Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14895.epdf?shared_access_token=vAnect9_EFgAozs_DMA2W9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N6yB-nEyCdRoL51ykMO5E9cRyN6nl_3LTXmnXsQewWfGCBtXLQ_l4j4acze-frxy5-RlJHTHNqK7Tdzc-zl7ObbImdsUjprxF0STwa91ZVY_icLbtlUawp9KNYAy5Jaik%3D

<comment><USER2> Abstract: Genetic studies have consistently indicated a single common origin of Native American groups from Central and South America. However, some morphological studies have suggested a more complex picture, whereby the northeast Asian affinities of present-day Native Americans contrast with a distinctive morphology seen in some of the earliest American skeletons, which share traits with present-day Australasians (indigenous groups in Australia, Melanesia, and island Southeast Asia). Here we analyse genome-wide data to show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans. This signature is not present to the same extent, or at all, in present-day Northern and Central Americans or in a 12,600-year-old Clovis-associated genome, suggesting a more diverse set of founding populations of the Americas than previously accepted.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is only partial agreement on these results. For a bit more, see: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6246/354.summary?sid=c...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6246/354.summary?sid=c8a040a2-e527-4b4e-bfcb-9e486acf6338)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a copy of the paper not locked behind a paywall?

<comment><USER5> Try: [http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Publications...](http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Publications_files/2015_Nature_Skoglund_PopulationY_concatenated.pdf)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: European Linode / DigitalOcean alternatives - <AUTHOR> Title says it all. I'm looking for European (non-US servers and non-US corporation) alternatives for VPS servers. Can anyone recommend some? Anyone with personal experiences, or any companies out there offering this? <comment><USER2> Bytemark ([http://www.bytemark.co.uk/](http://www.bytemark.co.uk/)) offer "legacy" VPS and dedicated servers (been a customer for 10 years now) and they also have a new Cloud offering called BigV ([http://bigv.io](http://bigv.io)) which I've started using for stuff - great company, great service, they've recently donated a 16-blade, 57Tb server to the Debian project as well (including hosting) - [http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/04/04/a-major- infrastructure...](http://blog.bytemark.co.uk/2013/04/04/a-major- infrastructure-donation-to-the-debian-project)

They really are the mutts-nuts!

<comment><USER3> Tim from Bytemark here - if you've got any questions or anything - feel free to ask them here - or email 'support at bigv.io' and put it to my attention.

With regards to privacy from warrants etc, we're currently considering a warrant canary - [https://twitter.com/matthewbloch/status/348354514081951744](https://twitter.com/matthewbloch/status/348354514081951744)

<comment><USER4> Wow, I've been an on and off customer for six years - your cloud offering looks immense.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Well, do give us a shout if there's ever anything we can help with (or even more crucially, anything we can improve on, or start doing that we're not doing!)

Have a great day!

-Tim

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.hetzner.de/](http://www.hetzner.de/) quite solid and have great prices too.

<comment><USER6> strato.de are very good too, and have very similar offerings to hetzner: I've been using them myself for years. However, they require payment by German domestic bank transfer, and the contracts are a little harder to terminate. I'd try hetzner the next time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in Germany. Bank transfer isn't a problem. I'll check them out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://edis.at](http://edis.at) has some great european options, and they are based in Austria it seems. I have been using them before, only for a little while but they do have some cheap options. I have not done any benchmark so I cannot say anything about the performance. Worth looking at though!

<comment><USER8> We've been using their VPSes for a couple of months and are happy with them so far, even if the management interface is a bit clunky. They also have a good selection of data centers if location/latency is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been with IOVPS after RapidSwitch sold their VPS business to them. I have one trivially underused server, so I can't speak for performance.

They can't handle recurring billing automatically (you have to log in every month and pay - which leads to late charges if you forget) and they are _much_ more expensive than Digital Ocean.

I've tried BrightBox too. Someone else has already mentioned them, and I left a big reply there - basically, very good if you need to jump from 1 to 15 servers automatically to host your massive app, but very expensive in any other case.

I'll be switching to Digital Ocean with their Amsterdam data centre when droplet deployment is back up - it's just so much cheaper than anything else I've seen, and perfectly matched to my requirements (if anything, generous - $5/mo compared to £18, or £26 with BrightBox, for a tiny 512MB RAM, 20GB HDD Linux box.)

<comment><AUTHOR> A pity that Digital Ocean is a US corp. It means that they can be subpoenaed. Their pricing is awesome. Corporate location is bad.

<comment><USER9> for my purposes, this isn't a priority. If I do get around to setting up my own mailserver, _then_ I'll care (although I'll probably just use an old box sat in my living room, or a raspberry pi - I don't get that much mail.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OVH - [https://www.ovh.co.uk/vps/](https://www.ovh.co.uk/vps/)

£5.99/mo - 1 core - 512Mo - 25Go - 100Mbps/1To

<comment><USER11> I switched to OVH last month. They are not as good as Linode: my VPS was rebooted recently, and I've had to make a couple of changes to the default configuration to deal with some weirdnesses (screen and tmux would exit immediately, for example). However, so far, it has been good enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use Gandi[1], they have both IaaS and PaaS offers. They are based in France with a datacenter near Paris. They have a very good support team and I'm happy with the service so far.

[1]: [https://www.gandi.net](https://www.gandi.net)

<comment><USER13> Gandi runs on OVH.

There are been rumors that they might became an settle over to the states, but to the current day the are located in France (and I doubt this will change).

I can really recommend them, if you are looking for some "cloudy" servers (dynamic resources, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can suggest Hetzner. Their plans are the best in terms of performance/price ratio.

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://www.exoscale.ch](http://www.exoscale.ch) has a very similar approach to digital ocean: very quick provisionning, extensive API and automation tool support

<comment><USER15> I should mention that exoscale is based in Switzerland and thus PRISM/ACTA free and is an IAAS provider (as opposed to a VPS provider).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> East Asian alternatives would be helpful to some of us, too, if any commenters want to mention those. Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, or anyplace else that has reliable connections would be excellent.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://cloudroyale.se/](https://cloudroyale.se/) recently launched, I haven't used them but their offering seems pretty good and they are part of FS Data which is well established hosting provider in Sweden.

That said, Swedish hosting is pretty expensive compared to others.

I currently use Leaseweb for my own servers, but other alternatives are OVH, Hetzner among others.

</comment><comment><USER18> We switched from Linode to [http://www.cloudvps.com](http://www.cloudvps.com) last year because they are in my home town here in The Netherlands and the prices are almost half of Linode's. We have some high traffic websites running with them and have had no problems so far.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would recommend [http://uberspace.de/](http://uberspace.de/) with their (non root) VPS/shared hosts. Shell-access, Ruby, Python, Perl, node, etc, etc all major DB_Systems, 10gig space, traffic, I believe unlimited. Nerds themselves, that do not wanna have a lot of your data to begin with.

And you pay, what the service is worth to you (minimum 1 € per month).

I switched there some time ago and am totally happy since. Great guys, great service, great philosophy behind the product (and, as the normally do server hosting for smaller companies, financially secured by themselves).

EDIT: By the way: you can try them for one month, just using a untaken uberspace-name without anything else (not even an email-address necessary):

[https://uberspace.de/register](https://uberspace.de/register)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is crazy / cool. You pay them what you feel like. Interesting biz model.

<comment><USER20> This usually means, the pricing won't last very long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oktawave ([http://www.oktawave.com/](http://www.oktawave.com/)) - based in Poland, very fast hardware. e24cloud ([http://www.e24cloud.com/](http://www.e24cloud.com/)) - from Poland too, second availability zone soon.

</comment><comment><USER22> Reposting from some hellbanned chap:

\-----

GMOCloud (Japanese company) Japan location based KVM [http://vps.gmocloud.com/](http://vps.gmocloud.com/) and CrownCloud (Australian company) Frankfurt location based KVM/OpenVZ

\-----

Non-EU is probably even better if privacy is your concern.

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.brightbox.co.uk](http://www.brightbox.co.uk)

I asked them about their policies regarding plans to expand to the US or hold any US interests, and also specifically asked about a mention in their policy documents on defamatory content (as I deal with user generated content) and received this good response:

        we're based in the UK, both co-founders are UK residents and we have no plans to
        become a US company. All our datacentres are in the UK, and expansion plans are
        for the EU only.

        We believe strongly in data protection and obey all the relevant laws. I agree
        that ISPs really *should* be considered "mere conduits" but unfortunately there
        is legal precedent that means we can be held responsible for defamatory content
        if we're notified and do nothing about it.

        Usually, solicitors for the allegedly defamed contacts both us and our customer.
        If our customer is unresponsive or uncooperative and the alleged defamation
        continues, then we get held responsible.

        So our AUP considers defamation abuse to enable us to take action to protect
        ourselves if we have to. The only other option available to us would be to have
        customers indemnify us against any legal action (most likely in the form of
        a large deposit :).

        But we're not interested in suspending accounts or servers any time a
        solicitor writes to us. If you deal with the reports in a timely fashion (usually
        within 48 hours) then you shouldn't expect any problems.

        And for what it's worth, we've never actually had to suspend anyone for this
        (though we've come close enough to feel the need to put it in our AUP).

