred to by those functions.)

<comment><USER7> This mean OpenMPI, right? Not sure of what other cross platform provider of shmem there is.

<comment><USER6> I'm not talking about any particular implementation. You could use openmpi. Or posix/sysv shm. Or whatever win32's equivalent is. Or any other facility—many languages have something like this built into their standard library.

<comment><USER7> > I'm not talking about any particular implementation.

Sure, but this needs to map to some implementation in the real world to be a meaningful sentiment. Surely you are aware there is zero standard for the functionality you're referring to. This leaves you with recommending OpenMPI, the only reliable cross-platform implementation of the functionality.

If you don't care about cross-platform compatibility you might as well just hook straight into syscalls, which is referred to on linux (what you seem to be referring to) as shm.

<comment><USER6> > Surely you are aware there is zero standard for the functionality you're > referring to.

Aside from being patently false—shared memory is standardized by IEEE 1003.1 POSIX[1][2][3] and supported on all modern unices—that's a pretty disingenuous and bad-faith assertion. But anyway:

1\. 'shmem' refers generally to the ability of memory pages to mapped into multiple processes' address spaces. The existence (or lack thereof) of any particular implementation does not invalidate the broad point, which refers to a capability which tends to be implemented in _some_ way on arbitrary platforms. Of course, if you want to develop a particular application which uses shared memory, you will want to make decisions about which platforms you want to support and how you want to support them. Of course, this may involve using platform abstraction layer (like openmpi), or building your own, or intentionally tying yourself to a platform or group of platforms. None of that has any bearing on my point, but it does lead to:

2\. The functionality referred to in the linked video—that of composing multiple disparate applications with pipes—is one that is uniquely associated with unix. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that any critique of said functionality operates within the framework of unix. And all unices newer than 30 years implement sysv shmem[4].

1\. [https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/sy...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/sys_shm.h.html)

2\. [https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/sy...](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/sys_mman.h.html)

3\. [https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/help/codes....](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/help/codes.html#SHM)

4\. [https://tldp.org/LDP/lpg/node21.html](https://tldp.org/LDP/lpg/node21.html)

<comment><USER8> Please make your substantive points without swipes like "that's a pretty disingenuous and bad-faith assertion". I know there was something of a provocation, but you'll represent your point of view much better (not to mention not poisoning the commons further) if you ignore that bit.

Discussions like this are otherwise so high-quality that they're really worth taking care with. (Also, all of us longtime Lisp programmers should have a horror of what happens when swipes start to take over technical discussions.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand the point about tail call optimizations not being a part of C... Sure, but you can just rewrite the tail call into a loop and get the exact effect, no?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what he was talking about, but I can make a guess.

According to the sysv abi, every function has to have a stack frame; so for strict conformance (e.g. for unwinding the stack), you should have a stack frame for every function. In practice, this is kinda dumb. Gcc/clang will do TCO (and won't even generate a stack frame if you pass -fomit-frame-pointer). There's no particular reason why the generated code should abide _internally_ by the sysv abi, only that it be able to call external code written according to said abi (and pass callbacks to said external code, but you'd need thunks for that anyway to account for closures).

<comment><USER10> I just wanted to record for posterity that after 14 years of reading it as fomit frame pointer this is the post where I finally realized that it is -f omit frame pointer. What are are fomit pointers and what do they do!? Well now I know.

<comment><USER11> And now I wonder what -f orce are</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vatican to Digitize 41 Million Pages of Ancient Manuscripts - <AUTHOR> http://hyperallergic.com/117932/vatican-to-digitize-41-million-pages-of-ancient-manuscripts/ <comment><USER2> I got to spend a few days once visiting St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai, one of the oldest monasteries in the world, which is famous for having never been sacked. The Codex Sinaiticus was found there, one of the two oldest complete manuscripts of the Bible. It also has some of the only surviving iconography in the world from before the iconoclast period.

Their librarian is American from Boston, and he has been digitizing their library for several years now. My traveling companion was also a Boston librarian, and we had an amazing tour of the library. It was very strange to see, surrounded by ancient stone walls and crumbling manuscripts, top-of-the- line Macs, shelves of USB drives, and a giant digital camera in a room-size metal frame, with a cradle for resting books on.

I'm delighted to hear more such works are being preserved!

<comment><USER3> There's something strangely appropriate about old books and works of art and high-tech in the same space. It feels like you're present in a continuous stream of thought from ancient to present.

<comment><USER4> I find it amazing that the books and manuscripts are still around hundreds if not a thousand years later meanwhile the dye medium of my data CDs from the mid 90s is probably rotten.

<comment><USER5> Lots of books and manuscripts from that period _aren 't_ around any more. A monestry in the middle of the desert is going to be hot and dry, which is great for preserving books.

"Never been sacked" is important as well. Often books can get burned and destroyed during political upheaval, either intentionally (burn the books) or accidentially (the building with the books goes on fire).

When the Spanish conquered what is now Mexico, they destroyed all the Mayan books. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices#Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices#Background) > "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction."

<comment><USER6> There's an interesting anti-parallel to ancient mesopotamian history. From the superlative book Brotherhood of Kings ( [http://www.amazon.com/Brotherhood- Kings-International-Relati...](http://www.amazon.com/Brotherhood-Kings- International-Relations-Ancient/dp/0195313984/) ):

> Mari holds the key to much of our knowledge of this era. The site of Babylon > has physically sunk over the years so that now the palace and archives of > Hammurabi are below the water table and, presumably, reduced to mud

> As in the case of Ebla, the vast archive of thousands of documents from > eighteenth-century [BC] Mari is preserved because the palace burned down. > [...] Because of this, it is possible to read, in some of the letters baked > and buried in the conflagration, about Hammurabi's relations with Mari in > happier times.

