Jason Calacanis Knows He's Spamming Google, He Just Thinks It's No Big Deal - <AUTHOR> http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2010/02/22/apparently-jason-calacanis-knows-hes-spamming-he-just-thinks-its-no-big-deal/ <comment><USER2> While it's always a bit annoying to see a meme take up article slots on Hacker News regularly, I don't mind this one. I see sites like Mahalo as doing massive disservice to huge numbers of people --

* thousands of AdWords advertisers that have paid for their ads to be matched with content sites, not scraper pages with a huge ad to text ratio

* thousands of publishers whose work is being scraped, aggregated and outranked without as much as a backlink

* millions of web searchers that are hitting these pages instead of the real sources of the content they were searching for

And calling out companies that harm the fabric of the web for everyone else is worth doing.

<comment><USER3> The question is: why doesn't google do anything about this? There are countless such pages. Why not just blacklist domains? Or artificially give them lower pagerank?

Or is it okay as long as they get ad-sense money?

<comment><USER4> Isn't there a search engine out there that takes into account the advertisements vs. content ratio? It would be trivial to get rid of Made for Adsense sites by scanning for the Adsense code used and seeing how often it's used on a page and the percentage of the page it takes up.

<comment><USER5> Google allows you to have three ads though. If you had a page with three ads and the best written 500 word article on it's topic, your definition of MFA sites would have it banned even though it is obviously a ton better than most sites around.

<comment><USER6> For smaller publishers, it's usually three blocks of ads plus two blocks of link units. For those not familiar with AdSense, link units are the horizontal or vertical lists which take the visitor to a search results page rather than straight to an advertiser's page.

I think a strict definition of MFA is always going to be a little grey, but there's clearly something wrong with pages that are nothing other than widgets, scraped content and the like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really too bad Google doesn't allow you to simply blacklist domains from your search results permanently. The thing that frustrates me the most about these SPAM sites is the fact they're constantly popping up and my down voting of the result seems to do absolutely nothing unless I'm using the exact same search query. Just let me blacklist Mahalo and other sites like it permanently. Better yet make it possible to subscribe to a blocklist so the community can pool it's resources and fight back.

<comment><USER8> I request this from Google every couple of months. If I could remove an entire domain from all my personalized search results, I'd be soooo happy.

<comment><USER9> I've requested this, too. I even switched to Yahoo! for a few hours because they let me blacklist expertsexchange.com (since changed to redirect to experts-exchange.com). I don't see the option on Yahoo!'s page anymore.

<comment><USER10> expert sex change .com?

<comment><USER9> Yes. It used to show up in Google search results as expertsexchange.com. After being thoroughly razzed, they made it redirect to experts-exchange.com.

Since it was called expertsexchange.com at the time I blocked it in the Yahoo! search results, I took the liberty of referring to it by its old name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Jason Calacanis is the Paris Hilton of the web.

Mahalo is not particularly interesting, not particularly evil, he doesn't really do anything, and yet - we keep talking about him and putting his shit on the front page of hacker news.

It's a mediocre aggregator/linkfarm, with some mechanical turk style incentives for humans to contribute, and a nice chunk of $ in the bank. Just ignore/mock him for another year or two until the funding runs dry.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are absolutely right, it is mediocre crap. The issue is that through the spam techniques described in the article, he can now gain undeserved top 10 rankings for many phrases using pages that have no business being there.

If you are not part of the web development community then these discussions will most likely bore the hell out of you. However, if you are, and if you are aware of how many innocent sites Google bans or penalizes on a daily basis, or AdSense accounts that get canceled with no appeal for offenses much less than his, then this stuff actually matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the things I really miss in google is a persistent blocking preference a.k.a. site blacklist. Mahalo would go straight in there, along with expert- sexchange, sedo parking and a few others.

<comment><USER13> Depending on the browser you use, this is easy to do. I have experts-exchange and other useless sites blocked using greasemonkey/greasemetal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sedo parking is a bitch tho, since by it's very nature it's tons of different domains. You would need a way to block by app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> a year on, maybe not so crazy now eh? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485618>

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, got any stock picks you want to share? :)

Nice call.

<comment><USER14> someones network of contacts > everything

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> SEO is snake oil. This is further proof that the whole "industry" is ruining the integrity and usefulness of the internet.

<comment><USER16> That is the angle Jason used when he created his steaming pile. It doesn't mean that anyone in the industry agrees with Jason's strategy.

And if you want to place the blame where it belongs remember that Google is the company funding all this content scraping with their ads programs.

I just tried searching for a recent post from an official Google blog (about AdSense using referral data for more relevant ad targeting) and found a scraper site with their ads outranking them for their own content. Pretty sad.

<comment><USER17> Actually, pretty savvy.

Google gets paid for the scraped site because of ad impressions and possible clicks.

Google does not get paid for running an informative blog, in fact it's a cost to them.

Google cares about getting paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >> "Currently when I look, Google tells me that Mahalo has 356,000 pages indexed"

I see 'Results 1 - 10 of about 2,200,000 from mahalo.com'

Have things stepped up a gear or am I misunderstanding?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, different datacenters will show different results... sometimes very different. It also matters if you are visiting Google.com or one of the country variants.

According to what Jason said in another comment, however, all of their pages are listed in their xml sitemap, and all of those are listed in a master xml sitemap index located here (warning! huge files if you follow the links in the first one!):

<http://www.mahalo.com/sitemapindex.xml>

Based on what I saw 2 million+ looks like a huge overestimate, if what Jason said is true.

Edit: My bad, frederickcook's answer was the right one. I didn't realize you were doing a regular text search.

<comment><USER19> There are 12 sitemap-mahalo.xml files, each with 50,000 urls in it. The 12th has 48,661 urls by my count. That gives a total size of 598,661 pages.

Methodology:

      wget http://www.mahalo.com/sitemapindex.xml
      cat sitemapindex.xml |sed -e's/[<>]/\n/g'|grep ^http|xargs wget
      for P in sitemap-mahalo.xml* ; do echo $P ; cat $P |sed -e's/[<>]/\n/g'|grep ^http|wc -l ; done

Edit: Formatting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> this is getting really old and we're not interested in doing anything black hat or even gray hat. as such we're doing the following:

1\. we're removing (or building out) any page in our system created by our users with under 200 words of original content. This will take a couple of weeks but it's tarted.

2\. we're not letting users create stub pages (short pages) until we can noindex them and put them in a different directory (i.e. /stubs/) so google can easily tell the difference between them.

these pages are < 1% of our revenue and low single digits of our traffic. we don't benefit from them materially, and I think we're being targeted by Aaron Wall and other SEOs for my "seo is bullshit" comment from 2005 or so.

I guess that is fine... I gotta live with the ramifications of what I say. however, for the record I don't believe that SEO is BS any more... when i said that it was when we were building joystiq and autoblog and we spent zero time on SEO.

All that being said, we're being targeted by a small group of folks who want to take us down. we're only going to get stronger from this because our hundreds of contributors are rallying around building out the short pages.

Topix, Kosmix, NYTimes and Zimbio are all making quality topic pages and are not getting attacked over it. not sure why there is some double standard.

regardless.... this is not a material thing for us. we're flushing all these pages and moving them to a different directory going forward so that search engines know where they are located (i.e. /stubs/ ).

thanks for the ass kicking.... having a horrible day today over this.

jcal

<http://bit.ly/jasondown>

<comment><USER21> _we're removing (or building out) any page in our system created by our users with under 200 words of original content. This will take a couple of weeks but it's tarted._

or

 _i'm also getting a list of every page under 300 words and having the page managers build them out in 30 days or deleting them._

from: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1143512>

is it under 200 words or under 300? are the goal posts moving already?

<comment><USER20> 300 is the goal right now.... we're making plans right now.

.... keep the attacks up, only makes us more motivated.

<comment><USER16> There is a big difference between stating an observation and an attack. You can (and have) dismissed the Google guidelines as irrelevant. But you shouldn't slag off others as spammers if you are going to do far worse.

You are the one who attacked people. We are simply tracking how well you performed in your efforts.

Hold yourself to your own standards or close your mouth. Period.

<comment><USER20> Aaron: let's be real for a moment. You're a bit of a troll and you're certainly obsessed with me to an unhealthy level. I'm flattered, but it is getting old.

You pointed out some minor stuff we could do better, we're doing better. Now go back to your basement and hit F9 on Chatroulette.

<comment><USER22> Jason, either you are not actually reading what aaron's saying or you have an emotional intelligence worse than my mother. Just saying.

Aarons stating facts. You are responding ad hominem. Perhaps you should hold off on the reply button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> this is getting very, very old. can we move on? please??