I also plan to utilise Jump Networks: [http://www.jump.net.uk/](http://www.jump.net.uk/) which is about as close to [http://prgmr.com/san-jose-co-location.html](http://prgmr.com/san-jose-co- location.html) as you're going to find in London. Remember... if you're going CoLo it's all about power consumption.

Finally, other sites I checked out included [http://www.cloudsigma.com/](http://www.cloudsigma.com/) and [http://www.prometeus.net/sito/](http://www.prometeus.net/sito/)

</comment><comment><USER24> If you are concerned about privacy, I would also be wary about having servers on some EU countries and check on their relationship with USA in data sharing.

</comment><comment><USER25> ¿ Do you know that Linode has London based servers ?

I rent some of their London servers happily

( aside from cancelling my credit card the other day due to a breach, no-one's perfect )

Edit: I see you're concerned about data-privacy... so latency is not your issue

\--

In that case I also use:

* Hetzner.de

and in the past I have used

* FlexiScale ( based uin Reading, UK )

This is more akin to Amazon EC2

[http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/pricing/](http://www.flexiscale.com/products/flexiscale/pricing/)

<comment><USER2> DigitalOcean also have servers in Amsterdam, but they don't fit the OP requirement as they're run by a US-owned corp

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://www.transip.nl/vps/](https://www.transip.nl/vps/) (starts from 10 euro, first month 5)

And my Raspberry Pi is (for free) in a rack with these guys: [https://www.pcextreme.nl/aurora/](https://www.pcextreme.nl/aurora/) (starts from 5 euro)

</comment><comment><USER27> FlareVM is pretty good: [http://www.flarevm.com/](http://www.flarevm.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> [http://www.hosteurope.de/Server/Virtual- Server/](http://www.hosteurope.de/Server/Virtual-Server/)

Unfortunately their website seems to be only available in German. I run several services on their VPS and root servers and have not experienced a major problem yet.

<comment><USER20> Plus, they're owned by the UK group, so...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Assuming you're doing this for privacy reasons, some information about the various jurisdictions involved would be really interesting too if people know the answers. My understanding is that Sweden and the UK are out due to traffic monitoring, that may also apply to other EU states.

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://prq.se/?intl=1](http://prq.se/?intl=1) is a hosting and colocation company in Sweden with strong free-speech values. They're also against the data retention policies that are being implemented in other EU countries.

<comment><USER31> You should be aware of this when considering Sweden for hosting: [http://wikileaks.org/wiki/New_Swedish_law_draft_for_centrali...](http://wikileaks.org/wiki/New_Swedish_law_draft_for_centralized_internet_and_telephony_interception,_Dec_2009)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've setup a personal server on moln.is recently (2 months) - 18 euro / month for 1GB RAM, 1 core, 50GB disk space, 1GB traffic with 1 GB NIC.

They seem to value privacy. I am not too happy with the SLA but then I had no issues so far - satisfied with the service so far.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can recommend [https://www.jiffybox.de/](https://www.jiffybox.de/) — Germany-based, part of Domainfactory, a German company.

The VPS prices are rather good, and I'm happy with the performance and reliability so far.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm using VPS.net for a few years now, I think they are great and they have a good and quick support team. They're a British company as far as I know but they have data centers everywhere, and you can choose where to host your VPS.

</comment><comment><USER35> I used to work with a very little company built with passion. [http://www.harmony-hosting.com/](http://www.harmony-hosting.com/) Their support is amazing, and will help you in French or English.

</comment><comment><USER36> GMOCloud (Japanese company) Japan location based KVM [http://vps.gmocloud.com/](http://vps.gmocloud.com/) and CrownCloud (Australian company) Frankfurt location based KVM/OpenVZ

</comment><comment><USER37> Inexpensive VPS on Hetzner infrastructure [https://enablevps.com/](https://enablevps.com/)

8€ / 1G RAM machine & access to all host cores.

KSplice on the host so no need to reboot.

Minimal but decent features.

</comment><comment><USER38> Serverlove ([http://www.serverlove.com/](http://www.serverlove.com/)) are based in the UK, and offer a comprehensive API, plus CLI tool.

</comment><comment><USER39> [http://brightbox.com/](http://brightbox.com/) is quite good. Based in England as par as I know..

<comment><USER9> I have found the experience of using brightbox quite good, but it is much more expensive than other services.

The smallest, cheapest, single VPS system that I had running came out at about £26 per month. And that's with almost no bandwidth - which is pay as you go (typically I used 2p per month). They split this cost up, so you get billed separately for an IP address (which you can share between boxes via a load balancer), bandwidth, actual number of box-hours, etc, and then tack VAT on at the end.

It's a great service, I just ended up paying much more than I expected because of the way they structure their billing/price plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> DediServe are good. But still dont match those two in terms of pricing.

</comment><comment><USER41> LeaseWeb is quite good, except for their recent MegaUpload fiasco.

</comment><comment><USER20> I suggest Switzerland. It's not part of the EU (therefor not subject to EU laws), it's politically neutral (it never goes to war), it's one of the best examples of healthy democratic systems and it values privacy very much.

<comment><USER42> Do you have a proposed provider? because i find it a bit hard to find one that doesn't host their servers in the Hetzner Datacenter in Germany. EDIT: word

<comment><USER2> I used to work for a business ISP (PSINet) who had a DC near the foot of Mt Geneva in Switzerland - not sure what happened to it after things wound down?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is on the front edge of sci-fi? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but the way I'd interpret this, I'd say that Greg Egan and Charles Stross have to be in the conversation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sure - I started re-read Neuromancer recently and just felt a sense of wonder at knowing it was written in 1984. It was so conceptually solid for the time. So far on the edge.

Who's doing that now?

</comment><comment><USER3> Cixin Liu, with his excellent 'Remembrance of Earth's Past' trilogy. Beautiful, literary, conceptually profound sci-fi.

</comment><comment><USER4> Could you clarify what you mean by this question?</comment>


Intentional Fire-Spreading by Firehawk Raptors in Northern Australia - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/birds-intentionally-set-prey-ablaze-rewriting-history-fire-use-firehawk-raptors <comment><USER2> This has posted, and discussed, to HN in the past.

From the article: "According to the team, firehawk raptors congregate in hundreds along burning fire fronts, where they will fly into active fires to pick up smouldering sticks, transporting them up to a kilometre (0.6 miles) away to regions the flames have not yet scorched."

... where "according to the team" means "we have not actually filmed or photographed this behaviour, once, despite years of trying".

I wish them the best of luck; it would be fascinating to learn of animals other than humans using fire as a tool.

But for now, it's still firmly in the "old bush legend" category.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16077638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16077638)</comment>


Show HN: Stereoten - A social music player for iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://stereoten.com

<comment><USER2> Cool Man! Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER3> not groundbreaking at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> that's cool idea!</comment>


PhoneGap Developer App Preview for Firefox OS - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/09/phonegap-developer-app-preview-for-firefox-os/

<comment><USER2> Curious to see how this works out, with JS being the native way to write applications. Been excited about the Firefox platform because of this for a while (especially for POS/embedded/tablet applications), but I'm developing a cross-platform app for both iOS and Android in Ionic, and I'm much less interested in PhoneGap now that I've actually done something with it. (I'm a big proponent of Angular at work, it's not that part.)

I think I was able to get about 40% of the way there in about five hours in Cocoa, the only real stumbling block was dealing with ViewControllers and UITableViews. Unfortunately for non-native platforms, if PhoneGap is positioned as a good starter for low-barrier apps, it doesn't bode well if a developer can go in fresh and with about the same amount of effort build one platform in whole, and about 20% of another...

<comment><USER3> I spent some time (>18 months ago) testing PhoneGap for potential use with what would become [http://recent.io/](http://recent.io/), but PhoneGap was too slow on actual devices to be usable. Launching a "Hello, world" app took something like 30 seconds on an iPhone 3GS. Maybe hardware speed increases have helped to fix that problem.

I haven't tested Ionic, though the Creator utility looks promising. Do you have any experience in how well Ionic interfaces with native APIs, like Twitter/Facebook on iOS and sharing on Android? And how do Ionic-built HTML apps perform in terms of speed?

<comment><USER2> Creator does look great, but so does Interface Builder. IB has caused me to leave the computer in a state of shock from frustration, so I'll have to reserve judgement.

Performance is fairly good. I get around 5 seconds on a 4s, and about 8 on a Nexus S, though I haven't tested with recent code on the Android Phone. The only native API I've used has so far been push notifications. While there's a plugin for that, it works as a pretty thin bridge between native code, and a couple of dispatch functions that use stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString. I've had to fix things, so it means having to understand Cocoa code anyway.

There are also some visual issues with the code, in that the view will save its state if the user uses a route in a view to change the current view. Normally this would help, but if it frequently updates the view changes back and then it flickers.

Overall it's ok if you really love web tech, but I'm learning native iOS development in response to my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We used phonegap for a big app for the world cup and discovered that phonegap isnt ready for nothing serious, everything run slow, the plugins are a mess, sometimes compilations fail w/o warning, the documentation is bad an never acurrate, it was very frustrating, if you want some simple 1 page app. Its meh but for everihing else its just horrendous( sorry my bad grammar)</comment>


How Flightfox doubled their remarketing email conversions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getvero.com/how-flightfox-doubled-their-remarketing-email-conversions/

<comment><USER2> The email that did get me to start using Flightfox was another one sent to you a few days later after you had signed up, looked around, but didn't end-up launching any contest.

