In the Ruins - <AUTHOR> http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/MISC/RUINS/Ruins.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, that got flagged off the front page fast.

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't like it. But I think it's important, so I'll upvote it. A lot of things on HN are like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the best sci-fi short story I've ever read, and I don't necessarily agree with all the views expressed, but I thought it would be interesting to HN.

For those not familiar, Greg Egan writes some of the hardest science fiction you'll ever read. Check out _Orphanogenesis,_ which stands alone but is also the introduction to his mindblowing novel _Diaspora_ :

[http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphano...](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is it about? TL;DR version?

<comment><USER5> If you're the kind of person who substitutes reading a review for watching a movie:

It's a poignant story about the devolution of social media into shallowness. With both orbital and quantum mechanics thrown in.

<comment><USER4> I am that kind of person in this case, thanks.

HN submissions like this – meaningless title followed by a wall of text – are unfortunatelly pretty common here. The problem is that you can't easily determine if the article's value is in the information it provides or in the reading experience (i.e. something that makes you laugh or a well-written story).

The point is, I visit HN primarily for information, not for reading experience. That's why a 3 sentence summary of a 3 page long article may have the same value for me as the whole article. So I'd say TL;DR summaries are valuable for some people and there's nothing wrong about requesting it. Why should I waste time reading a multi-page nytimes.com article if the _useful_ information can be compressed to one sentence?</comment></comment></comment>


Want to increase your IQ? Get motivated - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/04/want-to-increase-your-iq-get-motivated.ars <comment><USER2> What a misleading title...

The article skips the part of what motivation has to do with increasing your IQ. The only connection is how motivated you are to increase the measure of you IQ at a point in time. Furthuremore, having increased motivation benefits you throughout life. Did people ever think that was not the case?

Usually arstechnica articles are well done, but that is not the case here.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best CMS for a content+app (50-50) type site? - <AUTHOR>

A search on CMS yeields thousands of results. What is the most popular (& good) CMS these days? specifically a CMS that supports mobile devices and works well with a website that includes lots of content & apps. <comment><USER2> YMMV, but the best solution I've found for this is either:

1) If your CMS just needs to be used in-house, then roll your own. It takes a week or less, you can deep-integrate it into your applications, and you'll be guaranteed to get more or less exactly what you want.

2) If you either need it to be exposed to external/non-technical people or you absolutely do not want to spend time developing CMS features, use WordPress for content pages and your app stack of choice for app pages. You can have them share the same domain if a requirement for e.g. SEO by using reverse proxy tricks -- trivial to Google if you know the words "reverse proxy." If not a requirement, don't do it that way.

One of the nice parts about using WordPress is if you have a high- generalizability problem like "It needs to work on an iPhone" then you are basically guaranteed that some 17 year old designer has hacked together a plugin which makes it mostly work on your iPhone. The downside of using WordPress is that... feel free to rephrase the last sentence.

<comment><USER3> I've actually wondered about this a bit before. You're kind of the "Marketing Engineer" around here so I'll ask you.

Do you do what you described in option 1 or 2? I know you use WP for your blog but what do you do for the marketing/landing pages of your apps? Do the marketing pages live in the same code base as the app? I'm inclined to do it this way personally so that integration of something like ABingo! is easier.

<comment><USER2> Bingo Card Creator is 95% #1, Appointment Reminder is #2. Client sites depend on what I can convince them to work with, largely tending to follow whomever "owns" the marketing site internally (engineers prefer #1, non-technical folks prefer #2).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of factors here. Use the right tool for the right job.

If you want to put in the for to doing some learning Drupal is a good. Its got a massive community. Its not as "plugin" friendly as WordPress and its more server side Dev friendly than WordPress. For my personal use I use Mezzanine which is a Django project. I picked it because its got a lot of solid basics that id need, is python based yet has the backing of Django community.

Unless you roll your own you're always going to become frustrated with a decision that someone else has made for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll go ahead and suggest the obvious: Wordpress.

It has one of the largest ecosystems (if not the largest), and you can usually find multiple plugins to do whatever you want. You can self host, use their free hosting, or pay for their premium hosting. It has a variety of responsive themes (both free and paid), and a mobile switcher that will auto-detect if you are surfing from a mobile or desktop device. Due to its popularity there's tons of tutorials and help on bunches of forums. It may not be the best if you are looking for a particular feature set, but it is probably the best all- around solution.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do a lot of django, so I wanted mezzanine to work out. Unfortunately, it's a challenege.

Wordpress is wordpress. You're stuck with php and mysql. (ick).

Jekyll is awesome and together with [http://prose.io](http://prose.io), it's basically a cms.

[http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free- we...](http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free-websites/)

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity what was the issue for mezzanine?

Small anti WordPress rant... it uses absolute URLs for everything which is a total PIA when moving domains.

<comment><USER3> I've used mezzanine before but ultimately removed it from the code. If you're interested in adding a company blog to your app's domain, it just touches too many things and makes a mess. I use zinnia now [http://django-blog- zinnia.com/](http://django-blog-zinnia.com/).

I think mezzanine is a great alternative to wordpress. It makes a great blog if that's all you want. If what you need is a CMS to handle the content side of your app, you may want something a little more flexible/light weight.

<comment><USER4> RE: Part I get it... It's kind of just like Wordpress, great for blogs and everything else is difficult IMO. The only difference being you can still use Django if you need to. I guess... I don't know enough, just enough to be dangerous. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Drupal would be a natural choice for this.

1)It handles thousands and thousands of users out of the box and saves you masses of time with prototyping, and

2) has over 20,000 plugins (that you can get in and tweak) free for the using or modifying.

3) It's got a security team that is constantly vigilant that sends out security updates for you. (That was one of the big sellers for me.)

4) It's got a bit of a learning curve, but it's truly the swiss army knife of CMS's.

5) Once you've built something in Drupal, your app may seem slow, but then you can performance tune it (and its server) to be very very fast.

6) There's a huge community (the other huge selling point) that is very helpful.

7) There are plenty of nice responsive themes that you can tweak for any device you want.

8) It's very gratifying for developers to create new functionality that's never been built before.

9) It has a very well documented API.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Drupal. As others have mentioned, these have their downsides but on the upside, it's got a decent developer community and integrates well with the app itself. (usehuman.com)</comment>


Ask HN: Is okay keeping a private copy of your mailbox after leaving a company? - <AUTHOR> As per title, I always wondered: assume you are abut to leave the company you currently work for, is okay keeping a private copy of your mailbox after leaving a company?
Your mailbox contains, roughly, a history of most things that happened to you during the employment.
On one hand it could contain private information of the company, on the other hand it might contain data that you could need should anything happen and should you be called to testify and/or justify anything.
Assume, for the sake of the argument, that the contents of the mailbox are kept safe and in encrypted form. <comment><USER2> I'd assume that the majority of companies larger than ~10 employees or so have this explicitly in the agreements you signed (as something that's not allowed).

When you talk about "it could contain private info of the company", lets be frank and say that a full copy of all your emails definitely contains private company info. It might _also_ contain data you want, but if you worked somewhere for any length of time and actually worked, your communications contain private company info. As such, exporting it for your personal storage constitutes copying the company's information without their knowledge or permission. It's possible they didn't put a prohibition on that into your contractual agreements.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your mailbox, like anything created during work time, is company property, so you're definitely NOT allowed to do this.

I have been wondering about the nuances of this issue, however: What if I remember key information (processes, design patterns, key numbers ...) and make use of it outside of my employment? Is that this "experience" people talk about? At what point does it go over into IP theft?

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not okay and people have gone to jail over emailing themselves confidential corporate info / data to their personal email. I don't see how transferring everything outside of the company network would be viewed any more favorably.

</comment><comment><USER5> No proprietary right in employee's emails > [http://employmentblog.practicallaw.com/who-owns-an- employees...](http://employmentblog.practicallaw.com/who-owns-an-employees- work-emails-and-their-content/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I saved employment contracts (they sent it to my work mail for some reason). Sometimes things like how to connect to and use third party apps.

Hard no to documents and documentations, any keys, meeting minutes, diagrams and designs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Please don't.

If you're worried about losing potentially important personal information or useful work then take good notes. Barring that just remind yourself that you solved that problem once and can do it again.

That said, maybe your browsing history (stripped of intra-net links) might be useful for later?

</comment><comment><USER8> If the legal implications matter to you, hire a lawyer. Indeed if you are likely to be called to testify after leaving the company, it's probably worth hiring a lawyer independently of the email issue.

</comment><comment><USER9> No.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it'd be fine as long as you don't show it to anyone else or let anyone know you took a copy, just to avoid the prospect of being legally hassled.

Some of my most useful reference materials taken from past jobs have been source code I've written and technical email threads I've contributed to.

I mean, I created or helped to create these, so why shouldn't I take a copy? It's not harming anyone, only benefiting.

In my opinion, it would be a symptom of having your mind overly influenced by the evils of capitalism to believe otherwise.</comment>


Building a CQRS/ES web application in Elixir using Phoenix - <AUTHOR> https://10consulting.com/2017/01/04/building-a-cqrs-web-application-in-elixir-using-phoenix/ <comment><AUTHOR> A case study describing how I built a web app following a Command Query Responsibility Segregation and event sourcing (CQRS/ES) pattern. In Elixir using the Phoenix Framework.

