Ask HN: Should I trademark prior to Y Combinator? - <AUTHOR> Should I trademark prior to Y Combinator? In my research prior to applying all fingers point towards waiting until I get into YC to incorporate or create a legal entity. Is this the same thought on Trademarking. Should I wait to get into YC to trademark? Any thoughts would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> There may be a strong push to change your name for various reasons. That would seem to make trademarking a waste of time. Paul Graham wrote about it a couple of years ago [http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html)

<comment><USER3> From that essay:

> 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. > 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have > the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of > the rest, one way or another.

To me it suggests that having high valuations may be the cause of having the .com domain. A more useful analysis would be _when_ companies that are now successful got their domains.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that stuck out to me as well. That was a poor way of conveying the point. The 34% of YC that do not have a .com will probably just buy it once they have the cash, regardless of whether or not they change the name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well first you mean 'apply for a trademark' let's assume. Because it can take anywhere from, say, 7 months to several years to get a trademark issued (I have gotten them in as little as 7 months).

It's really a cost issue. If money is no object then there is little downside other than a) alerting people to what you are doing (tm apps are public) b) deciding if you will do it yourself or have an attorney do it for you.

Creating a legal entity is a bit more involved. You can apply for a trademark, pay the nominal fee and assuming you do the application correctly (in the right class) etc. you can just simply abandon it later if you change your mind. You would only be out the fee. Not like state paperwork which is a bit more sticky.

The date a trademark is put in use is important. So assuming you file as 1a and are using the mark getting it in early could have benefits. Blocking potential competitors and so on.

If you are on a shoestring and have little money then it most likely doesn't pay to apply for the trademark and spend that money which you might need for other things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the intel. I'm bootstrapping the company myself so I have to be mindful on my spending right now. I checked and already know my class and have my details, so it will cost me $225 to do without a lawyer. I'm running the business and building the brand and see that no one has trademarked my company name so I was thinking about doing it. I'm going to hold off and set a goal to do it at Christmas time when I have extra funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The important thing about a trademark is that you start using it. If you run into a problem with somebody else using your name, the most important thing will be who used it first, not who TM'ed it first. In fact, if they TM a name that you had first, you can claw the name and the TM away from them.

Unless you are expecting somebody to steal/abuse your name, there's no rush to TM.

</comment><comment><USER7> IP Lawyer here. Note: I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer.

Upon using your name in commerce you acquire common law trademark rights. Filing a trademark _before_ you are actually using it in commerce requires filing an Intent To Use trademark application and will cost you a few thousand dollars in legal fees (or a hell of a lot more if you are doing international) - either that or you are doing it yourself with trademarkia, and, in that case, I wish you _bon chance_.

Try to choose a strong name, but be prepared to change it.

"Strong" means, in order: a completely made up word, a word that has nothing to do with the product being offered, a word that is suggestive but not decriptive of the product. For more information, look up the "abercrombie" test. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abercrombie_%26_Fitch_Co._v._H...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abercrombie_%26_Fitch_Co._v._Hunting_World,_Inc). [http://berryentertainmentlaw.com/the-abercrombie- formulation...](http://berryentertainmentlaw.com/the-abercrombie-formulation- generic-descriptive-suggestive-arbitrary-and-fanciful-marks/)

If you want to search for competing marks, please note that this is an extremely technical process. You can try to search on TESS, but it is very difficult. [https://tess2.uspto.gov](https://tess2.uspto.gov)

Note that this is only US trademarks.

Additionally, if your question is "how do I know if my mark will be infringing?" The answer is "that is an extremely hard and expensive question to answer." The touchstone of trademark infringement is the "likelihood of consumer confusion test," which is ensconced in the sleekcraft / polaroid factors. [http://www3.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury- instructions/node/244](http://www3.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury- instructions/node/244) [http://likelytocauseconfusion.com/likelihoodofconfusionfacto...](http://likelytocauseconfusion.com/likelihoodofconfusionfactors.html)

The point of all the above is that you really do need to be a professional at this in order to have the wherewithal to make judgments about the likelihood of a trademark's success. In addition, it takes a few business quarters to a year and a half for a registration to issue.

The point of all this is that domai.nr is as important a tool as TESS, that you can easily get lost in the weeds on this issue, that your own judgment is in _no way_ a replacement or a substitute for a licensed attorney, that trademark strategy is hugely complicated and can be a total sinkhole. What does that mean? It means that, for a startup, like many, many other issues, you do the best you can but keep in mind that you are going to have to spend a lot of time and effort on it down the road.

Tl:dr: As a startup _in general_ : IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY, it is worth starting this process this sooner rather than later. If you do NOT have the money, a reasonable strategy is to move forward with a name that you like but _are willing to change_. It is okay to change your name very early on. However, the goal is to _avoid_ having to change your name when you already have a product out and some market presence. For YC: Do you need a trademark before you apply to YC? Almost definitely not - unless you are already selling your product. Do you need a trademark before you start selling your service to enterprises or spending money on marketing? It would be foolish not to at least engage an attorney and start the process.

Note that many other IP attorneys may have different opinions. That's fine - reasonable minds can differ on this subject, the above is an extremely short primer. Also please note that _I AM NOT YOUR ATTORNEY AND IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT FILING A TRADEMARK YOU NEED AN ATTORNEY._

Edit: shoutout to [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=27182818284](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=27182818284) for posting this PG blog post - extremely on point: [http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the intel. I love the disclaimer. Don't worry, I won't try to claim you :) My business is running under the current name, so i'm going to make it a goal to start the trademark app process via the USPTO sight by the end of the year. I don't have enough money to hire a lawyer as yet. I'm hoping to get into YC so that I can take care of this then. It's a unique name and I already own the domain and have a website running. This is all new to me, so I appreciate your intel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do it if it's your top priority. Do you have a brand and brand name that is out there and essential to you or your customers right now?

</comment><comment><USER9> The idea that startups should wait until after joining an accelerator to do their filings seems a bit mythical to me. Maybe it worked back in the day when founders applied with only an idea (or no idea), but now I'd expect most companies to be pretty well established before entering an accelerator. C corp, restricted stock with vesting schedules, the whole bit.

If you're already established with a public product, then you should just go get the trademark. It's not that expensive. If you're stealth, then you could wait, but only because of your stage of company, not anything to do with YC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I did recently apply to YC and prior to applying and read through the "How to successfully apply" and watch several video on their YouTube page. They advised against creating legal entity prior to YC because a mistake could be made and they even ask about this on the application. I have not created a legal entity as yet. However, this prompted me to investigate on the trademark matter. I just want to make sure i'm focusing on the important items first with the resources I have available and not jumping the gun.

<comment><USER9> If you managed to get a YC invite with no registered company, then I suppose you could wait on everything (and hats off to you in that case :))

If you end up not getting into YC, though, I'd say go ahead and register the company anyway. You'll need it in order to take angel money or give out stock options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you make a list of the top 10 things that are gonna hurt your company, a trademark conflict won't be in there. So, no.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you care enough to ask, find a trademark lawyer. An hour (or even half an hour) of their time is all you need.

</comment><comment><USER12> IANAL. My understanding is that by using your name in commerce (in particular interstate commerce) you already have an automatic trademark. But maybe you mean to ask about trademark registration, which is a separate proactive step you can take to give your trademark more protection.

</comment><comment><USER13> Will trademarking help you build a product that people want? There's your answer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Could anyone please give a ballpark number for the costs related to trademarking?

<comment><USER15> I could be wrong, but if you're doing the application yourself, it's under $500 for filing. Chances are you'll need a lawyer, and that's under $1000; separate from filing.

<comment><USER16> You can easily do a trademark these days using services like LegalZoom for about $500 (includes the Federal fee). No separate lawyer necessary.

[https://www.legalzoom.com/business/intellectual- property/tra...](https://www.legalzoom.com/business/intellectual- property/trademark-registration-pricing.html)

<comment><USER13> Or just do it yourself: [https://www.uspto.gov/trademark](https://www.uspto.gov/trademark)

<comment><USER17> I've done that. I hold the trademarks ANIMATS (supplemental register), SITETRUTH, and DOWNSIDE. I have the domains "animats.com", "sitetruth.com", and "downside.com". Those were all obtained simply by filing directly with the USPTO. Unless you're in a crowded area of the namespace, trademarks aren't hard.

Owning a trademark gives you strong rights in domain name disputes. This is effective even if there's someone else who's a big name in a different business area. See ICANN's UDRP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Trademark regardless if you're serious about giving it a go..

</comment><comment><USER19> I could talk about this forever, but I'll restrain myself.

libertymcateer makes some great points. But I wanted to add two things:

1) For most people, when I think about registering a trademark, their concern is getting priority so that other people cannot jump in and use the same mark. Registering a trademark brings a host of benefits, but you don't need to register to get priority over later users. You just need to use the mark "in interstate commerce."

The problem for a company at your stage is this - chances are you are nowhere near the point that you could be said to be using the mark in interstate commerce. I'm assuming you aren't selling anything under the mark yet, right?

So, if you are really concerned about getting priority now, registration would have a benefit - you could file what libertymcateer referred to as an "intent to use" application. Your "priority date" would then be the date of your application, NOT the date the mark registers.

Eventually you will need to show that you are using the mark in commerce, but you can get up to 3 years to do that.