In that email Flightfox said they noticed that I didn't launch any contest and gave me a coupon that covered 50% of any contest just to try it out.

So that's how I started using their service.

On the other hand I also learned there are other things to take into consideration when launching a contest. The most important one, knowing you have to buy the ticket as soon as possible. My contest was a tricky one (involving a toddler, timing international connections in the US, etc) so after 3 days there was only one decent result, and it was gone by the time I wanted to purchase it :(

So I guess that was the reason why the longest duration of the contests is of just 3 days. Which reminds me, I still need to go back there and do it all again.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are experimenting with a number of different campaigns and are of course continually A/B testing the one I mention in the post but this is a nice snapshot for a certain point in time!

Hopefully we can cover more of their tests in the future as it's great stuff.

I'll make sure they see this comment too, in case they have any feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It doubled, or in this case, increased by 1.6%. That's nice, but how can you know that a 1.6% increase is a direct result of these tweaks, instead of just natural ups and downs in email response? Maybe 1.6% of recipients were having an unnaturally good day and decided to click that month? That's only 1 in 98 people after all. If it had been 10% or something like that then that's an obvious difference, but 1.6%?

<comment><USER4> Typically A/B tests are run until they reach a statistically significant result. The article doesn't include the sample size, but with a sample size as small as 500 users for each test an increase from 1.6% to 3.2% would be a change larger than 1 standard deviation, and thus can be assumed to be more than just random noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We currently do a lot of this stuff internally using our own system. But I must confess that we don't have great analytics on it...so it's tough to know if it's effective. Will check this out as an alternative.

Out of curiosity, how's this compare to using something like Intercom.io?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a common problem. Awesome to hear you have something setup though, that's a step ahead of most!

Tracking metrics properly would help you take it every further.

Intercom is (in my opinion) more closely related to a CRM. It's messaging features are quite powerful and give you the ability to do support and in-app messaging really easily.

In contrast, our focus is squarely on email right now. We make it easy to setup sophisticated campaigns, use custom HTML templates and do A/B testing - all the good stuff you'd expect when dealing with emails. On top of that we want to make it easier to send _better_ campaigns by building out tools that really help you drive your conversions higher. Reporting is a big part of that, as is sharing real-world examples!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Totally awesome ... using something like Vero for email marketing is really a no-brainer

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would be curious to know if placing that copy directly on the website in step 2 would have the same effect as the email. Has Flightfox tried that?

</comment><comment><USER8> +1 @davidtyleryork, we've been doing the same. Customizability is always a concern for us but we will definitely take a close look at this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Drop me a line if you have any questions, chris AT getvero.com (same goes for everyone here, of course).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Vero, where were you 3 months ago? I was searching for exactly this and ended up cobbling together a solution. Oi :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Would have loved to have helped!

You're not alone in cobbling together a solution, there are a ton of people in that bucket. We want to make Vero the tool that not only helps people save time building their own solutions but allows them to send better campaigns (i.e. better reporting and internal smarts).

The blog posts with examples are hopefully helpful even if you're not using our system!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great post Vero! Really like seeing the winning email and the original one.

Keep up the great work.

</comment><comment><USER11> What plugin is that for your blog on the left hand side with the share icons?

<comment><AUTHOR> Digg Digg (<http://bufferapp.com/diggdigg>) by the guys at Buffer.</comment></comment>


Front Cover of Bloomberg Businessweek - <AUTHOR> http://www.zinio.com/pages/BloombergBusinessweek/Aug-11Aug-24-2014/416312244/pg-1

<comment><USER2> I am disgusted by this cover. It's like Kevin Rose's feature in Businessweek in 2006 [http://images.businessweek.com/mz/06/33/0633covdc.gif](http://images.businessweek.com/mz/06/33/0633covdc.gif) but worse in so many more ways.

It's so easy for media to generalize a huge group of individuals working, engineering, and building successes and failures in Silicon Valley. This only exacerbates the problems leading to protest and general feelings of dislike towards all things tech here.

This is one issue of Bloomberg Businessweek that makes me sad I ever picked up or purchased one in the past. If there is a bright light at the end of this tunnel, please tell me.

<comment><USER2> realized this might be a bot posting. account created 6 days ago and about is...

ybrushinator about: Spokesperson for a group of (5) individuals looking for seat time at your table.</comment></comment>


When Ads Work - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantcast.com/blog/when-ads-work/ <comment><USER2> Author here, happy to answer any questions the HN community might have!</comment>


BTC correction happening? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/ <comment><USER2> Just normal 25% intraday volatility; nothing to see here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Coinbase is down. It probably isn't helping the situation.

Wow, as I'm typing this now the market is massively recovering. I just saw it go from 600 to 700 in probably 30 seconds. There are a lot of people doing algo trading with bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only surprising thing is how much faster BTC goes through different market phases than other financial instruments. A blow-off, reversal and sell-off like this would take at least days in equities or commodities while this merely took hours. It also appears as if the frequency and amplitude of BTC tops is increasing. This trend actually makes BTC less and less useful as a currency to do business in since you have to hedge your exposure by the hour.

<comment><USER5> It's still such a small market. A single whale can cause a price to fall or rise...a group of whales could "crash" the damned thing for a time. It's also a nerd market. There is algorithmic trading happening at a level that only can happen with firms that have access to the direct feed on the exchanges...BTC allows everyone with enough knowledge to do high frequency trading.

But, every day the size of fluctuations that are possible will become smaller. More people holding BTC, more people buying and selling BTC, leads to less ability of a few buyers or sellers to cause a major change.

Someone in another recent BTC thread joked (in a "ha ha, only serious" kind of way) that the current speculative nature of the market might get enough people buying into BTC as a lottery ticket kind of purchase to cause the tipping point for it being a viable currency to happen without anyone noticing. If 20 million people in the US held Bitcoins...that's a big market for vendors to want to tap into. It's worth a little risk to get those buyers, as well.

<comment><USER6> "Someone in another recent BTC thread joked (in a "ha ha, only serious" kind of way) that the current speculative nature of the market might get enough people buying into BTC as a lottery ticket kind of purchase to cause the tipping point for it being a viable currency to happen without anyone noticing"

How is that? It sounds like you will have lots of people with Bitcoin holdings. I do not see a currency, because I do not see where anyone is using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange.

<comment><USER5> "It sounds like you will have lots of people with Bitcoin holdings."

Which is all it takes to have lots of people who want to buy things with Bitcoins. Since there's almost zero barrier to doing so, once you have enough vendors accepting Bitcoin, there's little reason _not_ to buy things with Bitcoin.

What I'm getting at is: The influx of millions of new Bitcoin holders will lead to an influx of new vendors accepting Bitcoin. Sure, people are still clinging to bitcoins like gold...wanting to hoard it rather than use it. But, that desire will fade when the market settles down and becomes more predictable.

<comment><USER6> You are hand-waving away this step:

"...once you have enough vendors accepting Bitcoin..."

There is also some irony in this statement:

"people are still clinging to bitcoins like gold"

 _Lots of people have gold_ but you would be hard-pressed to find any shop that accepts payments in gold.

<comment><USER5> I'm not really intending to hand-wave it away. I just assumed it would come to pass, based on past evidence (there's more vendors every day, with the pace accelerating). I may be making an incorrect assumption. There are, in fact, a _lot_ of assumptions being made by those who are bullish on Bitcoin, and some or all of them may be wrong. In some cases, if the assumptions are wrong, it will mean the end of Bitcoin. In others, if the assumptions are wrong, it'll just mean Bitcoin is more limited as a currency than we might like.

But, it can't be anything other than a hypothesis until it is tested; neither you, or I, can know how this is gonna play out. Bitcoin isn't quite like anything else that has existed before, including gold or other currencies, so we're all guessing. I've laid out what I think will happen, and a bit about why I think it will happen.

One last point: Gold, precisely unlike Bitcoin, is not easily or cheaply transferable over the Internet. That's a big distinction and, I think, enough to make it clear we're dealing with a different thing entirely. I left it unstated before as I kinda felt it would be obvious to HN readers. But, any time anyone compares Bitcoin to gold or another traditional currency or store of value in a _general_ way (without being specific about how Bitcoin seems to be behaving like that other subject in one way or another), I question the validity of the analogy straight away. I genuinely believe Bitcoin is something new, and new human behaviors will develop around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think we have to wait a little longer to make that call. The "correction" seems to be correcting itself now:)

<comment><USER8> Completely - this is a very new commodity market upon which lots of people are speculating. I intend to speculate on it and so do (are) many people in the tech and now wider communities.

Worth remembering that at least bitcoin is backed by some value of work, what is USD backed by again? Debt :-D

<comment><USER6> 1\. Bitcoin is not backed by anything. The work that goes into creating Bitcoin via the mining process has no bearing whatsoever on the value or utility of Bitcoin.

2\. USD is backed by the law -- laws concerning debts, laws concerning taxes, laws concerning torts, etc. The law is what makes USD useful, which is why USD has value.

<comment><USER9> You are wrong about point number 1. The purpose of mining is to process and secure bitcoin transactions. The work that goes into mining is what provides the utility of bitcoin. The 25 btc mining reward is just an incentive.