Our documents from that period come from conquering kings who, in their zeal to raze enemy cities, forever preserved those cities' records. Literature wasn't as much of a presence then as it is now (tablets run to accounting and correspondence), but it (and history) existed; cf the epic of Gilgamesh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a former history Ph.D. student who has done research in the Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum (ASV), this is kind of an uninformed announcement, or at least it is not the whole truth. The truth is that the Vatican already has all of its pre-modern manuscripts (e.g., roughly pre-1700) digitized. In fact, you're not allowed to read the original copies of the older manuscripts. Instead, when you request a manuscript they hand you a CD that you then take down a flight of stairs to a room with iMac G4's that aren't connected to the Internet where you can view the jpeg's using some early 2000's image viewer. Anyone with a master's degree and with a legitimate claim to being a researcher can visit the archive after a brief interview, and the application process is perfectly straightforward and made public on the ASV's website in multiple language. There is nothing "secret" about it. (It is "secret" in the Latin sense of the word meaning "apart," because it was established as a central archive meant to replace the decentralized archives that were hitherto held in each of the Vatican's individual departments.)

They could have put the digital copies up a long, long time ago if they had felt like it, but libraries are institutions of power and old attitudes die hard. I don't know what the new digitized copies will add, but I'm guessing that they will be in color and that they will also include the more modern manuscripts in the collection. There are more important reforms that they could divert their resources to, however, like better and more uniform indexing and cataloging. Perhaps these will follow, but even once (if) they put the copies on the Internet the state of the Vatican catalogs is such that it will be extremely difficult for any interested members of the public to approach the source material.

<comment><USER8> Any ideas if they are hiding anything fun?

<comment><USER5> After the Da Vinci Code book & film, people think there's some sort of secret early Christian books that are being hidden and if the world knew about them, Christianity/Catholic church would fall.

But there are loads of early Christian books / "gospels" that survive or rediscovered which are quite different from what's in the bible, and no-one really cares.

For example in 1945, a pile of early books were discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt[1], including a Gospel of Thomas[2]. There is a Infancy Gospel of Thomas[3] from ~145CE which claims to talk about Jesus as a child, in which child Jesus uses his supernatural powers to kill children who bully him.

Have the revelations of all this "brought down the Catholic Chruch"?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_thomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_thomas) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas)

<comment><USER9> No, but (as I gather it) the bible as it is known today (and for the past millennia) is a whole, and anything extra - gospel of Thomas, the apocryphal books, etc - are seen as just that - extra, non-canonical, and not to be treated as fact / truth or handled during sermons.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. But those "extra books" have been know about for centuries. It's not like there are new "extra books"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No matter what your feelings are about religion, this is a great thing for humanity in general. The preservation of ancient manuscripts only makes us richer.

<comment><USER11> It's sad you have to qualify it—religion is part of all our past, whatever our opinions of it now, and it will only increase our wisdom to understand our ancestors.

<comment><USER12> It's also very much a part of our present, perhaps Silicon Valley not withstanding.

<comment><USER13> Oh, don't worry, Silicon Valley still has some forms of religion. Like the idea of Singularity, with Kurzweil as a prophet. You also have Saint-like figures such as Steve Jobs, whose achievements are God-like for all his believers, no matter how he mistreated employees, competitors and humans in general.

It's a strange thing, actually, to see people reject older _nonsensical_ beliefs while creating their owns devoid of all rationality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They already have some things from their catalog digitized.

e.g. [http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp](http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp)

[http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?pag=cataloghi_online](http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?pag=cataloghi_online)

<comment><USER15> They are watermarking scans of items that are not in copyright since they predate the copyright system. What kind of bullshit is this?

These should all be public domain. Is there anyone besides Google and the Vatican that watermark public domain works?

<comment><USER16> The reproduction itself is still a protected work, but you are free to reproduce the content if you copy it from the original or a reproduction that is no longer protected (i.e. older than 50 years in most jurisdictions I know about).

<comment><USER17> I don't believe so. INAL but if the photograph attempts to exactly replicate an image I'm pretty sure copyright doesn't hold. So like, a high resolution image of a Caravaggio is still usable as public domain.[0]

I'm pretty sure the Vatican's got to "ruin" the images with a watermark or anyone would be able to use them as is for whatever they want. It'd be different if it was sculpture, but these pics seem to me like they'd definitely fall into the "slavish reproduction of a public domain work" category.

[0] [http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public- domain/welcome/#...](http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public- domain/welcome/#dear_rich_she_wants_to_use_bloch_paintings_on_tv)

<comment><USER18> Er, why are we looking at reference on _US_ copyright law here? The State of Vatican City is not a US jurisdiction, and it has its own copyright law (which incorporates, to the extent that it is not preempted by the special laws promulgated by the Vatican, the copyright law of Italy.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I highly doubt most of that stuff will be publicly accessible. A friend told she had a very hard time finding the documents she needed for her thesis at the Vatical Library. She had the definite impression, after a lengthy process to get clearance, that the inventory was kept patchy on purpose to make it hard for external visitors to find stuff in the allotted time.

<comment><USER7> The interview process is short and straightforward, or at least it was in my case, but the indexing system is a nightmare and a patchwork of centuries of amateur and professional librarians cobbling together catalogs. Some of the collections can only be referenced using catalogs that are 250+ years old-- literally. I don't mean copies or modern printings of the catalogs. I mean literally some dude wrote on the pages in front of you 250 years ago and that is the tool that you are supposed to use to find your sources. Yes, very low quality facsimiles are tucked away in a corner of the reading room, but you need to figure out which catalog they're in to find them...

One definitely wonders at some point whether the whole thing is organized as a conspiracy to confuse new Ph.D. students!