It uses two open-source Elixir libraries I've authored to provide the building blocks for such applications:

* EventStore: A CQRS event store that uses PostgreSQL (v9.5 or later) as the underlying storage engine. [1]

* Commanded: Provides support for command registration and dispatch; hosting and delegation to aggregate roots; event handling; and long running process managers. [2]

It's an unorthodox approach to building Phoenix web apps. The article details why you might consider applying it.

[1] [https://github.com/slashdotdash/eventstore](https://github.com/slashdotdash/eventstore)

[2] [https://github.com/slashdotdash/commanded](https://github.com/slashdotdash/commanded)</comment>


Django with websockets and a bolted-on telnet server: a hendrix demo - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92VeMkjM1TQ <comment><AUTHOR> The project is approaching 300 stars. I have a bottle of champagne ready to crack. :-)

[https://github.com/hendrix/hendrix](https://github.com/hendrix/hendrix)

edit: pop! What an awesome way to end the week at Reelio.</comment>


Chilled out: poll contradicts what we thought we knew about income & happiness - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21548213

<comment><USER2> 1) Self-reported happiness is an EXTREMELY unreliable indicator, as the social pressure to "seem happy" is very real and very different by culture, class and educational level

2) Happiness and income are relational in that we've seen over and over again people are most happy not by being objectively "rich" but simply objectively richer than their peer group. "Poor" countries with a growing middle class see themselves as having -- or at least with the potential to have -- more than the median material wealth of their peer group. "rich" countries with shrinking middle classes have the opposite expectation.

Bottom line, this is merely a very clumsy study</comment>


Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704322004574477700761571592.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter

<comment><USER2> This article reminds me of the "sample bias" Phil Greenspun wrote about in his career guide for women in science

<http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

When our policy makers think about PhD's in the sciences, they form their opinion by talking to the dean of MIT and/or nobel prize winners. They don't see how underpaid and disappointing many of these careers really are, or that "Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."

It's not just greenspun, of course. CNN listed "Research Scientist" as one of the "Big Jobs with Low Pay." A RAND institute study recently concluded that the low interest of US students in math/science research was the result of uncompetitive pay and work conditions.

I do think that the US should make an effort to retain top talent in these fields, but I have trouble taking an editorial seriously if it completely fails to acknowledge how uncompetitive research science careers have become with law, medicine, mba, and other paths available to very smart people.

Loosening out immigration laws for these folks and allowing the percentage of foreign nationals in our PhD programs to rise even higher (and it's already very high) will allow the US to fill some science positions without addressing this discrepancy for a while longer... but not forever.

Someday, maybe I'll get to read an editorial by an MIT dean that acknowledges how unattractive PhDs in science have become for Americans, and what to do about it that doesn't amount to "more visas for foreigners."

</comment><comment><USER3> The article seems to assume we need more PhD scientists. Here is a counterpoint, which argues that we actually overproduce PhD scientists.

[http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/oct2007/s...](http://www.businessweek.com/print/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071025_827398.htm)

(I think the actual problem is that we overproduce _low quality_ PhD scientists, but the assumption that we have a shortage isn't right.)

<comment><USER4> Law of supply and demand.

If there was only a 100 science PhDs granted each year in th eUSA then they would be able to demand a high salary as industry fought for their services. This would in no way reduce the innovation of industry of force them to move their R+D overseas.

No wonder they call economics the dismal science

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "But that openness stands in sharp contrast to arcane U.S. immigration policies that discourage young scholars from settling in the U.S." I am an immigrant. Whether I am a "scientist" is debatable but the above statement is disingenuous. I think, sometimes people mix-up the highly talented pool of immigrant with IT works... I am yet to see Ph.Ds refused visas and what not (not to say one need a Ph.D. to do something useful).

<comment><USER4> To work in the USA with a PhD, even as a professor you need an H1B - you are subject to the same quotas and limitations as other H1B IT workers.

<comment><USER5> No you're not. It is not the same quota.

<comment><USER4> That's a recent change - it used to be very difficult to get academic staff into the US, even for international research programs. It's why a lot of international scientific projects aren't head quartered in the US anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In general, in the long term, immigration is vastly a net positive.

The waves of migration from Europe in the early 20th century brought with them their share of crime and poverty. There was even a jewish mafia, but I'll stake that right against Feynman any day.

In general, technology and education are the best contributions to productivity growth, which in turn is the best proxy we currently have to good living ("happiness economics" is a growing field that aims to produce a better proxy). These immigrants are making life better for everyone.

Full disclosure: I have immigrated twice, about to get my US citizenship (passed the test, need to be sworn in). Probably not gonna win a nobel prize, but as an entrepreneur hope to be creating jobs.

<comment><USER2> It always surprises me that people talk about "immigration" as if it's a binary field, either on or off. To me, it's all about degree. There's an ideal level of immigration - go too high over it, and it leads to overcrowding, social upheaval, displacement. Go too low, and a society stagnates.

It's not just about numbers, of course, it's also about the type of immigrant. While it may be politically incorrect to say so, migrant farm workers who send most of their earnings home may very well result in a net loss, whereas highly educated workers result in a net gain.

The issue is so intense in the US that I think it's productive to ask how you'd design an immigration system for a smaller country with lower population density. Right now, New Zealand has a population of about 4 mil and a land mass only a bit smaller than California.

Would New Zealanders be better off if fifty million immigrants came into the country over the next 20 years? If not, how many immigrants would you consider to be ideal? It's not all about GDP - it's a beautiful country, essentially a giant national park, and that would be lost if they allowed mass immigration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> but the vast majority of immigrants to the US take jobs and don't win Nobels.... so? :)

<comment><USER8> Except for every immigrant that comes in taking a job, they also come with an indivisible consumer unit that makes other people jobs. Strangely almost always in an average $1:1 ratio.

This probably explains things like why the population of the US roughly trebled over the last 100 years and yet unemployment didn't rise to 66%+ of the working population during that time.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand this.

There is no proof that immigrants spend nearly all the money they earn. In fact, I would argue that they are frequently more frugal so the money is locked away from the economy.

And I would also not attribute immigrants as the main factor to why unemployment did not rise to 66%. The main reasons that the number of jobs grew rapidly can be attributed to the auto and computer industry.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget about remittance. Lots of immigrants send a chunk of their income back home. Think of the ads, _Can I send money to {[India, Mexico, ...]|random} and get free cell phone minutes?_

Incidentally, the point is not that immigration prevented unemployment from rising to 66%, but simply that the number of jobs tends to be proportional to the size of the population. New people == new jobs.

<comment><USER9> "Don't forget about remittance."

Remittance doesn't help the US dollar. It hurts the US dollar. As foreign exchange banks need to make a profit, for every USD -> Rupee exchange, they are giving you less rupees for your dollar. Its just like buying gold. If a bunch of people start buying gold, the price will skyrocket against the currency you are buying it with.

" but simply that the number of jobs tends to be proportional to the size of the population. New people == new jobs."

Sorry but I don't believe that. More people does not necessarily equate more jobs. If you have a city that has food and water for 500 people, you are bound by that restriction. Adding another 500 people to it would not increase any jobs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lambda Jam 2013 – An Architect's View - <AUTHOR> http://corfield.org/blog/post.cfm/lambda-jam-2013?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> How do you find out about this sort of thing before it happens? I regularly read LtU and did not see this there... I happened to be in Chicago last weekend and would have gone.

<comment><USER3> It's hard. Somehow I knew about it and did not go. Anyway, I happened to see it because I follow Alex Miller on twitter (@puredanger) & some others on Twitter. In addition to Lambda Jam, Alex organizes (at least) Strange Loop and Clojure/(West, East).

It's surprising just how many conferences are put on. I learned about some more from the Lisp in Summer Projects page[1].

TL;DR: dig into the community(ies) of conferences you're interested in. You'll still miss some.

[1] [http://lispinsummerprojects.org/](http://lispinsummerprojects.org/)</comment></comment>


Apple Reports Third Quarter Results - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/08/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/ <comment><USER2> Some fun facts from the earnings report and call:

What they reported by the numbers:

\- declared a cash dividend of $0.63 per share of the company's common stock. The dividend is payable on Aug. 17, 2017

\- Revenue: $45.4 billion, up 7% YOY

\- Adjusted EPS: $1.67, up from $1.42 in Q316

\- iPhone units: 41 million sold, up 2% YOY

\- iPad units: 11.4 million, up 15% YOY

\- Mac units: 4.3 million, up 1% YOY

\- Services revenue: $7.3 billion, up 22% YOY

\- Other Products revenue: $2.7 billion, up 23% YOY

\- Q4 Forecast: Revenue between $49 and $52 billion

\- Greater China is Apple's only major region to report a revenue decline -- down 10% from last year's Q3, at just over $8 billion. Greater China also saw a 25% quarter-over-quarter decrease, while the Americas only saw a 4% quarter- over-quarter decline.

Where growth is coming from:

\- Apple says it generated $7.3 billion in revenue on services, which includes the App Store and Apple Music. That's 22% more than the $6 billion in the year-ago quarter.