<comment><USER6> The problem with your theory is that it permits anyone to start their own Bitcoin fork and magically people will use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, it is correcting back to what it was...this morning.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its pretty volatile today. Probably not that interesting for HN to see new posts on it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, but it went up to $900.

There are a lot of people trying to buy bit coin right now; it's a commodity and people are speculating on it. There is more demand than supply right now IMO.

</comment><comment><USER12> Can somebody with some knowledge about the chinese bank and regulatory system tell me if Bitcoin presents an attractive opportunity for chinese people to buy foreign currency like the Euro and Dollar easily?

<comment><USER13> Yes. If you have a large amount of Chinese Yuan (CNY), it's very difficult to legally convert that to foreign currency or purchase substantial foreign assets. Foreign exchange is strictly regulated.

Until the Chinese government clamps down on BTC China, as I expect they will, bitcoins offer an excellent, possibly even legal, method for Chinese to take their money out of China. It's so useful in fact, that Chinese are willing to pay a 30%+ premium for bitcoin on the Chinese exchange.

Note that this same problem also stands in the way of those who might arbitrage the difference in the exchange prices.

(I've lived and transacted in China)

<comment><USER14> Most of these purchasers are not really a net demand for Bitcoin, though, are they? I see them as mostly using Bitcoin as a short-term intermediary to gain USD or EUR while bypassing exchange controls. So they'll account for, say, 1,000 BTC bought, and 1,000 BTC sold.

<comment><USER13> Many of them may not have USD bank accounts overseas, or wish to have the funds associated with their name.

I suspect a large amount of the funds are ill-gotten gains from rampant corruption by government officials and cronies.

Also, many will probably decide to hold on to at least some bitcoin even if they do have means to convert to foreign currency. Since there is a massive amount of money trying to get out of China - hundreds of billions - it's certainly possible there is significant net demand. If each purchaser keeps 20% of their assets in bitcoin, and $10M is fleeing each day, that's $2M in net demand - enough to influence price significantly at current volumes.

The differential between the Chinese exchange and US exchange may partially be explained by Chinese purchasing in China - raising the price - then selling overseas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There seems to be some mistake. I clicked on a news headline, but I got a incomprehensible stream of digits and a graph with no horizontal scale.

</comment><comment><USER16> If I had a Bitcoin for every prediction that Bitcoins were going to have a correction, I would have more Bitcoins then what exists.</comment>


Any good Rails 2.0 tutorials/examples? - <AUTHOR>

Bought Agile Web Development W/ Rails and it's already deprecated (how rude of them to break backwards compatibility).  At any rate, anyone here have good resources for learning Rails 2.0. <comment><USER2> The "Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition" is in beta right now, it covers Rails 2.0.

Obie's book, "The Rails Away" also covers Rails 2.0.

Akita on Rails gives a good overview of Rails 2, and 2.1. He gives a very good overview of whats new and whats changed between versions.

Hope this helps. There is also a good documentation project going on, but I can't seem to find the link.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER3> "The Rails Way" or "The Rails Away"??? I think it should be "The Rails Way". Anyway, you can try to build up your Ruby skills first before starting on Rails.

<comment><USER2> My apologies... you are right. its "The Rails Way" by Obie Fernandez.

Thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


I Can Be the Bank: Individual Investors Buy Busted Mortgages - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-decade-after-the-housing-crisis-small-investors-try-to-bring-busted-mortgages-back-to-life-1542734455 <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/B3wHYJ](https://outline.com/B3wHYJ)

</comment><comment><USER3> My family has been in commercial property rental for a long time, but never residential.

Residential is seen as an easier path to being a landlord because the capital requirements are lower, but I caution everyone considering buying a rental property to ask a very simple question: "Are you willing to kick someone out of their home?" Would you be prepared to evict a human being not that different from yourself, who may have lost their job, have kids, medical problems, etc?

In addition most jurisdictions stack the laws against residential landlords (I'm in Canada) for both legitimate and populist reasons. It's not quite as blatant with commercial.

Buying delinquent mortgages that are so underwater that lenders will sell them to collection requires a whole new level of commitment. You will need to become one of those people who call at dinner every single day, call employers, stalk online, harrass, even threaten - you're literally trying to squeeze money out of the people who have the least to spare. I'm not going to judge the collectors, debtors or the business model, but it's definitely not for me.

<comment><USER4> The one exception to this rule is a pretty astounding scam: buying your own delinquent debt. I can't find the citations for a story I read about a guy who did this at the million dollar condo level, but the idea is pretty simple. Bad debt trades at a fraction of the nominal price, so it might be easier to buy the rights to collect on your own debt than pay off the current debt owner.

The hard part, of course, is getting someone to sell it to you without their knowledge.

<comment><USER5> How could someone with delinquent debt (presumably someone unable to pay their obligations) be able to afford buying their own delinquent debt?

<comment><USER6> Depending on how delinquent it is, Debt can sell for pennies on the dollar. The irony, of course, is the more delinquent you are, the less your debt is worth. Therefore, those who show the least attention to repaying their debt, are the ones who get the best deal on settling.

You just have to deal with Debt Collector harassing you for 2-3 years, and take a pretty big hit to your credit, and you can often settle debt for nothing more than the original principal loaned.

Of course, good luck trying to borrow money for the next 7-8 years...

<comment><USER7> "Nothing more than the original principal loaned" is a much less attractive deal than "pennies on the dollar"!

<comment><USER6> Most people are not willing/able to get their debt delinquent enough (ability to pay is a big barrier for most) to get there. But almost _everyone_ , if they are willing to put up with the hassle of a debt collector and a credit- history black mark, can negotiate for the original principal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Gail Greenberg of suburban Philadelphia embraced the nonperforming-loan > trade to build up her retirement savings, which took a hit in 2008. She > started in 2016 with a loan in Flint, Mich., she bought for $15,000._

> _"I only owned it for nine weeks and the house burned down," Ms. Greenberg > said. Thanks to an insurance payout, though, she said she made a profit of > $27,000._

> _Ms. Greenberg took that as a sign she should make loan investing her day > job. She now owns 58 mortgage notes, as they're often called, totaling more > than $2.4 million in unpaid principal._

I wonder how she's doing now.

<comment><USER9> Holy crap. I wonder how big this market is? If it's enough to matter, I'd say this is a sign that people should get the hell out.

<comment><USER10> Can you imagine what this market looks like when the next recession hits? Banks unload all this bad debt to these non-performing debt buyers and wipe their hands, meanwhile the economy crashes and there's no money getting collected and nobody wants to buy the debt off them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aren't they basically running collection agencies? I thought there is a whole industry that buys defaulting loans and then tries to get the borrowers to pay.

<comment><USER12> Yes. Collection agencies normally are used for unsecured debt. Mortgages are secured by real estate.

There has always been a brisk market for real estate paper ("notes"). This might be someone that lent on a second mortgage and now needs his cash back, so he enters the note market and takes a hefty discount to turn his stream of income into a lump sum. Or someone that just sold their house with owner financing, and wants to be free of the hassle of servicing the loan for the next fifteen years, so they sell on the open market. Supply and demand determine the prices, and the discounts are easily 40% off the net present value of that mortgage note's stream of income.

<comment><USER13> The thing I'm most confused about the whole article is how did some homeowners go years (a decade?) living in their home without paying a mortgage and not get evicted? The article implies this is happening but I didn't realize any lender allowed that amount of time to pass.

<comment><USER14> I assume the properties were so devalued that it literally wasn't worth the bank's time to foreclose and try to sell, nor to keep hassling the non-paying borrower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know the legality of using loan acquisition as a strategy for donation and tax exemption?

\- `A` loans $100,000 from `B`.

\- `A` cannot pay the loan, and therefore `B` sells to loan to `C` for $10,000.

\- `C` then donates money to a charity set up by `C`.

\- The charity then offers to pay off `A`s loan, and the money comes back to `C`.

At this point, `C` "donates" (i.e. cycles the money) enough to make their taxes $0 per year. `A` has their mortgage slowly but surely forgiven. Win-Win, but the IRS losses.

While morally grey, what might the legality be?

<comment><USER16> IIRC under current tax code this results in $100k of taxable income for the original debtor. For C, well, getting paid from the charity counts as taxable income, so things net out. Donate $100k, receive $100k in debt repayments, net change to AGI is $0.

The best scheme I can come up with is this:

Make the note performing again by giving the creditor a small amount of money. Claim that it is now worth significantly more than $10k due to being a performing loan. Donate the _loan_ to a controlled charity, pocket the tax deduction for the "fair market value" of it, and then stop paying to make it be "performing" and have the charity take the losses on it. The IRS will still fault it, probably, but it lets you actually get ahead on your taxes.

NB: this system can be a price support for rare artwork getting sold in distress. If you think you can claim to the IRS that a piece of art is worth $100M later, and you pay a 30% marginal tax rate, then the post-donation after-tax price is essentially $30M less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How is this possible in the US ? I run a lending startup in India, but you can't own paper until you have a regulatory license from the central bank. Our license took 18 months - including extensive background checks, interviews,etc.

Can any individual buy mortgages and become a lender in the US ?

<comment><USER18> There is a difference in the U.S. between lending, loan servicing, and simply holding onto debt. All three have different regulations, in decreasing order of regulatory burden. The people in the article are not lenders. They are buying loans and acting as mortgage services (e.g. making sure people pay their debt every month).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> TLDR; Apparently there are laws in some states that makes it very hard to foreclose. So these loans linger over for years and now being purchased by some folks trying to restart the payments hoping to take advantage of better economy. It's very high risk business.