<comment><USER19> I think it also depends on what you're looking for. My friend was working on libertines in the XVII century, so probably documents the church is not especially proud of now.

It did not help that one of her advisors had published a paper on homosexual marriage in a roman church in the late XVI century [0, 1]

[0] [https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_di_San_Giovanni_a_Porta...](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_di_San_Giovanni_a_Porta_Latina#Confraternita_segreta)

[1] [http://books.google.it/books?id=tOANjJswdRQC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA2...](http://books.google.it/books?id=tOANjJswdRQC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=gay+marriage+san+giovanni+porta+latina&source=bl&ots=UtEfte8joE&sig=Y_K65JooqRLLoOtE6Erj84KYG6Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rlQ-U8XpO8iZtQbanoCwBQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER7> I defer to your friend's expertise on the subject, but really, the Church isn't trying to hide anything. This was not the case when the ASV opened to the public in the late nineteenth century when in fact the Vatican's hope was that researchers would read their documents and write nice things about the church. These days, however, the ASV is one of Europe's main archives, curated by respected professionals. There is no hidden agenda.

A more likely reason why your friend had such a hard time was Napoleon, who made a policy of transferring all the grand archives of the countries he conquered back to Paris. An enormous number of documents were lost during the transfer and the eventual repatriation, somewhere around one third. Records relating to Galileo's trial were lost, for example. Of course, the most likely reason that your friend and I had difficulty is just the incredibly user- unfriendly systems of cataloging that the ASV uses.

At the risk of sounding like an apologist for the Vatican, I should also point out that the fact that these archives are open at all is remarkable. These aren't a national archive, for instance, where the state maintains records as a service for its citizens and to keep the nation's heritage alive. The ASV is quite simply the dumping ground for the Vatican's bureaucracy over the past 1700 or so years. They don't owe this to anyone.

It would be like if Microsoft pooled all documents generated by HR, marketing, product development, engineering, legal, and its other divisions, physically dumped them in various containers over the centuries, and one day in the year 3749 A.D. announced that the public could rifle through the papers if they wanted to. The immediate impetus would be to demonstrate that Office 3750 was not in fact part of an anti-competitive plot to secure a monopoly on productivity software sold in Alpha Centauri and Venus. But by 3800 A.D., that original purpose would have been long forgotten and researchers, regardless of which office suite they use, would be able to mine the archives for anything that anyone working for Microsoft ever said, did, or observed during the work day, so long as those thoughts were captured on some format that eventually made its way to paper.

...to make the analogy more complete, let's also assume that most of the other major institutions and their archives have been wiped out by this time. What ends up happening, then, is that researchers in 3749 A.D. dig through MS' archives for glimmers of things like what people ate during the day in 2014 or what sort of music they listened to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The announcement [http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to- digitise-82000-manus...](http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to- digitise-82000-manuscripts-in-the-vat)

</comment><comment><USER21> Now we really need a long term storage medium.

Has anybody else though about just how fragile data is these days I mean these books/manuscripts are ancient?

What is the likelihood of any of our data surviving for over 1000 years in the digital realm?

We need a long therm digital data archive or we risk loosing a lot of important but not very popular data since the internet favors popularity over importance.

<comment><USER13> Problem is, data storage evolves very fast and new technologies come and go. Even if you designed the ultimate, 1000-year durable floppy disk 20 years back, nobody would use it now because it's obsolete in terms of storage. You can only reach this kind of thinking when storage density reaches a plateau.

Personally, rather than data storage, i'm much more concerned about the formats and the OS we use for our files - will they still be supported 50-100 years down the road ? For the ones which are open-sourced, maybe, but how about all the proprietary formats ? How can we ensure they will remain readable ?

<comment><USER22> You store the data in an open lossless format at the highest quality that makes sense, then transfer the digital copy from storage medium to storage medium as they are developed.

So for your example you'd transfer from floppy disk to bluray.

<comment><USER21> Regular storage mediums are just too fragile and if you have a lot of data transferring it over takes too long we're still digitizing books.

Long term storage medium capacity doesn't need to progress in line with regular storage mediums it just need to be updated once it's too out of sync.

The old data can stay on the old version since there's no urgency in transferring it over as long as the spec for it is kept on the latest medium a reader can always be built to read it.

We tend to worry about not having devices to read it but given how 3D printers are progressing having the spec and building a replacement reader should be easy enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From the original press release[1]:

> The project consists of an initial four-year phase during which three > thousand manuscripts will be digitised, which may be extended into a second > phase to include the 82,000 volumes – more than 40 million pages – of > manuscripts preserved in the Library and dating from between the second and > twentieth centuries.

It's going to be slow but it's a step in the right direction.

[1]: [http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to- digitise-82000-manus...](http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to- digitise-82000-manuscripts-in-the-vat)

<comment><USER24> Slowness isn't surprising. These books are _old_ and one-of-a-kind. Even with the best technology, it's still a very delicate process to scan them without damaging them. Some of these works are so old, that even the wrong kind of _light_ will hurt them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If only the Vatican Bank was so transparent...

</comment><comment><USER26> An attempt to stay relevant and continue to paralyse certain communities with superstitious bullshit from the iron age, for the foreseeable future!

<comment><USER27> I'm assuming you did not read the link, the library includes art from feudal japan, a book from the Aztec empire, etc. Did you think it was just a bunch of old bibles? Missionaries would report what they saw when they traveled the world (often making "first contact"). I don't think digitizing texts in Ancient Greek will help "relevance" much.</comment></comment>


JavaScript Cryptography Considered Harmful (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nccgroup.trust/us/about-us/newsroom-and-events/blog/2011/august/javascript-cryptography-considered-harmful/ <comment><USER2> Authored by HN's own Thomas Ptacek[0]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek)</comment>


Interview with Brunello Cucinelli, King of Cashmere - <AUTHOR> http://pi.co/brunello-cucinelli-2/ <comment><USER2> I was born and grew up in Assisi, in the heart of Umbria, the Italian region where Cucinelli is from, and where his company is located.