<comment><USER6> It's obviously of interest and importance to a number of people involved in this field or troubled by poor quality material showing up in Google. If you're not one of those people, it's pretty easy to identify these links and not upvote them or visit the articles/comments, etc.

There are countless articles on HN that I have no interest in (e.g., I don't even know what Clojure is), but I just don't click through to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Think this thread has gotten way out of hand.

A lot of the comments in here seem like more of a personal attack than anything else. You might as well change the title of this post to "Jason Calacanis ruined the Internet" or something to that effect..

Can we stop the drama already? I think we're going to need a hose to control this mob.</comment>


Ask HN: Navigating US healthcare regulations as a technical founder? - <AUTHOR> Hi there. I am working on a startup in the healthcare technology space. I am a solo founder with an engineering background and am building an MVP by myself.
My issue is that I have trouble navigating the various regulations that come with doing business in this space. I am generally aware of HIPAA but would ideally like to find someone with much more experience to serve as an advisor or even cofounder.
How should I go about this? <comment><USER2> The ideal candidate would be a physician with the regulatory and clinical background, both in depth and years, to advise or cofound your startup. I know one :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I would agree with your description of an ideal candidate. I've edited my profile to include my email address.

<comment><USER2> Great!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN my Hackathon Project: Visual Craigslist w/ HN's algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://5thavenue.chartboost.com/ The concept was to rethink the way we browsed Craigslist and shopped online. The main section, the "homepage" is a tree map of recent craigslist posting sorted by popularity using a slightly modified version of Hacker News' ranking algorithm.
The newest page is a masonry view of the realtime stream of the craiglist posts as they are added to the system (much like Hacker News' newest page.)
The top page is the masonry view version of the homepage.
The game page is a FaceMash-like game for the posts, which influences the overall scores and popularity of items. <comment><USER2> If I find something I want to buy on Craigslist my incentive is to hide it. On HN it's the reverse.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The concept was to rethink the way we browsed Craigslist and shopped online. The main section, the "homepage" is a tree map of recent craigslist posting sorted by popularity using a slightly modified version of Hacker News' ranking algorithm.

The newest page is a masonry view of the realtime stream of the craiglist posts as they are added to the system (much like Hacker News' newest page.)

The top page is the masonry view version of the homepage.

The game page is a FaceMash-like game for the posts, which influences the overall scores and popularity of items.

</comment><comment><USER3> Too bad this will probably be banned for eating up a lot of CL bandwidth. See prior hack called listpic: [http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2007/06/08/jim- buckmeister...](http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2007/06/08/jim-buckmeister- qanda-why-craigslist-banned-listpic/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd be surprised, but our entire service does not make a single request to the craigslist servers.

We get the craigslist postings from the 3taps API, which themselves scrape Google Caches to import that data.

The images are typically hosted on services like imageshack or flickr. We store everything in our own database and keep track of our own version of the data, which we stream from the 3taps firehose.

<comment><USER3> O RLY?

<http://i.imgur.com/ccBEs.jpg>

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. Fair enough. But, even then, the requests come from the client browser, rather than our server, which is much less likely to be a problem to CL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do I get to the Craigslist ads? Clicking on the images appears to do nothing under Mac OS and Chrome.

<comment><USER5> Working on this feature. We ran out of time to implement this for the hackathon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do you parse craiglist in realtime? Won't they block your server?

<comment><USER5> The data all comes from the 3taps api (<http://3taps.com>), which is who is sponsoring this hackathon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand the Game part of the website. How does picking one item among a pair of two completely different items (e.g. a motorcycle helmet vs. Castor oil) influence score?

Considering it was a hackathon, maybe the algorithm you developed isn't complete to show two similar objects...unless you intentionally chose to do it in the manner you did. Just curious why.

Fun website by the way :)

<comment><USER5> The images are just pulled from a single category on craigslist. So we currently have no way of separating out the motorcycles from the motorcycle helmets, without further filtering.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's beautiful. I don't know if Craigslist is the optimal medium, but I like looking at it. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty cool. I am currently shopping for a motorcycle and it is much nicer to be able to browse the images. I do wish that it didn't gray out the image on hover though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER11> Seeing it on android... Can't understand what the site is about.maybe something is not working

</comment><comment><USER5> WE WON! WE WON! hip hip hurray! hip hip hurray!</comment>


Ask HN: Practical ways for a Malaysian to set up business in the Valley? - <AUTHOR>

I'm an owner of a close-to-ramen-profitable startup who has always wanted to set up business in the Valley. I'm in my early twenties, personally quite rich (made some stock market dough, kind of like Eduardo Saverin in the Social Network), speak good English, know American culture, etc. Is basically joining an accelerator program like Y Combinator the only practical way? <comment><USER2> There are multiple issues here. Likely the stickler is going to be immigration status, since without a work-capable visa you can't meaningfully participate in a startup. This is totally orthogonal to joining a tech incubator at the moment: YC matters in the Valley but being accepted into YC will not magically grant you a visa.

Depending on how rich "quite rich" is, you may be able to qualify for an investor visa in a US company. If this is the high percentage option for you, start talking to an immigration lawyer ASAP.

If that is not an option, suffice it to say that the difficulty of getting a legitimate visa into the US is probably the biggest single challenge you'll face up to Series A or so. (Believe me, I sympathize.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe that you need US$500k for an investor visa. Has it changed?

<comment><USER2> AFAIK the current standard is low to mid six figures, depending on circumstances and the whims of the examining officer. It has been a while since I needed to be up on this, though, so don't treat that as gospel. (I used to deal w/ US immigration peripherally on behalf of Japanese clients. These days the geta is on the other foot.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I checked out your startup zuupy.com , its a daily deals site for business owners. I'm not exactly sure if YC would want to fund another daily deal site ( unless its a specific vertical, like daily deals for sports/theater tickets )

Not sure if you would want to put in $500k just for the sake of being in the Valley.. Alot of non-valley startups doing very well too. If you really need the connections, best way is to make a kickass product and the investors will come knocking.

Probably start with the hard grind - join a startup that offers a h1b, then go from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wait. Why would you use a throwaway account?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's another quick way. As a Malaysian national, if you have a master's degree or 5 years of work experience. If you can get a US company to employ you and sponsor your green card. You can get it within just a year.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its $500k if your business is setup in designated distress areas, for other areas its $1 million. From what i hear there is something called a "Regional Center Program" where you don't have to manage. There are companies which do it for you (and manage your immigration process). You just have to write them a big fat check and hope you will get it back in 5 years :)

Just google for EB5 investor visa and start contacting the law firms!

</comment><comment><USER6> I know at least two Y Combinator companies who moved to Valley. I believe YC helped the founders to get L1 visa.

If a US company or person is a partner in your company, then you may be able to get a L1 visa. I guess this can also work out if you have a US based investor, but I recommend to confirm from an attorney.</comment>


Goodbye, Sourceforge - chris-at http://helb.github.io/goodbye-sourceforge/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sourceforge is essentially a gigantic set of Google doorway pages which MITM downloads initiated by unsuspecting (largely non-technical) Internet users of popular free-as-in-beer projects. They're open about doing this. [https://sourceforge.net/blog/gimp-win-project-wasnt- hijacked...](https://sourceforge.net/blog/gimp-win-project-wasnt-hijacked- just-abandoned/)

These "mirror" (MITM) pages outrank the authoritative sites for many projects because Sourceforge has been around for 10+ years and has superior trust/backlink profiles compared to the newer author-blessed sites which presently host the software. Gimp is actually fortunate in this regard -- gimp.org is stickied to the top spot when searching [gimp] and Sourceforge floats around #8 or so.

Sourceforge should get hit with Google's standard penalty, which is "we smite your rankings with the hammer of an avenging god." _Minimally_ , Google should at least tighten up their enforcement of AdWords policies. Their "installers" are per-se violations of the Unwanted Software Policy ([http://www.google.com/about/company/unwanted-software- policy...](http://www.google.com/about/company/unwanted-software- policy.html?hl=en)).

How about it, resident Googlers?

<comment><USER2> There you go.

[https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/](https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/)

<comment><USER3> Reported. If you report, please provide some reason. I provided- "embeds malware/adware with downloads"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be honest I can't say I have any good memory of Sourceforge. It used to a heavy website with a confusing UI, and never really got better over the years. When Google Code started, I was glad I could move to it, and then GitHub.

<comment><USER5> Yeah I don't get this "SourceForge, once a trustworthy source code hosting site" \-- that is simply untrue. Maybe for the 1st year or two after its launch, but it has been subject to all sorts of crappy management since at least 1999/2000\. I used to have projects there, and contribute to projects there (argh memories of terrible CVS) and it was always slow, always had a terrible UI, and very early in its history became submerged in bad ads and out-links to bad content.