The most surprising part of entire article is that it is very hard to enforce foreclosure for missed payments in many states. The delinquent borrowers can stay in homes for months and often years! As mortgages are essentially sponsored by US government, this whole market runs on twisted economy.

The basic question is why more people aren't taking advantages of these laws and twisted economics? For example, you can live in Hawaii, buy a house, just don't pay any mortgages, declare bankruptcy and stay in the house for next 4 years for free. Or even better: buy many houses, put them on AirBnB, collect income and never pay any mortgages!

</comment><comment><USER8> Everything about this sounds so fucking gross.

> _A scrappy breed of independent investor_

> _During the boom before the bust, lenders made mortgage loans to countless > buyers who couldn't afford them. Lenders later wrote off many of the loans, > but borrowers' obligation to pay remained. Today, in an improved economy, a > rag-tag group of individual investors, plus some Wall Street giants, is > buying these old loans and trying to tease value out of them._

It's a feel good story of the year! A group of scrappy rag-tag enterpreneurs, with a can-do attitude, hustling by ... going after people who were already fucked at least once.

> _Others use loan servicers to try to get mortgage payments restarted so they > can feed the loans back into the Wall Street mortgage securitization > machine._

Yes, feeding things to a machine definitely sounds like a morally neutral proposition.

<comment><USER20> > going after people who were already fucked at least once.

I'm not sure it's so clear cut. The last anecdote in the article was a civil engineer with savings and a good salary, who thought his entire mortgage was forgiven by PNC and he got a free house. At least in that case, he should be obligated to pay his mortgage.

<comment><USER21> Here is another example of people I don't feel too sorry for...

When I was house-hunting after the crash, I noticed that the loan history of most of the short sales (underwater mortgages) I looked at followed the same pattern:

\- Buy house with minimal down payment. \- Over 5-10 years or so as the market climbed, refinance with ever-larger cash-out mortgages. \- After the crash, apply for short sale, forcing the bank to take a loss.

So, for example, I might see a house with $750k loan on short sale for $350k. But on closer inspection of the history, find that they put $15k down on a $250k house, then pocketed $500k in cash-outs. Sure, they "lost their home", but at the end of the day it feels more like bank robbery to me.

Now they probably didn't have all that cash sitting in a bank somewhere. It was probably all spent on one thing or another. But they still got the advantage of spending that $500k. (Not necessarily wisely. The one I remember details of lost both his house and his wife because he blew it all on racing toys.)

Yes, there were certainly plenty of people who were legitimately burned in that whole mess. I'm just mentioning that from what I saw, more often than not there were huge cash-outs involved.

<comment><USER22> wait, can you explain this to me? How does refinancing the home in this example give them a 500k windfall? eli5 plz

<comment><USER23> Assume his home was worth 1mm at the peak. He got a new loan for $750 k, paid off his old loan of ~$250k, and pocketed the difference.

<comment><USER22> right, but now he has much bigger monthly payments, and still owes that 500k back... so it seems all he did here was get a big loan....

<comment><USER21> That is true. But then he stops making the payments. The bank either forecloses and takes the house to settle the loan, or he sells it in a short sale for $350K and the bank writes off the difference. Worst case, he has to file bankruptcy and maybe pay income tax on the amount forgiven. Either way, he still got to spend the $500K on...whatever.

Now that I think about it (and these are pure anecdotes), at the time I heard tales of people using the money from refinancing to buy a smaller home with cash. Then they'd move into that and let the first house get foreclosed on (because their paid-in-full primary residence is protected in bankruptcy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems most people think that you buy these busted mortgages to make some ROI.

It's far from truth.

I know some guys purchase them to negotiate frequent sex with the Tennant and other favours. You'll be surprized how many people are completely unware of the law and make it seem like they are providing a fair deal.

<comment><USER25> If you know these people you should report them. Sexual exploitation is no laughing matter.

<comment><USER26> There's news documentaries on this. Increasingly popular practice

<comment><USER27> Yeah, I call bullshit. Link to some of these sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This might be interesting if I could read it. Who here wants a closed internet?

<comment><USER29> Paywalls are annoying, but such comments like this only add noise, so please refrain from injecting that into the thread. This is in the FAQ at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) and there's more explanation here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywall&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

<comment><USER30> Are there other forms of copyright infringement HN encourages or is this the only one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> man I hate paywalls, I really want to read this one.

<comment><USER32> I'm loving the ability to buy articles a la carte on Blendle. No relationship with the company.

[https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/a-decade-after-the-housing- cri...](https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/a-decade-after-the-housing-crisis-small- investors-try-to-bring-busted-mortgages-back-to-life/bnl- wsj-20181120-SB11730339679307604739004584554273660297070?sharer=eyJ2ZXJzaW9uIjoiMSIsInVpZCI6InRtcDYzNzkzMjIwNDkxNjI0YjllIiwiaXRlbV9pZCI6ImJubC13c2otMjAxODExMjAtU0IxMTczMDMzOTY3OTMwNzYwNDczOTAwNDU4NDU1NDI3MzY2MDI5NzA3MCJ9)

<comment><USER33> How does this businesses model work... have they gotten the WSJ as well as all of the other publishers to agree to sell individual articles?

<comment><USER34> Yes they have. I have had it for over a year. People don't want to subscribe for $10 a month or something but surely they can pay 20 cents for an article. Otherwise we are going to have junk news forever with auto playing videos and ads.

Edit: Also once you pay you can decide to rescind your payment if it is click bait or not good. Also no relationship with them I just want to see a paid web content model succeed.

<comment><USER35> I'm a Blendle user as well, and I really love the concept - the main thing I would like is integration between Blendle and the original publication site, because people post links to the original newspaper, not to Blendle...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers with Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/japaric/copper <comment><USER2> The author of this guide (Jorge Aparicio) has done an amazing amout of work getting the ecosystem started for Rust on microcontrollers. A few of his other projects worth mentioning:

\- svd2rust ([https://docs.rs/svd2rust/](https://docs.rs/svd2rust/)) generates register-level APIs from SVD files, an XML format provided by most ARM microcontroller vendors. This gets you the equivalent of the low-level C header files for manipulating the hardware registers.

\- cortex_m ([https://docs.rs/cortex-m/](https://docs.rs/cortex-m/)), which provides APIs for the core ARM peripherals in every Cortex-M MCU.

\- f3 ([https://docs.rs/f3/](https://docs.rs/f3/)) - High level APIs for the peripherals and external sensors on the STM32 F3 Discovery board.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently finished my Master's Thesis on using anything other than C/C++ on microcontrollers.

It's a mess. A couple of languages like Rust, D, etc. can be hacked on micros due to their compiler suite, but it is always messy. Above guide uses inline assembly to blink a GPIO. Hardware access is on register level. None of this makes your live easier.

In order to be viable for microcontrollers you need two things: * a compiler or interpreter for your target * a Hardware API

There are some projects, like MicroPython and Espruino who realized the importance of the Hardware API. They basically transcend micro-interpreters and RTOS (especially given the languages asyncio features).

Microcontroller vendors ship C/C++ libraries for their hardware. You either have to wrap that, like the micro-interpreters do, or your language has to be able to use them natively.

What Rust on microcontrollers need is a Kickstarter campaign with a nice dev- board as perk to finance a project that implements a nice API for that specific micro.

<comment><USER2> > Above guide uses inline assembly to blink a GPIO.

No, the only inline ASM in this guide is to cause a debugger breakpoint. You also need inline ASM to enable/disable interrupts, and that's about it.

The code in this guide looks ugly because it's written to show how to use the hardware without any abstraction. Higher level APIs like f3 ([https://docs.rs/f3/0.3.1/f3/](https://docs.rs/f3/0.3.1/f3/)) exist, though not nearly for every chip or peripheral. Even in C, for anything outside the popular Arduino/mbed/etc boards, your choice is usually between buggy vendor bloatware and using the registers directly after carefully reading the datasheet.

<comment><USER4> From what I've seen, using registers is often simpler and easier than using the vendor GPIO libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been looking for such thing for a long time as I don't really like C for embedded programming. Was following [https://zinc.rs/](https://zinc.rs/) for a while but then I've discovered ivory/tower framework made by Galois ([http://ivorylang.org/](http://ivorylang.org/)). It's basically haskell DSL and C code generator for embedded world, currently targeting stm32 family.

Compared to these early rust attempts they've written a port of ArduPilot in ivory/tower called smaccmpilot ([http://smaccmpilot.org/](http://smaccmpilot.org/)).

In one of the papers they even compare ivory with rust in terms of memory safety.

I'm now trying to port ODriveFirmware written in C (+CubeMX/CMSIS) to ivory and so far I'm pretty surprised how well it goes. I'm going to start documenting this process on a blog soon, if interested I've created a wiki page collecting resources about embedded programming in Haskell at [https://wiki.base48.cz/EmbeddedHaskell](https://wiki.base48.cz/EmbeddedHaskell)

<comment><USER6> In a similar vein there is ATS - which already compiles to C. And you can in theory write controller code in ATS if you want those functional features and more

ex:

(this guy has done examples on a ton of boards!) [https://github.com/fpiot](https://github.com/fpiot)

www.metasepi.org/doc/metasepi-icfp2015-arduino-ats.pdf

[https://github.com/fpiot/msp430-ats](https://github.com/fpiot/msp430-ats)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I go through this cycle every 6 months or so where I will get excited about Rust and try it out for embedded development again. Typically in the first day, I get frustrated with some major limitation and put it back on the shelf. This last time, I wanted to make a simple timer that displayed the time since a button was last pressed on a 16x2 character LCD screen.

