Apple plans to build new headquarters "that looks a little like a spaceship" - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-apple-new-hq-20110609,0,6877722.story

<comment><AUTHOR> More images and video here [http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=26&recordid=463...](http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=26&recordid=463&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter)</comment>


On March 10, I received a letter from John De Goes - <AUTHOR> http://amar47shah.github.io/posts/2016-03-28-lambdaconf-yarvin.html <comment><USER2> There is an astonishing amount of self-importance going on in essays like this. People who believe they are striking a blow against fascism by not attending a functional programming conference that an obscure former blogger is going to as well -- this sort of fantasy is quite reminiscent of the sort of online gun-rights slacktivists who picture themselves fighting off armies of looters or government troops with their personal arsenal.

Make no mistake, in an actual fascist regime people like this would be the first to knuckle under.</comment>


The Way I Work: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20101001/the-way-i-work-michael-arrington-techcrunch.html <comment><USER2> And with this my opinion of Arrington shifts from "hey, he's kind of a self- important dick" to "huh, this guy is an introvert who's confident and passionate about his work, kind of like me."

Guy's all right. And my hat's off to him for building something truly powerful from scratch.

<comment><USER3> And I'm surprised at his drive "I'd work until I passed out, and wake up eight or nine hours later, which might be 4 p.m. or 3 a.m. Then I'd work again until I passed out." I don't think I've known many people to push it quite that hard.

<comment><USER4> I've met plenty of people who have to work two (sometimes, even three) jobs just to make ends meet. They work non-stop, exposed to the elements, doing manual labor - all to make ends meet.

The guy sits in front of his computer all day, blasting music.

As a developer, I realize sitting in front of a computer IS work. But, it's not _hard_ work...

<comment><USER5> it can be mentally challenging, depending on what you are working on.

While I agree you are not lifting heavy stuff, or doing anything physical, working on hard problems can be mentally tiring and tasking to your health if not done in moderation.

If you are just doing anything that is easy (a simple web app), then the hard part would be getting motivated to get started, but after that it is more mechanical, your are just cruizing by (and probably not learning much).

BUT if you are working on really technical stuff, beyond your normal comfort level then that is not the case at all. Your brain will fatigue, and you will actually feel the pain of work, (this is a good indicator that you are learning something new and it is tasking your brain).

Also, for people with more responsiblities, the worrying about work doesn't really end when you go home. If you are managing people, or need to learn new technical skills/updating your self, it becomes a bit hard to just switch off. When you are working more normal jobs, once you go home you can just 'switch off' and just worry about your home tasks.

So, it all depends...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i worked in the same company with Michael for a little while long before his TechCrunch days (RealNames between 1999 and 2002). He did come off as standoffish and arrogant to most people. This said, not enough to warrant the hate that some people devote to him since he became successful with TC. I think he is just a somewhat clumsy person when it comes to being anything else than a competitive opinionated door buster. Michael is otherwise a very smart guy and impressive entrepreneur and he seems to be on his way to becoming more of a human being too ;-)

</comment><comment><USER7> I loathe Inc.'s site. The interstitial pop-up. The toolbar. Terrible, really. But I enjoyed the piece.

<comment><USER8> For some reason on page 2 some javascript kept scrolling the page all the way down like every 20 seconds... so annoying. I ended up copying the text to a text editor.

<comment><USER9> You should really try readability:

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

It make reading articles on the web much nicer.

<comment><USER10> Wow. I didn't know this existed. You sir have made my life better today. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I'd love to have three monitors, but Macs support only two.

You can drive three monitors from a Mac Pro:

[http://blog.acceleroto.com/2010/08/28/buying-and-setting- up-...](http://blog.acceleroto.com/2010/08/28/buying-and-setting- up-a-2010-mac-pro-with-3-monitors-read-this-first/)

And here's a Macbook Pro driving 4 screens:

[http://daggle.com/macbook-pro-multimonitor-4-monitors-at- onc...](http://daggle.com/macbook-pro-multimonitor-4-monitors-at-once-1577)

<comment><USER9> Or you could use synergy to connect two macs together. You can even copy and paste between them.

<comment><USER12> I use Teleport on the mac... it's a bit more user-friendly as it has a proper preference pane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm impressed by the honesty. Doesn't seem to be the arrogant guy many people play him up to be.

<comment><USER14> Doesn't seem arrogant, just seems to be quite the introvert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The early days of TC were what Arrington did best. His writing was engaging and the his takes on startups interesting. But the urge of getting big had a significant — and I think negative — effect on the quality of the news. Countless stories of Twitter being down or Apple's Appstore rejections have damaged the TC brand.

Who's the next "TC of the early days"?

</comment><comment><USER16> > So I'm usually working on four or five hours of sleep. Then I make it up on > the weekends.

That doesn't sound healthy either! But if his doctor thinks so, and if he's not gaining 50 pounds like before, I guess it is. I'm interested, because I use his previous style (but my work is no as stressful, and I've been losing weight by eating less and healthier.)

</comment><comment><USER17> I really enjoyed that article. What strikes me is how driven and hard-working Michael Arrington is. Actually, 'compulsive' comes to mind. Which prompts me to think that successful entrepreneurs aren't motivated to succeed... they're compelled to succeed.

<comment><USER18> Some are just compelled to act on their ideas. Unfortunately, it doesn't always result in success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _I wake up pissed..... I fall asleep happy_

</comment><comment><USER20> An interesting and seemingly revealing article no doubt. I "choose" to buy it depicts Arrington's life genuinely.

That said, a couple weeks ago, Arrington wrote a piece on TC regarding the "psychomanipulative" techniques he uses when he writes to get the reaction he wants from his readers. Here's the link: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/05/blogging-and-mass- psychoman...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/05/blogging-and-mass- psychomanipulation/) but if you don't feel like clicking here is an excerpt:

"But then you start to get really good at what you do. You write something and you get trashed. The next time you try it a little differently and it the commenters love you. You don't even do it consciously – but over the years you just get better at it. To the point where you pretty much know exactly what the reaction will be to any given post, and how to tweak things to get the reaction you want."

Anyway, based on this, I'm left with a slight bit of skepticism after reading the Inc article. Is this the real Arrington, or simply the Arrington he wants us to believe? I'm not sure there are motives for the latter, which is why I choose to believe that the Inc article depicts his life genuinely, but not without some doubt.

Just food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER21> I didn't know that Michael had failed start-ups before TC. What were they?

<comment><USER22> Check out his LinkedIn profile for details about his work experience:

<http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelarrington>

Aside, from First Data Corp., he doesn't list which companies he founded. I would assume that he was the co-founder in those that he held a C-Level position: RazorGator and Pool.com.

He has an interesting background. For example, I don't think a lot of people know he has a Stanford Law degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "But then at some point in the past year, I suddenly lost my short-term memory." Has anyone else here run into this experience?

<comment><USER24> Actually, yes. Not completely (as in, not forever), and it's not very serious (I get the feeling of a failing short term memory in times when I'm more stressed out) but it's definitely cause for concern. I guess it is the combination of sleep deprivation and way too much stress.

<comment><USER25> This happened to me in my closing months of the old day job. I found myself at home, with no memory of how I came to be home, or of eating the dinner whose receipt was in my wallet.

Salaryman life, banzai.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> very impressive that he's moved to Seattle and is still as effective as he is...great article

<comment><USER27> When you are introverted like Arrington it probably _helps_ being away from the valley. Also, you don't have to turn down some many meetings/dinners/etc that are not as efficient as the phone or IM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> one of tech's most famous he may be, but I still wouldn't trade places with him .. not with a lifestyle like that.

but he does seem like a good guy despite this.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd love to know what doctor told him it's better to sleep 4 or 5 hours and wake up on an alarm than to sleep 8 or 9 hours and wake up whenever. Sounds like something out of a Rodney Dangerfield joke.

<comment><USER30> I've seen a study that people who sleep 8/9 hours a night typically don't live as long. Of course, correlation vs causation and all that.

<comment><USER31> It's actually bracketed: 7-8 is ideal. Anything less or more is bad for you (usual disclaimers, etc.):

[http://longevity.about.com/od/sleephealthandaging/a/sleep_du...](http://longevity.about.com/od/sleephealthandaging/a/sleep_duration.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Some more surprising bits:

 _Venture capitalists were smoking pot in my backyard and passing out on my couch._

 _I like hard music that is not happy music—Metallica, Eminem, Rage Against the Machine._

<comment><USER33> > Venture capitalists were smoking pot in my backyard and passing out on my > couch.

This is the west coast, right? You could replace "smoking pot" with "drinking booze" and the surprise level doesn't change all that much for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > For example, in July, a CNN journalist was fired for tweeting her opinion > about a Hezbollah leader. I wrote a piece about how ridiculous it was that > she could not have an opinion.

I know someone who works for CNN. It is in his contract that he cannot blog or otherwise express his opinion (and I assume not Tweet - contract predates Twitter).

<comment><USER35> > It is in his contract that he cannot blog or otherwise express his opinion

Exactly what is so ridiculous. That it wasn't a arbitrary decision doesn't make it a good one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Instapaper'd this. No way I can read that article on that website.

</comment><comment><USER37> curious as to why the date shows as Oct 1? Is something to do with the mag?