\- Apple announces revenue of $2.7 billion from other products, including Apple Watch, Apple Pay and Apple TV. It was $2.2 billion in the year-ago quarter. This represents 23% growth for the category. It's likely that the HomePod will become part of this category in the December quarter.

<comment><USER3> The iPad Pro 10.5 appears to be a solid upgrade and has many users upgrading. Not a repeatable bump though AFAICT.

If you were on the call did they break out the cost of building/moving-into the new HQ? I was trying to guess the chance of a 'down' year when they didn't refresh enough hardware.

<comment><USER4> There is massive iPad growth in the small business sector. If you walk into a restaurant these days, it's pretty common to see three or four iPads sitting on the counter. Seems like every service like Amazon Prime Now or GrubHub requires its own iPad.

Daycares are also big consumers of iPads that allow parents to see pictures of their kids at school.

Many small businesses are now using Square to accept payments, which requires an iPad at every cash register.

Technically, for all or most of these purposes, an Android tablet would work equally well. But people still think "iPad" when a tablet is required.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. It makes sense that businesses want to be associated with strong brands. Using an lesser known tablet brand at their point of sales / customer interaction tool might make them look cheap.

<comment><USER6> I've met people that were scared of Square as it "didn't look like a genuine POS".

I guess using an iPad could make the consumer feel safer. Than again a "Pro" looking case for the Android tablet might also do the trick.

<comment><USER5> If I didn't know what Square was I'd be suspicious too.

Swiping your credit card into a dongle attached to the audio jack of an iPhone/iPad. Seems legit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Macstories has some great graphs with the new (and old) data. [0] SixColors also has some graphs, [1] and a transcript of the conference call. [2]

[0] [https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q3-2017-results-45-bil...](https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q3-2017-results-45-billion- revenue-41-million-iphones-million-11-ipads-sold/)

[1] [https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/08/apples-q3-fy17-financial-...](https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/08/apples-q3-fy17-financial- results/)

[2] [https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/08/live-transcript-apple- exe...](https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/08/live-transcript-apple-executives- talk-to-analysts-after-3q17-results/)

<comment><USER8> Damn those charts are beautiful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once again, the oracle of Omaha got it right. Buffett made a gigantic bet on Apple in January because he saw it being cheap and undervalued.

Warren talking about the investment [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27nxKovluxE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27nxKovluxE)

<comment><USER10> He also had about the same or more invested in IBM. He's a great investor but not infallible.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but he sold 30% of IBM at around $180ish for what I assume is a nice hefty profit.

<comment><USER11> His cost basis was $170 [1]. It's a modest profit as a percentage, and he's now close to underwater on his entire investment into IBM due to the drop (the ~$2 billion in dividends he has yielded, may keep him over break-even, unless IBM plunges again).

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/19/warren-buffetts-ibm-stake- wa...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/19/warren-buffetts-ibm-stake-was-in-the- black--briefly.html)

<comment><USER12> Pretty sure he's not losing sleep over where IBM is today.

If he still owns it, he's still bullish on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The TLDR; of the results is that they beat their Q3 estimates. Others have a good summary of their earnings report (or see [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/AAPL/news](https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/AAPL/news) ) .

</comment><comment><USER14> I think they have 5.2 billion shares outstanding, so that means they made close to $9 billion in PROFIT just in this quarter.

That's enough to buy Stripe in cash, in just 3 months. Crazy

<comment><USER15> On a good quarter they will make over $18 billion profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember reading somewhere that these results would make it easier to determine when the next iPhone was launching. I wonder what the outcome is there.

<comment><USER17> > _make it easier to determine when the next iPhone was launching._

You mean it might not be around September 20 like the last 5 generations? (5: 2012-09-21, 5s: 2013-09-20, 6: 2014-09-19, 6s: 2015-09-25, 7: 2016-09-16)

The iPhone 4 was 3 weeks later on 2011-10-14. Only the SE was released not released in Fall, on 2016-03-31

<comment><USER18> There was some speculation this year may be delayed because of supply issues with OLED panels.

<comment><USER19> The speculation I've heard is that there will be a 7S and 7S+ basically the normal date, with some new high-end "iPhone pro" (the supposed OLED one) that may not be able to ship at the same time and may come out a month or two later.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video] - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1117836/bitcoin-mining-heats-homes-for-free-in-siberia/ <comment><USER3> Didn't watch the video, but a quick point on how the energy efficiency of this works out:

Electric heaters are 100% efficient at turning electrical energy into heat. All the energy they take in, that's where it goes.

Bitcoin mining (and computers in general) are basically in the same boat. There's some ancillary energy use for blowing air around or shining lights or making sound waves, but for the most part the electricity turns into heat and does some math along the way.

Sounds great! Perfectly efficient! But the important caveat is that heat pumps are (effectively) more than 100% efficient. They can take 100 watt of electricity to transfer 300 watts of heat from outside to inside.

It's not technically a measure of "efficiency", we call this the "coefficient of performance" instead. Or we call it the "seasonal energy efficiency ratio", which is the same thing except multiplied by some constant factor because somebody wanted a scale that went up to higher numbers. Or for heating, the heating season performance factor, which I forget the specifics of, but is geared toward how well it works pumping heat in from outdoors when your heat source (outdoors) is very cold.

In short, it's just as efficient as any other electric heater, but heat pumps are 3-4x better than that.

<comment><USER4> This is silly, CPUs are 100% efficient at converting electrical energy into heat. Where do you think that 'ancillary energy' is going?

Obviously heat pumps are more efficient - that's kinda beside the point though.

The main point here is you can take anywhere you had a resistive heating element and replace it with a mining chip, and you're now doing something useful with that energy you were turning into heat anyway.

Yes heat pumps are more efficient but there are plenty of places in your house you have plain old heat elements that aren't going away (water heater).

<comment><USER3> >Obviously heat pumps are more efficient - that's kinda beside the point though.

Only obvious if you know what a heat pump is!

Plenty of people will hear "Electrical heating is 100% efficient" and interpret that to mean it's the ideal solution, when in a lot of cases it's just about the worst.

But yes, if you have electrical heating, you could throw in some CPUs or ASICs instead and they'll work just as well. The return on investment for cryptocurrency may drop off a cliff when the next silicon process comes out and mines more for the same energy, it's hard to see people wanting to keep upgrading their baseboard heaters on the same cycle that computers get replaced.

Whether it's money positive vs resistive heating will depend on A) price of your electronics relative to a cheap electric heater, B) how it stacks up vs future electronics if the payoff doesn't happen while it's new, and C) how insane the cryptocurrency markets get.

<comment><USER5> > Whether it's money positive vs resistive heating

Strictly speaking, isn't it just a special case of resistive heating?

<comment><USER6> It's resistive heating that does something that most resistive heating doesn't do: generate some level of additional income in the form of cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER7> Only if you need full power heat 24/7 365. If you ever want to turn it off then it's costing you deprecation on very expensive hardware, vs a simple heating element.

Remember, few things need constant heat output 24/7 365, otherwise your going to want to generate some or all of your heat from other sources.

<comment> mark-r That's the brilliant part - doing it in Siberia where the heat is almost always welcome. Iceland might be good too.

<comment><USER7> Siberia gets warm in the summer as in it can hit 100+f, and you need a lot of insulation minimal heating even at 50f. So, not really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course, it would be cool if Bitcoin didn't require throwaway computation. Then we could use this computation for something that's actually valuable, like protein folding, or something, and still make use of the waste heat.

<comment><USER9> >it would be cool if Bitcoin didn't require throwaway computation

Sure, but that's a technology that does not exist. If you can figure out how to create a blockchain-like concept, where the 'proof of work' actually contributes to humanity, you have invented the next big thing.

Edit: Reading the comments below me, it looks like this is a space that is being actively explored. Exciting!

<comment><USER10> You can have blockchains without decentralized consensus. It's how Certificate Transparency works.

You have the contract host record all operations and output on a ledger, and then ship that ledger/log out to monitors. This improves the auditability of the system, and enforces the backend logic as a contract. Deviations from the code are detectable by replay, and then provable. Flag the host and readjust your trust.

You can also find ways to reduce the cost of switching between traditional hosting models, such as using data-sharing networks (Dat, IPFS) to quickly "hydrate" a new host, and good ole configurable endpoints to make the switch.

It's the opposite of a trustless network; it's a trust network built on accountability. You watch hosts for bad behavior (such as the violation of the backend contract) and reconfigure trust around violations. No decentralized operation, but much less wasteful than PoW.

<comment><USER11> > You can have blockchains without decentralized consensus.

That's pretty much something like Git.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, though we don't use Git to monitor active systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to increase my PC voltages every winter at my parents wooden heated house near the arctic circle. The room temperatures could drop all the way to 16C (60F) during the night. That allowed easy overclocks on my Athlon processor from 3 to 4Ghz. I still had to wear wool socks though, because the air pushing from the central unit would cause an annoying breeze of cold air onto my toes in the always chilly room.

<comment><USER13> _The room temperatures could drop all the way to 16C (60F) during the night_

That's what you call cold up in the arctic? That's definitely how cold my NYC apartment is every night from November through March. Heat is expensive!