It should just die.

<comment><USER6> That you misremember it or are too young to know better doesn't mean that it "is simply untrue". It's not, it was valuable for many years. It's your revisionist history that is simply untrue.

<comment><USER5> It's not revisionist, I'm 40 years old and have been consuming and participating in OSS since before SF existed. It was painful to use, even in the context of the times. Granted, there wasn't really any alternatives in the first few years of its existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're downloading open source software on Windows, friendly reminder to get it via Chocolatey rather than ever clicking on a download button. Chocolatey has reviewed, silent, direct, crapware free downloads of just about anything you'd want.

[https://chocolatey.org/packages](https://chocolatey.org/packages)

<comment><USER8> Ninite is pretty slick and crapware free.

[https://ninite.com/](https://ninite.com/)

I can't wait for the new package manager in Windows 10, though.

<comment><USER9> It would be cool to have a Windows "official" package manager, however I don't think their initial launch is going to be that.

From what I understand, it's more of a "package manager-manager" so it manages other systems (like Chocolatey) rather than running the repos itself.

<comment><USER10> There is Windows Marketplace for that.

<comment><USER11> I have a $25 credit in the Windows Store, and I cannot for the life of me find a single thing worth buying.

<comment><USER7> Windows 10 will include desktop apps in the Windows Store: [http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/29/desktop-apps-are- coming-t...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/29/desktop-apps-are-coming-to- the-windows-store/)

In the meantime, I'd drop $5 on Hitman Go: [http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/hitman- go/5fa3bb...](http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/hitman- go/5fa3bb42-c32b-4b1f-9fde-bd2c3d5f3241)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For a second there, I thought this was an official GitHub page and thought "Wow, those GitHub guys really have balls to attack SF that directly". But then I realized it is "helb" and not "help" in the URL.

<comment><USER13> Wonder how many others thought exactly the same, I did too.

<comment><USER14> Sorry about that… [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9624068)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was shocked the other day when I went to grab FileZilla from SF, and my virus scanner tagged it for malware. I hadn't realized it had fallen so far as to bundle crapware. SF used to be my goto site for looking for weird open source stuff. Now I guess I will have to finally take SF off my list goto sites.

You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

<comment><USER4> It was FileZilla's developers who decided to bundle crapware with their installer on SF so can't really blame SF on this.

See there: [https://forum.filezilla- project.org/viewtopic.php?t=31127](https://forum.filezilla- project.org/viewtopic.php?t=31127)

"This is by design. In any case, nothing is forced upon you, all offers are entirely optional and are only being displayed during setup."

<comment><USER16> > See there: [https://forum.filezilla- > project.org/viewtopic.php?t=31127](https://forum.filezilla- > project.org/viewtopic.php?t=31127)

Strange, almost every comment on this page say the crapware was added by SourceForge, e.g.

> The offers are added by SourceForge, they are borderline crapware to put it > nicely.

<comment><USER4> SourceForge offers developers to add crapware to their installer in exchange for a revenue. This is completely optional and I suppose most dev don't do it (I distribute some semi-popular installer on SF and they've never forced me to include adwares).

The FileZilla developers have never been very vocal about this so most of their comments is a generic "Nothing unwanted is being installed without your consent", but they are the ones who have accepted to add the adware. And even though they also have clean installers, they put the ad-enabled link first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find this state of affairs rather tragic. To see what was one of the pioneers of the global open-source movement reduced to such infamy.

<comment><USER18> TBF, the way I see it they only did the hosting and making the money; I don't remember them actively supporting open source or the ideals behind it, or being open source developers themselves and contributing, or making their own software open source. Having a revenue model that involves making your users guess which DOWNLOAD button will actually download the application is not the open source spirit.

<comment><USER19> AFAIK their website was originally open source, with GForge, FusionForge, and GNU's Savannah based on it. Then they had a longer stint staying closed, but they opened back up a couple of years ago, and their current software, Allura, is open source again, though (slightly ironically) now as part of Apache.

<comment><USER20> The core developers behind it were always Open Source advocates.. but we were always at a war with the corporate overlords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've found that Sourceforge is still the only place you can get a lot of good- but-unmaintained software. I was there just the other week for the Saxon project[1], and it was painful to see how low SF have sunk.

I wonder if it would be possible (and legal) for somebody who isn't the project owner to copy some of these unmaintained projects into another system?

[1] [http://sourceforge.net/projects/saxon/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/saxon/)

<comment><USER22> I remembered Saxon being an Apache project, but it's not. I must have remembered wrong. Anyhow, it should be an Apache project.

[http://www.apache.org/#projects-list](http://www.apache.org/#projects-list)

<comment> guard-of-terra Xalan is Apache project so there will be redundancy.

(I remember they had a dozen Java MVC frameworks 10 years ago tho)

<comment><USER22> I think I might have things mixed up with Xalan. It's been a long time since I used it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If I were a project manager who run a sourceforge account the last thing I would do now is abandon it.

Why? Because SF have proven if I were to do so they'd take my work under my name and bundle their crap into it. The only way to stop that is to keep it active.

That feeling of being trapped into a terrible system because it'll screw over people even worse if you leave.

<comment><USER24> That's illegal (with the European laws).

<comment><USER25> Which laws?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps it is worth asking the mirror services to put some pressure on as well as the content creators?

These are two popular mirrors in the UK & Ireland (both academic institutions):

[http://www.mirrorservice.org/](http://www.mirrorservice.org/) (University of Kent)

[http://ftp.heanet.ie/](http://ftp.heanet.ie/) (Ireland's National Education and Research Network)

<comment><USER27> As Github.com lacks afaik a binary hosting / download feature and Google Code closed its service (no new projects) - it would be great if all the Sourceforge mirrors (heanet, etc.) would be coordinated from an open source community instead of coordinated by Sourceforge.org. There is definitely a need for a binary hosting and mailing list website for open source projects, to fill the hole that Sourceforge may leave behind.

I remember the "BerliOS" from a Germany's Fraunhofer institute that was a kind of clone of Sourceforge, a open source project hosting service. It was closed in 2013 and some valuable code and binaries are lost forever.

<comment><USER28> Github does have a pretty good binary hosting / download feature, it's called Releases. There's even an API to automate it. It's not very widely used, perhaps because it only rolled out it 2013.

About Releases: [https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your- software](https://github.com/blog/1547-release-your-software)

An example: [https://github.com/adobe/brackets/releases/](https://github.com/adobe/brackets/releases/)

As for mailing lists, I guess their excuse is that they already provide possibilities for discussion in the issue tracker (which can be also interacted with entirely by mail). This is appropriate as a forum for developers - but not a forum for users, which would be out of Github's scope, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can Archive.org/etc backup all the open source projects from Sourceforge.org and Google Code? It would be a big loss if the unmaintained but often still very useful source code get lost forever.

<comment><USER29> There is some work being done by the (unaffiliated) Archiveteam to do that, see [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=SourceForge](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=SourceForge) and [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Talk:SourceForge](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Talk:SourceForge)

Help if you can, it's fun! #archiveteam on EFNet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well, to be honest, this is exactly where Sourceforge has been headed for years and years. You could look at its behavior years ago and say "Yeah, follow this out on a line" and see this exact situation in the crystal ball. Sourceforge has been scummy (and getting scummier) for years and years.

<comment><USER31> I remember actually keeping a couple of service accounts on services that served as mirrors for SF for years just because they backed the service (early on, before a lot of the sleazy stuff started).

Unfortunately, short of registering a trademark with the PTO, it'd be difficult to get a lot of this crapware removed from SF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Author here. Thanks for your pull requests, I added some of the suggested services. Maybe some comparison table (like the one at Wikipedia) would be better than a simple list.

About that help/helb confusion mentioned here – sorry about that, it's not intentional, it's just my nickname since 2nd grade or so.

</comment><comment><USER32> What's unsettling about this is that Slashdot also belongs to the same company that turned SF into the crapware distributor that it is now.

<comment><USER33> Slashdot split from Thinkgeek a few years back.

<comment><USER34> Both Slashdot and SourceForge are currently owned by the company that owns Dice.com.

<comment><USER33> Good point. Thanks.

I'd thought Collab.net ended up with them. Need to review the history.

<comment><USER35> Collab ended up with the business version, SourceForge Enterprise Edition (SFEE), which was a Java rewrite of sourceforge.net shipped as installed software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like how you don't have an option to shut down your project to help clear those links from Google. Either you keep it up to date or SF will "step in" and do it for you.

<comment><USER37> That's the whole point of open source. If a developer abandons a project, someone else can pick it up and keep it going. And if you disagree with some of the developer's choices, you can fork the project and make your own version. Sourceforge is a great example of how someone evil can take advantage of the features of open source to do bad things.