<comment><USER38> Probably because its in the upcoming issue of Inc. Magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't know Arrington personally, but this articles makes him sound very arrogant. Is this how he is normally?

<comment><USER40> lack of sleep, lack of patience, overload of work and very hard on himself I'd say make it that way.

I dealt with him only once and briefly, and it went just like a business transaction, straight to the point. No worries there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "This summer, since I'd just moved, I did a lot of household things—like unpacking or buying a shower rod. Depending on my plans, I may go out to dinner with my friends or my parents. Or I'll eat alone and then go back to work."

Key insights... tell us more!

<comment><USER42> I think the purpose of the Inc interviews is to just get the author to say everything, and I think a lot of people appreciate the honesty and lack of editing (removal of irrelevant content) in this article. I liked it.</comment></comment>


As China rapidly adopts clean energy, use of traditional stoves persists - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0432-x <comment><USER2> I keep hearing about China adopting 'clean energy' yet they are building more C02 emitting coal plants faster than ever.</comment>


Façade – we make rainbows - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rafal/hello-this-is-fa%C3%A7ade-c20f7087b08d#.sfol5sxh2 <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Associations of Cognitive Function with Carbon Dioxide and Ventilation (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/27662232 <comment><USER2> I keep seeing these studies showing that tiny increases in CO2 impair cognition, but I have trouble believing them. The US navy runs their submarines with CO2 levels that vary from 300-11,300ppm.[1] Their own studies show that CO2 levels of 4% (40,000ppm) do not affect cognition[2]:

> Thus, CO2 at 40,000 ppm for 2 weeks did not affect performance on multiple > tests of cognitive function in physically fit young airmen, a population > probably not unlike submariners.

CO2 tended to cause poor sleep, headache, and hand tremor before it caused cognitive issues.

Another bit of evidence that makes me doubt these recent studies is that the levels of CO2 in your lungs are much higher than what is in the atmosphere. Exhaled air is around 5% CO2. Each breath doesn't replace 100% of the air in your lungs. If you have a container that is 5% CO2 and you replace 80% of it with air containing 400ppm CO2, you're down to 10,320ppm. Inhale 1,000ppm CO2 and your lungs will be at 10,800ppm CO2. In other words: a 250% increase in atmospheric CO2 levels only causes a 4% increase in lung CO2 levels at the beginning of a breath. If such tiny changes significantly affected cognition, we would see impairment happen in many more circumstances (such as when walking or smoking).

If something's impairing cognition in stuffy rooms, I don't think it's CO2.

1\. [https://www.nap.edu/read/11170/chapter/5#47](https://www.nap.edu/read/11170/chapter/5#47)

2\. [https://www.nap.edu/read/11170/chapter/5#54](https://www.nap.edu/read/11170/chapter/5#54)

<comment><USER3> More recent studies than those from the 60s and 70s though have found that cognitive issues show up in different kinds of tasks:

[https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.1104789](https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.1104789)

Their measures of focused activity were nearly unchanged, while measures like initiative and strategy declined somewhat at 1,000ppm and sharply at 2,500ppm.

<comment><USER3> And this study found:

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1541931214581192](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1541931214581192)

"Within the limitations of this experiment, (1) breathing 4% CO2 for one hour slows information processing by impairing the response selection stage of processing and not the stimulus encoding stage and (2) with increasing time- on-task information processing is increasingly impaired and the magnitude of this effect is similar for each processing stage. These findings help define a useful model of human information processing and identify the locus of CO2 impairment."

That could explain the null results found by the Navy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The conference rooms at my office often have CO2 sensors on the wall.

In the interest of science, I discovered a few strong breaths of air next to the sensor will kick the HVAC on full blast.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've often complained that flying is the most exhausting thing you can do that involves not doing anything at all. Long meetings are number two on the list...

<comment><USER6> That's from hypoxia. Being in an airliner is equal to being at about 5,000'. The reduced air density means less oxygen and you get fatigued (also reduces cognition, coordination, vigilance and night vision).

<comment><USER7> Closer to 8000' in commercial airliners. While it's technically hypoxia, insofar as it's less oxygen than at sea level, I don't know if 8000' is enough to cause the effects you're describing. Anecdotally, I'm a fat smoker, and I don't seem to notice any of those negative effects at 8000', but I certainly notice them at around 12000' or so.

<comment><USER6> I didn't realize it was that high. I guess I was remembering from the Cessna 421 I flew, but we were cruising at more like FL250. Looks like the 787 brings it down to like 6k though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 1e-9 Many residential buildings have horrible ventilation as they commonly rely on the random forces of wind and thermal gradient to force fresh air through cracks around windows and doors and through other holes in the building envelope. This can lead to long periods of time with ventilation far below ASHRAE standards. Conversely, if you are getting enough ventilation through leakage, the quality of the air may be poor due to pollen or other pollutants. One way to address this is to set up a positive pressure situation with a high quality air purifier pulling fresh outside air through a ducting system like [https://www.iqair.com/sites/default/files/documents/InFlowW1...](https://www.iqair.com/sites/default/files/documents/InFlowW125InstallationInstructions_105_20_20_11_Mar2012.pdf). If you don't own your home or just don't want to run a duct through your wall, you can add a window kit such as the LG COV31735301 Room Air Conditioner Exhaust Duct.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just wait til atmospheric CO2 hits 600ppm!

<comment><USER9> I guess we found out how idiocracy actually happens haha

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've found that 5 minutes is about when the impairment starts.

<comment><USER11> How many people/what size room?

<comment><USER12> It's a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH of Ruby on Rails fame) gave a great talk recently on air quality: [https://youtu.be/MRqh8oLY7Ik](https://youtu.be/MRqh8oLY7Ik)

Apparently his wife was showing signs of Formaldehyde poisoning after they moved into a newly constructed home. This motivated him to investigate the air quality in their house and he bought industrial-level air testing equipment to figure out what was going on (since many of the consumer-grade devices were wildly inaccurate). He also did a deep dive into the research on how air quality impacts cognitive and creative performance. Fascinating talk, worth watching.

<comment><USER14> Just reached 4:30 sec and he has mentioned lack of ventilation in their house, which I know to be a common problem with new build housing through dealing with condensation problems.

UK: most of the bog standard double glazed windows have a little vent up at the top so you can open a fairly small slat and get a small air gap.

35min: his risk priorities are mould, particulate matter, volatile organic chemicals, co2, on the grounds that CO2 is easier to manage

<comment><USER15> The problem is that if it's cold enough outside that you need double glazing, then opening the slats would negate the benefit. Heat exchangers really are the only solution here, but of course the UK seems to be at least a century behind on residential building standards compared to anywhere else I've lived in Europe.

<comment><USER16> The idea is to minimize heat loss from conductivity through the windows, but accept the heat loss that comes with venting air.

Old single-pane windows were missing the vent probably because a) old building codes let you have less ventilation or b) the old windows were leaking air around the frames in addition to conductively leaking heat through the single- pane glass.

<comment><USER14> Acoustic isolation is a motivator for double glazing in some locations. And the vents are _small_ (6mm by 30cm full open).

Most Victorian era houses have 'air bricks' in various locations (terracotta bricks with a small grid of holes in them) and the houses were pretty leaky.

UK government is moving to remove * cooking on open gas from the building regulations for _new_ homes in a few years (big methane/burning fume generator). Eventually as post above parent says we will move to more rational ways of heating the houses. Piping an inflammable gas to millions of houses has always struck me as a bit strange.

<comment><USER15> I really hope they don't. One, electric cooking is shit however you wrap it up. I have found a large correlation between people being okay with electric cooking in places I've lived and also not cooking/not knowing how to cook. That's probably the only way electric cooking has become so prevalent in the UK. Who would want to anyway if stuck with electric?

Two, I do not want to have to wait hours for the tank to heat up again after someone takes half a minute too long in the shower.

The power just isn't there when it comes to electric water heating. I am very glad to live in a house with a combi gas boiler right now where the whole house can have a shower on demand, straight after each other if need be.

Until we all have massive heat pumps or some other way of getting high-power heat from domestic electric, it makes complete sense to me for us to pipe gas around while most of our domestic energy usage in the UK goes to heat.

<comment><USER17> Induction cooking is electrical cooking. Do you mean conductive electrical cooking?

<comment><USER15> Yes, induction does have higher max power in comparison to the terrible resistance hobs and the slightly less terrible ceramics. The problem with induction is that it doesn't work when you don't have a completely even bottom (on your cookware). Cookware warps over time. You can get induction wok stoves, but that misses the point. You can also get a nice gas stove with a massive centre hob for your wok needs.

Even forgetting the evenness issues, which ceramic stoves share too, the modulation just isn't there. Lower power on induction and ceramic means alternating the same power on and off. This does average out over the long term to a lower power, but what if you need a constant lower power? The power settings also tend to be discrete and far apart, which is again completely useless for a lot of fine applications. It's completely useless for instance you want your pilau rice to steam properly at the end of cooking at a low power in a shallow, broad stainless steel pan (as it should be), rather than sticking to the bottom of the pan.

<comment><USER18> Warped cookware works fine with induction hobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not just CO2, but heat lowers performance. Every time I go into an office and the AC is set to like 75 or higher, I just feel groggy. Set it to like 72, or lower, and it's a lot easier to stay awake. 65 or so in the winter is perfect, I love it when it's brisk in the office -- I get in early intentionally and before 8 AM it's nice and cool.