I visited the company twice, and I am good friend with someone who is very close to him.

I know many details, some of which I won't reveal as I don't know if they are supposed to be revealed; but in general, I have a very high opinion of Brunello Cucinelli and his work.

One thing that I particularly appreciate is the fact that he tries to "elevate" his workers, from a cultural standpoint, at every occasion.

Years ago, when tensions between Christianity and Islam were rising, Brunello gave a Koran as a present to everybody, saying something like "we should know them better; if we do, we will stop being racists and we will understand that we are all human beings".

He invests millions of euros a year in cultural projects, or invites famous actors or thinkers or philosophers to give a lecture to his workforce.

Another episode that I love is that, when the company does well financially, he voluntarily decides to distribute thousands of euros to each employee as a present.

I have never bought any of his product, as they are extremely expensive. I know several people which own his cashmere, and they all rave about it. If you like to invest thousands of euros in clothing, then his products are fine. My upper threshold has been in the few hundreds, and only for a few selected ones.

Last, but not least, everybody talks about and knows Tuscany, but Umbria is really a hidden jewel. As always, when you visit Italy or any other foreign country, keep your eyes open, as there's always someone trying to take advantage of you, especially if you're American or Japanese (trust me, American or Japanese tourists are considered to be the "easiest" to take advantage of).

If you like Brunello's style of management, you should also read about Adriano Olivetti. If Olivetti didn't die prematurely, there would be a non-zero chance that instead of talking about Intel today, we would be talking about Olivetti.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have enormous respect for Brunello, his process, and their product. I purchased a used pair of Brunello loafers for $200USD (Retail for ~ $999) and many years later they continue to perform at the highest quality even after daily use -- and on top of that have stayed fashionable.

Cucinelli seems focus on the entire dynamic of what a product is; considering everything from how it was made, what it is made of, how it is sold, and how long it lasts long after it is purchased. This type of care for the ecosystem of commerce is so incredibly rare I can't help but applaud the man and what he and his workers have accomplished. But what he has truly done is make a product that is an icon -- something to be purchased for all those dynamics and maintains its value even for the 2nd and 3rd owner.

"There are some companies that give a lot of their money to charity. I'm not interested in that. Because first of all I want to see how they make their profit in the process. It is meaningless that they make a huge profit and then do charity."

His clarity, but lack of cynicism makes an environment that I would aspire to be a part of some day. Honest, yet hopeful.

</comment><comment><USER4> The bit of Italy I live in is pretty, but Umbria (where the company is located) is - in my view - one of the most beautiful places in the world. I can't help but think that makes you happier, whoever you are, rich or poor.

<comment><USER5> Umbria is beautiful. We went there for vacation once, just before the earthquake. What part of Italy are you from?

<comment><USER4> I'm not from Italy but live in Padova for... a few more weeks :-/ See my profile.

<comment><USER5> I saw your profile, interesting! As I want to go back and live in Italy, I also signed up for news for the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonderful interview. If only he didn't have to charge $995 for each cashmere sweater to be able to provide these things for his workers, and for himself. Either way, I'm glad he does.

<comment><USER3> Whats wrong with his price point? $995 isn't 1 million dollars -- if someone valued participating in this ecosystem almost any first-world consumer could afford one or two and have them for a lifetime.

Also consider the psychological pricing -- maybe he could cut his sweaters to $599, or $299 (but not much lower than that) -- but likely still be way out of the "I dont pay more than $49.99 for a sweater" crowd. So then he'd be leaving a ton of money on the table for fractional growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Olivetti ran his company more or less the same way - as a philosopher

</comment><comment><USER7> Amazing man, wish i could afford his clothing.

</comment><comment><USER8> great read, thanks</comment>


A Vibrating Watch That Messes With Your Perception of Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2014/01/a-vibrating-watch-that-messes-with-your-perception-of-time/

<comment><USER2> I'm skeptical. I still lose track of time when I repeatedly hitting that snooze button every 9 minutes in the morning.</comment>


Managing asyncio tasks, the trio way - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/RouquinBlanc/traio <comment><AUTHOR> Trio is a new way of writing asynchronous code in python3. It's elegant, with its nurseries and scopes, and allows to manage tasks in a sane way, compared with asyncio.

Except it's an incompatible alternative of asyncio, so if you're already in an asyncio project, using asyncio libraries, you can't use trio... And what if you like asyncio???

There are discussions about adding a similar concept of "supervisor" in asyncio in a future version of python3, but for now we already need something to help, and in fact if you are using asyncio, you are probably already handling tasks and cleanup, more or less manually...

"Traio" (as some kind of Trio on top of asyncio) is an experiment on trying to bring a bit of scoping for coroutines and a cleaner way of managing (understand: cancel, join) tasks, while still using pure asyncio.

Please comment! It's very young, but at the same time we hope it can help making asyncio an even better library!</comment>


Europe's Planned Digital Tax Heightens Tensions with U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/us/politics/europe-digital-tax-trade.html <comment><USER2> The problem seems to be rooted within the EU itself with Ireland, Luxembourg and others allowing these companies to pay little or not taxes.

<comment><USER3> Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5% which is in the lower half of the table of EU rates but that's no basis to brand it a "tax haven".

People get riled up because of an exclusively American twist to their corporate tax rule which allows American companies to defer paying US corporate tax on foreign earnings until the money is "repatriated". This is why you never see UK, German, Japanese, etc. companies use Ireland as a tax "haven".