<comment><USER38> I'd amend that to "someone evil who's built up a 'good' reputation for long enough that they dominate search rankings...." I don't know that what sourceforge is doing is a _unique_ situation, but it's AFAIK not a common one. It's not going to have the same effect if I start bundling open source installers with malware and hosting them on my own, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's high time that SF lands on malware blocklists.

</comment><comment><USER40> May be worth noting that GitHub supports SVN as well ([https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion- clie...](https://help.github.com/articles/support-for-subversion-clients/)), I believe some of the others do as well IIRC.

May be important to some legacy projects trying to get off of SF.

<comment><USER41> If they also added a Mercurial bridge, that would be the final nail in SF's coffin.

It's sad that with Google Code going away, a lot of projects that chose Google Code for Mercurial are being pushed to switch to git (e.g. vim) because Google is pushing so hard for projects to be migrated to GitHub,

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I still have a project hosted on Sourceforge ([http://sourceforge.net/projects/pinyinput/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/pinyinput/)).

They haven't injected their own installer on downloads so for the time being I leave it there because I'm too lazy to move it off.

A while back I did move the main project page to its own domain, so I'm only really using Sourceforge for downloads and source control (although the project is stable and hasn't had commits for a long time so not even that really).

</comment><comment><USER14> So i changed the service list into a simple table. Also, Gitlab providers are listed separately. Any ideas for a domain name? :)

<comment><USER43> gitalternatives.com is still available. By the way, thanks for including GitLab so prominently on your site. Any chance of including a column for free private repo's with unlimited collaborators? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Ah the old days when Sourceforge and Freshmeat were some of the go to places for OSS when I was learning Linux in the 90s. Occasionally I'll end up back at SF somehow and man how terrible it has become. Makes you really appreciate places like Github now a days.

</comment><comment><USER45> GitHub has been the go-to online source control for so long, I'm sure no one will miss SF.

</comment><comment><USER46> Whenever I've had to go to a sourceforge page to download software I always think, ugh I have to deal with this crap again? (UI, annoying redirects, can't find correct versions, etc) I honestly never understood why developers used the website for distributing binaries, I understand code hosting, but not the distribution (this was before they hijacked stuff).

Hopefully, this will hit a chord with enough projects that they will altogether stop using sourceforge.

<comment><USER6> 10-15 years ago, there weren't that many other options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Guilt by association? Perhaps SF is not the true source of badness/malware but instead they tend to host the projects most likely to include such malware.

<comment><USER48> No, they definitely are... [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/05/source...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/05/sourceforge-grabs-gimp-for-windows-account-wraps-installer- in-bundle-pushing-adware/)

<comment><USER47> Tsk, that's pretty damning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I like that they open-sourced their engine. [https://allura.apache.org/](https://allura.apache.org/)

</comment><comment><USER50> I still land on SF now and then, to download sources that are hosted there. But that only happens because another site's "Download" button sent me there. In the beginning I was very impressed with SF. But as others have said, the UI is rather confusing and those ads they've been showing would devalue any site they run on to "lower-tier crap you need rubber gloves for". A sad development.

</comment><comment><USER14> Someone posted it to Reddit, discussion here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/37pz5x/](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/37pz5x/)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm really surprised at how many people in this thread are Windows users frankly. I just presumed that most YC commenters were OS X/Linux people with a few FreeBSD, etc.. OSes floating around.

<comment><USER52> I'm really surprised you'd think it's standard for YCers to only use one operating system.

<comment><USER53> He mentioned three in his comment, not one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What about mailing lists?

<comment> david-given This is the biggest issue for me --- project hosting is easy, mailing lists are not. Particularly, migrating people to the new list is going to be hard. I've been looking at Google Groups but it doesn't seem to support import, although it does support a nice web interface (good for people who expect forums).

Does anyone have any recommendations?

<comment><USER14> There were some suggestions in yesterday's thread – [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9617824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9617824)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Maybe GitHub should start mirroring Sourceforge projects :)

</comment><comment><USER56> >> SourceForge, once a trustworthy source code hosting site...

No, SourceForge was always sleazy.

<comment><USER14> It wasn't in 90s and early 00s… Along with Freshmeat (and The Linux Game Tome :)), they were pretty useful websites.

<comment><USER56> Wikipedia says SourceForge launched November of 1999. I remember as early as 2003 thinking it was sleazy how it tried to trick you into downloading adware with their big "Download Now!" ads. So maybe not literally "always", but certainly the majority of time.

<comment><USER14> Seems about right, maybe my memory tricked me. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm new to Silicon Valley need salary advice - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm a hardware engineer that recently moved from Europe to Silicon Valley and believe that my market value is about $100k/yr. I helped a startup (2 founders) for a few days by designing and building hardware of the first prototype. They want to hire me but they cannot pay 100k/yr for salary. Instead, they want to offer me part cash and part stock. I'm very new to Silicon Valley and know little about the invest stages of a startup. For me it is completely new to get my salary partly in cash and partly in stock.
Let me give you some background about the company, before I post my questions. Right now the startup has 2 founders in Silicon Valley and a few people doing software in another country. The founders are very convinced about the future success of their product. They have more than 10 years experience in founding and have started several companies. Those companies are so successful that now they can spent 100% of their time on this new startup. They are currently in the seed fase and want to show of with the first prototype to possible customers. They have self funded this new startup.
For my personal situation: Normally I would ask a salary equal to my market value of $100k/yr. I need at least $50k/yr to pay my bills and to save a little. I have never worked for a startup in Europe or US, so I'm completely new to company stock.
So here are the questions: - Is there a big risk in stock? - is it acceptable to have 50% cash and 50% stock? - what salary should I ask for a temporary position (2mo's), and how is it divided into cash and stock? - what salary should I ask for a long term position (>1yr), and how is it divided into cash and stock? - where can I learn best about salary for engineers in startup companies?
I really appreciate your replies! Thanks! <comment><USER3> 1) How are you arriving at that estimate of your market value? Is it tied to your previous experiences in Europe? My understanding of market rates in the Valley is that if you can solo-prototype hardware your market rate is probably substantially north of that. (If you put a gun to my head and said "Pick a number!" I'd say "Oh please don't shoot 140k!")

2) The options you receive are not directly comparable to stock of public companies in terms of variance of returns. +/\- 90% of options in startups will be _valueless_.

3) You ask what is acceptable. Anything which you and they agree on is acceptable. As your peer who wants to see you get the best deal possible, I would strongly suggest negotiating primarily for hard currency and treating the equity like the lottery ticket that it is.

4) It is not the customary practice of Silicon Valley firms to award equity for temporary (2 month) positions. A company doing that is signaling bad things about its likelihood for future success. Silicon Valley firms which need specialized contract work done for them raise money and then pay market rates for it. (n.b. Market rates are probably at $10k+ per week. Yes, that's a much larger number than the salary we discussed earlier. Ask if you don't understand why that would be true.)

<comment><USER4> As for #4, does the $10k number apply to only hardware specialists?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> $100k is low for a HW designer unless you have no experience building anything (home/school projects don't count). $135k-140k is about right for an experienced Staff-Level HW designer.

In my view not getting paid market rate and taking equity is for founders. Under no circumstances would I take 50% stock and 50% salary as an employee. Generally founders carve out 15% equity for the employee pool. So you might get what 1%? Not worth it.

Also, there's a perk premium that you are giving up when you join a startup. Established companies have ESPP, profit sharing, 401k matching, RSU's, bonuses, etc... This can easily be 30% over your regular salary.

Joe Sixpack HW engineer at Average BottleCap Co, is probably earning $135k base + ~$40k or $175k-$180k in total compensation.

So even at market rate salary, you are below market in terms of total compensation.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ask yourself this: why can't the founders afford to pay market salaries if they have successful businesses already, and had previous success with fundraising?

It's likely not that they can't pay you market wages, but rather that they don't want to for some reason. By that I mean they presumably could either pay out of pocket (if their other businesses have been financially successful), or they can sell the equity they are offering you to an investor, and then use the money they receive in return to pay you (that's the whole point of fundraising, after all!)