In addition to the HAL annoyances that turbinerneiter talked about, I wound up giving up this time because I could find no way to manipulate strings in a static buffer. In C I could just allocate two 17 byte strings statically and then `sprintf` to them, but there seems to be no equivalent in Rust.

I'd be curious to know what limitations others have run into when trying this and if I was just doing it wrong.

<comment><USER8> The write! macro would be the equivalent here. Something like this:

        use std::io::Write;

        static mut S1: [u8; 17] = [0; 17];

        fn main() {
            unsafe {
                write!(&mut S1[..], "Hi: {}", 5).unwrap();

                let s = std::str::from_utf8_unchecked(&S1[..5]);

                println!("string: {}", s);
            }
        }

<comment><USER9> Having all your main inside unsafe doesn't seem like the best advert for Rust :)

<comment><USER8> You're right, it's not; I was just showing the smallest code. :)

This is unsafe specifically because of the mutable static; you can deal with that in a few different ways, but that wasn't the point of the example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hello, HN folks. Author here.

Sadly, the repository posted by the OP is not up to date. That's not to say it's wrong but just that doesn't contain recent developments. Also, this repository documents every single part of putting together a microcontroller project _from scratch_. Although interesting, this is not the fastest way to "Hello World". That's why I have put together a nicely packaged Cargo template [1] [2] to quickly start a new microcontroller project. This template works for _any_ Cortex-M microcontroller and paired with the svd2rust code generator [3] you can easily get _full_ device support (register level API) for any microcontroller for which the vendor has released a CMSIS-SVD file [4]. There's a database of such files in this repo. [5]

For some, directly working with registers may be too low level. In that case you can look at my Discovery book [6] which showcases a higher level API and several examples for the STM32F3DISCOVERY board. The API is documented here. [7]

What's missing from all this is a good concurrency history. (All the examples in the Discovery book are single task.) So, I have been working (not alone) on a multitasking framework that's suitable for real time systems and the focus has been minimizing overhead while guaranteeing memory safety. At this point, we have pretty much reached the goal and we are currently working on the ergonomics. I hope that we'll have something show Soon (TM).

I'm happy to answer questions about Rust on microcontrollers. I may take some time answer, though, as it's weekend :-).

P.S. I hope I got the formatting right. First time posting on HN.

P.P.S. Congratulations for reading the whole thing! As a reward, here's a robot [8] built with the framework I mentioned.

[1] [https://github.com/japaric/cortex-m- template](https://github.com/japaric/cortex-m-template)

[2] It seems that the Cargo template feature got removed recently (due to not having gone through a RFC process) but you can easily rollback your Rust installation to get an older Cargo that supports templates: `rustup default nightly-2017-04-01`

[3] [https://docs.rs/svd2rust/0.5.1/svd2rust/](https://docs.rs/svd2rust/0.5.1/svd2rust/)

[4] [http://www.keil.com/pack/doc/CMSIS/SVD/html/index.html](http://www.keil.com/pack/doc/CMSIS/SVD/html/index.html)

[5] [https://github.com/posborne/cmsis- svd/tree/master/data](https://github.com/posborne/cmsis-svd/tree/master/data)

[6] [https://japaric.github.io/discovery/](https://japaric.github.io/discovery/)

[7] [https://docs.rs/f3/0.3.1/f3/](https://docs.rs/f3/0.3.1/f3/)

[8] [https://mobile.twitter.com/japaricious/status/84569793557265...](https://mobile.twitter.com/japaricious/status/845697935572656128)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for doing this. I'm really excited about the potential of Rust for embedded, but it still requires too much trail-blazing to be compatible with my current priorities. FWIW I've been doing realtime embedded C for years, but feel it is high time we made some progress in the embedded world with respect to memory safety and concurrency correctness. I'm also a huge fan of Micropython, but of course Micropython isn't applicable everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is cool. I wonder how much benefit Rust is likely to yield in this space. I generally tend to try to avoid any dynamic memory allocation when writing code for small μcs, so that takes away one of the big pain points of writing in C. Rust does have pattern matching, which is always useful. My experience is with Cortex M0s with ~32K flash, though, so I can see how Rust might have real benefits with bigger μcs.

<comment><USER13> Which Cortex M CPU/board would you recommend for a seamless development experience?

<comment><USER5> I really like F3 and F4 discovery boards. You can re-flash dedicated stm32f1 with blackmagic probe (instead of ST-Link) and bridge UART to it to get really awesome development board.

After this is done you'll get /dev/ttyACM0 and ACM1 for GDB interface and UART bridge. From GDB you can connect to it directly with 'target extended-remote /dev/ttyACM0' (no need for OpenOCD middleware).

[https://wiki.base48.cz/STM32#Running_BMP_on_Discovery_boards](https://wiki.base48.cz/STM32#Running_BMP_on_Discovery_boards)

<comment><USER14> What is the advantage of blackmagic probe over plain ST-Link?

Genuine question, I've never used the ST-Link for more than flashing the image and some debugging, so what am I missing?

<comment><USER5> It implements GDB stub directly so you don't need to run OpenOCD to be able to attach to it from GDB.

Also UART bridge is nice but this might be supported newer in ST-Link too. I haven't used STLink for a while - flashing all the stuff with blackmagic right away.

<comment><USER15> Quite sure they do have the UART bridge now, but the black magic probe looks interesting. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kind of off topic, but I can't recommend Quantum Leaps (www.state-machine.com) enough for microcontroller development. Also, the book by Miro Samek (quantum leaps founder) is very good. I've had a really good experience using his software on the cortex-m MCUs.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ugly stuff. In my opinion, plain C is much better (the pain was to program microcontrollers in pure assembly). If you want higher/"safer" level, I would recommend you using Lua, Python, or even Node.js.

<comment><USER18> python and node js would have orders of magnitude worse performance / overhead.

<comment><USER19> MicroPython can compile to native code and also allows for inline Assembly.

[https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/pyboard/reference/spe...](https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/pyboard/reference/speed_python.html)

[https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/pyboard/reference/asm...](https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/pyboard/reference/asm_thumb2_index.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Twittering with Mathematica - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/04/30/twittering-with-mathematica/ <comment><USER2> I recently looked up mathematica, after reading up on wolfram; I then went to the site to find it cost $2,495 for a license :( Can anyone explain to me please what it exactly does and its worth in a few sentences? Thanks..

<comment><USER3> cell phone calculator: scientific calculator :: scientific calculator: mathematica.

Mathematica is computational software. It has some powerful graphing capabilities and can be used to write technical reports. It can also handle very large sets of data. You write code to use it, and you can code C applications to access Mathematica. It is pretty powerful.

It is mainly used by scientists and engineers. I think you can get a home edition for around $300.

<comment><USER4> Yes, $300. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465403>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mathematica looks really powerful and practical. The demo was really impressive rrrrrrright up until he had to start using a Java library. Then it was all the creating of client objects and credentials objects, initializing things, marching to and fro... There may have been some factories in there; I skimmed it.

Man, does Java suck or what?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you survive a HN launch? - martin-adams

Every so often a site hits the homepage and gets taken offline.  Anyone got tips on how to test a site for load before it goes viral? <comment><AUTHOR> Take a look at apache benchmark ( <http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/ab.html> ) which can help get a general idea of what your server can take.

Generally speaking, for blog-type content that's typically served to HN, it's best to ensure that each visit doesn't equate to a db query (either via a caching mechanism, or by using a blogging platform that's not db based)..

<comment> martin-adams Great thanks. It'll be interesting to know what load my application will fall over with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Using AWS or similar, you can upgrade to a huge server for just a few hours, then downgrade it once the traffic tapers.

<comment><USER3> What would a micro instance do if the load increases to that degree? Does it actually crash or try to do some scaling? I'm a bit green to aws.

<comment><USER4> It might shut itself down due to too much load. In my experience, I find you can surpass the maximum load by 2 or even 3 times with no problem. But any more than that, and it will just shut down.</comment></comment></comment>


Slipping away from the Perl community - <AUTHOR> http://perlbuzz.com/2011/04/slipping-away.html

<comment><USER2> There's another post about this from a few months ago, I guess he's been feeling this way for quite a while.

<http://perlbuzz.com/2010/11/think-for-perls-sake.html>

<comment><USER3> I like his emphasis on kindness. Imagine a forum where you could rate a post on a separate dimension of kindness/ meanness (alongside rating on the usual vague dimension of "like/ dislike")... with restriction of privileges for people who are persistently mean. :)

<comment><USER4> cool idea

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's about manners, a please and a thank you will go far further than any cogent argument.

If people don't like you they won't listen to you even if you're right. Even in geek circles logos is the last form of rhetoric to be considered.

</comment><comment><USER6> Agree with him totally. Really like him a lot from #perl, he's an incredible human being.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm throwing my tantrum all the way to Hacker News! Here's to bitter angst and indiscreet not-quite finger-pointing.