Ireland follows international law in taxing multinationals on the profits generated in Ireland. When you hear a claim along the lines of "Apple only pays 2% on its revenues in Ireland", it's because the vast majority of the profit is taxable in the US not in Ireland but payment is deferred because of this US tax loophole. Just because the cash hasn't been handed over to Uncle Sam, doesn't mean it isn't due.

It's perfectly understandable that the US government is unhappy at this attempt by a foreign government to grab corporate tax which by all international standards belongs to the US treasury. If the EU (and I'm a proud European) wants a share of digital tax, then they should grow their own profitable tech companies to tax instead of selectively eyeing up US tech companies. The US doesn't get to impose corporate tax on German car makers or French wine producers - nor should the EU get to impose a corporate tax on US tech companies.

<comment><USER4> Except they don't pay 12.5%.

Apple paid 0.005% in 2014.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/30/how-apples-irish- subsidiarie...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/30/how-apples-irish-subsidiaries- paid-a-0005-percent-tax-rate-in-2014.html)

"When you hear a claim along the lines of "Apple only pays 2% on its revenues in Ireland", it's because the vast majority of the profit is taxable in the US not in Ireland"

No, this is not the reason. They pay an incredible low tax rate for all EU profit because of special illegal deals.

<comment><USER3> That's not a fair comparison. You don't pay corporate tax based on a percentage of turnover so your rate has nothing to do with corporate tax rates. They pay Irish corporate tax on profits generated by their operations in Ireland which are understandably a tiny fraction of their sales in Europe. The rest is taxable in the US and in fact Apple have recently started repatriating foreign profits to the US and are paying US corporate tax on them.

<comment><USER4> No, you don't understand the system at all

First, they shift all profit to Ireland as "licensing costs" for intellectual property.

Next: "Ordinarily, those profits would be taxed in Ireland at the relatively low rate of 12.5 percent but — thanks to an agreement between Apple and Ireland — the vast majority of profits in Ireland were attributed to a "head office" not located in any country and therefore not subject to taxes in Ireland or anywhere." [https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/30/how-apples-irish- subsidiarie...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/30/how-apples-irish-subsidiaries- paid-a-0005-percent-tax-rate-in-2014.html)

<comment><USER3> You're contradicting yourself - they cannot simultaneously shift all profits to Ireland and to a non-Irish head office. They split the profits on their international sales channeled through Ireland between both. The non-Irish profits are taxable by the US which is why the US government is fighting the EU over this as they rightly (in my opinion) see it as a money grab.

<comment><USER5> No he is not contradicting himself, and yes they can do both of those and spirit away the entirety of their EU profits into a caribbean island with minimal taxation. Read up on the double irish dutch sandwich tax strategy.

<comment><USER3> You're implying that by moving international profits to a Caribbean country means Apple has avoided corporate tax? Like laundering money?

This is not the case - they park their international profits in the Caribbean because US tax code allows them to keep profits offshore and only pay tax when they bring the profits onshore.

If Ireland was facilitating corporate tax avoidance by an American country, why is the US supporting Ireland in the Apple case in the ECJ?

Does this not suggest that there is more complexity to this situations than the hyperbolic headlines?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> US aside, is there any word on how Ireland et al. are reacting to the EU trying to cut off their cash cow?

<comment><USER7> It may not be that bad for Ireland. Ireland had stipulations in bringing a certain amount of operations(ie jobs) into the country to get their favorable tax rate. If the tax benefits are cut back, these businesses may decide it is worth while to keep operations ongoing in Ireland even without the favorable tax regime. Only time will tell on that front if Google et al will remain there.

<comment><USER3> There is no "favourable tax rate" in Ireland - around 1990 or so, the EU ruled against selective favourable tax rates. Before that, Ireland used to have a 10% rate for exporting (largely foreign) companies and 25% for non-exporting companies. As a result of the ruling, a single 12.5% rate was introduced. It's been like that since.

<comment><USER5> But with the Double Irish strategy and its successors, no US company actually pays those 12.5%, but less than 0.1% instead...

<comment><USER3> Eh no to the 0.1%. But I have to concede that the power of shocking but nonsense headline numbers is hard to argue against given how I'm burning through Karma here.

The 0.1% is a number concocted by treating the value of European retail sales as a numerator and the Irish corporation tax as a denominator. The problem is that the dimensions in this division are not-compatible. By the same calculation Walmart only paid 1.2% corporate tax in the US in 2014 (corporate tax paid / total revenue). In actual fact, Walmart paid an effective rate of over 30% because corporate tax is calculate on profits - not on revenue.

<comment><USER4> derriz, the ~0.005% taxes is not on revenue but on EU profits. How can you keep repeating your same mistake and keep burning through your karma?

"After an investigation, the EC determined that Apple, in accordance with the tax agreement with Ireland, had effectively paid annual taxes of 1.0% on its European profits in 2003 and ~0.005% in 2014." -marketrealist [https://marketrealist.com/2018/01/eu-demanding-15-billion- un...](https://marketrealist.com/2018/01/eu-demanding-15-billion-unpaid-taxes- apple)

How about you post some of your sources?

<comment><USER3> JanSt it seems we are talking across each other so this will probably be my last post on the subject.

The EC's determination is being challenged in court on the very basis that Vestager completely misunderstood or deliberately miscalculated what was "EU" profit.

She basically claimed that Apple USA's intellectual property and management contributed nothing in generating profits on Apple sales in the EU. This is clear nonsense - without Apple USA, there would be zero "Apple" profits in the EU.

Ask yourself a simple question; when Apple sells an iphone in Europe, say for say 600EUR excluding VAT or sales tax, how much of that profit "belongs" to the US operation and how much "belongs" to the European distribution center which happens to be based in Ireland?