I would have an upfront conversation with them to find out the answers to these questions - maybe they strongly believe the equity is going to be worth a lot in the near future, and want you to share in that upside for your contributions. Or maybe they are trying to take advantage of you - <USER2> talking to them and reflecting on their responses will get you your answers.</comment>


Operation Match, an enterprise that tries to arrange compatible dates (1965) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1965/11/3/operation-match-pif-you-stop-to/?page=single <comment><USER2> Curious. Persons of a certain age will remember Douglas H. Ginsburg is the man who lost a nomination to the Supreme Court when it came out that he had smoked marijuana in college. It wouldn't today, yet I wonder what the Senate would make of Operation Match. Maybe nothing, but the press would have fun.</comment>


Why Did Hundreds of Arctic Explorers Disappear Without a Trace? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://howwegettonext.com/why-did-hundreds-of-arctic-explorers-disappear-without-a-trace-a7d623a90c05#.cstolracu <comment><USER2> Is there an overview of all the Arctic explorations? They talk about there being many of them, but I've not heard of any others, surely others would have suffered lead poisoning too. This was one of the issues the Roman's had, but it was several more decades before people realised it was such an issue. A century or so if you include the US water supply.</comment>


Man with ALS writes patch for Gnome using morse code (with touching story) - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78514#c19 <comment><USER2> Kind of humbling, no? I've got plenty of excuses why I don't contribute more to OS projects, but when a guy bangs out a patch _with his knees using morse code_ while dying of ALS, they all suddenly seem pretty lame.

My hat's so far off to this guy, its on the floor in front of me.

<comment><USER3> Touching, but at the risk of being karma-annihilated: what else would be be doing?

He's probably sick of being useless, can't get paid to do anything (and wouldn't want to be, it'd be pity money), and wants to do something both productive and helpful. So he found a way, has supportive family that helped make it possible, _and has a huge amount of time in which to do it_. If I had that much time on my hands I'd be fixing a lot more than I am now, when I'm spending time with my wife / friends / at work.

<comment><USER4> Dude, you probably haven't seen anyone close by suffer from a debilitating disease and pass away in the recent times. It is painful for everyone involved and it takes tremendous amount of dedication to work on something like gnome. He could have said _who gives a shit_.

No one dying from a disease ever thinks that 'Oh, next week is gonna be my last, let me enjoy it'. Every day is a struggle trying to find something that might help you live better or longer. Working on an OS project is the last thing you would think of if you don't believe it passionately.

<comment><USER3> At which point did I state the opposite of any of that, or even imply it? You're _agreeing_ with me. "No one dying from a disease ever thinks that..." is precisely my point, instead people look for things with _meaning_.

Like contributing to community projects.

My point is more that people go all hero-worshipy when someone does something cool when they are dying, and take everything out of context and set them on a pedestal and it's ludicrous. All rationality goes out the window. "... they all suddenly seem pretty lame" is a flawed way of looking at the world, a loss of context, and it helps nobody.

<comment><USER4> When you are dying, _All rationality goes out the window_. Working on open source project is the last thing they worry about.

Let me ask you something. _Whom do you respect?_

<comment><USER3> > _When you are dying, All rationality goes out the window._

This is ALS. A progressive, multiple-year disease. Via Wikipedia[1]: Death usually occurs within two to five years of diagnosis.

I've met plenty of rational dying people. Except when it comes on extremely quickly, most everyone I've encountered or heard about has been _more_ rational than the people around them, not the reverse. People don't suddenly become invalids when they have to face their own mortality.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis#D...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis#Disease_progression)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once a hacker, always a hacker. What an amazing story! And to think he was coding raw GTK, which is a nightmare even with vim+autocomplete. Sample from his patch:

        image = eog_thumb_view_get_first_selected_image(EOG_THUMB_VIEW (priv->thumbview));
        g_return_if_fail (EOG_IS_IMAGE (image));
        file = eog_image_get_file (image);
        filename = g_file_get_path (file);

<comment><USER6> Meh. I would disagree; It's very subjective.

Sure it might look very verbose on first sight, but most of the seemingly excessive text is just there since it's C.

You get used to it, and the GTK+-family API:s are generally very well- designed, very orthogonal and predictable. The verbiage "falls away" from your sight after a while, and you just do what you want done.

<comment><USER7> i think he meant it in the context of the long function names really making a difference when you have to tap each character out in morse code with your knee.

<comment><USER6> Ah, good point of course. For that reason, I really hope he used some kind of completion in the IDE/editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is so humbling. It also makes one wonder what are good input tools for people with handicaps. I can think of two projects: (i) Dasher <http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/> discussed here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2142934> and (ii) Emacspeak <http://sourceforge.net/projects/emacspeak/> authored by T.V.Raman who himself is blind.

My family has a history of retinal detachments, and I have a tear myself. But I have never given it much thought, because these are always things that happen to others, not you.

Are there input devices based on Braille, wondering if it would be faster ? As an aside, there used to be code in the Linux kernel which on certain kernel panics would communicate the error message through Morse code using the integrated speaker.

Edit: About Braille, I was thinking more in the lines of a small 6 button or a similarly limited device.

<comment><USER3> From some of my earlier investigations, handicapped computing support is astonishingly bad and expensive. Largely because many things are near one-off limited-use solutions that can't be re-sold... but nothing is ever modular or adjustable or could be tweaked to _be_ used in multiple situations anyway. The DIY crowd for such things, meanwhile, keeps hacking up things like this for almost no money.

And it only gets worse once you come to software. Hardware interfaces have a general communication format - websites do not. Applications do not. Almost _nobody_ makes software with hinting for assistive devices, despite tools and standards existing. I suspect it's mostly because it's extra work, and doesn't (usually) significantly help to pay the bills when added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Link to his patch applied to the eog.git repository: <http://git.gnome.org/browse/eog/commit/?id=EOG_2_91_6~42>

</comment><comment><USER10> Can't wait until I get the fix through Ubuntu's update manager so that I can tell the story behind the "Copy image" menu item to my family and friends!

</comment><comment><USER11> I especially liked the GNOME member's response. Classy and dignified.

</comment><comment><USER12> My first job out of school was writing code at ALS.net. It was started by Jamie, a mechanical engineer to find a cure for his brother Stephen, who had just been diagnosed (and was eventually turned into a movie: <http://www.westcityfilms.com/smsf.html>).

The horrible thing about ALS is that your body deteriorates, while your mind stays 100% fine.

Stephen was physically in pretty rough shape by the time I started. He loved playing video games with his brothers, so Jamie made a little mouse-like device for Stephen that also allowed him to mimic keypresses.

Once a week, we'd all hop online and play Diablo together. It was interesting getting to know Stephen this way - he was barely able to talk when I first met him, but he could type using Jamie's device.

(Aside: Ben, the third brother, now runs PatientsLikeMe.com, a support community for people with diseases like ALS).

</comment><comment><USER13> If you aren't familiar with ALS, you might have heard it under the name Lou Gehrig's disease.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis>

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome. We're naming our 4th son (currently 20+5 weeks) Adrian. I loved the post and the picture. Sounds like a great man RIP.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a mention his father went to India for treatment. Is that because they are particularly good at treating ALS, or is it a health insurance issue?

But it takes incredible willpower to continue doing anything in situation like this. My hat's off.

<comment><USER16> Can't speak for that question or this case specifically but I was sick (gastro) in India a few years ago. My now-wife went off to find medication. The pharmacist had her describe the problem and put together a bag of tablets and electrolyte drinks. She asked how much. He said "30." She said "30 dollars?"

He said, "No, rupees."

I think that was less than 70 US cents at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Respect! Now there's a mantra:

ACCEPTed COMMITed RESOLVEd

</comment><comment><USER18> Someone who doesn't give up. +1</comment>


Inline HTML editors vs. Page Builders: the growing void - <AUTHOR> https://www.rgeeditor.ninja/the+growing+void+between+inline+editors+and+page+builders <comment><USER2> It's fine that this is an advertisement, but please label it as such. The title currently reads more like a blog article discussing this idea than an advertisement/announcement for rgeeditor.

While the post does briefly talk about the woes, ultimately it's an advertisement/announcement for the product, and I think it should be very clear that this is what you're presenting.</comment>


Linux 5.4 Features Are Huge: ExFAT, New GPUs, Enabling Lots of New Hardware - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-54-features&num=1 <comment><USER2> While there's lots of great features here, I'm very impressed with AMD GPU support these days. I bought a laptop last year which had (at the time) a brand new Ryzen APU, and it worked nearly flawlessly with the newest (at the time) version of Ubuntu (now with newer kernels is 100% flawless). And it seems like now they're getting support ahead of releases which is fantastic, because AMD is making some great products these days (my AMD APU offers good computing power as well as great graphics for the power consumption).

Linux on the desktop (or laptops) has never been better. Even if the 'year of the Linux desktop' might never come thanks to most everything being in the cloud and platform agnostic, I'm happy to see that Linux is still very healthy and better than ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally exFAT will be supported out of the box!</comment>


Show HN: Txc – A small text-caching server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bindh3x/txc <comment><USER2> You keep using that word "cache", I don't think it means what you think it means</comment>


Technology and Wealth Inequality - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-and-wealth-inequality <comment><USER3> "But it feels really unfair. People seem to be more sensitive to relative economic status than absolute. So even if people are much better off being poor today than king 500 years ago, most people compare themselves to the richest people today, and not the richest people from the past."