<comment><USER12> Interesting, I didn't know NYC apartments get so cold! But yeah, maybe it's just me, but I prefer sleeping in a warm (or hot) rooms.

Also, it's still actually cold outside. Coldest mornings the year I left my parents apartment were around -40C (-40F). I personally withdraw from going outside by choice after it gets below -30C (-22F). Below that point, I start having random nose bleeds of blood. People from the south may pass out.

<comment><USER14> In Canada schools are stiil open in -40C weather. We only get a few days like that in the south.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So - I actually physically run 2 mining rigs - each with 6 Nvidia GTX 1070s - pulling 1020 Watts each. They each heat a room fairly nicely and I make around maybe $300 in profit from just selling coins per month. This is AFTER I subtract my electricity costs which for these 2 rigs is about $160 per month. I have not quantified the heating benefits but I'd estimate it at maybe $20 a month. I built them back in March/April for $6k total, and I've made twice that so far - paying for itself already and extra $$$ - plus I still have the hardware going or I can resell it at a profit even thanks to the shortage of high end video cards due to all these crypto miners like myself.

In the summer, I had the rigs in 1 room air cooled with just the windows open - no problems with 90 degree F days at all. Fun project, and so far quite successful.

<comment><USER16> But if you'd bought $6k worth of ethereum outright in march it would be worth $90k now. That's why I haven't started mining, it only seems profitable in a sideways market.

<comment><USER15> That has a different risk profile entirely.

I could always resell the video cards I bought at near cost. Buying speculative coins is another matter entirely. Further, I'm not mining ETH - <USER2> I took your advice on the coin I am mining I would have a net LOSS not gain. You should take another look at the economics of mining, I think you have a few aspects misunderstood.

<comment><USER17> _I could always resell the video cards I bought at near cost_

You sure about that? There are so many miners these days, if the mining market tanks, the used graphics card market will be flooded and prices will likely plummet.

<comment><USER15> I can only speak about right now - not the future. I've already made more than my investment so not a big deal for me.

<comment><USER18> Right, but we're talking about the past decision's risk profile. Obviously it worked, but it could have gone a number of different ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a startup which installs their servers in private homes and other buildings where they are used for heating. They essentially connect the market of server computing and heat.

[1] [https://cloudandheat.com](https://cloudandheat.com)

[2] [https://www.informationweek.com/cloud/heating-your-house- wit...](https://www.informationweek.com/cloud/heating-your-house-with-cloud- computing/d/d-id/1317475)

</comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of a story; a buddy of mine during my college days lived in a solitary townhome adjoining a million-watt microwave emitter room. The thing produced enough waste heat to warm the apartment in the dead of winter, even with all the doors and windows open, plus the adjoining warehouse which was several times the volume of the dwelling.

I was envious at the time, although now I wonder about the health implications of the setup, and whether it was strictly speaking legal. The guy is alive and well today, fortunately.

<comment><USER21> It was probably fine; microwaves are fairly easily blocked by even a very thin metal screening. The main health issue with microwaves is the heating caused by it.

The eyes are usually what is damaged first because they tick all 3 boxes of:

* Easily damaged by heat

* High water content

* No good way of shedding heat

Testicles hit the last two, and the degree to which the first is true is debated.

<comment><USER20> > It was probably fine; microwaves are fairly easily blocked by even a very > thin metal screening.

That makes sense in retrospect, given we humans routinely stand with our noses pressed against thinly-screened microwave oven windows waiting for food to heat, apparently without health effects!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a kid I always tried to convince my mom to let me play computer games to heat our house during winter. She didn't believe me. But it was probably not the efficiency of the heating that stopped her from letting me game all day, though

<comment><USER23> Did you tell her that you move you body when you're really engaged and generate additional heat by burning your calories? That might swing the balance to your favor.

<comment><USER24> Body heat is actually 2-3 orders of magnitude from being cost-effective, unless there's a food source much cheaper than typical lard. Edibility adds quite a premium to calories.

In case anyone is wondering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are many other cases of people heating homes with mining rigs, especially in places that has a year-round cold climate. Electricity savings in cooling the rigs as well as heating the home + the profit from mining, makes the whole thing worth it...

... IF you can tolerate the noise that the rigs generate

<comment><USER26> There are passive cooling rigs for high performance computers (LinusTechTips video). If this is a valid market, one could make prebuilt silent rigs as radiators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Towards the end of the video, the owner makes a point that this democratic distribution of mining power instead of large miners controlling the network is a good idea. Curious to hear more about this -- does anyone know good writing re: Democratic / distributed benefits of mining?

<comment><USER28> The bitcoin protocol is somewhat at odds with the desired goal of distributed mining. Only 1 entity gets the reward of mining a block, and only 144 blocks are mined per day. You are encouraged to join the strongest pools to have the highest chance of making money. According to blockchain.info, the top 6 mining pools control 75% of the market.

[https://blockchain.info/pools](https://blockchain.info/pools)

<comment><USER29> Statistically the reward is the same whether you're solo mining or in a pool. Actually less in a pool because they take a cut of the profits. The benefit of being in a pool is that you get the (smaller, since they're shared) rewards more frequently instead of waiting possibly years until you solo mine a block.

But there's really no reason why you have to be in the biggest pool, if you're in a pool with a 1/144 share of the hashrate you'll already be getting daily income, why do you need it to be more frequent?

Note: I think solo miners also get a bit more average latency when receiving bloks, I'm not sure if that offsets the cut the pools take enough to make the expected value of being in a pool higher or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This technique could pair nicely with another problem we have- storing solar power.

In theory, you could build a system which uses solar power to mine bitcoin during the day, and store that heat somewhere (like an underground tank of water) until you need to warm your house at night.

Of course its not a perfect solution because the coldest places are obviously also the places which get the least sunlight.

<comment><USER31> _> and store that heat somewhere (like an underground tank of water) until you need to warm your house at night._

Just install a solar water system if you want to heat your house, it'll be more efficient at generating heat than solar panels.

 _> This technique could pair nicely with another problem we have- storing solar power._

Actually the ability to quickly turn on and off mining operations has other more practical uses for excess energy. Right now there are situations during the day where utilities have to idle base-load plants because renewable energies produce enough to satisfy grid demand, or they even have to pay another utility to take their excess power in case they can't quickly throttle their base load (e.g. with Nuclear).

Having a large crypto currency mining pool the utility could use during these times would enable them to use the excess energy and generate a profit from it, instead of paying another utility to take their excess energy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hm, I've politely ignored bitcoin for a long time, but I live in a cold climate and do make some use of electrical heating. Is there a good user- friendly miner setup I could use to supplement a space-heater? I assume a low- power linux box running some bitcoin-oriented package with a bunch of asics shoved into the USB ports?

<comment><USER33> Try this linux pendrive for gpu mining [https://ba.net/zcash-eth-miner- os/](https://ba.net/zcash-eth-miner-os/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is this company too: [https://computing.qarnot.com/](https://computing.qarnot.com/)

It's built on the same idea but a more mature and more general solution to the same problem.

<comment><USER35> Hah! Qarnot is a good name for this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> How much are they paying for power?

<comment><USER37> In Siberia power is paying for you!

Seriously though in Irkutsk electricity is about 0.017usd per kilowatt/hour

<comment><USER38> For comparison, PG&E E1 baseline for California is currently $0.19979/kWh. As in, 12x more. God help you if you wander from baseline.

[https://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-1.pdf](https://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-1.pdf)

Even using a time-of-use plan like E6 (which they don't allow any more), off- peak is $0.16728/kWh in the summer, and peak summer is $0.35933/kWh. The ETOU-A and ETOU-B plans they're pushing people toward bottom out at $0.17279/kWh winter off-peak, up to _$0.36335 /kWh_. Again, all baseline figures. Electric Vehicles and over-baseline (read: mining) will punish you to death.

[https://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E- TOU.pdf](https://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-TOU.pdf)

In those rate plans, PG&E apparently spends more on transmission alone than Siberian customers entirely pay for service. Also, good luck explaining the plan structure to someone; it took me 20 minutes of edits just to put this comment together coherently.

<comment><USER39> Oh, you have all that med insurance shit for those smarties who can handle electricity rate plans.

<comment><USER38> CARE doesn't help as much as you'd think, but yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r There's nothing new about this. I remember a story from the days of mainframes, where a data center had to be redesigned - they had built it without heating, expecting the mainframe to provide all the heat the building needed in the winter. By the time they got around to buying a machine to put in it the technology had progressed and it was much more power efficient than they had planned.

<comment><USER35> >the days of mainframes

Those days aren't over. Mainframes are still in serious use, at least in banks, and (I didn't know this until going to find the following link) apparently also have Blockchain support: [https://www.ibm.com/us- en/marketplace/z14](https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/z14)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> ASPLOS 2008 conference on Wild and Crazy Ideas already suggest the more general version of this: "Computation: A Byproduct of Home Water Heaters" [http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~swanson/WACI- VI/](http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~swanson/WACI-VI/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Seems to be quite popular solution when Russian winter is coming.