<comment><USER20> Got a source on how heat lowers performance? Because anecdotally, I beg to differ. I like it around 76F.

<comment><USER19> * Winter Wakes Up Your Mind--and Warm Weather Makes it Harder to Think Straight - Scientific American || [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/warm-weather-make...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/warm-weather-makes-it-hard-think-straight/)

"Despite this minimal deviation in temperature, the researchers found remarkable differences in cognitive functioning. In one lab study, participants were asked to proofread an article while they were in either a warm (77°) or a cool (67°) room. Participants in warm rooms performed significantly worse than those in cool rooms, failing to identify almost half of the spelling and grammatical errors (those in cool rooms, on the hand, only missed a quarter of the mistakes). These results suggest that even simple cognitive tasks can be adversely affected by excessive ambient warmth."

<comment><USER21> lol

When it is cold enough, body starts to shake, each muscle is convulsing, consuming glucose and making it into heat.

Brains use a lot of power that comes from methabolism. Could it be that human body tries to warm itself using brains to utilize glucose by doing cognitive tasks?

What cognitive tasks are most energy consuming?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Has this paper from 2015 been replicated or otherwise followed up since? I tried a quick google search but all I found seemed to be referencing this one study.

</comment><comment><USER23> So if I want to pull one over various people in a meeting, I need to make sure:

1\. Organize a long meeting.

2\. Invite as much people as possible.

3\. Pitch my stuff at the end of the meeting.

4\. Profit.

I jest.

edit: 5. Bring a small oxygen tank to keep myself sharp!

<comment><USER24> No because when people are impaired, they tend to choose the path of least resistance, which is often maintaining the status quo.

<comment><USER25> So, add some people that you know will agree with you.

That has all the smell of a con artist, and some people are good on sensing this. Others aren't, and if the population of the meeting is random enough, many people will fall over it. It is also not a new discovery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've only read the abstract but it seemed to imply that the well ventilated office with artificially high levels of CO2 (labelled Green+ ?) resulted in higher scores than the well ventilated environment with low CO2.

Am I reading this correctly ?

</comment><comment> chroem- In real life this is a non-issue since all commercial buildings that have undergone any sort of renovation in the last 25 years have CO2 monitoring integrated into their HVAC control system.

<comment><USER27> In which country and under which building standard? Because I can tell you, I've been in plenty of modern buildings all over the world where there was clearly not enough oxygen in several of the rooms.

<comment><USER28> Minor nitpick, but _not enough oxygen_ is not the same as too much CO2.

<comment><USER7> That's not a minor nitpick. It's important to note the difference. If you double the amount of CO2 in a room, that's still not a lot of CO2, and if you displace oxygen to double it, you've still got tons of oxygen. Humans are hyper-sensitive to higher CO2 levels, even while still getting a lot of oxygen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 2 hour meetings? At my workplace anything >30 requires some serious justification.

<comment><USER30> Sure but one room is probably hosting > 2 hours of meetings in a day.

Doors opening probably helps though?

<comment><USER22> Most commercial office buildings have forced air ventilation systems (in the USA).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> didn't read it, but what if you instead crank extra O2 in the office...do people's cognitive function improve?

<comment><USER32> Submarine anecdote: we'd bump up oxygen levels a little bit to make the crew more alert. Oxygen had a max spec that we worried about because high oxygen could cause fires.

Anecdotally a submarine crew is too exhausted to feel effects from CO2 when it's in spec. If atmospheric controls were down and CO2 shot up, headaches were normal. Far from a controlled experimental environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I had 8 hour meetings two days in a row last week. And we were all feeling it at the end.

</comment><comment><USER34> A former client of mine, Healthy Workers, is solving this problem by creating smart buildings that measure things such as CO2 and O2.

They are hiring a backend developer and other non-technical roles in Amsterdam.

[https://healthyworkers.recruitee.com/](https://healthyworkers.recruitee.com/)

<comment> chroem- But virtually all buildings already do this. In fact, it's often part of the (legal) building code.

<comment><USER35> No. Building Codes typically refer to a standard like ASHRAE 62, which basically prescribes a fresh-air rate for a space by size and occupancy. Demand based ventilation is not common in my experience (small commercial buildings).

<comment> chroem- I suppose it could be the difference between high rises and smaller structures. My projects have been very particular about it.

<comment><USER35> Probably right. Many clients view it only as an added expense for equipment. Beyond that, there is a certain type of client/owner who is skeptical of any automation beyond a bi-metallic thermostat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This explains why we went with Node for our next project.

<comment><USER37> Did you reply to the wrong thread?

<comment><USER38> He's suggesting that the impaired cognitive function from the increased CO2 is why they picked Node. (I.e: a joke)

<comment><USER37> Ah ok. That went over my head, but I get it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wow. I wonder what sleeping in a closed room does every night.

<comment><USER40> A while back there was a long thread on slatestarcodex on people's anecdotes about this question.

<comment><USER41> [https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/08/23/carbon-dioxide-an- open...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/08/23/carbon-dioxide-an-open-door- policy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I suspect the effect kicks in much sooner than 2hrs

</comment><comment><USER43> Can't imagine what the CO2 level of Congress is like.

</comment><comment><USER44> At the PPM required for cognitive impairment, how long does someone need to be in the area for this to measurably affect them?

I know at my workplace, we tend to have short meetings (thankfully!). However we inhabit the upper sections of old downtown square, which was 7 different buildings architecturally "glued" together. But when we do have meetings, they're back to back with other meetings given the shared meeting space.

But this is even more sinister if what I'm thinking is correct: the toxins accumulate even if it doesn't impair the first meeting (or 3), and effects worsen through the day for anyone in there.

</comment><comment><USER45> All that extra CO2 could also raise temperature locally inside the meeting room, at least if it's got sunlight shining into it somehow. And the increased temperature will probably make the people involved feel even less comfortable and thus less able to think clearly! We'll need to develop radically new technology to scrub all this CO2 out of the planet's meeting rooms and save the world from its detrimental effects.

<comment><USER46> The greenhouse effect is not appreciable at this scale.</comment></comment>


Help Scale NPM - <AUTHOR> http://scalenpm.org/ <comment><USER3> I'll be that guy; I'm a little confused as to why this would require $200,000 (the requested total funding requested) to solve. From the site itself :

614,680,691 requests per month come down to ~230 request per second. Allowing for some spikiness that boils down to perhaps 1k request/second at peak. Requests in these cases are mostly relatively simple queries on version-ed, highly cacheable data. I say highly cacheable because it is relatively static data for which most (if not all) of the data fields relevant for these requests can fit in memory of perhaps even a single node (NPM currently includes 48,799 packages. That leaves a very healthy chunk of data per package on 16Gb-128Gb RAM server boxes).

The downloads are a bit of a puzzle to me as well. On my machine the average NPM package is about 200Kb (YMMV). 114,626,717 downloads are mentioned on the site. 200k times 114 million downloads lands us on roughly 23 TB. Even on a relatively expensive CDN such as Amazon CloudFront the total monthly cost for that bandwidth and content request load for CloudFront and the required S3 costs land on about $3k/month and that's ignoring all bulk discounts, reserved capacity and so on (which are very significant at these volumes).

I'm more than likely oversimplifying a few things here and there (or failed horribly at math) but I'd still be very interested to hear why this requires such a large investment. Also, wouldn't the more obvious solution be to open source the npmjs software and allow the community to contribute knowledge and time instead?

EDIT: Quickly wanted to point out that I use npmjs.org often , is a great service and that donations are very well deserved. After re-reading my post it turned out more negative sounding than intended.

<comment><USER4> Every fuzzy-versioned dependency means one request to npm that you can not (really) cache - at least not without doing and relying on active cache invalidation. And if I look at my average npm install log, that's about half of the requests. For storage estimates you should also include that it's not only storing the packages but also all versions of the package. ~A year ago the registry was 25GB in size IIRC. And that was a freshly downloaded & compacted one on my machine. Especially considering that the growth will not suddenly stop, things get complicated.

Also: both the website and the registry is already completely open source. But hosting it with "perfect" uptime is a real problem and requires not only network/hardware but also people. Including testing and migrating to a new, more scalable solution - say a handful of people (2-4) will work on that for a month, which does not yet include future maintenance. That can easily mean $50000 just in salaries - or in "people that would normally bring value to paying customers" if you assume that those people will be fine with working that month without pay.

<comment><USER3> I see what you mean but allow me to theorycraft a bit more : Changes and removal of packages are considerably more rare than additions and either happens relatively infrequently. This makes cluster wide cache invalidation relatively trivial (it's easy but has scalability issues, and scalability won't be an issue here). Also, when I said "cached" I probably should have said keeping various indexes in memory to facilitate queries. I actually work with systems in a roughly similar technical domain (way different space though, I work on large scale TV systems).

Your other point is definitely the big challenge but that is exactly the main motivation to use hosted CDNs and other hosted services that have solved this challenge for you o a large extent.

I'm almost tempted to have a go at this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't it be better to make NPM more distributed so that anyone could set up a mirror and help out?

EDIT: Not saying it would be easy; I'm just wondering if you've considered this direction.

<comment><USER6> Anyone can make a mirror. That's the glory of CouchDB. Just kick off replication and BOOM you've got the npm registry. There are community mirrors in Europe ([http://npmjs.eu](http://npmjs.eu)) and Australia.