<comment><USER8> If you accept trolling, flamewars, and abrasive personalities as just the cost of doing business, then what is any different about tantrums?

<comment><USER7> Hypocrisy.

There's nothing more pathetic and annoying than and "I'm leaving" blog post. They always take the same format: a bunch of complaints leveled against nameless individuals (but _they know who they are_ , that sort of thing) and lip service to the author's pet peeve that nobody else cares about.

I mean, it kind of started off with a big invitation to please roll your eyes: 43? 43 is not that old. You're tired of all "the arguing"? Stop arguing. But let's start at the end, because that's where the meat of this post is.

"I'm tired of seeing cool new projects and realizing I will never use them, because I don't want to be associated with key members of the communities surrounding them."

This is stupid. He's tired of acting like a petulant child, he says.

"I'm tired of those unable or unwilling to see outside their blinkered little world, and to think that others might think differently, and to think that their feelings might matter."

So he writes a blog post and put a reddit vote-me-up on the side.

"I'm tired of having to delete comments on Perlbuzz because the commenters can't manage to make a point without slinging insults at those with whom they disagree."

You _moderate_ a community. It's not a status position, it's a job. If it's too much work, you can quit. Nobody will hate you for it. People quit staff positions in the big communities I'm a part of all the time; they usually stay in the community and they're just tired of taking care of it. It's fair, and it doesn't require a rant.

Obviously he's not happy with the state of moderation on perlbuzz, but that's something best taken up with the rest of the staff "hey $name, we should crack down on insults more" not the community at large. When moderators do this, it ends up making the whole community look bad. That shouldn't surprise you, because "making the community look bad" is _clearly_ the intent of his little rant here. He's mud-slinging.

"That means less contribution, technical and otherwise, from me, and from the others who have shared the same concerns with me regarding their own contributions."

What's funny is this is probably the kind of status game he's complaining about up above. The people who are the most profane and arrogant in a community are none-too-rarely the people who estimate highly the value of their contributions (be they commensurately brilliant a la Gregory House or otherwise).

I'm sure -- I don't know the guy, but I can give him the benefit of the doubt -- I'm sure Andy Lester has made some pretty valuable contributions to the Perl community in the past. So, yes, "Perl loses because of it." This little ending touch is apparently Mr. Lester's way of totally disclaiming involvement in the situation; he's absolutely refusing to take responsibility for leaving. And Perl loses because of it.

Now on to the totally unrelated personal quest that nobody cares about he tries to make it applicable to the situation.

>I'm tired of hearing that profanity in written communication doesn't matter because hey, it's just words, man.

This is a curveball. How do you think this little unrelated tidbit made it in to the post? I mean, what does it have to do with anything?

As far as I can tell, it's clearly a reference to some other argument. It's an argument he also probably _lost_ , because nobody keeps complaining and carrying on about the arguments they won. It's lame to bring it up while complaining about the general attitude of the Perl community towards each other.

<tangent>

It's also an argument where, if you ask me, he's totally wrong. Profanity - _fuck_ , _shit_ , _cunt_ , _piss_ , _asshole_ , _cocksucker_ \- the complaint is leveled against those who say these are "just words", and perhaps "just words" isn't a very good description. Profanity is more like noise. Its effect when added to a sentence is to make the rest of the sentence _louder_. It has no intrinsic kindness or meanness to it. Some of the best parts of life are "fucking awesome"; the worst are "fucking terrible" or even "fucking shitty".

So it's a part of the English language, and it gets plenty of use in text because there aren't many ways to make text "loud". It's a natural human instinct to talk louder when you're angry or excited, and complain as much as you will that instinct really isn't going anywhere fast. Even those who abstain from "fuck" and "shit" find other ways to amplify their statements, be it through an excessive use of formatting (bold formatting is both louder and more visually offensive than italic formatting), plenty of symbolic annotation (by surrounding words with -dashes-, \ _asterisks\_ , /slashes/, or _underscores_), or abuse of grammatical conventions (these are too numerous to list, but include writing every word on it's own line, Capitalizing Every Word In The Sentence, putting. a. period. after. everything., or the dreaded "allcaps").

To me, it's pointless and silly and even elitist in some cases to argue over _how_ precisely this amplification of textual communication is done. To draw a distinction between the guy who peppers his sentence with "cunt" and the guy who murders my linefeed with his Enter key is disingenuous, and to exile those who don't use whatever a community's "preferred" amplification style is insular and xenophobic. Profanity ranks quite low on the scale of offenses here, because it is perhaps the easiest to ignore and I'd rather see it than most of the alternatives.

</tangent>

A bit of background: I'm not a part of the Perl community; I have scant knowledge of Perl but as far as I know it's a fine language used and maintained by plenty of talented individuals and I've heard Moose is really cool though I can't make head or tail of it.

I do, however, know _pathetic_ when I see it.

EDIT: I hope this isn't too personal. The main point is not "I hate Andy Lester" -- just please don't ever imitate what he's doing here.

<comment><USER9> I suspect this fails the "say it to his face" test.

<comment><USER7> Who am I to say things to this guy's face? I don't know him. I haven't been aware of his existence, beyond maybe having used a project or two that he's worked on, until today. He presumably doesn't want to hear from me.

I'm saying that his behavior is bad for the community, both Perl's and ours. I'm saying it to "the HN community", because I have nobody else to say it to.

We've seen this before. It was titled "Rails is a ghetto" and whatever change it inspired didn't cover the drama it caused. Zed himself said he was sorry to have written it.

<comment><USER8> I haven't read "Rails is a ghetto," but I do know that Zed Shaw's writing style is a lot more abrasive than this article. The basic premise here seems to be, "Why can't people just be civil to each other?" On the other hand, most of Zed Shaw's writing is of the form, "I'm right, and these people are wrong. They are so wrong that it physically pains me, and I should probably sue them for that." The only link that they would seem to have is that they are both, "I'm leaving X community, and here is why" blog posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah yes, Andy Lester: the only person who has ever banned me from contributing to his open source projects. What a role model for civil interactions.

<comment><USER11> I know neither you nor Andy in person. But from reading Andy online, I get the impression that he is bright, talented, and kind. From reading you, I get the impression of someone bright, talented, and immature. I value your technical contributions here, but at times fear your overall impact on the site.

Banning you from a project is not hypocritical on his part -- it's exactly what he's talking about. He feels, rightly or wrongly, that it's better to remove the source of incivility than to put up with it. You've got a lot of obvious talent and knowledge, but yes, Andy might be a good role model for civil interactions.

<comment><USER10> _but at times fear your overall impact on the site_

Why? Because I don't like iPads?

<comment><USER11> No, I don't care for iPads either. My fear is that HN is a wonderful but fragile community. You offer a mix of knowledge and irreverence (I'm pretty sure I vote you up here more than I vote you down), but those who see you winning attention for snide but insightful comments are more likely to copy the snideness than the insight. I like that civil public discussion is still possible here, and want to keep it that way.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough. I should think a little more before hitting reply.

<comment><USER12> BULLSHIT! You are jrockway, shooting from the hip is your trademark. As for context to this comment, tl;dr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "And it makes me sad that Perl loses because of it."

Perl loses for lots of other reasons than profanity and verbal abuse.

<comment><USER14> Oh the irony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This guy says _tired_ a lot.

If you're tired, take a nap. When you wake back up, the world won't seem such a horrid place, and you'll be able to get back to making cool software again instead of lamenting.

<comment><USER8> He's basically experiencing burn-out with respect to the Perl community. I'm confident that if "taking more naps" was a cure-all for burn-out, then burn- out wouldn't be such an issue.

Aside: I don't think that he was being literal in his use of the word 'tired.' I don't know if it was intentional or not, but you're response comes off a bit like this:

      person 1: I'm sick and tired of dealing with these
                issues!
      person 2: If you're sick, then you should see a doctor!

<comment><USER15> I meant to say that when shit starts getting to you, it can help to get away from it for a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It must be a tough world out there for the overly-sensitive.

<comment><USER16> Wow, it seems I've gotten about a -11 karma for this comment so far, I guess pg must have removed the -4 limit.

So apparently people believe that the world is just great for the overly- sensitive. Weird.

Anyway, here's your chance to downvote me a second time!