Couple of weeks ago there was an ethereum-mining heater Comino [https://comino.io](https://comino.io)

These guys say they use optimized liquid cooling to transfer heat from GPUs to the room effectively (and earning like $10-$15 a day).

</comment><comment><USER42> Earning $430 for month by bitcoin mining. What about the electricity costs?

If you factor in electricity costs and the money they spent on infrastructure(GPU's and high-end machines), it is a dumb idea. They could have spent $30-50 on heating equipment instead.

<comment><USER43> Electricity costs are probably subsidized (since otherwise in places where it gets super-cold it wouldn't look nice if people froze to death for inability to pay their power bill).

Electricity costs in Irkutsk (place where the place that the video is describing is located) are 0.7 RUR per 1 kWh for rural areas. That's about 1 cent per kWh. For comparison, California's lowest tariff in about 20c per kWh and if you are consuming a lot (which you'd do if you mine) you'll get over 35c/kWh. If you qualify for low income subsidy, though, you might get it for significantly cheaper :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is there a way into mining that is scalable? I mean some way where you don't have to shell out $8k up front and can build-as-you-save? There are lots of ways to save money on heating for people with $8k to spare

</comment><comment><USER45> Dumb question...

How much does a Bitcoin mining rig usually last for before it needs replaced?

<comment><USER46> Same as any other rig for anything. Higher load usually doesn't make much difference in lifetime.

The problem with components is that they can break one day after you bought it, or last 50 years.

For example, in CERN they bought 100,000 disk drives for their huge amount of data. Lets say disk lifetime is 1M hours which is 114 years, so sounds pretty good. But that means, on average, every 10 hours one of their drives will fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> O once had a little freelance gig for a company that did offer computing resources to one part of their customers and heat for houses and water to the other with just that concept. cloud & heat

</comment><comment><USER48> It's nothing new. Moreover, it's going to be very difficult for individual to mine anything using their PC nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER49> Back in these day, you were installing Gentoo.

</comment><comment><USER50> They should be mining Bitcoin Cash instead.

<comment><USER51> Many miners switch back and forth... To get the best returns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I only turn on the heat when I want heat. Mining bitcoin to heat my home seems backwards.

<comment><USER45> Might be different if you live somewhere permanently cold

<comment><USER52> That's right may be they never leave home or go on a vacation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Can someone talk me out of using this to heat my apartment in San Francisco?

<comment><USER43> Check out electricity prices in SF. Especially the top tier. You probably would be better off burning small-denomination bills for heating. Unless of course you tricked your landlord into covering electricity costs, in which case mine away until police comes to evict you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> >$460 a month

The rig looks kinda tiny even for a pooled mining setup with such output.

</comment><comment><USER55> Ethereum mining put my apartment in SF to about 88 degrees last summer.

</comment><comment><USER56> How to measure the clickbait coefficient of the headline:

A: imagine the situation the headline literally describes ( Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia)

B: read what the article describes (A cottage that's heated for free with bitcoin mining)

clickbait_coefficient = the distance between A and B

</comment><comment><USER57> hmm.. Airbnb for bitcoin miners as space heaters?

</comment><comment><USER58> I can attest, I have a 9 card mining setup which pulls around 330w per card 24/7\. In the summer when it was 70-80 degrees outside it was enough to keep a large basement in the 90s, plus the rest of the house uncomfortably warm. I had to purchase an AC to keep the place livable.

Now that winter is coming around I look forward to the extra heating.

There seems to be discussion in these comments about mining for the purpose of heating a home, but the heating is a bonus. You're making money AND saving on energy, that's the important part.

Plus, in my opinion, a constant heat source like a mining rig is preferable to an older cycling central system which can be slightly disturbing as it loudly cycles on and off throughout the day...</comment>


Open source dead simple Youtube playlists with real-time changes - <AUTHOR> http://ytpl-marksteve.dotcloud.com/marksteve

<comment><AUTHOR> Source is at <http://github.com/marksteve/ytpl></comment>


Jerry Seinfeld: So You Think New York Is 'Dead' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/opinion/jerry-seinfeld-new-york-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> I just saw a video on yt of someone biking in nyc and showing empty streets, and places for rent. I didn't think it was that bad. But if jerry seinfeld thinks it's time to post something to tell people to stay, then it must be pretty damn serious...

<comment><USER3> ^ This comment right here is a great example of confirmation bias. Rather than give a specific rebuttal to Seinfeld's commentary, they provide an anecdote that supports their pre-existing bias.

<comment><USER4> What was Seinfeld's take, that cities "change"? He gave as an example "Rome"?

Perhaps tourists will go to a revitalized NYC someday, and visit the ruins of the Chrysler Building and Statue of Liberty.

Seriously. Cities "change" is perhaps the most vacuous and ambiguous _commentary_ a person could make. Change to what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > When I got my first apartment in Manhattan in the hot summer of 1976, there > was no pooper-scooper law, and the streets were covered in dog crap.

Man, this guy knows how to write.

I am writing a novel in my free time (my 3rd; but I am nowhere close to being a proper "writer" \- I just like writing, that's all), and I am studying how to be a better writer. The first sentence of Jerry's article is just masterfully written.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is New York dying? This wasn't funny at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a reply to: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175351)

<comment><USER5> In my view, James Altucher is very close to what I would consider a "fraud" / "scammer". e.g. He was running a dubious business to get people invest in stocks and cryptocurrencies a while ago.

See what Naval Ravikant did after recording a podcast with him: he essentially asked the podcast to be removed, as he didn't want to associate his name with Altucher again.

I doubt that Jerry Seinfield needs to pay too much attention to what that guy writes.</comment></comment></comment>


ARM Launches DynamIQ: big.Little to Eight Cores Per Cluster - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/11213/arm-launches-dynamiq-biglittle-to-eight-cores-per-cluster <comment><USER2> I wonder when Intel is going to attempt their own version of big.little.

I think there is a market for laptop and thin-desktop x86 CPUs that are asymmetric 2 core/4 thread big + 2 core/2 thread little, and they already have a small version of their modern cores[1], so a 2 full Skylake + 2 little Goldmont cores (or 4+4) could be extremely interesting, especially on a future 115x socket.

      1.
      * Silvermont (Bay Trail/Avoton/Rangeley) == "atomfied" Haswell
      * Airmont (Braswell/Cherry Trail) == "atomfied" Broadwell
      * Goldmont (Apollo Lake/Denverton) == "atomfied" Skylake
      * ???mont (Gemini Lake) == "atomfied" Kaby/Coffee Lake.

<comment><USER3> The problem with Intel doing this is that, for marketing reasons, they tend to enable different sets of instructions on different cores and an OS would have a really hard time scheduling threads when some the Skylake cores can execute AVX instructions but the Goldmont cores can't. Normally the scheduler wants to assume that it can just move a thread from one core to another but if the thread started off on the Skylake and was taking an AVX-enabled code path that would cause problems.

Not that the idea isn't appealing or even infeasible. It just runs afoul of Intel's marketing.

<comment><USER4> This is one of those interesting cases where RISC-V could eat their (and maybe ARM's) lunch on implementations like this. The wide vector instructions (i.e. not the packed SIMD, but the -V extension) are width-independent, so you could just make the vector machine narrower on the little core, and switch it to low-frequency in-order.

<comment><USER5> ARM did it first with SVE. The RISC-V vector extension is just a draft while I believe SVE silicon is being developed now for exascale HPC.

<comment><USER4> Cray did it first, that's why there's no patent dispute right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A better source of information than Anandtech, including a reference to the presentation slides.

[https://community.arm.com/processors/b/blog/posts/arm- dynami...](https://community.arm.com/processors/b/blog/posts/arm-dynamiq- expanding-the-possibilities-for-artificial-intelligence)

[https://community.arm.com/processors/b/blog/posts/arm- dynami...](https://community.arm.com/processors/b/blog/posts/arm-dynamiq- technology-for-the-next-era-of-compute)

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure about 'better'. Those links are full of buzzwords and marketing speak.

<comment><USER6> Anandtech's article is basically copy-paste from ARM blog, without the links for the relevant information, hence why the ARM site is better.

<comment><USER8> No copy-paste there. Ultimately there's not that much information, so the analysis is going to read similar. But claiming it's basically a copy-paste is a bit much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So to tie this in to an application of these chips:

Smartphone that has this - when idle (no phone calls, user is either not using or just looking at static screen such as e-reader or non-interactive web page) only low power chips run, doing the bare minimum housekeeping tasks, updating the screen, etc.

When something happens, the low-power chips wake up the more powerful chips and hand off the task to them.

Is that the basic idea?

Intel's POV seems to be to have 1 powerful CPU with different power states, while ARM is explicitly breaking up the power levels with different CPUs on the same SoC.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm very curious how they work the cache hierarchies of these hybrid clusters. You really want to be tuning the latency and throughput of the cache to the consumers attached to it and that wouldn't be straightforward in this case.

</comment><comment><USER10> Will the proper OS support take 3 years to land like it took for bigLittle?

Probably.

Will individual manufacturers using the IP stumble and fall like Samsung did with their A15 bigLittle hardware implementation?