If you want to run or use a community mirror that's totally great!

npm config set registry [http://my.awesome.community.mirror](http://my.awesome.community.mirror)

<comment><USER7> I'm surprised they're using CouchDB and not MongoDB.

<comment><USER8> npm is pretty much the prime use-case for CouchDB. REST API out of the box, replication is a core feature and not just a scaling feature (multi-master, MVCC) and the validation/access control is pretty much made for it. The npm registry is implemented as a CouchApp for a reason.

<comment><USER3> I agree that from a functionality perspective this is largely true, at least on paper. That said, if running costs become a significant bottleneck CouchDB becomes a less obvious choice. Sometimes there's a reluctance to migrate from one technology to another as requirements change over time but this seems one of those occasions where exactly that step is required. Sometimes it's good to take a step back, look at your current requirements in terms of cost and performance and determine what technology best suits your needs. I would question the know-how and objectivity of anyone that would land on CouchDB/node.js in this instance.

<comment><USER8> There's no node involved in the registry itself. This is purely CouchDB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a big fan of npm but there are unanswered questions here.

1\. Why $200,000? Can we get a rough budget so we can understand how it will be used and how long it will last?

2\. We should all be thankful for the time and resources Nodejitsu/Joyant/IrisCouch puts into node and npm. That said, wouldn't the projects be better off separated from these businesses with their own funding? If we were donating money to the projects instead of a for profit corp we would have more certainty of how and when the money will be used. "Donating" to Nodejitsu just adds to their bottom line and in reality could be used however they want. If something happens to the business we have no guarantees the money would continue to be used for npm.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a bit confusing. Am I right in asserting the following?...

Commercial PaaS hosting firm, nodejitsu, is asking for _donations_ to pay (or help to pay) for the costs of running npm.

Nodejitsu plan on using said funds to purchase additional resources at Joyent, where npm is currently hosted.

Joyent own the trademark for Node.js

</comment><comment><USER11> But I thought node was web scale.

Edit: Yep that was a lame joke. Anyhow, take my money, I love NPM and use it daily.

<comment><USER12> Well, benchmarks show it's not more webscale than an plain old JEE app , or a go app or even javascript on the JVM ( [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/) ). By the way java 8 comes with a new js engine i believe,might be interesting to see if node get ported to the jvm with it.

Yes, it will be able to serve more concurrent requests than your typical python/ruby/php app.

But npm doesnt even seem to run on node, looks like it is a couch app. I dont know how it performs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to donate. But as most Germans I don't own a credit card. Why do so many people ignore that credits cards are not the default payment methods in some countries. I'd even accept to pay the extra fees for using PayPal.

<comment><USER9> Because there are very few ways of receiving payments from multiple source types reliably. PayPal is _not_ reliable.

<comment><USER14> This. It's also notorious for freezing assets from crowdfunding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think giving up money for more servers and hosting is really the answer here. I think de-centralizing and distributing the registry is really the way forward here. there is one project i know that is trying to make this happen [https://github.com/jmgunn87/mynpm](https://github.com/jmgunn87/mynpm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Appears to be running slowly. Maybe we need a scalescalenpmdotorg.org?

<comment><USER17> It's down now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the JS comments - made me laugh

      /**
       * Simple counter magic to make people engaged.
       *
       * @constructor
       */

<comment><USER6> Glad you liked it! The counting is derived from the last week of npm downloads uniformly distributed over time. [http://npmjs.org](http://npmjs.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always feel guilty about how much I end up downloading from the npm registry. I keep my nodejs projects is separate dirs, so I end up downloading the same dependencies over and over again each time I start a new project.

I wish the --global install switch was cleverer and allowed you to have multiple versions of the same package installed at the same time. Then I could just symlink everything together which would save them bandwidth (and save me diskspace).

<comment><USER20> npm actually caches packages locally, so don't feel too bad. Still if you have wildcard dependencies it will hit the main npm server to check if you have the most recent version in your cache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Better ideas than this:

* Offered paid, private registry that doesn't cost an insane amount of money. Somehow host it on the same metal as the public repo.

* Decentralize. Make it easier to setup mirrors or proxy/cache layers. If I had a simple to deploy npm caching proxy that didn't need to replicate every upstream package, only the ones that I use, it would reduce load upstream and protect me when upstream fails. ++ if I can host private packages there as well.

</comment><comment><USER22> They should take Bitcoin for additional exposure

<comment><USER23> To be honest, the "Card number" and "Security code" on the form struck me as a little weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder why they can't/don't make use of a CDN to scale downloads. Unless they do already and I'm not aware.

<comment><USER25> CDNs cost a lot of money.

<comment><USER3> Certainly less than reinventing the wheel. You have to include development cost, maintenance and so forth that is not needed or significantly reduced on hosted content delivery services. See my post in this thread for details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Countless hours have been saved by NPM. I would have donated a bit more if it let me input the exact amount.

</comment><comment><USER27> Considering that CouchDB was built to do multi master replication, it's just a matter of adding more servers and setting up automatic replication.

Also, is the current setup using any kind of front end caching like Varnish?

<comment><USER4> "built to do multi master replication" is a pretty naive way of putting it. Couch does not (by default) support a multi-master cluster setup. The way in which couchdb supports mutli-master is "you have different servers that sync data and conflicts are resolved on application level". And I wrote "data" for a reason because there's stuff you need to sync yourself if you want to have multiple couchdb servers appear as one to the outside.

<comment><USER28> True - multi-master in CouchDB means that you can have two CouchDB instances (or, indeed, anything which speaks the CouchDB replication protocol - <USER2> [http://www.replication.io/](http://www.replication.io/)) which can be synced and, in the event of a network partition, both instances can be written to. One of those masters could be CouchDB and one could be PouchDB in a browser or TouchDB on a mobile phone. Neither instance requires any coordination from the other.

Clustered CouchDB (BigCouch - on it's way to being integrated into CouchDB vNext) relies on the same MVCC semantics - it's just using Erlang rather than HTTP to transfer documents between clusters and attempts to keep the nodes in sync continuously.

Conflict resolution is tricky but CouchDB plays it safe and keeps all conflicting revisions of each document around until you resolve them to ensure no data is lost. It's pretty easy to find and fetch any conflicted documents so they can be resolved in an application-specific way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Regarding the banners, you say that the banner will be on the scalenpm.org site, anyway to get on the npmjs.org site or somewhere else with greater visibility?

</comment><comment><USER29> Could npm use torrent somehow? Reducing the load from the main servers? This would require users to opt-in and become a peer... just a random thought.

</comment><comment><USER30> Out of curiosity, how do they normally pay the bills?

<comment><AUTHOR> They mention somewhere on the site that they sell a private version of npm that they are working on, and also nodejitsu (the company behind npm) also runs a node hosting platform: [https://www.nodejitsu.com/](https://www.nodejitsu.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would only donate if they dump Nodejitsu.

</comment><comment><USER32> So... Will I receive an email or something to confirm that my donation went through?

</comment><comment><USER33> I want to give $50, can I just get a t-shirt?

</comment><comment><USER34> So now we live in a world where people extort you to fix their broken service. The first repository is always free...

</comment><comment><USER35> This website is not scaling well.</comment>


Eighth-grader charged with felony for shoulder-surfing teacher's password - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/eighth-grader-charged-with-felony-for-shoulder-surfing-teachers-password/

<comment><USER2> In normal countries when you forgot the key in the ignition and your car gets stolen as as consequence, the law comes down hard on the thief. And then the law comes down on you. To borrow Smokey Bear's slogan it's because "Only _YOU_ can prevent crime of opportunity!"

In normal countries, such things as criminal energy expended and severity of the crime also factor into the size of punishment, but that isn't the point here; the point is that through their weak security practices the administration fosters a criminogenic environment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9362307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9362307)</comment>


Customer Stories: I Want A Discount For Ordering Less - <AUTHOR> http://mywifequitherjob.com/customer-stories-i-want-a-discount-for-ordering-less/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's sometimes amazing to me how presumptuous customers (or potential customers) can be. Anyone have good advice for dealing with the crazies, or even just the crankies, in a reasonable manner?</comment>


Butchering HQX pixel art scaling filters - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pkh.me/p/19-butchering-hqx-scaling-filters.html

<comment><USER2> > Unfortunately, the reference code is more than 12.000 lines of unrolled C > code. This code is basically duplicated without a thought in every single > project.

Not by me. Overly bulky code is one of my pet peeves[1]. Here is my implementation of HQ2x in 6KB, 188 lines of code (not including the header file, which is 1KB and used for external linking.)

[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=DsNupdbc](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=DsNupdbc)

I devised a few observations to reduce the code. First is that the 256 patterns have four cases for each corner. If you rotate the eight surrounding pixels twice, the case blending rules match another corner (sans two cases which appear to be typos in the original algorithm. I asked the author, he apparently made the entire unrolled table by hand.) Now that the algorithm is cut down by 75%, put the switch statement into a lookup table.

To speed up the algorithm (and which further reduces its size), I use an old 16<>32-bit expand/compact trick, a YUV lookup table, and a really clever mask compare that blargg came up with. At this point, my version is already significant faster than the original algorithm. But I also added in OpenMP parallelization support, which really makes things run fast on multicore systems.