Vesteger's claim is that ALL OF IT belongs in Ireland. This claim will not last 10 minutes in front of the ECJ judges.

The vast majority of it - according to decades of international tax case law - belongs to the Apple USA as they invented and developed the product. The product isn't even manufactured in Ireland.

As a result of transfer pricing, the Irish distribution has very little profit to declare and so pays very little corporation tax.

But this does NOT mean that Apple has avoided tax. They park their US profit in a Carribean bank account waiting for an opportune moment to repatriate it and when they do they pay corporate tax on it. The ironic aspect of this thing is that the US has the highest effective corporate tax rates in the OECD and so Apple would be far better off shifting as much of the profit as they can to Ireland. But they cannot because of international norm on transfer pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More incentive for tech companies to move to the UK?

<comment> oh-kumudo UK is out of EU. And what is the point of moving to UK, when you want to the market of EU?

<comment><USER8> To escape silly EU laws like this one, while still being a part of the continent and close to the market.

<comment><USER9> > still being a part of the continent

Sorry, I understand that this is most likely just figurative, but it very much gives impression that you haven't looked at the European map for a while.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand your comment. The UK is literally part of the European continent.

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

<comment><USER9> I immediately read the original comment as UK belonging to the mainland of Europe, but you are right, continent can also refer to continental shelf.

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

"The most restricted meaning of continent is that of a continuous[5] area of land or mainland, with the coastline and any land boundaries forming the edge of the continent. In this sense the term continental Europe (sometimes referred to in Britain as "the Continent") is used to refer to mainland Europe, excluding islands such as Great Britain"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "... that push has prompted complaints from American tech giants, which argue that they are being unfairly singled out by Brussels. European officials strongly deny those claims..."

After so many targeted requirements, restrictions, investigations, fines, and taxes no one's really buying that denial.

It's tariff by other name, which lends credence to Trump's rhetoric about how we haven't been treated fairly by our so called allies.

EU governance and enforcement lends itself to be hijacked by the bloc's most powerful members (france and germany, in this particular case the french) and use them as a cudgel against perceived business threats.

<comment><USER4> No it's not. Amazon pays less taxes on books sold than any bricks-and-mortar store in countries like Germany. They abuse the broken tax system and force smaller players that can't afford those structures (or get an illegal special Ireland tax treatment like Apple) out of business because they can't compete against massive scale combined with lower taxes. The EU now tries to fix the system because those companies keep evading all other measures. The EU population and local businesses do not accept that damaging behavior anymore. You want to make profit in our countries? Don't abuse the system or it will be fixed to be fair again.

<comment><USER11> If you are going to benefit from the EU's consolidated market you can't complain about the benefits companies are extracting from that same arrangement.

Not to mention that taxing specific companies that happen to come from the same country while the keeping the tax rules unchanged for the rest of the economy isn't fair or free trade and would justifiably require retaliation.

<comment><USER4> Ireland agreed to a special Apple tax treatment so that Apple pays practically no taxes. Special deals for single companies are illegal under EU law. You want access to the EU market? Play by the rules.

The tax law is also not applicable only to US companies but to all companies.

This is like saying all law breaking mafia members that corrupted a member state are coming from the same country and putting them behind bars is not fair because the EU is a consolidated market and if you want to profit from it you have to agree that the mafia extracts value from the arrangement and leaving the rules unchanged for the rest of the non-mafia economy is not fair or free trade.

<comment><USER3> The commisioner has argued that Ireland agreed to a special deal for Apple. Ireland and Apple strongly deny that there was any favourable tax deal offered. The ECJ will decide the case and unless the EU wants to undermine the entire system of transfer pricing which is the basis for international trade, they will side with Ireland and Apple.

<comment><USER4> The EC ruled the tax deal illegal and forced Ireland to collect $13bn which Ireland denied to do. The EC thus put Ireland to the ECJ and started implementing alternative tax rules, with the 3% revenue tax being the result. Paying 0.005% taxes by evading the system? The system will be changed.

"The ECJ will decide the case and unless the EU wants to undermine the entire system of transfer pricing which is the basis for international trade, they will side with Ireland and Apple."

Transfer of profit to the lowest tax destination is not the basis for international trade. Evading taxes will result in tax laws adapting.

<comment><USER3> This is simply factually incorrect. Ireland and Apple lodged the appeal to the ECJ against the ruling in November 2016. Ireland was forced to collect the 13B pending the appeal in December 2017.

The US is not the lowest tax destination - in fact it has a relatively high corporate tax rate. Apple is making their international profits subject to US corporate tax which is why the US is on the side of Ireland and Apple in the appeal.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but you completely misunderstand the situation. This is not about moving profit to the US and the US is not the tax haven I'm talking about. Get your USA out of your head and just accept that they don't pay the taxes they are obliged to pay in the EU by evading them.

<comment><USER3> Putting "sorry" at the start of a comment accusing me of misunderstand the situation doesn't really help here. I've contradicted your claimed sequence of events and of course I googled before writing the post to confirm my memory of the timeline of the EC ruling and the ECJ involvement.

There is no corporate tax evasion here and that is confirmed by reports like this one[1] which makes it clear that offshore Apple (and other US corporation) profits are clearly liable for US corporate tax. The fact that they can defer paying their US corporate tax is due to a quirk of the US tax system and nothing more.

[1] [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4150066-repatriation- make-2...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4150066-repatriation- make-2018-1-trillion-buyback-year)

The 3% is a proposed duty/tarif which has nothing to do with how Apple's profits are and were taxed. This is a tax on revenue/sales/imports not on company profits.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I saved $39,420 by not buying a domain without a prototype - <AUTHOR> http://www.adamduvander.com/simple/how-i-saved-39420-by-not-buying-a-domain-without-a-prototype <comment><USER2> Why, just this morning I saved myself 360 million dollars by not buying a Boeing-747!