Presumably.</comment>


Ask HN: My startup is failing, but my side project might be winning. Do I quit? - <AUTHOR>

This is a throwaway account.
About 6 months ago, my startup I co-founded received $1M in seed funding. We raised the money on hype and a smooth talking co-founder. Previous to the funding, we had a bit of traction selling some tech to some large enterprises.
Fast forward to today, we've only had 1 more sale over the last 6 months, and the way our pricing is set up, we're making pennies per day. We have 2 total clients, and their contracts run out in May. These 2 clients net us about 30 users per week. We've considered pivots, but we can't agree on which pivot to go with. We are slated to make about $5,000 this entire year. Our runway gives us until December until the $1M runs out. We're not at each other's throats, but we know we are failing.
Over Christmas, I built a small side project on my own and launched it just to see if it would be a hit. 9 weeks have gone by, and it's shown steady growth. It's got 1500 active users, people who are logging in every day and spending about 7 minutes on the site per day. It's got well over 40k page views per week, growing about 20-40 users per day. Each user performs about 6 events per visit (event = upload a file, make a comment, upvote someone's file, make a listing, save for later).  There's 1000+ listings with 100,000k+ uploaded files. It doesn't make any money, mostly because I have a moral issue with making money on the side while my main startup is doing so poorly. But I could very easily start adding subscriptions or premium features.
My dilemma: is this side project good enough to quit my own funded startup? I've already asked my co-founder if he would be interested in this pivot, and he said he wouldn't. Do I ride out my main startup while letting the side project grow on its own?
Does anyone have any experience or advice on how to quit your own startup?
I'm so damn confused. <comment><USER2> One concern is that your current investors could sue, claiming ownership of your side project.

Why not pivot to your side project? If your cofounder doesn't want to do it as a pivot, pitch it to your investors. If they also aren't interested, then you can quit in good conscience (and make sure it's legally done right so they don't come back and sue you later).

<comment><USER3> Good advice. Be transparent. Email your investors and co-founders, politely, with your analysis of the current situation and status of the side project. Ask them if they anyone is interested in the side project's progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you should be having this conversation with the investor whose money you're burning through at the rate of tens of thousands per month! Now, I dunno your precise situation so you should probably speak to your personal attorney first about your contractual obligations to your investor as well to your co-founder and anyone else in the picture.

But I think the investor is hoping to recoup or better yet to grow the value of that $1m investment, regardless of how that happens, as opposed to get a data point on the quality of the original investment decision. I don't know exactly what your side project is but if it is generating consistent growth and daily engagement with little or no additional effort on your part that sounds promising.

If I was your investor Id be far more impressed by your candor about the need to change direction than I would disappointed about the first idea not panning out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for the feedback.

The investors are fully aware of our struggles. Our board meetings no longer involve going over new product or marketing points. We simply discuss sales.

However, I haven't spoken to them about quitting. We've spoken at length about pivots and even about returning what's left of the money.

My opinion is that we should return the money since none of our pivots make any sense, and frankly, I don't know if I have the gas to pivot, but no one agrees with me. Everyone has an idea of where we should pivot.

The side project is 95% organic growth. I wrote a bot that sent some automatic invitations at first, but I've run out of leads. The only work I'm doing here is answering emails at the end of the day with suggestions/questions from the growing user base. Plus the occasional bug.

<comment><USER4> You're welcome. I have to say I admire your candor; if you're thinking about returning the money then I'd say definitely discuss your exit options with an attorney. Of course everyone wants to pivot, it's human nature to postpone unpleasant decisions in the hope that something will change tomorrow, and if someone else is footing the bill then it's doubly tempting. I'm sure you're familiar with the sunk cost fallacy too. It's no fun feeling like the only pessimist int he room when everyone is predicting that you're going to have that Great New Idea any day now.

Now, I don't know if you have a prospect to make money out of the side project or what your financial situation is, so I wouldn't advise you to do anything drastic, but I suggest you pick a date in the near future to review, and if you still feel the same way when it arrives, then announce your decision and disentangle yourself in an orderly fashion (having first worked out what that would involve). Lots of luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never been in this position so you can just throwaway my input if you want.

Some questions:

\- You're burning through $60k/month. What are you spending it on if you're getting no sales? Can you cut the expenses to just focus on the necessities?

\- Your co-founder is not interested in the pivot. Why not? Does he see something you don't? Maybe your side project is only getting growth because it's free. If you could "very easily" add paid models, why not try that first to see if it actually works. If it does show some promise, then I think at that time, it would be better to approach your investors as you've at least validated it a little. I don't know what the side project is but is it legit? You talk about uploading files so perhaps people are using it in a way that might be a legal grey area?

> "I have a moral issue with making money on the side while my main startup is > doing so poorly"

\- I'll challenge you here and say that I don't think you do have a moral issue with this. After all, you started this side project while having this startup which took away time from it so you didn't have moral objections with that. That being said, the fact that you did go out seeking something else either tells me a) you're not good at focusing on one thing in which case a startup may not be a good path for you or b) you have an inclination that the startup is not going to work in which case you should get out of it. Unless I'm missing another possibility, both options point to the same conclusion - you want to leave the startup behind.

In that case, tell your investors and give them the option that they can put the remaining money into this side project or they can have the money returned.

</comment><comment><USER6> Free users and paying users are often very different groups of people. Count your chickens once they're generating actual revenue.

</comment><comment><USER7> I stayed at a startup where I was early way too long even when was clear we were headed into the ground. The most depressing five months of my life.

If it's clear you're doomed now, you should leave whenever something better comes along. Your call on whether this is the new startup, or something else.

</comment><comment><USER8> To quote Mitch Hedberg: "My roommate said to me, 'I'm gonna go shave and use the shower; does anyone need to use the bathroom?' It's like some weird ass quiz where he reveals the answer first."

You have a problem and a solution in this post.

</comment><comment><USER9> While I do not have any first hand experience with this, I have heard/read from several sources that a co-founder bailing on their own company can be a big mark against your reputation in the future.

</comment><comment><USER10> Your 1 mil will be out in 9 months? Slow the burn and find a way to make the current company work.</comment>


Heterodox Academy Condemns Professor Watchlist - <AUTHOR> http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/11/24/heterodox-academy-condemns-professor-watchlist/ <comment><USER2> This title is wrong: the footnote is explicit in stating that the letter is only the opinion o the heterodox academy executive committee, and that the membership were not consulted in the drafting or content of the message.

</comment><comment><USER3> lol, first conservative version of this bullshit pops up and "everyone should stop" Transparent article of the day award lol

<comment><USER4> Please stop with these unsubstantive comments.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. I read their main pages and aside from the obvious "non-liberal" bias thing and strange back-patting and badge-wearing BS, their solutions page is just... fluff. Be aware of things. Ask people about their feelings. Adopt anti discrimination policies. Anyone can say this stuff. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.</comment></comment></comment>


In Chile, border collies are sowing seeds, bringing life back to forests (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/chile-three-border-collies-are-planting-seeds-bringing-life-back-forests-destroyed-by-fire-1628737 <comment><USER2> > "Border collies Summer, Olivia and Das spend their days bounding through > charred forests, unaware they're leaving a trail of seeds that could > transform the landscape."

Border Collies are whip smart. They may not understand what the seeds are for, but they certainly understand that they are spreading those "little things". They also understand that they are Doing An Important Job, which is /raison d'etre/ for a Border Collie.

Looking through the pictures in the article, I see what in my opinion are happy relaxed dogs. Which if you've ever spent time around a bored or poorly trained Border Collie, you'll know is pretty much impossible. For those of you who haven't spent much time around these dogs, they get very anxious and neurotic if they don't have a job to do. Whether it's herding sheep or spreading tree seeds, Border Collies _must_ have a complex demanding task to perform every day.

</comment><comment><USER3> People posting alternative solutions probably haven't watched a dog run through a forest. One of my favorite parts of camping is taking a short hike, while the dogs take a long run all around me (BC and a Britney).

Dogs will run through gaps drones couldn't dream of, and go through underbrush where a drone simply couldn't go. They can carry a much larger payload, longer. The distribution pattern will probably be more random, which is appropriate for a natural environment.

Versus human power? I know some people who could probably knock out 30km in a day, over very rough terrain, at altitude. Only one or two, though. I doubt they could do it every day, or even a few times a week.

It would be hard to scale, though. While I think I might enjoy attempting to teach hundreds of BCs to go on a hike with me, I'm not sure it's practical.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can border collies deliver packages too?

I can see a battle for jobs developing, between border collies and drones. Just as the fledgling drone industry was starting to take off.

<comment><USER5> I think people could trick them with food and steal the packages.

<comment><USER6> Those same people could shoot down drones to steal the packages. When you have humans in the equation things tend to get messy, it's just a matter of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love this. This is a perfect win, win situation. Dogs are the best. We talk about robots, drones, and AI but sometimes the best answer is right in front of us in the natural world.

</comment><comment><USER5> Dogs are an invasive species in those territories, attacking native wild life like deer, cats, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> > They are certainly better than humans, she said, as the dogs can cover a > range of 30 kilometres in a day, whereas a person could only do three > kilometres.

What ? Then why not put the seeds on the dog's tail ? (I am a bit suspicious of that number seeing how the masters seem to always be nearby the dogs on the photos).

Couldn't a low altitude drone be even more efficient ?