But anyway ... this guy clearly bested me. 560 lines with HQ3x and HQ4x included is even more impressive. Hats off to him!

([1] I also have inflate in 8kb of code, unzip in (inflate+2KB) of code, PNG decompression in (inflate+8kb) of code, SHA256 hashing in 4KB of code, an SMTP client with authentication+MIME attachments+HTML in 8KB of code, an XML parser (sans DTDs) in 6KB of code, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that's awesome. May I ask what method you used to figure out the algorithm?

> I asked the author, he apparently made the entire unrolled table by hand.

what the hell...

<comment><USER2> It was a mostly manual process. I was trying to understand why four rules (one for each output pixel) were needed inside every case statement. So I wrote a parser for the original source file that turned each output pixel rule into an integer representing what the code for it was actually doing.

From here I noticed the strong symmetry when you rotated the pixels. Which of course makes perfect sense, I was just able to confirm it here.

So I tried to reproduce the same tables using a LUT and rotate table, and matched all but two instances. This seemed really weird to me, since I figured this would have to be generated unrolled code, right? So I asked Maxim about it, and he said that they were probably mistakes. I was pretty shocked myself that he did this by hand.

I did a few blind comparison photos on my board to see if anyone could tell the difference (in practice it amounted to one or two pixel differences in each 256x224 upscaled image), and everyone actually favored mine, so I just went ahead and ignored those two differences.

I'm curious if the blog author noticed the same thing, or if he noticed the rotation quicker and only built his tables off of the top-left output rules.

Ultimately it looks like the blog author found a better route to reducing the comparison rules than I did. But I still don't think we've 100% cracked how and why the original author chose the rules he did. And since it sounds like it was done almost by sight, we probably never will.

Still, I'd really like to see if someone could find a way to generate the comparison rules mathematically. It's very likely that if we had some sort of scientific basis for when and why to blend each case, we could improve the visual appearance beyond that of the original algorithm. Obviously perfection doesn't exist. I'd expect the end result to be a function that takes tuning variables, and different input images would look better with different tuning values. But even for the default case, I bet we could do better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I just assumed it was symmetrical because I couldn't imagine it to be unrolled manually (I just quickly watched the visual representations of each side)... But now that you pointed out this I guess I'm going to check for differences, in all the filters. Do you remember on which side the typo was present?

And yeah, we still haven't really cracked the algorithm. I initially wanted to write the article as "understanding hqx", but I actually realized I still don't really get the rules.

Could you share the board post where you discuss your implementation?

<comment><USER2> Please understand that I wrote this code around late 2005, early 2006.

Unfortunately the discussion thread where I talked about this initially (on the ZSNES forums) has been deleted, or is for some reason not showing up in Google search results.

The best info I could find is here: [http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=82794#p82794](http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=82794#p82794)

But you can see how hazy my memory is. There I said there seemed to be six differences, but was already unsure of the exact number.

I am unable to find any posts where I mentioned what the exact errors were, nor where I spoke with Maxim about them. But if you really want to find out, it should only take a few minutes to write a parser for hq2x.c, generate the tables using my rotation approach, and compare the two. If you do so, please post which rules are different so I can file the info away somewhere.

Although I will say it's not too terribly important. The difference is extremely minimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice stuff ! I am wondering how we could use it to improve some of our stuff with this ...</comment>


What's New in Python 3.5 - <AUTHOR> https://docs.python.org/3.5/whatsnew/3.5.html <comment><USER2> Well, there's also type hints that so far we haven't added to "What's New" :)

[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0484/)

<comment><USER3> Type hints are not Pythonic. The syntax is ugly. It adds "stub files", like C's ".h" files, something newer languages such as Go and Rust don't need. Some of the proposed syntax is even in comments, because it didn't fit the language. But something had to be done to meet competition.

The problem Python faces is that Python's Little Tin God painted the language into a corner. He insisted for years that everything in Python had to be fully dynamic. This limited performance.

Then came competition in Python's space. Go came along, Javascript got traction on the server, and Python faced a real threat. Both of those can beat Python on performance, sometimes by huge margins, and they're useable by Python-type programmers used to the freedoms of scripting languages.

The Python 3 debacle had already thrown the Python community into disarray - most of the production work is still on Python 2, which was supposed to be abandoned but refused to die because the cost of conversion was much higher than expected. Meanwhile, Python 3 takeup was far less than expected; numbers like 10-20% come from downloads, and production use is probably less. Another incompatible change in the syntax would be rejected by the market. An incompatible change to a "typed Python" wouldn't fly.

So we get PEP 484, which is ugly but might help Python survive. Might.

<comment><USER4> As far as I know type hints don't affect Python's performance, because they're optional and not yet used by the runtime.

In any case, JavaScript is dynamically/unityped, so its performance is unlikely to provide a reason for type annotations. The real problem here is that PyPy is still maturing, and can't be used by many people because of legacy C extensions.

<comment><USER5> An they're unlikely _ever_ to be used by the runtime, because what hints there are are far too vague. Saying something is class X is useless when you don't know what attributes that class has (because they can be dynamically added and removed) nor what types those attributes are.

<comment><USER6> The level if information modern Python tools like those in PyCharm and JEDI can reason through to and discover about runtime behaviour is actually pretty impressive. I don't think it's going to pose a huge challenge for these kinds if tools to find. Dealing with ambiguous cases is a UI problem, too much info, not enough space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm extremely enthusiastic about `async/await` semantics, and in particular async iterators and the `for async` loop.

It's astonishing to see how fast Python is moving in this direction. It is truly a powerful language for async computations now - surpassing in this ability both JavaScript and C# (at least for now). For example Python got `async with` but JS isn't even close (userland solutions like Bluebird's using exist) and C# is only starting to work on `IAsyncDisposable`

<comment><USER8> This is awesome!

I want to ask:

\- Does it mean that it will be possible to create realtime apps with python? Will it be possible to use it instead of node.js? Do you think Django will implement that functionality?

\- Now that WebAssembly is coming - doesn't it mean that it could be possible to create both backend and frontend for realtime apps in python?

That would be so cool....

<comment><USER7> > Does it mean that it will be possible to create realtime apps with python?

I'm not sure what you mean by realtime but usually real time means something else and requires more deterministic behavior.

If you mean applications that use non-blocking IO to great extent then yes, but this depends a lot on the ecosystem to provide libraries for async file io, database io and so on. The Python language left good infrastructure to use though.

> Now that WebAssembly is coming - doesn't it mean that it could be possible > to create both backend and frontend for realtime apps in python?

Not anymore than we could before with asm.js unfortunately as seen in [http://repl.it/languages/python3](http://repl.it/languages/python3) the problem is wrapping and the library, I hope a company "picks up the glove" and makes "Python for the frontend", sharing Python code between backend and frontend could be amazing.

<comment><USER9> People have started to hijack the word realtime. It's truly sad, because now it just muddies up people's conversations. So now people have to ask, is it the one that keeps planes in the air or the one that makes sure your email badge counter updates.

<comment><USER10> I wish there was a better alternative term for the web sense that I could promote, just to help un-hijack the word before it gets out of control. But I don't know of one that is likely to succeed. 'Responsive' makes sense to me but it already has another meaning in the web world. What about something like 'reactive' or 'on-the-fly'? People will never go for 'near real-time' because it sounds too weak in terms of its advertising value. Someone else below me suggested 'push', which is pretty decent but again it's an overloaded term... Thoughts or suggestions? :)

<comment><USER9> I'm not much of a wordsmith, but I am leaning towards "forthcoming".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one surprised by Zipapp (since 2.6?). Wish I had known about this before ... [https://docs.python.org/3.5/whatsnew/3.5.html#whatsnew- zipap...](https://docs.python.org/3.5/whatsnew/3.5.html#whatsnew-zipapp)

<comment><USER12> does PEX still have value?

[https://pex.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://pex.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought % formatting was the "old way" and we're supposed to use format() in Python 3. Strange that they're adding % support to bytes now.

<comment><USER14> As long as % formatting still works, it is in many ways more convenient that format. '"Foo: %s" % bar' is a lot shorter to write than '"Foo: {}".format(bar)'. And % formatting is still built into logger, so if you use logger heavily you will probably be used to it.

While the format() mini-language is nicer in a lot of ways, the convenience of % and its ubiquity mean that I generally use it more often. The main time when I reach for format() is when I need more detailed control of column widths and the like, which you can do with things like "{var:{width}}".format(var=var, width=width)

<comment><USER15> Personally I dislike % formatting even if it's a few characters shorter to type. .format is superior in every other way and has consistent-with- everything-else method call syntax.

Edit: I think it's largely the special flower overloading of the % operator that bugs me the most. If % was spelled .sprintf I'd like it more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lots of good stuff in here.

Python 3.5 may actually be what finally convinces me to move to Python 3 (that, and the end of Python 2.7 support coming up in a few years).

The new async stuff, finally fixing some of the problems with byte strings that made them not really an adequate replacement for Python 2.x strings, and os.scandir is a substantial performance improvement over os.listdir plus calls to stat (though os.scandir, at least, is also available in Python 2.7 via PyPI).