I don't think this is the whole story. It's not just that it feels unfair, it's that it really _is_ unfair. Rich people can buy political representation, and unlike wealth, representation _is_ a zero-sum game.

<comment><USER4> _it 's that it really is unfair._

Moreover, the the creation of wealth depends upon a functioning society with a working police force, fire department, transportation system, etc., not to mention the accumulative effect that inherited money brings to kids growing up in a supportive environment and going to the best schools. It is a myth that the wealthy earned their wealth all on their own, but one Americans love because of their (our) infatuation with rugged individualism and personal agency. I personally do not mind levying _tons_ of taxes to level the playing field, but that's probably just my temperament. I want to live in a society in which there is equal opportunity, not a plutocracy with a handful of perpetual dynasties.

<comment><USER5> > _" I personally do not mind levying tons of taxes to level the playing > field"_

The question that comes to mind is whether you mind paying the taxes yourself, not what you think about foisting costs on others. It is very easy (and inexpensive) to say that every problem should be solved on someone else's dime; one might even care enough to vote with that in mind, but you are not taking any personal responsibility, or even using clever rhetoric to convince someone else to act.

<comment><USER4> _It is very easy (and inexpensive) to say that every problem should be solved on someone else 's dime_

It's not someone else's dime, full stop. The system misallocated the money in the first place by giving them a disproportionate amount. The mechanism for valuating people's contributions is self-serving and broken right now. A teacher contributes 1000000 times more to society than a hedge fund manager, despite what the hedge fund manager will tell you about the benefits of liquidity that his activities are supposedly bringing about.

<comment><USER5> > _" The system misallocated the money in the first place by giving them a > disproportionate amount."_

Though I have never seen convincing evidence (either way) on this subject, I will accept it ad argumentum.

Using coercion to force someone else to pay for things I want is still a cheap and lazy way for me to achieve my ends. My point is that one should convince the hedge fund manager to donate money to important causes. Alternatively, you might contribute your own hard-earned money to achieve the ends you profess (or pretend) to value so highly.

<comment><USER6> How very Randian of you. I don't imagine that you'd have much luck convincing the hedge fund manager to donate to anything unless they themselves think it is important. And it is very hard to convince them that others have it bad when they have it so good.

Asking the parent to contribute their hard-earned money also seems sort of disingenuous. How do you know they are not doing so? Even if they did, if they are unable to contribute enough (for any number of reasons), it likely will not effect the issue in a large enough fashion.

A Democratic decision is not 'coercion'. If the public decides something is important enough to them to pass a law/change the tax code they are not coercing the rich to pay more. The wealthy could just leave (with all that would entail for both parties) and no longer make their money off/with said public... Or they could stay.

<comment><USER5> > _" A Democratic decision is not 'coercion'."_

So if a state decides (through referendum or legislative measure(s)) to compel slavery or imprisonment of one race or another, through police or military action, that would not be "coercion"?

<comment><USER6> Are you really attempting to equate slavery with the wealthy paying higher taxes?

If we are reducing to absolute absurdity... This conversation is over. I have no interest in an HN fallacy battle. A 'democratic' decision to enforce slavery/commit genocide/etc is pretty clearly well outside of what was being discussed.

<comment><USER5> > _" If we are reducing to absolute absurdity... This conversation is over."_

My example was based on the many governments which have treated certain races as sub-human; I agree it is not directly analogous, but I was trying to demonstrate that democracies are not always fonts of virtue.

You went and called me a "Randian" (without any demonstrated reason), I believe it was you who was enjoining a "battle" through unsubstantiated allegation.

<comment><USER7> That's a joke. Name me one democratic government that voted a race of people into slavery?

<comment><USER5> I said "slavery or imprisonment of one race or another", and I believe the three examples below are all debatable, as to which they exemplify.

Thirteen Colonies, 1705

Wood, Origins of American Slavery (1997), p. 92. "In 1705, almost exactly a century after the first colonists had set foot in Jamestown, the House of Burgesses codified and systematized Virginia's laws of slavery. These laws would be modified and added to over the next century and a half, but the essential legal framework within which the institution of slavery would subsequently operate had been put in place."

Germany, 1933

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_March_1933)

South Africa, 1948

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_general_election,...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_general_election,_1948)

<comment><USER7> Of course you realize these kinds of governments are labelled republics right? Ironically to prevent "the majority abusing the minority." So again, where is democracy involved here?

In other words I had a trick question. You first have to ask what democracy is before you can even approach it....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mentioned this link in another story, but relevant here as well: Americans are surprisingly unskilled at judging where they stand in the income distribution, and unskilled at predicting where they'll end up. 39% of Americans believe that they either are or one day will be among the top 1% [1]. Out of the people who believe they are currently in the top 1%, 95% of them are wrong.

Also, people don't realize that relative wealth/income matters. When someone else gets richer and you stay the same (or increase at a slower rate), you're worse off. The increased average wealth/income increases demand and makes things more expensive for you. When LOTS of people around you get richer, and you stay the same, well, look at what's happening with the Bay Area's housing prices.

Take the above two claims, add in a scoop of "American Dream" mentality, and it's not hard to understand how so many Americans don't find the current situation troubling.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of- hop...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hope-over- self-interest.html)

<comment><USER9> _The increased average wealth /income increases demand and makes things more expensive for you._

You are confusing wealth increasing and inflation.

The issue of the Bay Area housing prices is an issue of wealth (specifically, building permits) not increasing with population. That's Malthusian depletion, not inequality, and it would be a problem even if the newcomers to SF didn't have money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The best thing one can probably say about this widening inequality is that it means we are making technological progress"

This is not a considered analysis. It's perfectly possible for wealth distribution to widen without technological progress.

Where is the economics? Where is the history? Where is the politics? I've enjoyed Sam's posts before, but this strikes me as a flavor of SV hubristic reductionism.

Not every human issue revolves around technology, and technology is not the solution to every ill.

<comment><USER11> Yeah there is an assumption in the article that technology is the leading cause of wealth inequality.

What about regressive government policies? The rich have more of an ability to influence policy in this country. Therefore they can get laws passed that are favorable to themselves, e.g. regressive policies.

It would be very surprising if you didn't see this, and if it were _not_ a cause of huge income disparity.

But we don't have to look very hard to see it. For one, actually working for a living is taxed at a greater rate than letting your money sit around in various accounts. I'm glad Warren Buffett spoke out about this. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have done much.

Another example of a de facto regressive policy is the employer-provided health insurance system. People in the middle class who work for corporations generally get health insurance for free and don't have to worry about it, while poor people went insured (hopefully this will be resolved by Obamacare; it's not clear to me how it will play out).

There is a vicious cycle between being sick and poor. People are poor because they're _sick_ , not necessarily because they are lazy. And they are sick because they're poor and don't go to the doctor.

Also, I decided awhile ago that I think the minimum income idea is stupid. Being fed and healthy are basic human rights. Having $15,000 of cash every year isn't. We should get the former right first before even thinking about the latter.

This philosophy also doesn't have the motivation problem. You should be guaranteed the option to make money (i.e. by being healthy; sick people don't have the option to make money). But the first dollar you make should come from work.

<comment><USER12> > Also, I decided awhile ago that I think the minimum income idea is stupid. > Being fed and healthy are basic human rights. Having $15,000 of cash every > year isn't. We should get the former right first before even thinking about > the latter.

But the minimum income idea might be a much better way of getting to where everyone is fed and healthy (or at least fed and has access to medical care). It's probably more efficient than the massive bureaucracies that run the massive programs that currently don't seem to manage to do a very good job...

<comment><USER11> The problem is it might take $0 to keep one person healthy, while it will take $100,000 or $1M to keep another person healthy. In other words, it follows a power law distribution.

It also varies widely based on location. I think this is a fatal flaw, and it makes the "basic rights" approach strictly better than "basic income".

<comment><USER12> See, that's why you use some of the basic income to buy medical insurance...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _I was recently in Detroit and was curious to see some of the neighborhoods where you can buy houses for $10-20k. Here are some pictures_

Those houses in the pictures are probably perfectly good houses. We have the same situation in certain neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago. Sturdy brick houses that will last forever but nobody wants to live in because crime in the neighborhood is too high.

It was not too tricky to dig the zip code out of the pictures on the blog. You can see the sort of crime that will make houses in your neighborhood basically worthless: [http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/48204-Detroit/crime/](http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/48204-Detroit/crime/)

<comment><USER14> Move to Europe!