So, if really want to protect your mark now and are afraid someone might take it before you are already using it, then applying for a trademark registration can be worthwhile.

2) The other thing I tell companies in your position that are thinking about registering a trademark is to think about the time, effort, and resources they will be putting into building a brand around their desired trademark.

At the outset, it's easy to change branding. But let's say you start building some recognition around a name over the course of a year or two, start getting traction, etc..., and then you find out someone is already using the mark you chose as your brand or something confusingly similar. At that point, you will have sunk a bunch of money into a brand that needs to be changed and will have to start sinking that money in again.

Why might you think of registering at the outset, then? Well, as libertymcateer mentioned, you could do a search on TESS at the USPTO website. But it's a clunky search system and it's not even complete for your purpose.

If you are looking for prior users of a mark that could interfere with your right to start using a certain trademark, you need to look beyond marks that have been registered or for which people have applied to register. If someone is using a mark in commerce, but never applied to register, they can block your use. And none of those marks will appear on TESS.

In addition, it's not just identical marks. It's confusingly similar marks that can block your use. TESS can do some fuzzy searching, but you need to do those kinds of searches on a much broader basis.

If you file a trademark application, a trademark examiner will do searches and present objections if there are barriers to your getting trademark protection for a mark. No, it's not foolproof - they can approve a mark and a 3rd party can object. But it will be harder for a 3rd party to object if you actually are able to register the mark. That puts aside the credibility you get in having a registered trademark for a brand - random folks who want to write a cease and desist letter will more likely be deterred if you've registered the mark.

Now, applying to register the mark isn't the only way to get a better assessment of whether your chosen brand name would be a good choice from a trademark protection standpoint. There are trademark search services that can do a good job seeking out competing marks. But you really do need a lawyer to analyze the search results. That process will cost more than filing a trademark application. (The lowest risk thing to do would be to have a trademark search done, analyzed by a trademark attorney, and then filing an application to register, but the costs add up and I'm assuming cost is an issue here.)

So, essentially, filing a trademark application is relatively low-cost way to get an assessment of the legal viability of a name for trademark purposes, before you put your resources into building a brand around that name.

Just some things to think about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good intel. Thanks for sharing. I'm already selling my product under the name. I did do a search and nothing turned up so I don't believe anyone has trademarked anything as yet.

<comment><USER19> Good to hear! In that case, priority over other users is not a concern, at least.

Honestly, given your question, just wait. If you are open to rebranding after joining YC, then I just don't see the reason to spend the money on registering a trademark. As I said, the priority issue seems to be taken care of for you. And while there are other benefits to registering, don't worry about those until you are convinced this is the name you want to use.

Good luck!</comment></comment></comment>


Khronos Releases OpenCL 2.1 and SPIR-V 1.0 Specifications - <AUTHOR> http://khr.io/fx <comment><USER2> What's the current status of OpenCL? Is it usable as a cross platform compute substrate? I haven't really paid attention to the GPGPU landscape in five years or so...

<comment><USER3> Apple gave it to Khronos, but since then it hasn't updated the versions provided with their OSes.

Google ships their own dialect in Android, Renderscript.

Everyone that wants to use C++ or Fortran on the GPU with nice tooling, goes CUDA.

Basically OpenCL is being used by those that are happy to stay with C or don't want to be stuck with CUDA despite the tooling.

Hence why SPIR-V came to be, as a means to allow other languages to target OpenCL, instead of using C as intermediate step.

<comment><USER4> SPIR-V only replaces/complements the OpenCL C kernels (Which whill become a subset of C++ in future release, might have been this one come to think of it) and not the whole OpenCL api pipeline, which is still in C.

Hopefully we'll have a LLVM-IR to SPIR-V transpiler in the future, and then have Vulkan/Cuda/DX12 consume that. I would love to see that.</comment></comment></comment>


How We Got Our First 2,000 Users Doing Things That Don't Scale - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3024472/how-we-got-our-first-2000-users-doing-things-that-dont-scale?utm_source=Product+Hunt&utm_campaign=af88ca3153-daily-email-01-06-2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cd7d34185-af88ca3153-104053773

<comment><USER2> Really interesting to see behind the scenes in terms of connecting with the press.

But this seems more like a minimum viable community than a minimum viable product to me.

      "No matter how useful your product might be, it isn't a business without users"

I think that should read: "without customers".

Is there a plan regarding monetization? There was no mention of this under 'The Uncertain Future' section...

<comment><USER3> Glad you enjoyed it. WRT to monetization, our focus is engagement/retention, then growth, then monetization (maybe). We have some ideas on how we might monetize (hint: [http://jonathan-kim.com/2014/starting- fires/](http://jonathan-kim.com/2014/starting-fires/)) but that's not our focus at this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just looked at ProductHunt - it's not really in a generally usable state, is it? There's no way to comment, no way to submit new products (even of it'd go through moderators first). It seems that the only thing one can do is to Logout :-/

What gives? What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> Sorry it's not incredibly clear. We have some changes to make to the product before we open it to a broader audience. In the meantime, we're slowing whitelisting people, giving them access to post and comment.

<comment><USER5> So is this limited just to commenters or to people submitting new products as well? I just noticed you do not have a submit product option either.

<comment><USER3> It's limited to both comments and submissions at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A smoothly implemented marketing roadmap.

It is an interesting historical narrative of what happened. Probably needs a second post of analysis, comparison/contrast, if I had to do it again I'd... but for what it is, its a good post.</comment>


Walls and bridges: even more on Facebookisation - <AUTHOR> http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2010/01/07/walls-and-bridges-even-more-on-facebookisation/

<comment><USER2> _The majority of collaborative conversations taking place in an enterprise mail world do not involve the customer. Words fail me. Well actually some words come to me. Words like "unbelievable" and "circle" and "jerk"_

It's clear that the author has absolutely no training in user experience work. The first thing you learn is to ignore what the users say that they want, and instead focus on what they're doing, and figuring out what they actually want to accomplish. Involving users directly in product development is a recipe for disaster.

You should of course manage your user relations, be nice to them and talk to them and try to solve their problems, but to figure out in what direction you should develop your product, never ever ask your users directly. Instead, perform proper user research, analyze their work patterns, do split testing, optimize their workflow, gather data, data and more data.

The best counter-example is something that everyone who has ever launched a re-design of a popular website has experienced: For the first four weeks, the absolute majority of your users will complain that your website is different, and they will demand that you change it back to the way it was. After four weeks everyone will have forgotten what the old version looked like and stop complaining.

What the article author fails to realize is that the users that are interested in being part of the product development process are in no way representative of your actual userbase. There might be a precious few super-users that actually do and will come up with worthwhile suggestions, but the majority are not in this category and are best kept away from your business.</comment>


Image Search Breakthrough: 0.98+ Precise Images of 500,000+ topics - <AUTHOR> http://rdf.ookaboo.com/

<comment><USER2> In TechCrunch-style blogs, every post has a large image at top (often just a stock photo) that's also used to represent the post as a thumbnail in post lists.

You could automate providing these images for new posts by mashing up this annotated database of CC-licensed images with the OpenCalais API. OpenCalais analyzes text to extract named entities (companies, technologies, people, even social tag recommendations) -- so match those terms with the image database til you get a hit and you've got an image with no work done by the author.

Maybe something I'll play with later tonight.

I wrote a PHP wrapper for the OpenCalais API some years ago. <https://github.com/dangrossman/PHP-OpenCalais>

<comment><USER3> For an example of how this is done with google images check out this project <http://logolifter.com/>

<comment><USER2> Am I missing something or is this site specifically designed to enable copyright infringement? I don't think the little disclaimer saves it. Contributory infringement is illegal in the US, and this tool lifts images from Google Image Search, 99.9% of which are not licensed for distribution. If this is your site, I'd consider replacing the image source with something like Flickr whose API which supports search-by-license.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Image Search indexes Ookaboo, not the other way around.

All of the images were published under a public domain or creative commons image elsewhere; there is a small probability that this information is incorrect, in which case we remove images as per DMCA

<comment><USER2> Hi Paul. I was referring to LogoLifter, the comment I replied to, not Ookaboo. LogoLifter's images are from Google Image Search, not from Ookaboo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please fix the title ("Image Search Breakthrough: 0.98+ Precise Images of 500,000+ topics").

Unless I'm misreading this radically, this is a learning dataset of 1,000,000 images, labelled with a precision of 98%.

This _isn't_ a breakthough in image search. It is helpful for anyone working on image search, but appears to have been manually labelled.

<comment><USER5> You are right, the title is grossly misleading, but I don't think this was manually labelled. They have this to say about the association of pictures and topics:

 _Ookaboo attains high precision within it's point-of-view by having a very permissive definition of "depicts," which means roughly "this image could appear in an encyclopedia entry for..." For example, in the case of dbpedia:Pablo_Picasso, we'd accept a portrait of the artist, images of his works, or a house that he lived in._

This leads me to believe that the topic associations were derived automatically based on information found on the page in which the picture was embedded.

<comment><USER4> Yes.

To be clear, I suspect a large number of the images come from Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and are manually categorised there. This software scraped the images and the categories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So is this meant for actually getting images or as a learning set for ML?

</comment><comment><USER7> Related: you can grab 100k images files with labels[1] from the old ESP game[2].