<comment><USER16> For what it's worth, even if the core Python developers discontinue support for 2.7 (and they might not, it was originally supposed to EOL this year), there is enough Python 2.7 code running in the wild, making people money, that some entity will certainly take over maintenance responsibilities. Python 2.7 is here to stay for a very long time if only because of the huge amount of legacy code written in it.

<comment><USER3> _" Python 2.7 is here to stay for a very long time if only because of the huge amount of legacy code written in it."_

True. It might even outlive Python 3, just as Perl 5 looks like it will outlive Perl 6.

<comment><USER17> It will stick around like Perl4 did and then fade away with time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> These kinds of advancements in the language are why I'm glad I've switched to Python 3, Python 2 needs to die already.

<comment><USER19> Python 2 will never die. Ask Kenneth Reitz for example. He says he will use Python 2 forever. There are a lot of companies with huge codebases who never will port to Python 3.

<comment><USER20> > Python 2 will never die.

Everything dies.

> Ask Kenneth Reitz for example. He says he will use Python 2 forever.

So, assuming this currently-stated intent never changes _and_ Reitz is immortal, Python 2 will always be in use.

The first of those premises is somewhat suspect, the second even moreso.

> There are a lot of companies with huge codebases who never will port to > Python 3.

That's probably true. Its less likely true that those companies will never port _off_ Python 2.

<comment><USER21> > Everything dies

Python itself might die when Python 2 dies, and arguably, Python 3 makes that more likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Note: The "What's New" document is not up-to-date yet. See [https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/3.5/Misc/NEWS](https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/3.5/Misc/NEWS) (warning - it takes time to load) for a more complete list.

</comment><comment><USER23> I am a bit reluctant about asking this but where do we stand in terms of real world performance? This is such a broad topic, I know, but surely there has to be some in-house metric system about this (perhaps popular web and scientific frameworks, game dev frameworks etc).

<comment><USER24> An image-reading tool I maintain works 14 times faster in Python 3.4 compared to Python 2.7. I have no way of accounting for the difference though.

<comment><USER25> This is probably the first time I heard of such a speedup when going from 2.7 to 3.x, and the fact that you can't account for it makes it worse because we can't evaluate what's happening and if such speedup could be achievable on other projects :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How much of this is planning on being backported to python 2?

<comment><USER27> Python 2 is feature frozen. 2.7 gets bugfixes and security improvements and that's it; new language syntax/features only happen in 3.x.

<comment><USER16> Except large chunks of the 3.5 standard library has been backported and are available via the cheeseshop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> While there are some Python experts around I have a question; in the world of Python 3 does it matter between 32-bit and 64-bit anymore? I remember a while back the only real option was 32-bit as most libraries were 32-bit only, especially on Windows where Python wasn't fantastically supported compared to Linux/OSX.

<comment><USER29> If you're downloading pre-built binaries like on Windows then unfortunately yes it does matter if you're using 32-bit or 64-bit libraries. Windows in general has always been a bit of a second class citizen with Python library support, although it will hopefully improve with easier access to compilers (there's a free version of visual studio tools for python library compilation apparently now). If you just want a lot of libraries that 'just work' you're probably best served using a pre-built distribution like Anaconda. If you're more adventurous this page has all kinds of pre-built libraries for Windows in both 32 and 64 bit: [http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/](http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/)

Alternatively it's insanely easy to spin up a Linux VM with vagrant and just compile and run python scripts from there. Everything will pip install without any issues.

<comment><USER18> Windows is a second class citizen for most language library support, that being said though Python does a great job of having the most recent versions available for Windows. The same can't be said of Ruby unfortunately. :(

<comment><USER28> Many thanks for the replies. Much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's going to be hard to get used to having the function body 'less' indented than `def`.

</comment><comment><USER31> Maybe this is obvious, but what would be the difference between the new async / await def and the current @asyncio_coroutine decorator?

Or between the new async / await and the current asyncio?

</comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone retain their legacy Python2, write new in Python3, and communicate between processes, read/write from a common database, and just in general keep 2 and write new in 3?

<comment><USER33> Someone somewhere is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I still use Python 2.7. I guess I should upgrade.

<comment><USER35> I've found this website useful for checking which packages have made the jump.

[https://python3wos.appspot.com/](https://python3wos.appspot.com/)

<comment><USER36> That site uses a very outdated list of popular packages. Use [http://py3readiness.org/](http://py3readiness.org/) instead.

<comment><USER35> Thanks!

<comment><USER36> Actually, did I speak too soon? I looked back at python3wos and they _have_ updated their package list.

It looks a lot like the one on py3readiness.org now, and it doesn't have all the nonsense like "tiddlywebplugins" that it used to have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How come `bytes` and `bytearray` got old-style formatting? Aren't we trying to do away with that in favor of a `format` method?

<comment><USER16> It's much more convenient to decode bytestreams (e.g. for a wire protocol) using % formatting. The lack of % formatting for bytes was a huge impediment for porting mercurial to python3, just as an example.

<comment><USER37> Could you point me to a code example? It's hard to see how old-style formatting would facilitate _decoding_. Typically, I think of decoding as being a process which _deconstructs_ something; not like formatting, which is really more about _constructing_.

<comment><USER38> I think he just meant encoding, which is true.

I remember Armin Ronacher (author of many nice things, especially Flask) even wrote a blog post against Python 3 and this was one of things he hated about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I hate the new @ operator for matrix multiplication, it just looks ugly. (And I use numpy matrix math all the time.) But whatever.

<comment><USER7> As a fellow numpy user - why? I would love having sugar for this, I use it all the time. Introducing a _single_ operator to overload seems odd but it's definitely a pragmatic solution to making code more readable. What would you do instead?

<comment><USER40> Personally, I'd have made it a diglyph of some sort, like :* or ^*, to make it obvious to someone looking at python math code for the first time that this is a multiplication operator. @ just leaves a weird taste here.

<comment><USER41> Agreed; this needs an operator, but it doesn't need a single-character operator, and the operator should have had * in it.

<comment><USER16> The pros and cons of different operator possibilities are discussed extensively in the PEP that added the matrix multiplication operator.

<comment><USER42> Direct link: [http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0465/#choice-of- operat...](http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0465/#choice-of-operator)

<comment><USER43> What about the & char?

<comment><USER16> & is the bitwise and operator.

<comment><USER43> Yep, forgot thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> We should appreciate the contributions of Serhiy Storchaka, who appears to be in the Ukraine (or Kazakhstan, or Tajikistan).

</comment><comment><USER45> Oh my god they finally removed the GIL!

<comment><USER46> Umm, no? [https://docs.python.org/3.5/glossary.html#term-global- interp...](https://docs.python.org/3.5/glossary.html#term-global-interpreter- lock) \- "The mechanism used by the CPython interpreter to assure that only one thread executes Python bytecode at a time"

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Does it really matter if nobody is going to upgrade past 2.7?

</comment><comment><USER48> Looking good. Soon I'll just be waiting for the announcement that they have sped things up 10X, and I might finally be able to let go of my Python ennui.</comment>


Ask HN: Manager forwarded my resume to recruiter, can I be positive? - <AUTHOR> Out of desperation, I directly mailed a very senior manager IT at a big tech company. The manager mailed me back and asked me a few questions and then he mailed me finally that he has forwarded my resume to their recruiter. It has been a few days since but haven't heard from anyone. Should I still be hopeful because I am everyday hoping to hear from them desperately and can't focus on anything. It is also because it is the best job with the best company I can work with. Also is anyone familiar with recruiting and how it works, I mean normally how long does it take usually for a recruiter to get back to you ? <comment><USER2> You've done your part. It's in their hands now. Whether or not you'll be contacted remains to be seen, but for now assume that it's in a black hole. If you get a response, cool, awesome. Cross that bridge when you come to it. What to do now is to go find 10 more jobs like it and apply. Then find 10 more, rinse, repeat.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on the company, and this could be anything from a bad sign to an okay sign. I think the real point here is that you shouldn't get all of your hopes around one company, but be applying to lots of companies so that you're not held back by small number statistics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks smeyer, I am trying. Its just that I took this unconventional route and almost seemed like it worked for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Three Ideas to Move Forward -

1) Follow up with the Hiring Executive, once a week. Show interest and persistence. *Be very careful NOT to convey desperation. That's a major turn- off. Signals something may be wrong with you.

2) The recruiter may have an active slate of qualified candidates already. Hopefully he received your CV. But time kills deals. If he hasn't responded, you're NOT his priority. General rule, the Bigger the company, the slower, more bureaucratic, and dumber they are.

3) Defeat desperation by coming up with more prospects. Focus your energy there. Identify and reach out to profiles just like Senior Mgr IT. Linkedin is a great place to do this research.

</comment><comment><USER5> It could take 3-5 weeks, so don't make the mistake of contacting the manager because you "just wanted to check in".

Sorry. Waiting sucks!

<comment><USER6> I don't agree with this advice. I agree not to send an email just saying "hey just wanted to check in", but you should absolutely follow up with the manager.

JSeymourATL gave some good advice IMO.

If this is even a moderately larger organization you can easily get lost in the shuffle and the hiring manager may not even know this because he thought it was all taken care of. In fact, he could wonder why he hasn't heard from "that guy he talked to" and then blow you off later because you never followed up. It is a delicate balance between stalking and diligent persistence but trust me persistence pays off.