On a more serious note, this is a problem relatively unknown in most of Europe. Sure, there are some (poor) neighbourhoods with relatively more crime, but it's a different kind of crime. You might get mugged, but you won't get shot.

<comment><USER15> >Move to Europe!

If you are starting a technology company you may want to rethink that idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7140701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7140701)

</comment><comment><USER17> One thing that will take longer to be automated away is certainly art (in the broader sense of the word art).

As I work with a lot of independent artists (mostly musicians) b/c of my startup BandHub, I can feel how this is the profession of the future - <USER2> automatable away. Everyone has something to say - and there is a huge long tail of potential ( niche? ) audiences.

Things like Patreon are really cool. I wonder how we can really make it work for anyone, anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER18> There was a tool long ago called N-Gen or N-Generate that made some pretty cool digital art. It never got out of alpha but I used it for wallpapers - it's weird that I can't find it anywhere, but my point is that art can easily be automated, it's just that "art" also includes the human creators and their reputation, which accounts for most of the high price on various paintings and stuff. Van Gogh's paintings would be very cheap if they didn't have his name attached to them.

[http://netart.org.uy/workshop/softart.htm](http://netart.org.uy/workshop/softart.htm) \- only mention of N-Generate I could find...

<comment><USER19> >>Van Gogh's paintings would be very cheap if they didn't have his name attached to them.

I suggest you discuss Van Gogh with an actual fine artist. I did recently with a coworker and they amazed me with their description of progression of his "style."

The artist made the point that his works are the result of his unique brain chemistry, the same that chemistry that caused all his personal problems.

I don't see how your claim is defensible.

<comment><USER18> Would they be as highly regarded if they didn't have his name and personal problems/history attached to them? Like if they were in a gallery credited to "an unknown artist" next to Picasso's paintings?

<comment><USER19> I guess you mean mass acclaim? A piece of art only has that value to me that matches the change it engenders in me.

It is either worth "something" (don't want to say worthless) or it is priceless, there's no real continuum for me if that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone else look at those graphs and get the impression that a major (e.g. depression-era) economic correction could be coming in the next decade or so?

<comment><USER6> It shouldn't have taken those graphs to point it out to you. All indicators seem to point to a forced 'adjustment' of the current social landscape within the next (couple) decades.

Inequality (of the social, political, wealth, access types in particular) can only get so widespread before someone gets the idea that they could do better for themselves leading a bunch of angry people with (metaphorical) pitchforks.

Perhaps (hopefully) the change wont be a violent upheaval though. There is the possibility that we've progressed enough to avoid that sort of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Even if the income for the poor and working class has risen compared to generations ago, something that many forget is that absolute quality-of-life for many of them has gotten considerably worse in very important ways.

Examples: violent neighborhoods, failing schools, housing blight and decay, lack of access to open space and parks, lack of preventative health care, lack of access to role models for children, lack of access to healthy foods.

Even if they have a smart phone and a flat screen TV, what do those things mean when you don't have the basics listed above?

I don't think the poor are as upset about differences in income as they are about the fact that they are pushed into, IMO, sub-human living situations.

The real question is, why have we made a high income the price of avoiding these terrible circumstances?

EDIT: Added a summarizing question.

</comment><comment><USER22> Already on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7140701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7140701)

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the shrinking middle class has more to do with our monetary system than technological advancements. It is well understood that devaluation of money through inflation is not an effect evenly distributed. It is a significantly larger effect the further from the "source" of the inflation an individual is in the economy. The middle class and poor are quite far from the source.

There is also the "feedback" of wealthy individuals being able to more effectively lobby the government to pass economically favorable legislation for themselves. I believe this is a very strong factor in the shrinking middle class as well.

Although the author gives statistics showing the increase in wealth disparity, there seemed to be little evidence supporting the thesis of the article which is that technology is driving this phenomena. Also, more compelling data would also be showing a period in US history when the middle class was expanding and then began to decline. Then the author could give a better argument to what changed. Though, I guess technology is always "advancing" so in that sense, he/she would never be able to find a proper place in time. Maybe "the dark ages"? :)

tldr;? Liked the data showing the increasing wealth gap, felt the argument that it is fueled by technological advancements to be weak to nonexistent.

</comment><comment><USER24> He makes this article about technology, but talks consistently about the top 1%. He draws no direct connection between the top 1% and technology. Are people in the top 1% taking the google bus to work? What percent of them are in technology vs say... oh... finance?

I am not disputing that wealth inequality in the states has already reached incredibly disturbing levels but making this argument about technology (without any actual support for it) is not only silly but distracting to the core point.

</comment><comment><USER25> What are the potential downsides to artificially lowering wealth inequality?

One of the first things you learn in engineering and life: nothing is free. There are trade-offs and costs to every decision. I could even describe the engineering process as mapping the valley of compromises between the mountains of constraints. Where is the optimal valley between total equality and total inequality? What happens when we end up too far in either direction?

</comment><comment><USER26> _" Many people have a visceral dislike to the idea of giving away money (though I think some redistribution of wealth is required to reasonably equalize opportunity), and certainly the default worry is that people would just sit around and waste time on the Internet._

Well -- I don't think that completely does justice to all of the concerns about this. What about inflationary worries? If it's taken as a given that everyone gets X dollars, doesn't that just encourage inflation, much like what has happened in education with the easy availability of student loans?

Right or wrong, that's an objection I've heard voiced before -- and it's more sensible/understandable than just greed or an intrinsic aversion to generosity towards the less well off as is painted in the quoted section.

</comment><comment><USER27> How sure are we that technology is the cause?

Another comment mentioned inflation [1].

I'd like to bring up the possibility that globalization is the culprit.

If there's a large pool of workers in poor areas of the world willing to work for $1 / hour or less, then theoretically we should see a shift in capital and infrastructure spending trying to connect them to the global economy, and wages everywhere else will try to lower to that level. AFAICT that's more or less exactly what's going on.

Also, in the US, from c. 1960-1990 labor unions had a monopoly on unskilled labor in many domestic markets, which allowed the price of labor (i.e. wages) to move away from a competitive pricing model and get closer to monopoly pricing model. Globalization allowed companies to break the unions' monopoly on labor by moving operations to other countries.

The solution is simple and obvious: If producing X in country Y saves you D dollars due to lower wages, laxer safety/environmental regulations, lower taxes [3], etc., you should tax those goods by D dollars when they cross your border. However, the money that can be made by avoiding monopoly labor pricing means that the business community successfully bribes / lobbies politicians. Even educated voters are largely ignorant of economics, and politicians can usually come up with rhetoric to support just about any economic policy they want, so the voters don't provide enough political force to stand up for their interests in a way that's effective.

Warren Buffett talked some years ago about why we need to have tariffs [2]. In the State of the Union, Obama mentioned giving tax advantages to companies that locate their operations in the United States.

We'll see what happens, but I'm skeptical about whether there's any political will for meaningful policy change.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7152014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7152014)

[2] [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/11/10/352872/)

[3] Think of the case of small countries that don't have much of their tax revenue go toward military, but benefit from the relative peace and stability of the current post-cold-war geopolitical situation which is partially the result of much greater military spending by the US.

</comment><comment><USER28> One thing that developers can do is think about how they can build products that give other people an opportunity to make income online. Marketplaces, payment processing, etc. Build sites that encourage people to learn to code or design, build tools to enable web designers to launch better sites, give small business owners new ways to monetize their sites and compete online. One of the things I'm most proud of as a developer is that we can build things that not only reward ourselves, but create opportunities for others.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why are there no y-axis labels on the first chart? That seems manipulative to me, so we just have to accept the author's own definitions of "rich" and "middle class." It also seems manipulative in chart 2 to label the middle quintile in big letters as "middle," as if just that 20% is the middle class. I'd love to see more transparency in these charts so I can make my own conclusions. It almost seems like the charts go out of their way to hide the absolute dollar amounts.

</comment><comment><USER30> Inequality is not just about poor people feeling bad because the rich have bigger TVs!

In modern countries, markets are the standard way of distributing finite or growth-limited resources (e.g. apartments in San Francisco). In these games the ONLY thing that matters is relative wealth.

As a result of this, poor people become measurably poorer as a result of other people getting richer.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is very interesting and well-written, but there were two usability issues that distracted me from fully appreciating it:

1\. Why aren't the footnotes hyperlinks -- or better yet, mouseovers? Sam, if you're reading, the minor effort needed to do that would pay for itself many- thousandfold as your readers are spared from having to scroll up and down over and over. Not doing that for them, intentionally or not, signals to your readers that you don't care. And it wrecks their train of thought as they're trying to follow along.

2\. Why does footnote [1] show up in the text _before_ footnote [0]?