[1] <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/resources/> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP_Game>

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks quite impressive and useful. Could someone explain what the precision metric refers to? The documentation states:

 _Ookaboo attains high precision within it's point-of-view by having a very permissive definition of "depicts," which means roughly "this image could appear in an encyclopedia entry for..." For example, in the case of dbpedia:Pablo_Picasso, we'd accept a portrait of the artist, images of his works, or a house that he lived in._

But that doesn't really explain how the number 0.98 was arrived at.

EDIT: made this into a straightforward question rather than speculation.

<comment><USER9> 1000000 * 0.02 = 20k

This implies there are 20k wrong images in the dataset, sampling can find some of them

<comment><USER10> doesn't it mean _could_ be 20k wrong images?

<comment><USER9> Yes, you are right. 20k is an approximate number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks very useful. One of my customers needs labeled images that can be used with attribution. Thanks for posting this.</comment>


Analysis of the NYSE "Flash Crash" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nanex.net/20100506/FlashCrashAnalysis_CompleteText.html

<comment><USER2> This guys explanation of "quote stuffing" seems incorrect to me:

 _"What benefit could there be to whomever is generating these extremely high quote rates? After thoughtful analysis, we can only think of one. Competition between HFT systems today has reached the point where microseconds matter. Any edge one has to process information faster than a competitor makes all the difference in this game. If you could generate a large number of quotes that your competitors have to process, but you can ignore since you generated them, you gain valuable processing time."_

I don't think this is correct, since it's not a trivial matter to ignore your own quotes. Say there are two orders about to come in, and you place a third. The market data feed then tells you [order 1, order 2, order 3]. It _does not_ tell you which order is yours. So you need to separately run code which remembers when you placed orders, and then guess that "look, order 1 and order 2 match the order I placed, I guess order 1 is mine, lets ignore it when doing the rest of our calculations". That's not fast code.

Besides, if your broker thinks you are DOSing the markets (as well as _the broker's_ system), they will shut you down FAST.

My "stupidity, not malice" explanation: novices didn't throttle the oscillations in their code and feedback loops developed. Some were self-loops - basically, you _just don't have_ the self-order detection code I described above, and try to trade based on your own actions. Some were loops between traders - trader 1 places an order, trader 2 cancels in response, trader 1 cancels in response to 2, trader 2 places an order in response to the cancel, etc. The band-saw patterns look like bidding wars on wildly undervalued stocks (e.g., one system places an order for accenture at 0.05, another at 0.06, another at 0.07, etc), which is actually a very good thing since it pushes prices back up to their proper levels.

<comment><USER3> Technically speaking, it may not be a trivial matter to ignore your own quotes, but it's not very difficult, either - if it takes M operations to handle your typical fully processed quote, and N operations to hash the quote and compare it to a table of quotes that you've delivered, then as long as M > N you've got some room for manipulation as long as you're able to pump enough bullshit into the system that everyone else has to deal with; I assume that in these situations M is usually substantially greater than N, probably on the order of at least 10:1 unless the quote is discarded as obviously irrelevant. It's just awful hard to imagine that the amount of processing done per quote in a HFT system can be less than a few hash table lookups...

I'd imagine the real difficulty would be making sure that the quotes you're putting in are a) relevant enough not to be immediately and trivially screened out by your competitors, b) not in danger of actually getting acted upon, and c) seemingly legitimate even in the face of after-the-fact scrutiny so that you avoid getting butt raped by the SEC for manipulation. a) and b) would likely be pretty easy to satisfy if you didn't have to worry about c), so...I don't know, this doesn't seem terribly implausible to me.

Then again, I don't know much about HFT, there may be factors in play that would make it a lot trickier to manipulate things in this way. And I'm certainly not convinced that this is what was behind the crash - "stupidity, not malice" is a good rule of thumb, and I'd have to see more evidence to assume that someone deliberately manipulated the markets here.

<comment><USER2> If you are doing high frequency trading, processing a quote isn't that hard either. It can't be, or you'd never respond fast enough. I suppose the best way to do it would be to ignore quotes X distance from the book, and then do your DOS X+0.01 from the book, though this might not be compatible with your regular strategy. Whatever DOS you want to do has to be compatible with your already existing strategy. I'm not saying it's 100% impossible, only that it isn't easy.

Additionally, your broker starts getting annoyed at you when your fill rate drops below 0.5% or so. If you DOSed the market, you wouldn't even be in that ballpark.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, looking at those graphs, it does appear that a lot of the extraneous action was happening right on the edge of the inside bid/ask.

 _Additionally, your broker starts getting annoyed at you when your fill rate drops below 0.5% or so. If you DOSed the market, you wouldn't even be in that ballpark._

That's definitely true, and I'm sure it would be a serious problem with doing anything of this nature.

Is there always a middleman that cares about what quotes you're pushing through, though, or do some people have closer connections that wouldn't be watched very closely?

<comment><USER2> Some larger funds become a broker/dealer, so they can cut their brokers out of the loop. I really doubt that anyone big enough to do that would be willing to risk their business on a DOS attack, however.

I fully agree that it's possible to do. I just find other explanations, like badly written algorithms, much more plausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nanex is a data feed company that was started by Eric Scott Hunsader who is one bad ass programmer and, based on my limited interactions with him when I used to program against a previous API he designed, a decent person. He was able to deliver results back then that other people couldn't dream of, and Nanex (called GenerationV at the time I think) was his "build it all again from scratch based on what you've learned to date" data feed engine. It's interesting to see the name come up here. How big of a player are these guys?

<comment><USER5> They're not, really. Not on the HFT landscape, anyway. It's tempting to say they're being slept on, but the cream rises to the top VERY fast in HFT--there have been multiple instances of products brought to market and the company being purchased outright by the first would-be customer (although this is much, much more frequent on the networking and hardware sides).

I think the analysis and borderline-accusation of what is termed "insincere quoting" by the exchanges is... laughable. It doesn't speak well to the authors' knowledge of their industry. I've had an exchange disconnect my session for sending 1000+ orders per second by myself, and I would have been quite happy to execute any of them (or else they wouldn't have been sent). To be honest, I'm surprised 5000 is the biggest number they could find. I would have guess an order of magnitude higher.

What happened on 5/6 was that the NYSE finally learned that they aren't the boss in the equities markets anymore. Trying to slow down trading without regard for the other routing destinations was nothing but quaint.

You know those videos you see of suburban shoppers at 6:00a on Black Friday, rushing through the doors to get one of the three available Xbox 360s or whatever? The NYSE was the hapless security guard whose watch was slow telling everyone the store wasn't open yet.

<comment><USER4> Very interesting. Thanks!

I wrote too hastily when I said Hunsader was producing results at the time that others couldn't dream of; that was a sloppy exaggeration. But his work was very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Short conclusion: "In summary, quotes from NYSE began to queue, but because they were time stamped after exiting the queue, the delay was undetectable to systems processing those quotes. On 05/06/2010 the delay was enough to cause the NYSE bid to be just slightly higher than the lowest offer price from competing exchanges, but small enough that is was difficult to detect. This caused sell order flow to route to NYSE -- thus removing any buying power that existed on other exchanges. When these sell orders arrived at NYSE, the actual bid price was lower because new lower quotes were still waiting to exit a queue for dissemination."

"This situation led to orders executing against whatever buy orders existed in the NYSE designated market maker (DMM) order book."

This is actually the most cogent explanation I've yet heard.

<comment><USER7> The scary part was that you could watch it unfold: [http://partiallystapled.com/~gxti/charts/2010/05/06-spread.p...](http://partiallystapled.com/~gxti/charts/2010/05/06-spread.png)

When you can see the spread like that then something has gone terribly wrong. As I read it, that spread is between NYSE on the bottom and the rest of the market on the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You might want to start from the main page as there is an intro and other overview info: <http://www.nanex.net/20100506/FlashCrashAnalysis_Intro.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> So the NYSE has been blaming the other exchanges for their behavior, when this was really a NYSE problem.

However, it was only a NYSE problem because they were effectively being DOS'd by some of the other exchanges.

         On the subject of HFT systems, we were shocked to find
         cases where one exchange was sending an extremely high
         number of quotes for one stock in a single second --
         as high as 5,000 quotes in 1 second!

So the NYSE was right to blame the other exchanges, but they were right for the wrong reasons.

<comment><USER7> I don't think they mean that one exchange was DoSing another.

Quotes within a single exchange are disseminated immediately to all interested parties -- if one party was spamming thousands of quotes at a stock, that stream would be repeated for everyone with a feed from that exchange. There's no way to tell which party is sending it, so the only thing you can measure is the quantity being sent by the exchange. Thus it is technically accurate to say that "one exchange was sending an extremely high number of quotes". It's in the exchange's best interest to disseminate quotes as quickly as possible in order to attract order flow and thus collect fees.

On the other hand, inter-exchange feeds are federally mandated and used primarily to comply with Regulation NMS rules that prevent trades from executing at a price inferior to the NBBO (national best bid/offer). In other words, if I send a buy order to NYSE but NASDAQ has a lower price, NYSE is required to either reject the order or route it to NASDAQ for a fee (it's up to the customer which method is used). It's not necessary to send 5000 quotes per second to another exchange because the primary motivation is compliance. Generally, institutions will send their orders directly to the exchange with the best price in order to avoid the extra fee for having it routed by the exchange.