Also, I do agree with gamechngr and others that the larger the organization the longer it can take to get a response. 1-2 weeks is not abnormal at all. Also, think about it this way, the recruiter could be out sick for a few days or whatever, and then has a stack of work to do when s/he returns.

One option is to follow up with the manager in a week and just ask for the contact of the recruiter so you may follow up with them as you understand that as a manager they have a lot of priorities to balance, or something along those lines. This assumes you don't already have the recruiters information, and if you do, start following up with them weekly.

<comment><USER5> Ironically, I actually totally agree with davismwfl, maybe I should have been more thorough in my response.

Following up in a a week (if small) or two is exactly what I would do, but my original post was just to say "don't rush it". Most of my offers have taken 3 weeks to get the appointment and another three - four weeks to get to the sign or walk stage. I have mostly looked into bigger companies though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Different companies work differently; YMMV. However, if it was in fact a very senior hiring manager with an open req for the job, it would be unusual in my experience for the recruiter to take more than a couple of days to a week to get back to you. This is basically the recruiters 'client' giving them the direction "I'm interested in this candidate". Not hearing back means to me he probably sent your stuff over with an "I got this resume out of band, and it didn't light my fire, so put it in the stack with the rest of them and put them through the normal vetting process".

Of course, some HR departments (usually at huge companies) simply work at a glacial pace. I've had recruiters call me weeks after the hiring manager and I had agreed on salary and dates telling me that I still had to go through their process (I didn't in the end take that job, btw).

Good luck, and stop fixating on the idea that there's one "best" job or one "best" company. That's not how the world works.</comment>


Product Discovery not Software Development - <AUTHOR> http://lolstartups.com/post/325938610/product-discovery-not-software-development

<comment><USER2> _This article was inspired by a heated discussion on irc.freenode.net #startups about whether not supporting IE and even Firefox is a viable strategy for an early-stage startup._

Here's how I see it: your software doesn't "not support IE". Your software "doesn't support IE _today_ ". You have the rest of your life to rectify this if it matters to you.

Other things may, for the moment, be higher on the priority list. That is OK. For example, if your are getting 10 visits a day, and your software does not support any printer but the default one, a non-trivial percentage of your ten visitors a day will be much happier with you if you fix that. However, for the moment, you'll have better business results if you work on your SEO to get to 100 visits a day, and tell anyone who complains that you're sorry and that a fix is in the pipeline.

My software really didn't support any printer but the default one, for about two months in summer of 2006. I am probably the only person alive who remembers this, because customers have more important things to do with their lives than remember and remark upon software that didn't meet their needs.

My friends who strongly advise against launching "half-functional" software like this say "But but but you'll poison your brand image with everybody who gets bitten by it!" First, if you actually manage to establish a brand image to poison you're far ahead of the game. Second, it isn't "half-functional", it is "fully functional for the set of functionality implemented right now". The people who just print to their default printer don't perceive it as damaged. Similarly, IE support should almost certainly be on your roadmap, but if it doesn't work today that doesn't mean your Firefox users will curse your name.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a great point. Early adopters will put up with bugs and crappy tech if the app _solves a real pain and makes them happy_. It's all about love, not IE6.

</comment><comment><USER4> While I do understand and agree that the initial stages of a startup are about Product Discovery, what I would like to understand more is when startups realize that they have hit the right product. Like what metrics can be considered as an indicator that your product is finally converging towards a point where a signinficant chunk of your target audience will find it useful and use it

</comment><comment><USER5> Got it. So, in order,

1\. Customer Development 2\. Product Discovery 3\. ??? 4\. Profit!

Right?

<comment><AUTHOR> tell me more about 3 plz</comment></comment>


Volvo and Uber team up to develop self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volvo-uber-idUSKCN10T12B <comment><USER2> I am trying to imagine these vehicles in the situations I drive within: * gravel roads that are washboardy * gravel roads that are difficult when covered with deep snow or deep ice * the dirt roads across fields that I use to scout deer or to get to a friend in a combine * the one-lane dirt road I was on this last week as I headed into a hike for a waterfall * our two-lane paved roads during the winter</comment>


Which Cloud is the least dirty: Google, Microsoft, or Amazon? - <AUTHOR> https://www.soapboxproject.org/archives/may20-reflect-corporations <comment><USER2> Probably the least informative article about cloud technologies I have ever read</comment>


Ask HN: What is the HN of economic news? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What do you mean by this? Are you asking about recent economic news stories or about the quality of websites and journalists themselves?

<comment><AUTHOR> An economic/investment community forum of the same caliber as The Hacker News</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Getting clients for a solo enterpreneur developer - <AUTHOR> I would like to ask experienced solo entrepreneurs in the software development sectors or anyone with viable actionable advise for tips on getting clients. <comment><USER2> A top response will make the point of word of mouth; using your network.

As someone with a deep network in my area, it still comes down to an ask until your stream is inbound.

With your Ask HN, I'm interested to know what some are using to build defensible funnels and not just hope that your network comes calling. My area is branding and my clients have purely been inbound but not a steady stream.

What is it? Door knock business parks? LinkedIn leads? DMs on Instagram?

</comment><comment><USER3> The best clients/projects will come through people you know and can recommend you or award the work directly.

Build your network, talk to family and friends about what you do, what value you can provide clients.

Reach out to people you meet, keep building your network.

You never know who you'll meet/talk to that has a connection to a potential client who has a development need/problem you can solve.

</comment><comment><USER4> Meet with your customers, and be prepared to answer: What can you do for us ?

</comment><comment><USER5> do things that don't scale. If applicable, create live mockups or real-life use cases with client's branding, as if they're already signed up and using your service.

</comment><comment><USER6> Your network is key to success.</comment>


Getting sued for using Apifier to scrape websites - <AUTHOR> https://search.rpxcorp.com/lit/txedce-175278-spider-search-analytics-v-human-data-project-inc-d-b-a-hdp-health <comment><USER2> Damn that sucks! Just searching for Spider Search Analytics LLC brings up so many patent cases.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So today I got an email for using Apifier.com as a scraper and apparently and infringing on the patent of Spider Search Analytics LLC.

Has anyone else who has done scraping (which I'm sure are many of you) dealt with this? This seems pretty unprecedented an insane, not for getting sued by using another websites content, but by using a scraper at all.</comment>


Ask HN: Starting a Company on a Cofounder's Patent - <AUTHOR> My friend invented a very exciting technology over the course of many years and received a patent on it. We have been casually working together on developing and commercializing it and there are many promising signs. We work well together and trust each other, and plan to formalize the project by incorporating.
I know typically founders are encouraged to assign all relevant IP to the new company, but my friend thinks his patent is worth >$100m and wants to maintain personal ownership of the patent. I'm worried that if we start a company that uses the invention without owning the patent, our company could be killed at any time by the patent holder. While I trust my cofounder, investors may be turned off and the patent could always end up in the hands of a less benevolent owner.
Is there any way we can safely start a company using his invention without holding the patent? Perhaps my friend can grant a license/authorization to the new company? Or is my friend being delusional and should just assign his patent to the company?
Any thoughts will be appreciated–thanks! <comment><USER2> > but my friend thinks his patent is worth >$100m

This is almost certainly delusional, especially if it's a software patent. Although that may not prevent you from building a $100m business on it.

> and wants to maintain personal ownership of the patent.

This was one of the WeWork shenanigans with the trademark being held by the owner.

> I'm worried that if we start a company that uses the invention without > owning the patent, our company could be killed at any time by the patent > holder. While I trust my cofounder, investors may be turned off and the > patent could always end up in the hands of a less benevolent owner.

These are reasonable worries.

The bare minimum for any company with multiple founders is to sort out the initial equity distribution. This may not be 50/50 if it's his patent, but it needs to be something you're both happy with. It's a difficult conversation, but it only gets more difficult if you're successful and there's real money involved.

The bare minimum for the company should be a permanent non-revokable license for the patent. He may want it to be non-sublicensable and non-transferable, which are reasonable requests.

If you can't satisfactorily resolve this between you, your working relationship is not good enough to run a business between you.

You also need to ask your co-founder: when someone comes and offers $10m equity investment into the business on condition that the company is fully assigned the patent, would they really say no?

<comment><USER3> > The bare minimum for the company should be a permanent non-revokable license > for the patent. He may want it to be non-sublicensable and non-transferable, > which are reasonable requests.

I think this is the most important thing in your response. Hopefully, OP listens and lifts it with his co-founder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! This could be a solution–I'll research this and discuss with my cofounder.

<comment><USER4> This will also put your co-founder in 100% control of whether or not an exit will happen. You won't be able to sell the business if a critical patent doesn't come along with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Generally it's not uncommon for companies to be started by licensing existing patents from other companies. The nature of that license matters more than who owns it - things like how long it will last, what you can and can't do, do you have exclusive rights, etc.

I am curious who paid for the patent application. Usually this is a lengthy and expensive process. I am also assuming that the inventor was employed somewhere while they developed this stuff - have the employers signed away their rights to the IP?

I would also point out that patents on their own are basically worthless. They do not protect small startups from being copied because you cannot afford to sue a competitor. At best they are a signal to investors that what you have invented is sufficiently unique as to pass a patent search, but even that is not saying a whole lot.

In short, I think the patent itself is a secondary issue. The problem seems to be a lack of incentive alignment between the founders. I would also suggest you look into some of the issues I've stated above, such as who the assignee currently is, who the co-inventors are, if there are any other parties who could have claims over it. This I see as a potentially bigger problem.