[http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/prices/](http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/prices/)

<comment><USER3> It warms my heart that Boeing has pricing information available, even if it's just average prices. I hate that "Call Us" where the price should be and needing to go through excruciating pitching by sales droid to get further, I'll ask them how their product is more special than a 747 next time....

<comment><USER4> Without providing an easy way to pay they are losing lots of potential customers. If they just added a simple Stripe form, their conversions would double overnight.

<comment><USER5> Fee = $360,000,000 x 0.029 + $.30 = $10,440,000.30

<comment><USER6> They could really reduce that fee if they started accepting payments in Bitcoin!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually _made_ $500 by buying a domain without a prototype. Back in college I started working on a personal project I decided to call "Silicon Brain". As soon as I had my first 5 lines of JavaScript I bought the domain name "sibrain.com". Fast forward a few months... I've lost interest in the project. Someone contacts me looking to buy the domain, I accept, payment is made within a week, and I am $500 richer.

[EDIT: Thanks joelrunyon for the cached copy.]

I'd like to make a counterargument: that if you think of a domain name that's relatively pronouncable and not extremely limited in scope (e.g. "joes-art- supply.com" would be pretty specific, but "joeworld.com" doesn't limit you as much) nab it. Granted, you don't want to be doing this _every_ day, but remember, "google" was once a nonsense word (okay, it was a misspelling of a number that was rarely used outside of certain contexts).

<comment><USER8> The guy who bought the domain from you could have saved himself $500 had he not bought the domain before prototype (the site is dead).

<comment><USER7> Good point. I'm probably only justifying my "habit" here...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> His numbers seem a bit off & inflated to make the point.

For example - why does he have to buy 3 domains per idea he thinks up? Getting the .com alone would be sufficient until he actually does have a prototype. Similarly, why is he bound to hold on to them for 3 years a piece?

A good alternative would be the "1 year rule" or buy a domain & commit to not renewing if you don't have a prototype finished by the first year.

All of a sudden - instead of risking $40k, you've got that by a factor of 10 (and that's if you're actually buying a domain every single day). At that point - the domain buying either needs to be a part-time job or is a really bad exercise in procrastination & distraction.

 _Alternative Numbers_

> 1 Year - 365 Ideas

> Domain - $10.50

> 1 Year = $3,650

<comment><USER10> Yeah, my numbers were inflated, but even with your numbers the point is the same: work on your idea first and only buy its home when you're ready to launch. Thanks for reading.

<comment><USER11> and make a more than a mental note to cancel the domain name if you don't use it in a year's time. It's the re-occuring domain charges that really get you in the end. (no pun intended).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site is down.

Mirror here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.adamduvander.com/simple/how- i-saved-39420-by-not-buying-a-domain-without-a-prototype)

<comment><USER10> Thanks. I didn't expect you guys to find me. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The reasoning here is a little silly; even those who pursue ideas without prototypes or validation probably don't buy up three domains _every single day_ , so of course it's not a matter of saving forty thousand dollars.

However, this does bring to mind two good points:

* Consider validating an idea, or at least making a paper prototype, before spending lot of time or money chasing it.

* Getting the perfect domain name for an idea is not crucial to its success. Look at Dropbox, they used getdropbox.com early on, presumably until they were big enough to buy dropbox.com.

<comment><USER13> The truth of Dropbox's acquisition of dropbox.com is a little murkier than them just buying it - it appears that they initiated this by suing the previous owner, who had owned the domain since 1995:

[http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/californ...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/california/candce/3:2009cv03824/218466/8/)

However, the case was later dismissed, so I guess they came to some other agreement after all:

[http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/californ...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/california/candce/3:2009cv03824/218466/12/)

No details on whether the initial owner had to give up the domain or was fairly compensated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > 1 Year - 365 Ideas.

I don't believe someone can buy domains for a spur-of-the-moment idea back-to- back even 3 days before he'll realize he has a problem. I would think that you can at least remember than you bought a domain yesterday and try to work on it a little.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Just about every day I have at least one new idea.

Jeez, and here I am having trouble coming up with just one.

<comment><USER16> The best way to overcome this is to keep a running list of any business or project you think of that's even remotely worthwhile. Continually groom and sort this list. It's like how comedians and writers come up with material, a lot of them carry around a notebook. Your brain gets used to having this background thread that is coming up with ideas and seeing all your ideas laid out in writing spurs new ones.

<comment><USER15> I think the main problem (for me) is that I live in a vacuum. I work in a tech company that engineers products for engineers. I've surrounded myself with so much tech savvy people, and places that I don't have inspiration for problems I am capable of solving. My desire is to create a product for "normal people"... but i don't know what "normal people" have issues with.

<comment><USER17> Are you not a normal person yourself? Do you not have problems? Go scratch your own itch!

Just yesterday I chewed through a (pretty good) idea for a modern review- oriented site for gear-centric hobbies. As a guitarist and photographer, I read a lot of gear reviews, and the sites that provide them are often horrible to use - 2002-vintage antiques, or ugly and unnavigable, or both. But the hobbyists have well-used forums (awful ones), enough to make a living for some small time businesses.

So the other night, I was researching Japanese kitchen knives, as I'm planning to get my daughter some for Christmas, and butted into the same problem. And I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if someone built a really modern review app and built hobby gear review sites with it?"

I spent a couple of hours poring over the financial model for such a business, and decided it was a bad idea. Running on ad support and waiting for the content to build would be a slow, painful time with a fairly low income ceiling.