I may be way off on the inter-exchange feeds as I am not a professional, but there are undoubtedly many here who are so please correct me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone say why this momentary "flash crash" was a big deal? Who cares if people or computers trade securities under market value for a short amount of time? It only affects the idiot that is selling them at that undervalued price. The value of the underlying company is unaffected and market forces will always quickly correct it. The people or firms that sold the securities at those prices are probably either fired or lost their own money and they chance it happens again is unlikely. Use buy and sell limit orders, you should be already.

Should we worry about all online retailers because Zappos had a computer error and lost some money? - [http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/05/24/pricing- error-costs...](http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/05/24/pricing-error-costs- zappos-1-6-million/)

<comment><USER11> _Who cares if people or computers trade securities under market value for a short amount of time? It only affects the idiot that is selling them at that undervalued price. The value of the underlying company is unaffected and market forces will always quickly correct it._

Well, the stock price _is_ the market value - if it's not then what is? Detecting errors as opposed to genuine changes in value is a non-trivial problem.

 _Use buy and sell limit orders, you should be already._

The flash crash happened so quickly that a lot of limit orders weren't executed, because the price dropped past the limits too fast.

If you had an order to sell something at $20, and the price dropped from $25 to $1 in seconds then there's a good chance there were no buyers for you at $20, but instead your trade might have been executed at $1. That makes a pretty big difference.

<comment><USER2> A limit order sell at $20.00 will never be executed at $1. It will never even be executed at $19.99. It will simply go unfilled until someone is willing to sell at $20.00 or higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that a crash of similar magnitude and duration happened in the 60s, well before computerized trading.

<comment><USER2> Could you provide a source?

<comment><USER12> I'm looking... (It isn't the first two places where I thought that I saved it.)

<comment><USER13> Here's a link discussing the May 1962 equivalent to the flash crash:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870395760457527...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703957604575272791511469272.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These kinds of writings are why I read HN. The article is pretty technical, well written, and removes any political BS that you would most definitely hear on TV.

Notice that "circuit breakers" wasn't offered up as a solution to the problem.

</comment><comment><USER15> The recommendations miss the most obvious fix: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_6,_2010_Flash_Crash#Circuit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_6,_2010_Flash_Crash#Circuit_breakers)

These things have been working fine and dandy across Europe for several years, where such a situation would not happen.

For the Eurex implementation see here: <http://is.gd/d2f1Y> [link to google quick view of the pdf]

<comment><USER16> Fixing the quotes to be timestamped properly seems to be a much simpler fix than relying on additional circuit breaker logic.

<comment><USER15> While time stamping solves the problem of inconsistent quotes, it does not do anything against bogus trades or somebody accidentally adding an extra 0 when typing in their data.

A circuit breaker would prevent the absolute free-fall that happened during the flash crash. At that stage, nobody knew what the "real" price of a stock was and everybody was guessing, the algos could not handle the situation. If a circuit breaker was triggered, it would lead to a trading halt on the stock and an auction to set the price.

Time stamping quotes solves system errors, but not mistrades or market panic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> i don't know what all the big deal is about this 'flash crash'. they happen all the time in the futures markets. they are the risk premium for strategies that make a market automatically.

this is not a threat to the economy if that's what the concern is. it's only a 'threat' in conjunction with a perceived fear. in this particular case, it had to do with greece. in the 87 crash's case, it had to do with a collapse in the bond markets.

all high-frequency trading or program trades do is quicken the whole process. one can implement safeguards to make the whole thing slower -- or you can let the market participants take care of themselves and/or fix the underlying problems and ignore mass hysteria which will reset as soon as the absence of a rational reason for a correction is made clear.

i feel like the 1987+ 'crashes' are very different from the 1929 crash, etc. they are not in themselves a problem. so far they've always popped back.

which is not to say that our economy has been in good shape since 1987. but that there are deeper issues -- having very little to do with hft.

</comment><comment><USER18> also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1456746>

<comment><USER19> and also, ever so slightly before that one :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1456414>

<comment><USER18> a low delay post :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sweet. If the 50ms rule goes into effect HFT traders could conceivably be set up anywhere in the US, no?

<comment><USER2> They already can be. Tradebot lives in Kansas City, for example.

<comment><USER21> At the moment, you're at a serious disadvantage if you're not across the street from the Exchange due to latency (obviously).

<comment><USER2> You're at a serious disadvantage if your _server_ is not across the street, it's true.

That actually wouldn't change with a 50ms rule. You still want your order in the queue before the other guy, even if he can't pull his order for 50ms.

<comment><USER21> Right, sorry for not making that distinction. That is what I meant, but the latency between brain and fingers is under some delay :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _the HFT systems detected the sudden price drop and automatically went short, betting on capturing the developing downward momentum_

This is the scariest part</comment>


Quantum entanglement, two-sided spacetimes and the thermodynamic arrow of time - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04012 <comment><USER2> Probably a basic question, but if entropy is causally connected to time, why don't different locales have different rates of time based on how rapidly the local environment is moving toward greater entropy.

That is, in deep space almost nothing is happening while here on earth a lot is happening to increase entropy, so why does time go at the same speed in both places?

<comment><USER3> It doesn't - Special / General Relativity demonstrates gravitational time dilation.

<comment><USER4> So you mean our simulation doesn't bother calculating the state of empty areas on which there are few or no other dependent states which depend in a statistically significant way upon that empty state?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based on initial conditions, the two-sided spacetime behaves differently with respect to the (thermodynamic) arrow of time.

If the initial conditions are of low correlation, the two sides move in opposite time directions, but the structure as a whole follows the thermodynamic arrow of time.

If the initial conditions are of high correlation, the individual entropies of the two sides can increase and decrease, there is not a dominance over time direction, and the overall structure is that of a one-sided spacetime.

So, their argument on the dual structure is:

less correlation = more disconnection between spacetime forming two-sided geometry

more correlation = more connection, forming one-sided geometry

Remember, though, that we are looking at dual views: gravity vs. quantum information theory and depending from which view you are describing, the words used to describe the system would be different. For example, two-sidedness in geometry refers to the gravity view.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another explanation for how time can be an emergent property of entanglement:

[http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/10/parallel-universes-and- ar...](http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/10/parallel-universes-and-arrow-of- time.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The point here is the universe has two sides; we can only observe one side. On the other side of the universe the time runs backward, from the future to the past. If one, by any chance, would traverse to the other side, will "grow" younger.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of my idea? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN, I am trying to get geeks to be social with my new project http://www.codeclip.org. What do you think? Any advice? <comment><USER2> Maybe try and grab code from developer blogs, like hypem does for music.

</comment><comment><USER3> i liked it better when it was called "github"</comment>


PM2.5 exposure possibly leads to 1.37M people's premature death in China - <AUTHOR> http://english.pku.edu.cn/news_events/news/research/5076.htm <comment><USER2> For anyone else who doesn't immediately get the acronym,

" _Fine particles (PM2.5) are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller, and can only be seen with an electron microscope. Fine particles are produced from all types of combustion, including motor vehicles, power plants, residential wood burning, forest fires, agricultural burning, and some industrial processes._ "

[https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.particle](https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.particle)

<comment><USER3> AKA, nanoparticles; 2.5 micrometers = 2500 nanometers.

<comment><USER4> > Nanoparticles are particles between 1 and 100 nanometers in size.

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

<comment><USER3> So where exactly then do 'nanoparticles' fall on the PM exposure list then? The standard measurements separate 'small' (<2.5 micron) particulate from 'big' (<10 micron) particulate. 'Small' things entirely subsume the nanoparticle definition.

PM2.5 exposure is exposure to particles with their largest length being less than 2500 nanometers. The link says PM2.5 include, "combustion particles, organic compounds, metals, etc." \- wherein those classes of particulate indisputably qualify as nanoparticles.

If you want to be really pedantic, we could instead say that PM2.5 include 'nanoparticles, clumps of nanoparticles, irregularly shaped nanoparticles, and fine particles'. But I suspect most people do not have common mental distinction between a 'fine' particle and a 'nanoparticle', even though they are (physiologically) more similar to each other in most regards than they are to larger, visible particles, hence the difference in measuring both PM10 and PM2.5 atmospheric particulate [1].

Regardless, the article is talking about a huge amount of pollution, indistinguishable from 'nanoparticles' at the point of measurement, that have caused health problems for a truly massive number of humans.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates#Size.2C_shape_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates#Size.2C_shape_and_solubility_matter)

> Similarly, so called fine PM, (often referred to as PM2.5), tend to > penetrate into the gas exchange regions of the lung (alveolus), and very > small particles (< 100 nanometers) may pass through the lungs to affect > other organs.

> The smallest particles, less than 100 nanometers (nanoparticles), may be > even more damaging to the cardiovascular system. Nanoparticles can pass > through cell membranes and migrate into other organs, including the brain. > Particles emitted from modern diesel engines (commonly referred to as Diesel > Particulate Matter, or DPM) are typically in the size range of 100 > nanometers (0.1 micrometer). These soot particles also carry carcinogens > like benzopyrenes adsorbed on their surface.

<comment><USER5> subsumes ≠ AKA

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Try comparing air quality in [0] Beijing and [1] Delhi. Most days you will find Indian air pollution far worse than the air pollution in Beijing.