<comment><USER9> _I am a bit suspicious of that number seeing how the masters seem to always be nearby the dogs on the photos_

I suspect a strong correlation between being able to take a photo of the dog and being near the dog.

<comment><USER8> Haha, yeah :). Too bad we aren't in the future and there's no go pro to install in the dog's skull or some interactive kind of storytelling to show da-da-data in its context. :]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > whereas a person could only do three kilometres.

I really wonder what they're referring to here. Obviously a trail runner can cover far more than that distance, even wearing the same kind of seed- scattering harness.

Are they comparing the distance someone could cover planting seeds by hand?</comment>


The Fall of a Star Trader - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-19/from-a-126-million-bonus-to-jail-the-fall-of-a-star-trader <comment><USER2> I would suggest anyone interested in learning more about this to watch the BBC documentary The Big Bank Fix. It shows how these traders didn't do anything wrong.

The documentary shows how there were some really high level bank executives involved in libor frauds and that was getting media attention. Therefore, SFO met with banks and eventually, based on documents provided by the banks, decided to prosecute simple traders.

The reason traders have been sent to trial has nothing to do with the actual libor fraud carried out by executives. But since it is still about libor, has been sold to the media as the libor trial. Start and end date of the "crime" have been carefully chosen to not include evidence of the executive crimes (such as the phone call shown in the documentary). SFO experts have admitted during trial to lie in order to convict these traders.

Many of these traders were in their early 20s when the alleged crime happened. Germany, France, and EU have already said that it was not a crime at the time and rejected extradition.

I rarely felt as sad as after watching that documentary.

<comment><USER3> I read The Spider Network (fantastic look into how bank prop trading worked) and came to mostly the same conclusions. The idea of just prosecuting "rouge traders" is a complete injustice, as trying to adjust the rate submissions was apparently a widely known practice in banks. Tom Hayes, a mildly autistic savant just doing what everyone else was got 14 years, essentially a murder sentence in the UK. Fire the traders and maybe ban them from trading for a few years.

Of course the investing public with LIBOR based loans wants blood, and they just believe the headlines that a few traders "conspired" to fix rates. In reality the entire system was built on a profoundly flawed incentive structure of trusting banks with positions that profit from LIBOR moves to not alter LIBOR submissions to make themselves money. But LIBOR is too big to fail at this point so they chose to scapegoat a few traders instead of admitting the whole system is corrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it clickbaiting or just misplaced hero-worship to call this the "fall" from "star trader" to criminal? Seems to me more like one minute he's a crook who hasn't been caught, the next he's a crook who's been caught. Rather than causing even a second of cognitive dissonance it should simply set you to scanning all his other accomplishments for fraud as well.

<comment><USER5> "Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune- crime/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune-crime/)

J.K. Galbraith: the notion of the "bezzle", from _The Great Crash: 1929_ :

[https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23458.John_Kenneth_G...](https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23458.John_Kenneth_Galbraith)

[http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rxv/business/bezzle.htm](http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rxv/business/bezzle.htm)

<comment><USER6> "Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

It's a great sounding quote, but obviously entirely untrue.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain? It's not obvious to me.

<comment><USER8> If it's not obvious to you, then the crimes of these people must then be obvious, no? [https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/](https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/)

Care to share a few of them which generated their wealth?

<comment><USER7> Obvious criminality is not the same as obvious non-criminality.

You seem to be getting pretty worked up about this. The reason I don't think the claim is obviously untrue is because I believe the magnitude of wealth involved, and often the scale of operations/actors, increase the probability of actions ranging from morally dubious but legal to outright criminal.

Per one of your other replies, we can quibble about the quote and what "behind every great fortune" means, exactly. You seem to be interpreting it to say that criminal action was a major factor responsible for the fortune, while I interpret it more loosely, the impact being irrelevant.

At any rate, I doubt the quote is meant to be taken strictly literally, and is more of an aphorism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can Deutsche now claw back the bonuses given to him earned through his manipulation of Euribor? Are they going to? Or will he be fined an equal amount?

<comment><USER10> I highly doubt Deutsche Bank wants that kind of attention. What if he starts arguing Deutsche Bank knew about it more then they previously said after they start going after him?

<comment><USER9> Every prosecutor loves it when the perps start rolling over on each other :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, can someone ELI5 this? What exactly did he do wrong here?

He was monitoring basis points to attempt to capitalize on it. But the SEC accused him of manipulating the markets?

I don't think he hacked any systems doing this. I don't think he created a fraudulent pyramid scheme here.

Did he violate some kind of public trust?

<comment><USER12> My understanding is that the EURIBOR rate is an index that attempts to track the overnight interest rate that banks lend to each other at. These numbers are not public (the trades are made "over the counter"), so the body that sets the rate relies on information given to them by the banks. To calculate it, they do something like taking the median of all submissions.

At the same time, there is a lot of money riding on what the EURIBOR is at any time. The allegation is that this guy (and others) conspired to change their submissions to change the listed EURIBOR and make a lot of money.

I'm no expert though, and I could be wrong in my understanding.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. This was a more detailed answer. I didn't see this anywhere in the article.

<comment><USER3> Essentially (for example) the trader has a position that makes money if LIBOR goes down, so he calls the LIBOR submitter at his bank or someone he knows through contacts at another bank and says "hey it would be nice if your 3 month LIBOR could go from .7% to .65%", and the submitters who were themselves often low level functionaries just did it as a favor. Though they could only move it within bank guidelines so the profits made were not huge in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Speaking of trading.

Can someone provide some insight on the best way to get into the industry as a Trader?

Can you still enter that industry when you are in mid-career?

I would think that since trading requires a lot of patience, and analytical skills, that something like this is better suited to more mature people. This is probably not something that you would entrust to a young early 20s person.

This guy's background says he joined as a quantitative analyst after college. And then rose to the role of a trader.

<comment><USER13> Dodd-frank means that prop trading isn't really a thing the way it used to be. Most trading in banks is now flow trading: the bank will take one side of a trade for a client in exchange for a fee. They'll then make sure their book is hedged so they don't have meaningful market exposure.

Asset managers still make big, directional bets though. Exactly how decisions are made varies from place to place, but decision makers will typically be older and have plenty of experience. Asset managers get lots of due diligence questions so no-ones handing millions out to a junior in their early twenties.

With regard to entering the industry, it's pretty hierarchical, and can be siloed: techies do tech, traders do trading, and there's not much crossover.

The most reliable way of entering the industry is to get on a graduate program and work your way up. Failing that, a quantitative PhD might get a hedge fund or HFT interested.

Do be aware that while it's a ticket to a comfortable upper middle class life, the salaries are not what they once were. Seven-figure bonuses are pretty much a thing of the past for most front office staff.

<comment><USER14> > With regard to entering the industry, it's pretty hierarchical, and can be > siloed: techies do tech, traders do trading, and there's not much crossover.

Not really true. It's true that there are software roles that don't interact with strategy much, and often traders/quants that don't do much proper software. But in many places the line can be very blurry.

> The most reliable way of entering the industry is to get on a graduate > program and work your way up. Failing that, a quantitative PhD might get a > hedge fund or HFT interested.

HFTs and hedge funds all hire of plenty of new grads and experienced-but-not- PhDs doing quant/trading style work - Hudson River, Jane Street, Two Sigma, Tower, I think Citadel all will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a little side note, Libor is so idiotic that I don't understand how the general public allow it to underpin most of the financial products they buy. We need a bit of a revolution in the rates/banking space. The current financial system is inherently unstable, frought with moral hazard and serves the rich to make them richer still.

<comment><USER15> Maybe one solution is to actually start teaching some simple economics at school. The curriculum in the UK conveniently skips over the details of banking. If people knew how it really works, I'm certain they would feel taken advantage of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/libor- scandal/](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/libor-scandal/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Funny how it's always only the people who steal millions that go to jail, never those who steal billions.

I guess aiming big is the way to go in the finance world.

<comment><USER18> Michael Milken, Bernard Madoff, Bernard Ebbers I am sure there are many more

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What about punishment for his superiors?

</comment><comment><USER20> Feels like the movie "Limitless".</comment>


Scandalous Weird Old Things About the C Preprocessor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.robertelder.org/7-weird-old-things-about-the-c-preprocessor/ <comment><USER2> The C preprocessor is a horrendous way of doing metaprogramming that was implemented because it was relatively easy to do as a separate pass. There's a reason why very few other languages have done it this way.

A good knowledge of the preprocessor is essential for writing obfuscated and underhanded C. For example, the lucky7coin backdoor: [https://github.com/alerj78/lucky7coin/issues/1](https://github.com/alerj78/lucky7coin/issues/1) where the code

      if (vWords[1] == CBuff && vWords[3] == ":!" && vWords[0].size() > 1)
      {
        CLine *buf = CRead(strstr(strLine.c_str(), vWords[4].c_str()), "r");

expands to

      if (vWords[1] == "PR" "IV" "M" "SG" && vWords[3] == ":!" && vWords[0].size() > 1)
      {
        FILE *buf = popen(strstr(strLine.c_str(), vWords[4].c_str()), "r");

<comment><USER3> IMO, whether or not the C preprocessor is good depends on what you're trying to do and how you do it. I doubt there are any preprocessors or macro systems that can't be used to obfuscate code - That's basically the definition of what they do, modify your code before you compile it. Obviously, and strange/unexplained preprocessor usage should be examined and preferably removed.