But hey, want an idea? There's one. Run with it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I probably didn't save as much as the OP, but I saved a good $1000 of my domains. You see, domain registration becomes addictive, when you get an idea, you are so convinced that it would work and it will make you rich (probably) over night. I've fallen for this trap too, I registered some top notch domains in a span of 2 years, amounting to a total of ~50+ domains because of that sudden impulsive urge - "Oh, it's available! I should register it ASAP!"

Contrary to popular belief, there is (in my personal experience) not much (monetary) value for domains as the registrars and the others might want you to believe. I registered some really short, cool names that were estimated by 'domain experts'/appraisals estimating some of my so called premium domains for $1000's of dollars, yet in the end, I had to pay money to domain marketplaces (like GoDaddy) to list my domain for sale, only to discover that the demand isn't just there at all. A few scammers contacted me about their domain appraisal and brokerage services and that was just it. And unless you have a really really valuable domain that has some actual traffic in it, this is not worth investing your money in.

So, I just let the domains expire one by one. At first it was kind of painful, but after two painful years and after losing $1000+ dollars, I can tell you that when you have the actual product ready, the domain will be the least of your problems.

</comment><comment><USER19> > When the domain version of the name is available

When did that ever happen?

For every prototype I have build, I (or we in some cases) spend days looking for good name-domain combinations.

In my experience it is a real pain to find a domain worth buying for a specific idea, let alone 3 per day.

</comment><comment><USER20> Overall point is good, but while I could believe someone could come up with a reasonable idea every day of the year, coming up with a good enough _name_ for each one that's worth registering seems unrealistic. If you can do _that_ , you could have a mind blowing career in branding ;-)

</comment><comment><USER21> If you buy a domain for x and can't resell it for some approximation of x, then you paid too much.

</comment><comment><USER22> How I'm gonna save time by not clicking on linkbait.

</comment><comment><USER23> 403 I Didn't Buy a Domain

</comment><comment><USER11> site's down, perhaps a sign from the domain gods??</comment>


Open Letter on the Digital Economy - <AUTHOR> http://openletteronthedigitaleconomy.org/

<comment><USER2> I was hoping for something more far-reaching, but the public policy recommendations rehash ideas that have been proposed before ("We need to reinvent education with greater emphasis on STEM disciplines and coding skills," etc.) I would be very interested in seeing the proposals for new organizational models & approaches, but the link did not work.</comment>


Oculus Rift - The Latent Power of Prediction - <AUTHOR> http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/the-latent-power-of-prediction/

<comment><USER2> Is this really a blog with no rss? I've never come across that before, it makes me sad. (Or am I just not finding it?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this after searching the source: [http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/feed/](http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/feed/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of Lever's "50/50 men and women team" sales pitch - <AUTHOR> I see their ads popping in hacker news every other day and they always mention they have a 50/50 men and women team, but does that 50/50 ratio hold in the engineering team?<p>According to a friend who worked there a while ago their engineering team is nowhere near that 50/50 ratio. <comment><USER2> It makes me think that, that statistic likely came at the expense of talent - on either side of the spectrum. Engineering is a good example. There are vastly more men than there are women. Would I expect this company to hire the best women? No. Meaning the company intentionally hired less talented engineers specifically because they were women.

Beyond being sexist, I just don't think that's what a company should be focusing on.

Even if the statistic didn't carry over to every department - which I get the feeling it doesn't - I still think that would be wrong.

With that selling point, it's not hard to see why their job ads are continually up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like working with all sorts of different types of people, as I learn from perspectives different than my own in ways I wasn't expecting to learn, and I find that enjoyable.

I think some men reject the idea of women as competent, or more competent, as them, and tend unconsciously diminish female engineering talent, and you get meetings where the female engineer makes a proposal, and it's ignored, and then a second meeting where a male engineer makes that exact same proposal, and is lauded for the good idea.

I think if Lever is an attractive place for women, it means that the best women engineers and other employees will be more likely to be working there, rather then being devalued elsewhere. I think women that stay in tech and are successful have to be better at their job then men with equivalent roles.

That said, if I was concerned about the quality of their engineering talent, for whatever reason, I'd consider how best to judge them on that in a neutral and quantifiable sense when I interviewed there, rather then using demographics as any sort of signifier of talent.

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally don't care. When I look for future employers (as a male at least) I don't care how many women work there. I care about the work being done (is it interesting?), the team I'd be a part of (is it a happy team?), the compensation, etc. In short: I'm not sure who the sales pitch is intended for? Single men? Women who want to work in a less male-centric organization?

</comment><comment><USER5> I always thought it was a weird thing to say, though it does grab your attention which might be what it is going for. But as a man I always assume this means that I wouldn't have a good chance of being hired by the company. I don't buy arguments that women applicants are on average more qualified than male applicants, my prior is that applicants should be roughly equal. Presumably the company gets more male applicants, so to maintain a 50/50 ratio they must reject a significantly higher fraction of male applicants than other companies do.

</comment><comment><USER6> It makes me think no matter who they hire, they're going to throw off the balance!

Unless they hire in gendered pairs which would be... well, an interesting approach.

</comment><comment><USER7> It makes me think that they're sexist. The CS applicant pool is ~15-25% female. I would expect similar team compositions.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't work there simply due to the fact that they advertise this. Not that it's a bad thing at all, it just shows that the company will have a culture that is very PC/SJW heavy and I'm honestly sick of it in this industry so I would stay away</comment>


Machine Learning in the Financial Markets - <AUTHOR> http://zacharydavid.com/2018/01/08/accountability-generalizability-and-rigor-in-finance-research-machine-learning-in-markets-part-ii/ <comment><USER2> We had a pretty good discussion going a few months back when I posted part 1. Curious to hear your thoughts.</comment>