[0] [http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/](http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/) [1] [http://aqicn.org/city/india/new-delhi/us- embassy/](http://aqicn.org/city/india/new-delhi/us-embassy/)

Not letting China off the hook, but India is hardly ever mentioned and their problems are worse. India has been unable to implement effective policies and instead are looking toward gimmicky solutions like installing air filters at street intersections.

More needs to be done in India, China~

<comment><USER7> If you're looking for a global view, I recommend the world-view of the AQICN forecast. You can really see where the hot spots are and how they distribute particulates to other areas. Central China (Chongqing) and Eastern India (Delhi) are particularly bad. Europe really isn't bad (even when it goes over 100... it's not 600-999) and the west coast of the US gets hit by China smog.

[http://aqicn.org/forecast/model/cams- world/](http://aqicn.org/forecast/model/cams-world/)

<comment><USER8> Damn, I didn't realize the Aleutians got hit so badly by Asian pollution.

<comment><USER2> It's a small world after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While China is somewhat the poster child for modern air pollution, do not overlook that PM2.5 and PM10 exposure is also very bad in many parts of Europe, SE Asia, and large American cities. The Netherlands occasionally experiences a haze that is quite visible and smokey-smelling, in fact tomorrow will be one of the worst days of the year for PM exposure in NW Europe:

[http://www.temis.nl/aqi/aqi_nl.html](http://www.temis.nl/aqi/aqi_nl.html)

<comment><USER10> I wonder how much of that stems from the efforts to promote diesels over petrol for CO2 reasons.

<comment><USER11> CO2? The energy content of the fuel is roughly the same and the are both made of hydrocarbon chains with similar proportions of carbon and hydrogen. The principal difference being that petrol is shorter chains C8.. C11 and diesel is C13..C18. So how does using diesel reduce the emission of CO2? I understand that diesels are generally a little more efficient than petrol engines but that doesn't seem to be enough to claim any serious reduction on CO2 emissions.

<comment><USER10> I don't disagree, but there was a Europe wide effort in the late 90s to encourage diesels following Kyoto. The resulting tax changes on both vehicles and fuel led to a huge growth in diesels. They went from a minority 10% of vehicles to over half.

Only later did awareness of particulates grow.

Some background: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/22/the- rise...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/22/the-rise-diesel- in-europe-impact-on-health-pollution)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is unsurprising and in large part traceable to China's domestic coal consumption. When people say that coal power plans routinely kill orders of magnitude more people than nuclear plants ever have, this is what they're talking about.

<comment><USER13> Most of PM and other harmful smog components, like SOx, NOx and organic compounds, came from:

1\. Transportation emissions, especially diesel engines.

2\. Individual heating of buildings (using coal, oil or biomass).

This is because exhaust fumes are mostly not being filtered in these cases.

Coal power plants have advanced filter systems, which can reduce pollutants by more than 99% in some cases.

[http://i.imgur.com/dsNgDvn.png](http://i.imgur.com/dsNgDvn.png)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20150611212052/http://www.babcock...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150611212052/http://www.babcock.com/library/documents/br-1886.pdf)

[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40789-014-0001-x](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40789-014-0001-x)

Moreover, in power plants, coal burns in a much more optimal conditions, what results in less pollutants being generated.

[https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS_BurningQue...](https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FoS_BurningQuestions_Health_Coal_Wildfires_Jan2015.pdf)

> According to Environment Canada, coal-fired power plants in Alberta in 2011 > emitted only 0.4% of PM2.5 of human-made emissions (excluding wildfires).

But somehow most of the bashing by media, green/left politicians and 'ecological' organizations is targeted at coal power plants, instead of real pollution sources.

And ignorants enforce this lies, by repeating that "coal power plans routinely kill orders of magnitude more people than nuclear plants".

<comment><USER8> > And ignorants enforce this lies, by repeating that "coal power plans > routinely kill orders of magnitude more people than nuclear plants".

We can enumerate everyone who has been killed in a nuclear plant accident since the plants themselves do not emit any radiation or pollution when they are generating electricity. Nuclear power only has the problem of safety (keep bad accidents from occurring) and waste disposal, while coal plants pollute continuously, and emit much more radiation than a nuclear power plant (and even its waste).

The coal plants in China do not have any sophisticated environmental features like the ones in the west. Additionally, the burn much dirtier coal (mined in China) than the much cleaner coal that can be mined in say, West Virginia or Australia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know how much the negative health effects of living near a highway can be mitigated by using a plug-in HEPA filter?

I'm considering moving to an apartment 200 feet from the 101 (8 lane total highway).

<comment><USER15> It's hard to put a straight number on it, other than that "it will most likely reduce the negative effects".

A standardized HEPA filter removes 99.97% of particles down to PM0.3. How much it cleans the air in the room in the end depends on many factors, but in a small room and a decent filter you can expect a significant reduction in pollution.

So yes, if you want less pollution, a HEPA filter will deliver it in a theoretical range of zero to 99.97% purification, depending on the variable factors of room size, air circulation, purifier air flow and so forth.

A properly sized purifier will circulate all air in a room several times per hour, so in practice you can expect a good cleanup of particulates (perhaps around 80%) in a fairly short period of time (less than an hour).

<comment><USER16> I just want to point out that the HEPA ratings are pretty lax on how much and what they are effectively cleaning in the air. Pretty much everybody can use the word HEPA and it not mean that much if they are, for example, using an ionizer that essentially just makes the particles 'sticky' while putting them back in the air.

Source: I work at a top international air purification company.

<comment><USER14> Thanks. Do you have any recommendations on what to look for when buying a filter?

I was planning on buying a filter labelled True HEPA from a well known company, that uses a fan and not ionization, and being sure to replace the filter as directed.

The HEPA standard, ensures PM0.3 are filtered out. But this article ([http://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution- highw...](http://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution-highways)) says ultrafine particles (PM0.1) are the biggest health risk. Do you know if any filters remove ultrafine particles?

Wikipedia seems to suggest that most do: "Diffusion predominates below the 0.1 μm diameter particle size. Impaction and interception predominate above 0.4 μm. In between, near the most penetrating particle size (MPPS) 0.3 μm, both diffusion and interception are comparatively inefficient. Because this is the weakest point in the filter's performance, the HEPA specifications use the retention of these particles to classify the filter" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA)

<comment><USER16> It is pretty difficult to filter out ultra fine particles anyway and some of the best air purifiers can claim to do a lot. Obviously, you will be breathing that stuff every day and unless the air around you is seriously affecting your health, you don't need a high end air purifier. This is my opinion, but unless you have allergies or asthma, most top of the line air filtration systems won't have much of an impact on your day to day and I would personally suggest any $250-$500 range air purifier. This content in this article[1] does a really good job at comparing air purifiers but they suggest an ionizer which can have negative effects.

Things to look out for: \- No ionizer. \- No uv light. \- True HEPA is fine but if they've trademarked or registered their HEPA brand (HyperHEPA, HEPASilent), I would ask them more about what that means and they should provide a pretty good answer within the context.

1\. [http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-air- purifier/](http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-air-purifier/)

<comment><USER17> Why no UV? Seems like it couldn't hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Also, some of these particles enter the brain directly through the olfactory nerve.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10797.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10797.abstract)

easier to read:

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/05/toxic- ai...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/05/toxic-air- pollution-particles-found-in-human-brains-links-alzheimers)

<comment><AUTHOR> Crikey, that is a particularly sensible realization that is also quite alarming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I work <10' away from the dept laser printer all day. Talk of nano particles makes me worry.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toner#Health_risks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toner#Health_risks)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way to measure it with a simple and cheap device?

<comment><USER21> It's been a while since I last researched it but the least expensive unit I've saw at the time that was reportedly accurate is Dylos DC1100 monitors for ~$200-$300, depending on the sensitivity and options desired. However, I never got around to purchasing one so I can't vouch for it personally.

<comment><USER22> I've got a Dylos DC1100 Pro and it seems to work great, however I don't have a solid way of verifying the accuracy of its measurements. Supposedly it's one of the most accurate devices available at that price.

Empirically it works; running a HEPA filter in a closed room for 15 minutes will eliminate almost all particle readings. Cooking bacon in the kitchen will make the meter read 100x higher than normal, etc. I'd recommend buying one if you're interested in monitoring air quality, if anything it will be useful in giving relative quality measurements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The challenge in linking air pollution to age-related disease and mortality risk lies in the confounding correlation with wealth. There are plausible physical mechanisms involving, for example, increased levels of inflammation resulting from high levels of particulate air pollution, but regions with lower levels of air pollution tend to have much wealthier populations, and it is well known that wealth correlates with lower mortality and greater life expectancy, both for individuals and across societies as a whole.

<comment><USER24> Is clean air really correlated with wealth in China? The wealthy Chinese are generally in big cities which is where the terrible pollution is found.

<comment> et-al With money, you can outfit your home and workplace with air filters and own a weekend villa further away from the smog. You're still exposed, but at a much lesser amount than the guard who has to stand outside all day.

See also: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/world/asia/the- privileges-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/world/asia/the-privileges- of-chinas-elite-include-purified-air.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> another good reason to find space for more trees in urban developments; [http://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/2013/nrs_2013_nowak_002.p...](http://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/2013/nrs_2013_nowak_002.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER26> For reference, it is one in a thousand (Chinese population is ~1.4B).