<comment><USER17> My perception is that people downvoted you because your comment was a mean spirited shot which contributed absolutely nothing to the discussion, not because they disagreed with you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I just got laid off. Now what? - <AUTHOR>

I've just been laid off, it's not as horrible as it sounds, since I've been contemplating quitting lately, although I stifled that urge since I'd just been promoted.
I've been kicking around the idea of attempting to start my own business, but don't know if I have the technical foundation. As some background, I've been working as a PHP developer for the last year or so. Before that, I had no programming experience, although I've always been fairly technical. I got a Microsoft certification my Freshman year of High School.
I've been through fairly great pains to educate myself though, and shortly after I started programming for a living, I picked up SICP and read through it and did all of the exercises. It greatly improved my skills, and since then I've digested a good number of programming books. While I feel I have a strong theoretical background (ish), I've not taken on any major projects. Most of the work I've done over this last year has been maintenance on an already completed accounting/shipping/receiving etc... system. I haven't had too much time to pursue projects other than working through books like SICP and a few other textbooks like "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer programming" as I am also a full time student as well as a competitive pianist. I was also working full time.
Financially, I am neither in a good place or bad. I already freelance successfully, and even without my full time job, on average my freelancing covers about 1.5 times my monthly expenses (about 800 dollars.) I'll have a few grand set aside when I leave at the end of this month.
I have some experience using several frameworks and have implemented trivial projects in Django, Rails and Seaside. (Seaside was by far my favorite.) However, I am very lacking in my understanding of lower level computing details as well as systems administration (non-existent.)
I'm also 19, I don't say this to try and impress you, but I've encountered a fair bit of ageism working in technology. I think I'm competent, but a lot of people don't seem to be willing to give me a fair shake because of my age, or aren't willing to compensate me fairly. (I don't make outrageous demands). As an example, I was being paid less than 15 dollars an hour to do full time web development. I was happy with this because the environment was great, I had an office, dual monitors and a beast of a machine, so I felt pretty taken care of.
I guess my dilemma is this. Do I attempt to start a business or do I continue educating myself and freelance to pay the bills? Regardless of what I choose, I will still be a full-time student... <comment><USER2> _I don't make outrageous demands._

It is never too late to start. ;)

Seriously: Don't work for $15 per hour. Learn what you need to learn in order to charge $75 per hour. Some of that may be technical, but I sense that a stumbling block is that you have not learned to _ask_ for $75 per hour -- otherwise you would not be so "happy" with so little. Be less happy! Be pickier about your clients and make higher demands, of them and of yourself.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182369>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1880501>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is where the ageism and the relative inexperience comes in. I think I have a solid foundation, but being 19 and not having a ton of work experience has gotten me laughed at before. That being said, I'm pretty sure I can pass just about any programming interview test designed for the average programmer.

<comment><USER3> Prove them wrong. Do you own thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go to Bangkok. No really.

[http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2008/05/laid-off- one-t...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2008/05/laid-off-one-thing- you-absolutely-need.html)

If you can do freelance work from anywhere in the world, then this advice is doubly true.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would really love to do this, although since I already took some time off of school, this isn't really an option right now :/

<comment><USER5> I was also going to post that blog entry.

Don't let budget constraints deter you, particularly if you are able to get some freelance income whilst travelling. You'd be surprised how inexpensive it can be provided you're comfortable in low standard accommodation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My advice ... continue to freelance. As every student knows, some weeks are just busier than others and leave you with zero free time. If you were running a business, how would you handle those busy weeks? Would you sacrifice studying or writing reports for your business?

The great thing about freelance is that you can do it whenever YOU choose! If you decide to take a few weeks off from freelancing to study for final exams, you can do it. Running a business will not necessarily give you that flexibility.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I had thought about the course load. It's not really a concern. I'm pretty pro at school. I'd be a professional student if it paid real money.

Although, you're probably right about the business thing being way more than full time. That's something I've been worried about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The question is do you feel you are ready to start your own business or is it just the fact you lost your job. My advice to you, having the idea of starting your own business is great and I encourage to do this if not now maybe later, the feeling of satisfaction of doing something you are passionate about is unlimited and will always drive you to do more.

Starting business is not only about knowing what you want to do or how to do it , there is many factors you need to know before you start your own business, like business itself, law, finance and management.

Look for a good job in the same domain you want to start your business in and start planning your business accordingly, and try to get involved in everything required from you to succeed.

Having your goals set in early age is great.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was going to quit soon anyways, but now that I've been placed in this situation, I'm just torn between educating myself further or diving into a business.

<comment><USER7> There is nothing wrong with losing your job; Steve Jobs lost his job once. Many other successful billionaires, we all share a piece of the failure cake.

My advice is:

1- Get your hands dirty in some sort of business, but don't waste all your savings.

2- Get into the market, talk to people and do some market studies, look for a niche in the market, try to start in a small jurisdiction and keep notes of everything.

3- Learn about all aspects of business, as I said before, law, finance and management. Some marketing skills, and work on your social skills.

4- Get some entrepreneurs friends, online and better in real life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As others have said, you need to be pickier. You seem very confident in your ability here - why don't you carry that confidence through to negotiations?

I'm basically the same age (turning 19 in April) and doing contract work for $85 per hour right now (still in high school), but I have a job offer at a well-funded startup down here (Texas) that will pay a $105k salary as a senior software engineer once I graduate in the spring.

By allowing others to take advantage of you, you're supporting their ageism. Being great for cheap is detrimental to everyone. Either be bad and cheap or be expensive and awesome, proving in both cases that you get what you paid for regardless of age.

(Anonymous in case the company and/or my contracting clients who are paying more than $85 per hour are reading this.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that's motivational! What kind of area are you in? Is it very urban or a tech hub?

<comment><USER8> Glad I was able to help motivate. :) I'm in a suburb now, but will be moving to the Fort Worth area, which I'm told has a tech scene. I don't know if anyone would call it a tech hub, but I guess it's all about perspective.

There are opportunities out there, and at the end of the day it's all just life experience. Focus on doing something you enjoy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're doing well freelancing then have you considered doing something to generate passive income? It might not sound great, but a popular wordpress/drupal plugin could bootstrap a business, and a range of semi- popular paid plugins could be a business.

I know your concerns are mainly technical, but you've given us no idea of the type of business you're looking at starting. If your business idea is good enough and you think you can deliver then yes, I'd say go for it. As a single founder though I'd like to warn you that no matter how successful (or not) you get, it'll suck the life out of you like a vampire, so make sure it's something you're going to enjoy beforehand.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got a whole notebook of ideas, but in particular, I've been working on some studio management software for my own piano studio. The market wouldn't be very large, but turning it into a web app wouldn't be very difficult.

I'm a competent programmer, it's just the auxiliary skills that are really lacking...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Grow a beard, don't tell people your age, charge more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I'm half asian. As a result, I grow really crappy facial hair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> i`d guess the main problem are experience then. try to poke on github or code any startup idea that you fancy. try to emulate it or better. Try to push it into the cloud/crowd and get some feedback exchange with the user. Show the world how you solve the problem. That's how i got my experience. That's also how i got my new job with much higher pay raise.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nobody has ever done all the exercises in SICP. Except me, after I worked through Knuth volumes 1 through 3.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have seriously done all of the exercises in SICP. I have not worked through all of Knuth. Number 4 is on my to-do list though.

Also, besides myself, Eli Bendersky has. He's written all the answers in an informative blog.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks you guy! This has been very helpful!

</comment><comment><USER13> "fair shake" - you in Australia?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I live in Nevada. Reno specifically. Is that an Australian thing to say?

<comment><USER13> Well, sort of :) Kevin Rudd (our former Prime Minister) is somewhat famous for saying "fair shake of the sauce bottle" in a TV interview, instead of the saying "fair suck of the sauce bottle".

The "correct" version refers to sharing booze between friends, but Kevin Rudd's version meant sharing a bottle of tomato sauce (or Ketchup as you would say) to put on a meat pie.

People made fun of him for being too damned "clean" - ie. was he so PG rated that he couldn't even allude to consuming alcohol?

I thought your "fair shake" may have been in reference to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Party?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I'm not really a fan. Not because I'm anti-social, but doing dumb stuff with lots of drunk people doesn't appeal to me. That being said, I do from time to time, since most of my friends are in the Greek system.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: There room for another startup blog? - <AUTHOR>

I don't want to steal Startup Foundry's thunder. They are doing an awesome job. The truth is I had considered doing something similar - i.e. replace TC - for a while now, but never got around to it.
These guys came and have done a wonderful job so far.
I am wondering if there is a need for another type (perhaps a different slant) than Startup Foundry.
Would love to hear some feedback - given you guys would be the audience. <comment><USER2> Sort of a catch all answer, but bears repeating:

Did I need another search engine in 1996? Did I need another social network in 2007? Another mp3 player in 2002, etc.?

If you really want to do it, you should do it. It's all in the execution. I'm sure Startup Foundry is not serving everyone's needs (and they probably don't want to). Figure out who they aren't serving and cater to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

That's what I am thinking...at first I saw that the need was there to just go back to the basics. But they have done this wonderfully.

That's kinda one of the reasons I have posted this, because given that HN is my target audience - I want to know what is missing, what are you guys looking for that you aren't getting anywhere else.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't mind helping a little -- I could cover Israeli startups. Or, why not try and find a few people to attack each article differently? Have someone do the technical side, another do the marketing and combine into the one article? A multi-user, multi-author blog, I think that'd be fun. Also, try and do follow up articles on any one startup as linked at bottom. Just have a pool of authors ready and they can help when they feel like it. Leverage the idea of "guest author."

Try and create a matrix that each startup can fill out -- and make that searchable -- a checklist that changes over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am thinking about the guest authors stuff.

First trying to figure out the format of the blog and what it would cover. Love these ideas though.

Keep em coming.

Thanks for the offer. If this is something that we run with, I will be sure to give you a ping and see how you can be involved.

Can you email me a blurb about yourself please - so I can see how it would work? My email address is in my profile.

<comment><USER3> OK, also check out: <http://highscalability.com/>

They specialize in the technical side of websites: design is always interesting, and the design process.

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks good. I think I have come up with a different slant though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think I found the slant: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2229149>

Would love some feedback.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it's a market which has lots of niches, for example a non-US centric blog, or one which focuses on particular types of startups.</comment>