<comment><USER2> > I am curious who paid for the patent application. Usually this is a lengthy > and expensive process. I am also assuming that the inventor was employed > somewhere while they developed this stuff - have the employers signed away > their rights to the IP?

This is also an important point. Everywhere I've ever worked has requested all patent rights. If the company is successful you may have to deal with a lawsuit (merited or not) from the founder's previous employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would strongly recommend assignment to the company. As you allude to, any investor will want to see core IP in the ownership of the company, and to not have this, even in the presence of a cast-iron license agreement, will be off putting.

Having said that, you could mitigate through an arms length license agreement but it would have to be water-tight and obviously there's a tension between protecting your friend's patent and protecting the company's rights in that patent. The more it protects the company, the less confidence your friend would have (perpetual grant of rights vs time-limited, termination triggers etc).

You could also always start off with a license to give the company confidence, but if you are subsequently looking to fundraise and see investors are being put off, look to assign the patent to the company. The license could even incorporate an option to purchase to give the company further certainty that for the right price it could acquire the rights.

Hopefully some food for thought!

</comment><comment><USER7> I have been in similar situations and I would (and did) go for putting the patent into the company or walking away. Maybe with your shares vesting based on milestones. Companies do license patents (in my country this would put a strain on the company as a license implies you have to pay for it and that sets all kinds of precedents with respect to value etc, not sure how that works elsewhere) but those are usually in different situations; if you like each other and work well together, then this is the better (short and long term) option in my opinion.

Edit: also, and again in my experience, investors and buyers will find the company to be worth a lot more; we had a perpetual license with all the protections in the past and we had a lot of investor hesitance to take risks as they were worried about the IP for the core product of the company not actually being in the company. The license did nothing to alleviate that.

</comment><comment><USER8> yes you can license the patent to the startup under a non-revocable license. Make sure that the license rights pass on in case of "change of control" (acquisition, merger, sale). You should be able to google for this agreement. its pretty standard.

if you do a non-revocable, transferable license grant...it should be investor friendly.

</comment><comment><USER9> You say he worked on this for many years. How old is the patent? Could be new or old but it makes a difference as they expire after 17 years.

Also do your own informal search for prior art to at least understand whether his patent is novel... most aren't. Patent examiners famously do not do a good job at this determination.

Also the patent may well be worth 100m in his dreams but in the real world it is execution of ideas that matters and makes value. Ideas are worth basically zero without execution. But he may take offense if anyone tells him this!

Of course patents may be worth slightly more than bare ideas but it really depends on the patent and the prior art. Many patent lawyers will gladly file any patent as long as they are paid, even for a poor quality idea that should be unpatentable or that has prior art, or that offers no protection due to workarounds being available. Good luck.

<comment><USER10> > Could be new or old but it makes a difference as they expire after 17 years.

Assuming US, it would only be 17 years if the patent was filed before 1995. The term then was 17 years after the patent issued. For patents filed 1995 or later, the term is 20 years from the date of filing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wouldn't proceed. The problem is your partner did his work previously and your friend feels like he has a 100 million dollar worth of value.

How is he going to extract that 100 million? Through the company you will build for him. Any licease he assigns he will want 100m value for it. If things go well problems will start over how much each should get. If things don't he has an escape route ready. Worse if things go really well he can sell a licease to another company with bigger pockets.

I would create my own company and buy access to his patient through a percent of ownership + a fixed amount per product/service sold for a period of time with the right to renew.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google was started based on a patent owned by Stanford (PageRank). This was kind of bad for Google, though, as Stanford ended up making hundreds of millions off them for providing an exclusive license. The patents have only just expired this year.

<comment><USER5> "Bad for Google" \- you're making the opposite point that you think. In practice it doesn't matter who owns the patent, what matters are the licensing terms. Google make hundreds of millions in a day now, and PageRank was probably irrelevant to Google's core revenue streams within a few years.

<comment><USER12> Am I? If Google had owned the patent, they wouldn't have had to pay Stanford to license it, saving loads of shares/money, and the licensing terms would be moot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Patents do not give the assignee any protection against IP theft. It merely gives them the right to litigate.

I'm not suggesting this idea as your primary position. However, your new company could just ignore his patent and infringe. If your company is "successful" it will likely have more financial wherewithal than your friend. He'd have to raise a lot of money to fight your company.

This is clearly and obnoxious move, but totally legal (IANAL but I hold 5 patents).

<comment><USER13> Also, have you read the patent? The protection is only offered to the claims not the specification (all the rest of the text). Do the claims actually cover the up you care about or could you do what you want differently (even if covered in the specification) without doing what's in the claims?

The patent may not actually cover what you want to do. Alternatively, can you find other prior art that negates the claims? The patent issue process does not perform and exhaustive search on prior art. It could by that you could invalidate the claims if it ever claim to litigation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps you could have an agreement in place that should the company be dissolved, the patent gets reassigned back to him.

<comment><USER15> If the patent is where significant value of the company lies this will be an big issue for investors.

<comment><USER14> I'm a VC and I would be ok with this arrangement.

It's important that the patent is owned by the company, but if the company ends up failing, I've already lost my money anyways, and the likely value I'll get out of liquidating some IP is negligible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stipulating that the patent is worth $100 million. Do you want to be in business with someone who isn't satisfied with $50 million? Someone who sees you as a competitor? Someone who doesn't want you to get rich? Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tell us the patent number? I understand there may be good reasons to not share it, and you're still getting good answers regardless. Still just thought I'd ask as it would be interesting to see HN pick it apart.

</comment><comment><USER17> Delusional or not - I think his thinking is reasonable. That said, you should ask him to give perpetual license to the company and it's a win-win.

</comment><comment><USER18> You're _effectively_ asking your friend to start a company with you and invest whatever the patent is worth (maybe $100m, maybe $0) without any equivalent input from you. Why would your friend do that?

In your situation I would suggest to your friend that he starts the company owning 100% of the IP (and maybe the company) and assigns you 50% with a 5 year vesting schedule and a 1 year cliff (so during year 1 you'd have nothing, at the end of year 1 you'd own 10%, at the end of year 2 you'd have 20%, and so on). You might want something that defines what happens if you exit before the end of year 5. That way he has much less risk personally because he retains ownership until the company has proved to be more worthwhile than holding the IP on its own.

<comment><USER9> You seem to think ideas have value without execution.

I meet people like this at hackathons sometimes.

They tend to say things like: "I want to start a company. I already have the idea. Since I supplied the idea, I'll own most of the company but I'll be really generous and let you have 10% equity if you just write the program."

Things don't work this way.

<comment><USER18> _You seem to think ideas have value without execution._

No I don't. I think _patents_ have value without execution - in so far as you can license the patent without doing the execution yourself. To that end, the author of the thread has to try and persuade the patent holder that it's better to go in to business with him than it is to license the patent to whoever will pay. That means mitigating the risk that the patent holder is taking by offsetting it over time.

<comment><USER9> But there are garbage patents.

<comment><USER18> Sure. Maybe the one the original thread author is talking about is garbage, but I'm willing to be charitable and accept he probably isn't an idiot and has done a bit of due diligence to check. So, _assuming the patent in question isn 't garbage_, what I said stands.

<comment><USER9> That's a pretty large assumption though. Most people including many, many, tech people I have met are, to use your word, idiots about patents, essentially suspending all disbelief as if it is some kind of powerful magical certificate that validates the idea.

So what you said stands but only in a world I haven't encountered, and I have a few patents and have been around the block on this one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: How to make ISP realize? - <AUTHOR>

I have been using internet connection from BSNL in Bangalore. These people don't care an iota about uncountable number of times I have made complaints about their broadband service which keeps getting mysteriously disconnected time to time. I have checked all the cabling and am sure that problem is on their side. To add more to my frustration, today I couldn't book urgent tickets and within 20 minutes all the travel tickets are gone. This ISP has left us emotionally baffled... these tickets were too important to us. How should I take revenge from these ignorant morons? The morons who provide internet to IT hub of India and claim to connect India, in my case they have disconnected me from my relatives and furthered my daily frustrations. What to do? (apart from complaining which never works with these people) In the time when globalization has touched even inner parts of India, this ISP employs people in customer care who don't even know India's national language, forget them to understand well, when you speak in English. Ideas on how to take revenge from them are welcome. I can be imagined to be looking like 'Angry Monkey' of the Family Guy series right now. <comment><USER2> I don't know what your options are in Bangalore, but couldn't you cancel your service and use a different company?

Taking your business elsewhere is always the best possible revenge.</comment>


One Zoom to Rule Them All – Lord of the Rings Cast Reunited [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_U0S6x_kCs&feature=emb_title <comment><USER2> The title does not match what the video actually is, I'm not sure what it was, stopped after ten seconds of what seemed like a music video ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a very long and kind of annoying intro for the channel</comment></comment>


Google Trends (Very useful, for those who don't already use it) - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends <comment><USER2> It won't be useful for new startups since there isn't enough "volume" to create a trend.

It is, however, an interesting tool for observing on going patterns. Here is a trend I tried with "Web 2.0" and "Digg": http://google.com/trends?q=Web+2.0%2C+Digg&ctab;=0&geo;=all&date;=all</comment>