<comment><USER27> That's 1:1,000 per year so a much higher percentage of overall deaths. On the order of ~7% of all deaths in china assuming 1/1000 * ~70 year life expectancy.

<comment><USER28> Death rate in China is 7.7 deaths/1,000. So 1/1,000 caused by pollution would be closer to 13% of all deaths.

<comment><USER27> Wow, China's population must be aging really quickly.

<comment><USER29> Interestingly they're aging at 1 year per year, which is only a tiny bit slower than the people who live high in mountains who age at 1 year + epsilon (where epsilon is gravitational time dilation) per sea-level-year

<comment><USER30> I was curious how much altitude would affect aging so I did a quick google search. "The atomic clock calculated that for every 12 inches of elevation, 90 billionths of a second are added to a lifetime (79 years)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> All I could think of was some node package manager is killing people in China?...

<comment><USER32> Hah. I thought this was an article about PM2

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Tbh, I thought this was about [https://github.com/Unitech/pm2](https://github.com/Unitech/pm2) . I was pretty confused.

<comment><USER34> "PM2.5" is a standard term[1,2], along with "PM10".

[1] [https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/amtic/amticpm.html](https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/amtic/amticpm.html)

[2] [https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.part...](https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.particle)</comment></comment>


iTunesConnect new UI - <AUTHOR> http://help.apple.com/itc/my-apps-quick-tour/ <comment><USER2> Well, it looks pretty, like most Apple products. The proof will be in the pudding when artists and labels use it, I guess.</comment>


5 Mobile App Trends You Can't Ignore - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/03/22/mobile-app-trends-2011/ <comment><USER2> including the front side cam, we've already been(being?) through the same trends on desktops and laptops too. :)</comment>


Android 11 - <AUTHOR> https://www.android.com/android-11/ <comment><USER2> The change I like the most is the permission change:

"If you haven't used an app in a while, you may not want it to keep accessing your data. So Android will reset permissions for your unused apps. You can always turn permissions back on."

"Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again."

<comment><USER3> I wonder if that applies to Google's own apps

<comment><USER4> It does. Here is Maps + Location [0]. And here is Google Home + Mic [1]. I just picked 2 random google services that seemed like they would rely on location (Maps) and microphone (Home).

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png](https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png](https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png)

<comment><USER3> But do those permissions get revoked automatically if you don't use the apps for a while? (the "permissions auto-reset" feature)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As an operating system Android is continuing to get a little more modular, allowing more "user observable functionality" to be updated independent of an OS version upgrade (or waiting on a carrier or OEM to approve such an upgrade). Unfortunately, even more of capability of "Android" is being delivered by the very-closed-source Google Mobile Service (GMS) while the feature set of AOSP is dwindling to being "mere phone without the smarts." At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS. It's too bad the tribes and factions wanting to build a truly open Linux phone can't bury the hatchet and rally behind a single implementation.

<comment><USER6> > At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS.

On iOS you can't side-load apps. You can only run native code if it has been manually approved by Apple and acquired via their special App Store. There are a handful of exceptions but they have their own limitations.

Android is at worst as closed as Windows, but not more. Some perspective is called for.

<comment><USER5> Side-loading on iOS is possible: [https://www.notebookcheck.net/You-can-now- sideload-unverifie...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/You-can-now-sideload- unverified-apps-on-iOS-without-Jailbreak-or-revokes.461039.0.html)

And it's always been possible if you have a developer account (and I might be wrong, because I quit mobile development to focus on cloud but I think you don't even need a paid developer account to build and load an app from source code anymore -- but I could be wrong).

<comment><USER7> Subject to ridiculous restrictions, like an app only lasting 7 days before being disabled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Desktop mode. Please, desktop mode already. These devices have as much or more ram and logical processors than my last office computer. Office tasks have been more than capable to be performed on such a device. No third party hack, but native and official support for desktop mode.

Also, i am so tired of renting phones - give us the root account by default. If i would buy a new device, i will want to gain control of it.

<comment><USER9> Didn't Samsung offer desktop mode at one point? I think it got canned because no one used it, sadly.

<comment><USER8> Samsung still does it, but they are a third party thing, support is not native. Some apps just don't work well as a window.

Such a thing implies you have to have a capable monitor and a bluetooth mice/kbd. Adoption will take significant time, but it will come either from current OSes or a newcomer. Remember how Nokia was the definition of reality and Apple came with their smartphone and turned the industry around overnight? Same thing will happen once someone introduces a true universal and responsive device that can seamlessly adapt to all kinds of use cases. It's just a question of when.

<comment><USER9> > It's just a question of when.

I'm a lot more sceptical. I'm a tech nerd through and through and I can't really see why I'd want a truly responsive device like that. The things I do on both phone and computer (email, messaging, maps, etc) are on the cloud so it's easy to switch devices. The stuff that's more difficult to move (my coding setup) isn't something I ever use on mobile. I can see the financial argument in favour of it but a laptop style case with monitor, keyboard and trackpad probably wouldn't ever be that much cheaper than a Chromebook or the like.

<comment><USER8> Most of the things one does on a laptop - like media consumption, general browsing, etc. can be done on a smartphone. Why should you be forced to switch devices if all you want is the convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a windowing environment?

It has nothing to do with the financial side of it, it's all about convergence and finally exposing the full capabilities a such a device. Today's smartphones run full desktop OS under the hood, but they are just artificially crippled behind a platform designed to deliver ads.

Whether you will use your smartphone or laptop/pc for a particular task should be a matter of whether the hardware setup (mobile vs. full desktop) can handle it or not, not if it's functionally possible at all.

<comment><USER9> > Why should you be forced to switch devices if all you want is the > convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a windowing environment?

I don't think you should be forced to but the things you just listed totally change the way you view and interact with a device, so switching to a different device isn't really all that different an experience than docking the one you're currently on.

It's not that it can't be done, or shouldn't be done, but to me the benefits feel very minor. If I'm reading an email on my phone and want to answer on my laptop it's already exceedingly easy to do so. Docking a device instead of using a different one doesn't really change that equation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Option one: I'm growing old and crazy.

Option two: all these features encourage people to rely on their phone to manage their notifications/conversations instead of keeping their distractions at a minimum - humanly manageable level.

<comment><USER11> All those screenshots look so busy to me, like there's so much going on in these people's lives that they struggle to keep up. I want the distraction device that sits in my pocket to simplify my life, not expose and amplify all the small interruptions as if they _need_ to be taken care of RIGHT NOW or else.

"you can pin conversations so they always appear on top of other apps and screens. Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you're doing. Access the chat anytime or anywhere." — Yo dawg, I heard you like distractions...

It's not a critique on Android 11 per se. Just a general aimless rant about the direction we're going with our technological lives.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I was wondering if I was going crazy. Even the very first screen was kinda giving me a headache. It was supposed to be exhibiting elegance and simplicity.

But I know enough from a decade of using Android to see all kinds of segments of the interface that have their own special context behaviors and features, with new menu layers and questions and assumptions that I will need to train myself to figure out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you're doing."

Does it get more oxymoronic than this?

<comment><USER14> It's an (awkward) user friendly spin on what's ultimately a security update.

Previously, if an app like FB wanted a bubble, they'd draw a screen overlay via `WindowManager`. That's the same API often misused to draw invisible layouts over your banking app. Providing a purpose built bubbles API lets Android close the door on the riskier API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without a major dessert name these releases just feel smaller and not as noticeable. My Pixel upgraded this morning to 11 and just another day.

</comment><comment><USER16> What's the easiest way to replicate the scroll animation they are doing? (the big with the big green circle expanding in height)

I've looked at their source, looks to be a <div> which upon scroll updates the --root-vars (whcih is then used for the transform/scale css ruules)

        --component-position: 0px;
        --shape-position: 714px;
        --image-height: 712px;
        --offset-image-wrapper: 1248px;
        --offset-middle-image-value: 219.667;
        --scroll-position: 530px;
        --opacity-value: 0.507736;

Unfortunately the actual implementation is all hidden in the common.min.js behind the data-android-component-config

{'small': {'easeShape': 0.005}, 'medium': {'easeShape': 0.002}}

I'm just curious if there's any libraries which handle all the breakpoints,animations, style updates without needing to reinvite. For something so face-value trivial, the Google implementation sure has a lot of edge cases I can see they handle in their "setAnimations_" code.

</comment><comment><USER17> The biggest announcement here seems to be the "Security updates from Google Play"

I don't know if that means Samsung doesn't get to decide when you get updates or if it means "we're delaying security updates from being pushed to AOSP so you better have Google Services installed if you want your vulnerabilities patched in a timely fashion"

<comment><USER18> If you click on the link it says *for android One devices

which was already the case since ... android 8?

so i'm very confused

<comment><USER19> I think what's new is that the updates are delivered via the Google Play store rather than as a system update, meaning they don't require rebooting the phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know what efforts Android developers specifically take to address Android's performance on the multitude of low-end Android devices?

I think (?) most people experience Android on low-end / underpowered devices and I wonder whether with these upgrades those devices are left behind.

<comment><USER21> It's more that buying a high-end Android phone is kind of pointless. As a dev you want to target the largest possible customer base. In practice this means developing with a low-end phone and an older OS version in mind. You _could_ have your app adapt to higher-end phones or newer OS versions with things like optional features, but in reality the market share of those devices is too low to be worth the investment.