The example you gave is not really fair though, because it seems pretty obvious to me that nobody ever looked at that code - it hardly matters they hid the backdoor in the the C pre-processor. If you take a look at the repo, it only has three commits - With the first one ([https://github.com/alerj78/lucky7coin/commit/07d7e5fc53e5673...](https://github.com/alerj78/lucky7coin/commit/07d7e5fc53e56736643a73d8a13ff4f74c118b3b)) being a supposed import of the code from the repo it used to exist in, and it's in this commit where the backdoor was inserted. The real issue is that people were running code from someone who appears to be a complete unknown, has no history for his code, and just assumed it was the same as the old code without checking.

<comment><USER4> Preprocessors are uniquely problematic in this regard, though, since they're just simple text-substitution engines. Things like templating (as in C++), in- language macros (as in Lisp variants), or language-level metaprogramming facilities (as in Ruby, Python, ...) all have access to actual entities in the language, which constrains their effects in a way that's safer and easier to reason about.

<comment><USER3> I'm not looking to deny that straight text-substitution has it's drawbacks, you're completely right. But that being said, I still don't see it as big of a deal as it seems. Generally speaking, bad/malicious pre-processor abuse like this sticks out like a sore thumb when you're reviewing code. If you don't have anybody reviewing the code then it doesn't really matter how you disguised it. At least with the C preprocessor, if there's something you're unsure about, you can run the preprocessor separately and look at the output, clearing up all doubt over what it does.

Also worth noting, one of the nicer things about the design of the C preprocessor is that it can be applied to a lot of different file-types. In more complicated low-level C projects, you can run the preprocessor over your C code, assembly code, linker scripts, etc.. which is a huge gain since you can have access to all your constants and simple macros, simplifying work and duplication. You can't get that with something tied to the language - Which is unfortunate, because like you said it's better to avoid the preprocessor, since writing things on the language-level makes them much easier to reason about.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's one I recently learned about:

[http://reviews.llvm.org/D15866](http://reviews.llvm.org/D15866)

        #define FOO
        #define BAR defined(FOO)
        #if BAR
        ...
        #else
        ...
        #endif

clang and gcc will pick the #if branch while Visual Studio will take the #else branch.

<comment><USER6> This doesn't seem quite right. Did you maybe mean "#undefine FOO" or "! defined(FOO)"? Whether BAR gets expanded or not, in your example it looks like it would always evaluate true. Or am I misunderstanding the ambiguity?

It might be telling that I also don't understand the Clang bug report as written. I think there are typos in the examples. Is the switch from "HAVE_FOO_BAR" to "HAVE_FOO" in the first example intentional? Is the construct "#defined" (with a final 'd') intentional in the second?

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure -- I'm going off what the Clang bug says. They have a spec ref in there. (Note that you can't trust your intuition on how compilers work, you can only trust the spec and experiments.)

If it helps any here is the real-world code where this problem came up:

[https://codereview.chromium.org/1584203002/](https://codereview.chromium.org/1584203002/)

Edit: another reference: [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/cpp/Defined.html#Defined](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/cpp/Defined.html#Defined) "If the defined operator appears as a result of a macro expansion, the C standard says the behavior is undefined."

<comment><USER6> OK, I've now tested. For this test code:

      #define FOO
      #define BAR defined(FOO)
      #if BAR
      #error "true"
      #else
      #error "false"
      #endif

Clang, GCC, and ICC evaluate the "true" branch, while MSVC evaluates the "false" branch.

For the same test code with first line changed to "undef":

      #undef FOO
      #define BAR defined(FOO)
      #if BAR
      #error "true"
      #else
      #error "false"
      #endif

MSVC, Clang, GCC, and ICC all agree on "false".

Importantly, though, when used with "/Wall", MSVC gives this error message in both cases:

      main.cpp(3): warning C4668: 'definedFOO' is not defined as
         a preprocessor macro, replacing with '0' for '#if/#elif'

None of the other three compilers give any warnings even with '-Wall -Wextra -pedantic". So there definitely is a difference in behavior, but I don't think it's actually the one that's presumed in that bug.

For further experimentation, Clang, GCC, and ICC can be tested online here: [http://gcc.godbolt.org/](http://gcc.godbolt.org/)

And MSVC can be tested online here: [http://webcompiler.cloudapp.net/](http://webcompiler.cloudapp.net/)

<comment><USER7> According to the link posted by evmar, clang warns on this starting at r258128.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> #2 is incorrect. Being sensitive to line breaks does not make a grammar context-sensitive. It just means you have to treat line breaks as tokens rather than ignorable whitespace (which is exactly what the context-free grammar given in the C11 standard does).

Same with the bit about concatenating tokens. Every single one of those examples has a static parse tree, which, for the C _preprocessor_ , is a sequence of tokens and directives. The author seems to be confusing the preprocessor's parse tree with the effect it has on the underlying text.

(Yes, the _output_ of the preprocessor is dependent on what you define, but that has nothing to do with the _grammar_. What the author claims is like saying a Lisp is context-sensitive because the factorial function produces a different values for different inputs!)

Now, if you could do _this_ :

        #define foobar define
        #foobar x 123
        x

and get "123", _that_ would be a context-sensitive grammar. But that is NOT a thing you can do!

</comment><comment><USER9> I hate to say it, but I was rather unimpressed by this list, and nothing in it surprised me. While I certainly agree that the C preprocessor is a relic, and has not weathered the test of time well, I would suggest that a number of the supposed infelicities mentioned in this article stem from the misleading idea that the preprocessor is an integral part of the C language proper, when it is better thought of as its own language (and one that was traditionally done by a completely separate program). The preprocessor does things differently than the rest of C, because it's not C. It is a text-processing language of convenience, provided specifically for doing things that C itself cannot (or should not) do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try harder next time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Relatedly, C is a purely functional programming language:

[http://conal.net/blog/posts/the-c-language-is-purely- functio...](http://conal.net/blog/posts/the-c-language-is-purely-functional)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've written a C preprocessor and I agree that the language standard documents are ambiguous and incomplete. The best I could do was hack on it until it matched GCC's preprocessor well enough to compile Linux.

I don't recall all the horrid details, but one case that I do remember driving me nuts was the use of #if/#endif in the argument to a function-like macro.

</comment><comment><USER12> Has there been any notion of a replacement Meta/Macro language for C? Something open source. Of course pre-preprocessing one's files and the complexity that might add to the build system are unattractive but I'd still be interested if someone has attacked this problem.

<comment><USER13> My school of thought would be to limit it to just #include, #if, #else, #end, and non-recursive single word only #define / #undef. Force everything to be 1 per single line, and call it a day.

Macros should always be the absolute last resort to doing anything. Stepping through code in gdb with some "creative" macro-based API is almost as bad as C++.

<comment><USER14> I've seen 'C' macros used to do template-ey things that probably reinforced the readability of the code ( once you get used to the fact that the macros were there at all ) .

More modern compilers allow using non-static "const" constructs to do much of the same, which is a great improvement.

To wit:

#define in_bounds(lower,x,upper) ((x <upper) && (x >lower))

vs. const bool in_bounds = ((x > lower) && ( x < upper ));

Macros can be used effectively for reduction in strength, so long as you're not too clever about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm 95% sure the last example in #3 is undefined behaviour. #(a b c) is not valid, so evaluating it with multiple levels of indirection probably is a compiler bug for not erroring out.

<comment><USER15> And the last 3 or 4 are odd, but are required for some of the hacks required in the early days of C (and some are almost certainly used in the Linux kernel source today).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kind of click-baity, no? Though the title is missing "You won't believe what happens next... developers hate it!"</comment>


Golang Concurrency Design Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sargun/go-concurrency-considered-harmful-26499a422830 <comment> phoe-krk _' Considered Harmful' Headlines Considered Harmful_

I love how everyone can write a 'Considered Harmful' headline by figuring out something along the line of "I don't like it, therefore it must be bad, therefore I consider it harmful".

It's time to stop. This stopped being funny months ago.

<comment><USER2> There is a difference between having serious flaws and not liking it. Go's idiomatic concurrency is in the first camp and should be considered harmful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1) using channels + goroutine to implement a map doesn't seem like the most sensible thing to do; even golang's new sync.Map type is implemented with mutexs (eg [https://github.com/golang/sync/blob/master/syncmap/map.go#L2...](https://github.com/golang/sync/blob/master/syncmap/map.go#L267)). Idiomatic doesn't mean ALWAYS do this no matter what; it is the natural thing to do if it feels like the right approach.

2) Don't use "considered harmful" so much; it is considered harmful.</comment>


Four-Quark State Confirmed - <AUTHOR> http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.222002 <comment><USER2> Can anyone speak to what this means for QCD and whatnot? (Let's assume that this particle is in fact what they say it is. If I understand correctly, the analysis means that they definitely observed a real _thing_ ; however we can't have quite that much confidence that it is actually a bound state of four quarks.)</comment>