In the end, users with high-end Android phones will mainly be running apps that are not designed to take full advantage of the capabilities of the device.

<comment><USER22> Mmmm I'm not sure if that is always the case. Anecdote: I live in Australia (where probably the share of higher end devices is higher than other countries) and I've seen a trend where some Android apps that are made for the Australian market, are only available to higher end devices and listed as incompatible with everything else. In some extreme cases, they are also restricted to one single brand i.e. only latest generation, high-end Samsung models would be supported. I haven't used Android for more than a year so I'm really struggling to remember what apps did that, if I remember I will reply to this comment later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575)

</comment><comment><USER24> Upgraded my Pixel 2 today. Amazingly, battery life seems much better.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you can't record calls with that OS using 3rd party app then it is a deal breaker. That's why I am stuck with early 9 and won't upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Built-in screen recording. Finally." \-- lol.

Also important: Record with sound from your mic, your device or both.

</comment><comment><USER27> From a plethora of choice to a duopoly, spyware vs overpriced fragile hardware. Lame

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a pretty weak update.

Fiddling with quite minor things, while breaking the ability to backup your device even more. Backup is a major black eye in the Android ecosystem for regular users.

<comment><USER29> Android takes care of your contacts, passwords, wifi settings, browser settings, photos, etc. It requires a Google account but it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account.

What's missing is better media management for third party apps like WhatsApp and Telegram so important photos and videos are backed up while unimportant ones are ignored and even discarded regularly. Every single family member's phone I've had to deal with has had this issue ("why is my phone out of storage when I barely have any apps installed?!" Meanwhile, WhatsApp is storing 20GB of funny videos).

<comment><USER30> > Android takes care of your contacts

Google contacts.

, passwords,

Google app passwords.

> wifi settings,

Because you can't not use Google's app for it.

> browser settings,

Google Chrome settings.

> photos,

Google photos.

> etc.

(As long as it's in a Google app.)

> it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging > into your Google account.

After ten years or so of using Android I finally bit the bullet and enabled Google backups to transfer stuff to my new phone a few months back, and I was astonished at how _fucking nothing_ gets backed up that isn't already in a Google cloud synced app. What's the point? Every single other app I had to manually figure out how to transfer and restore, because all Google doing is to "helpfully" prevent me from backing up my data for "security" reasons.

<comment><USER31> In my experience a lot of apps back up their data to Google when you enable the Google backup setting. When I transferred to my new phone I had to reconfigure some security apps, but a lot of settings and data was automatically transferred from my old phone through the backup mechanism.

What's missing is alternate backup destinations. I'd like to see the option to backup applications to any cloud provider rather than specifically Google.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Valentines Day in BASH - <AUTHOR> http://valentines.digitalocean.com/

<comment><USER2> Can we please not tell people to pipe things directly from curl to bash?

<comment><USER3> Exactly. There's no way in hell anyone should ever do that, even (thanks to DNS hijacking etc.) if they thought the file was something they wrote themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't we have a bit too much of a history with clicking/doing things on the internet with "love" in their names? Happy Friday by DigitalOcean, where trusting random people on the internets is company policy.

<comment><USER5> Pipe it to more. That's just crap at the end after a lot of white space. What's sad about this is that it _doesnt_ use curses and just reprints the entire terminal.

curl [http://artscene.textfiles.com/vt100/valentin.vt](http://artscene.textfiles.com/vt100/valentin.vt)

And related.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> no love for my mac :-(

[Fri Feb 14 14:35:37] -bash:~$ curl -s valentines.digitalocean.com | bash

bash: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

bash: line 1: `<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "[http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">'](http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">')

</comment><comment><USER5> Why could't this just be a text file with curses escapes available via netcat? At least then it's limited only to known terminal exploits, rather than running whatever the hell it wants as you.</comment>


Anatomy of a Ruby Gem - <AUTHOR> http://thinkinginrails.com/2010/05/anatomy-of-a-ruby-gem/

<comment><USER2> The official documentation on the web <http://docs.rubygems.org/read/book/2> should really be updated.</comment>


Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS - <AUTHOR> http://ostatic.com/176552-blog/linux-supports-more-devices-than-any-other-os <comment><USER2> Maybe it should be "Linux supports more deprecate devices than any other os". They should clean up the kernel at some point. I'll probably won't be using that ISA SCSI card that I can't find anymore. That and a motherboard to use it on.

<comment><USER3> Yeah it's weird, 'cos there are devices that people _do_ care about, like the power management and wireless networking in their laptops, that Linux is badly trailing, well, pretty much everyone else.</comment></comment>


A Priesthood of Programmers - <AUTHOR> https://jacobitemag.com/2017/12/05/a-priesthood-of-programmers/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a long article, and I think it's stronger towards the start than the end (i.e. stronger in the descriptive narrative than any prescriptions), but it sets forth a useful frame through which to view tech change as an agent of social change.</comment>


What did Schrodinger's Cat experiment prove? (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/07/30/what-did-schrodingers-cat-experiment-prove/ <comment><USER2> Nonsense. Under the Copenhagen interpretation (which I do not personally subscribe to, but it is a legitimate interpretation and it has its defenders), when one particle interacts with another particle that's in a superposition, the result is that both particles are in an entangled superposition. Cat, Geiger counter and gunpowder can thus all be in an entangled superposition; one can argue that this is absurd, but Einstein also thought that the EPR experiment showed that quantum mechanics was absurd, and actually that result has been experimentally verified.

<comment><USER3> I prefer to replace Schrodinger's cat with Schrodinger's brother. Now you claim to have a human observer in a superposition of dead and alive states. He will not suddenly experience collapse when let out of the box to greet Schrodinger. The entire notion of "wave function collapse" is a fictional construct that can not be observed because it doesnt happen.

<comment><USER4> Schrödinger's brother is Wigner's friend

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I never thought of it as something to, uh, _prove_ but more like yet another way to point out the limits of our understanding when it comes to our ability to measure something.

<comment><USER6> This exactly. The simplest explanation for quantum behavior is just that we're unable to measure it. There are a lot of weird and magical explanations that people have come up with in order to write formulas that work.

<comment><USER7> I believe experiments were conducted in a way measurement capacity is irrelevant. Either it's an effect of things being rendered (as in a real "simulation",much like pixels in a game depened on the "camera" to render) or there is an undiscovered quantum property that is confined to dimensions known or unknown that have yet to be discovered.

In QM you have the observer, in relativity you have the reference frame, I think physics is exploring fundamental properies of the reality we experience,that it is a subset of something else.

<comment><USER6> People talk about a quantum particles as being in many places at once. When you ask what that means, the explanation is that they aren't in one place, their position is represented as a probability curve of the places that they might be right now, and then when an observer observes the particle, that curve flattens down to where the particle is.

That seems like a very anthropocentric view of the universe. Why would it matter whether a particle is "being observed", UNLESS the act of observation has a side-effect. If "observation" is purely passive then it can't affect anything, by definition.

A MUCH simpler explanation is that the way that we observe things (by looking at them) is by bouncing photos off of them. Quantum particles are small enough that bouncing a photon off of it can change its course.

Here's an analogy : you're blind, but you're super good at throwing and catching basketballs. The way that you observe the world is by throwing a basketball and then timing how long it takes to come back to you and catch it, and by observing if it comes back at an angle or with some spin on it. Imagine you come across a pigeon. You throw the basketball at the pigeon. You observe strange behavior of the pigeon when you "observe" it vs when you don't. You formulate the pigeon uncertainty principle. You describe pigeons as spooky. You just accept that pigeons follow different physics than school buses.

<comment><USER7> I believe the experiments were conductes in vaccum without light or photons. The double silt experiment I believe. From what I gather,they send particles in a controlled environment and see where they land AFTER it went through the silts, so interactions after the silt shouldn't affect which silt it goes through. That's why I said it could be some unknown interaction between the observer and the particles. Or unknown propery of a known interaction like gravitation.

To me, it sort of sounds like how time dilation works in relativity except for a different dimension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think of it as driven by thermodynamics - the state is "collapsed" when it's too informationally entangled with the rest of the universe. It's not really "collapse", just our good friend positive entropy.

<comment><USER9> This is indeed the case, this process is called decoherence. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So does that mean the idea of a "multiverse" is in the same box?

Edit: I'll rephrase (I'm serious) - isn't the idea of the multiverse based on the schrodinger's cat in a box idea, and the need for an observer? Or is the whole multiverse idea just sci fi? Or is there another physical basis for the idea of a multiverse?

<comment><USER11> The paralell universe thingy or the "multiple worlds" interpretation (which is what i assume you mean) is one of the competing philosophical explanations for what is going on during quantum mechanics. Like most topics in metaphysics, there is no evidence either way, and there are competiting interpretations that are just as good (but don't capture the imagination in the same way). Its based off the cat experiment in that its trying to explain what is happening there metaphysically, but the parallel universe interpretation doesn't make any testable predictions beyond those made by quantum mechanics, so neither the experiment nor any other experiment, proves it.

Any sort of visiting paralell universes stuff is pure sf.

<comment><USER10> yes, thanks, thats what I meant. While I'm here, something I've always wondered about the multiple worlds interpretation is where does the energy come from for all these parallel universes? Like if each possible event causes a split then haven't we just doubled the energy we started with? since we've created a whole new universe.

<comment><USER12> Yes, and there is billon of quantum events happening right now in each cubic inches of air around you. So billions of universe literally from thin air. Multiverse is fun but absurd.

<comment><USER9> You seem to argue from an economic point of view, as if it was too "expensive" or "wasteful" to have all those universes. But MWI doesn't add any postulates to QM, in fact it is the simplest of the interpretations and a direct translation of what the math of QM says. All those universes are as "expensive" as the quantum mechanical state superposition they represent, and the superposition is a central tenet of QM and thoroughly tested. Your conclusion could be rephrased as "quantum superposition is fun but absurd".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is something and there is nothing. We think we are something, but in someone else's view we are nothing.

You are the cat inside the box. You exist as a person, live in a planet and the entire setup could and couldn't be real. The experiment prooves that something is uncertain and all these are nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER14> > as soon as the radioactive atom interacts with the Geiger counter

Doesn't the paradox arise precisely because the time at which the atom will interact is probabilistic?

</comment><comment><USER15> Pretty sure no one's ever actually done this experiment, have you ever tried to put a cat in a box?

<comment><USER16> They love boxes. Or taped rectangles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It proved that it was and wasn't an experiment at the same time, and that the experiment's setup was and wasn't detailed enough and you could only know it when you read the teaching material.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have been mislead about Schroedinger's cat, but now I get the absurdity. However, I also feel there might be a conceptual mistake in the experiment setup: there -is- a conscious observer present inside of the sealed box: the cat. Thus there is no super-position and therefore the cat will observe itself when it dies (or stays alive), matching later experiments' results. Science: it works! But Schrodinger's attempt at absurd comedy seems to have failed.

<comment><USER11> > there -is- a conscious observer present inside of the sealed box: the cat. > Thus there is no super-position and therefore the cat will observe itself

I think you are misinterpreting what "observe" means in this context. Conciousness has nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER19> The article mentions "conscious observer" six times. Surely it must mean something involving consciousness?

<comment><USER20> This usage is misleading and surprisingly common because it helps to frame the problem well. To be clear, an "observer" in the quantum context is merely anything which is measuring the outcome of an event. It need not be conscious but it can be.

Having said that, I think you're actually correct to point this out! The cat will obviously have a look around inside the box and likely cause wavefunction collapse. I believe the cat is meant to be fundamentally unable to effect things though.

After all, it's mostly an interesting problem because it posits that anything that could be "alive" inside the box would be in a superposition of alive and dead which is something that's never been observed and probably can't happen due to the unstable nature of wavefunction collapse in the real world.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Virtualbox 3.2.0 Beta 1 released, experimental OS X Guests - <AUTHOR> http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30287

<comment><USER2> You forgot to mention the other HUGE addition that I know I've been waiting on for years... Multiple monitor support!

I use VirtualBox as my dev environment every day and I know I'll be more productive when I can use both my monitors for development again. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, it's kind of a deal-breaker that each Mac OS X guest burns 100% CPU all the time. This is mentioned in the new user guide as something which will be fixed in a future release.

</comment><comment><USER4> _"Memory ballooning to dynamically in- or decrease the amount of RAM used by a VM (64-bit hosts only) (see the manual for more information)"_

Awesome. I'm definitely not a VM expert, but I think that means I can fire up my VM, and if not much is running in it, it won't consume as much memory on the host. Is that correct?

<comment><USER5> I think it means you can increase the RAM of a VM without shutting it down. With Xen, the VM needs to be rebuilt (a couple of minutes off)

<comment><USER6> Memory ballooning is basically a mechanism for hypervisor to steal pages from the guest and yes, so it allows for over-commitment. Memory balloon driver is present inside the guest and hypervisor communicates how many pages it needs back to the driver. The driver allocates pages and sends it back to the hypervisor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ever since I bought my rarely-used Mac Mini, I've wished I could just drop OS X on my super-beefy Linux+Windows development machine. I hate having to have two keyboards, a monitor with two inputs, two mice or a switch, just to use OS X once in a while. And there's no way I'm giving up my model M for development.

<comment><USER8> You can use synergy to share keyboard / mouse between Linux, Windows and OSX. I use it between an Ubuntu desktop and a MacBook Pro. <http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My download is timing out at 419 KB, anyone else having problems?

<comment><USER10> Try using wget or curl. Chrome hung for me, but wget downloaded the 70MB file in about 30 seconds.

<comment><USER9> Tried wget, no luck. No worries, I'll try later, should really get back to work :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is Guest OS X, on VMs legal? I thought that was the against Apples terms of service.

I never really found out what happened to the whole PsyStar thing.

<comment><USER12> You're legally only allowed to run OS X _Server_ virtualized on Apple hardware. VMware and Parallels have both implemented checks in their products to help Apple enforce this (although I believe they're somewhat trivial to work around).

<comment><USER10> AFAICT VirtualBox does nothing to enforce it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can only hope the OS X support will work in Windows 7 x64.

My desktop is a monster of a machine, my 2,1 revision MacBook Pro, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER14> Who tried it? How well did it work?

<comment><USER15> So far, so good, but it's still got 30 minutes to go..

<http://skitch.com/petercooper/dbe31/virtualbox-os-x-2>

<comment><USER15> So, it finished OK:

<http://skitch.com/petercooper/dbjk1/osxundervbox>

No hacks either! :-) Had some issues with a dirty disc on the way.. and it totally refused to use an ISO.

<comment><USER14> Nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple lawsuit in 3. 2. 1...

<comment><USER17> On what grounds?</comment></comment>


Local markets benefit from fragmentation - <AUTHOR> http://ownlocal.com/newspaper-support-group/local-fragmentation/

<comment><USER2> Any time someone advocates barriers/moats/etc in a market, I immediate ask myself, does the redistribution of profits this causes outweigh the efficiencies gained?

The small town vendor story is instructive:

Walmart destroys downtowns, but it also saves the (oftentimes poor) locals hundreds or thousands of dollars a year. In some communities, this has been a huge boon to standards of living, even though it closed the local hardware shop. In other towns, it has turned them into a wasteland of low wage jobs in strip-malls and broken a big chunk of the local economy.

The same question can be put to the web markets: Going with one or two big providers will almost certainly add to efficiency gains, and thus lower prices. Is trading away the competition worth it?

Edit: Sometimes equilibria is two or three providers, or one dominant and a few smaller (think search). In my mind the best case market is probably US coffee, where you have one dominating chain (Starbucks) that opens up the market for lots of smaller one-offs.

<comment><USER3> I think that the Walmart issue creates benefit more through drawing money out of cities and into developing countries, and detriment through carrying money out of small towns. The decreased price of goods is often counteracted by lower incomes to local stores, and ends up doing more harm than good. This is basically a type of arbitrage and is often very helpful to the world economy, but I'm not sure the analogy carries over on the internet. Large companies do not help new developing communities join the internet marketplace like Walmart does for developing countries. So while I often do opt for a natural self regulating approach, large dominant companies would not be like Walmart in the future of internet culture. And the problem may correct itself in time, as big companies may not find their natural niche like Walmart did, and just become latent, new company gobblers. If this were the case, we may find that the internet doesn't have any use for dominant companies, and big companies will be consistently replaced one after another for years to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fragmentation isn't really the main issue. Someone will come along and snatch a lot of market share when it's meant to happen. So far, no one site offers a local experience that meets anyone's expectation of how broad a local community's interests or behaviors should be.

Facebook tends to be a closed circle. Patch has been plagued by both abusive, anonymous commenters and astroturf. Yelp seems focused on reviews and not on giving people their own voice and creativity. Groupon shows hardly any community interaction.

We still don't see many well-known sites that come close to offering the authentic experience of living in a mostly caring and helpful town with myriad subject matter experts. Some of these sites are more like the lunatics running the asylum. It's the same problem the editorial page has had for ages-- it acts like flypaper! The business model that can afford to carefully curate so much hyperlocal content really does not exist yet, so we find ourselves settling for something less until then.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this writer has an excellent point about the importance of locality on the internet, and I think that the idea of online cultures and communities needs to be explored more as method of creating organization within the internet. Really, aside from habit, mutual interest is the only bond holding most internet communities together, and I think that is a concept which can be explored and built upon.</comment>


Setup a Peer-to-Peer Team colloborative space in seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonido.com/app_workspace_home.html

<comment><USER2> looks like microsoft groove? what happened to groove anyway?</comment>


10 Cool Things You Can Do with CodePen and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.sitepoint.com/cool-things-codepen-javascript/ <comment><USER2> So Cool!</comment>


Git Magic [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/book.pdf

<comment><USER2> Link to HTML version of book: [http://www-cs- students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/book.htm...](http://www-cs- students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/book.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally a nice, basic reference (which doesn't also flame about other VCSs). Very easy to read in general. Bookmarked in case I need to work with any git- based projects - I'm sure it will come handy one day. (definitely easier than chasing after the right command in `man`)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's been posted many, many times: <http://searchyc.com/git+magic>

Most recent a few days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064027>

<comment><USER5> Nice, I'd been using google "Site:Ycombinator -----" to find articles of interest. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Multi-page HTML link was posted 3 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064027></comment>