<comment><USER32> > 2\. Why is footnote [0] before footnote [1]?

Because Sam Altman is a hacker: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero- based_numbering](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering)

<comment><USER31> Sorry, I meant _after._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is just elitist bullshit.

Living on minimal wage is quite different in Detroit and San Francisco. I think author has debt for next 100 years thanks to elite college and $1M house.</comment>


The First Falcon 9 Launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NREJEZ5eluk <comment><USER2> EDIT:

IT LAUNCHED! I can't contain my excitement. That vehicle will transport astronauts to space stations (and beyond?) in the Dragon capsule.

At 11:48, stage separation confirmed, and 2nd stage ignition as well. So, so amazing!

At 11:54, Falcon 9 achieved earth orbit.

The video signal has now been lost (too far away, apparently!)

So, so cool.

\</comment><comment>--

From the website:

        It looks as if we may have experienced a shutdown
        condition just after ignition. In these situations the
        vehicle puts itself into "safe mode". There may be the
        chance to "recycle" the count and try again.

The reason appears to be (as of 10:57)

        We are hearing from Mission Control that the pad abort
        involved an out-of-limit startup parameter.

It looks like they're going to try it again, but that was from 10:30 Pacific Time. (Edit: they say they are, as of 10:58.)

At 11:26 (PST), a bird flew by… still waiting on "T-zero time from Mission Control."

Retry scheduled for 11:45 (PST)!

Systems checks looking good (11:41 PST).

It's the little kid inside of me, I know, but I want SpaceX to succeed. Their goals have been dreams of mine all my life.

<comment><USER3> That was so awesome. My 8yr old was jumping up and down, cheering. It was just a beautiful launch.

<comment><USER4> I feel like I'm 4 all over again myself and watching the moonshot on our grainy black and white tv...

What a fantastic day this is. History was made today, I know there will be plenty of people to try to diminish the achievement by saying 'we did all this in the 60's', but what matters here is that it is not some government entity doing it, it's a company doing it and where there is one there'll be more.

Space is finally really being opened up, and with a bit of luck the pace will now accelerate.

I'm all for a second space race.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. And also, yes, we did do it in the 60's and it was an amazing feat of science/math/engineering to have done so. But what really gets me... look at the technology we have available to us now compared to what it was 50 years ago. Once we get over the initial hurdles of making this work with modern technology in the private sector, things have changed and improved so much that the level of innovation is really just going to skyrocket, I think (pun fully intended!). It is extremely exciting that they did it now, but what's even more exciting is the potential of where this can now go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ooh, I would have missed this were it not for the delay. Now I can watch.

Also, here's the instruction manual! <http://www.spacex.com/Falcon9UsersGuide_2009.pdf>

The prospect of real, affordable, commercial spaceflight is very exciting to me. I feel like a little kid again.

<comment><USER5> user guide, nice. hope they have a Python API!

<comment><USER6> The Houston Python users group has some NASA / Constellation guys... I suspect they might have a Python api.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't despair SpaceX fans, it took 4 tries to get Falcon 1 into orbit.

 _Warning, going to plug my blog_

I wrote something about it back when it happened:

[http://michaelgr.com/2008/09/30/spacex-falcon-1-rocket- reach...](http://michaelgr.com/2008/09/30/spacex-falcon-1-rocket-reaches- orbit-on-4th-try/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Now I have to rush off and watch a robot a mile below the ocean surface, 50 miles out to sea, attempt a heroic effort to cap a catastrophic oil spill. Ho hum.

<comment><USER9> These are amazing times indeed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There she goes :) I always feel like a little kid watching rocket launches, only now I want to be a Rocket Engineer instead of an Astronaut (ok, as well as).

(on a side note: am I right in thinking the gas venting from the side is pressure release?)

<comment><USER4> Both the first and second stage have venting ports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Video without the 'buffering': <http://www.spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=51>

</comment><comment><USER12> For my money, Elon Musk is _the_ entrepreneur. Gotta admire this man.

</comment><comment><USER13> From Wikipedia: "Musk has described himself as a workaholic who routinely puts in 100-hour work weeks, primarily on his businesses Tesla Motors and SpaceX. In his rare free time, he says he plays with his five children"

Guess that's what it takes to reach the stars.

</comment><comment><USER14> The audio just announced they have time today for another attempt. Yay.

</comment><comment><USER15> They re-started the countdown timer: "New takeoff time is 2:45 EST"

</comment><comment><USER16> Audio feed of what's going on: <http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?feedId=705>

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder when Elon Musk will be the richest man alive. Maybe sometime around 2020 if he plays his cards right?

<comment><USER18> But it is more fun to see him do with just a few hundred million what huge corporation couldn't do with a lot more money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Incredible! It reminded me of watching the Apollo launches when I was a kid. The web video feed was fantastic - amazing to be able to watch the Earth falling away in real-time.

Would be interesting to know if the roll that was occurring as the ship reached orbit was intentional.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome news! I wonder if there are viable alternatives to launch against chemical rockets? Also, bitgravity sucks big time, couldn't get a frame from them, let alone a stream.

<comment><USER21> Nope, there are no currently viable alternatives to chemical rockets. There are possibilities such as nuclear rockets and space elevators which might be viable in the future. A space elevator mainly requires advances in ultra- strong cable materials. A nuclear rocket would require a drastic change in government policies and public attitudes about nuclear technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Love how you can hear a guy in the background: "that's fuckin awesome".

Can you imagine that sneaking into a NASA launch? Love it!!

</comment><comment><USER23> That video is painful to watch, I don't suppose anyone has found a better version elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER24> It just spun around a bunch and then the feed cut. Is the show over or did something happen?

<comment><USER25> Yes, show is over, the falcon is behind the horizon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As of 2:30 Eastern the count resumed and is at 14 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow that was so close...

I hope they'll get another chance today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps we should explain that for all those hitting the link and being confused: The launch was aborted in – literally – the last second. Maybe they can try again today, maybe not.

– edit: They will try again today. Reason for the abort was "an out-of-limit startup parameter."

<comment><USER4> It looks like they will re-try, the counter was just reset to t-15:00 again, but holding for now.

Apparently no engines actually fired so they're cleared to re-try. Wonder what the cause of the shut-down was, but shut-downs are better than on the pad explosions I guess...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does the Bitgravity stream have audio?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's just silent most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yay! :) :) :)

</comment><comment><USER4> keeping toes _and_ fingers crossed...

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm investing in asteroid mining _now_...</comment>


Why lectures do not work - <AUTHOR> http://intellectualmathematics.com/blog/the-right-way-to-argue-that-lecture-doesnt-work/ <comment><USER2> I am of two minds about this.

On the one hand, I think lectures matter. Often I can't understand a paper until after I've heard a lecture on the subject. This is particularly true in logic as a lot of the papers are written in greek letters (seriously). The lecture includes the words that give meaning to the symbols. The symbols are rarely fully explained in a papers (e.g. what is Gamma?) since they assume the reader already knows and they have a limited amount of page space.

On the other hand, I took a course from John White where we were given a few dozen papers. Each person was assigned a paper to present for 20 minutes but we were all required to read all the papers. It was an amazingly productive class and I learned a lot.

Lectures and textbooks are where papers go to die. Papers are where ideas have their funerals. Conferences are where papers get their all-too-short life. In order to get to the leading edge of a subject you have to start with the lectures and textbooks, read the recent papers, attend the conferences, and then create a presentation.

Universities are basically the "shopping mall" of ideas. Lectures are the sales talk of ideas. Not everybody buys the product but you can't expect people to read a textbook (e.g. calculus) without the sales pitch (the lecture). So I think lectures matter as a "natural selection" mechanism to find people who will go further in a subject.</comment>


SpaceX succesfully launches another satellite, brings home another rocket - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/13/spacex-succesfully-launches-another-satellite-brings-home-another-rocket/ <comment><USER2> [https://youtu.be/QZTCEO0gvLo?t=1582](https://youtu.be/QZTCEO0gvLo?t=1582)</comment>


[ShowHN] JavaScript FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://giacomoballi.com/js <comment><USER2> You should edit the title to Show HN: instead on [ShowHN]. I don't know if the forum software recognizes your variation (for putting it into [https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show)).</comment>


Sql creating and maintaining table  - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3resource.com/sql/creating-and-maintaining-tables/sql-creating-and-maintaining.php

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=subhbwn>

Hacker News being sabotaged.</comment>


Google Offers to Auction Off Shopping Ad Spaces to Rivals - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-offers-to-auction-off-shopping-ad-spaces-to-rivals-1505743245 <comment><USER2> That not what the EU requested, they demanded Googleshop removed from first search results.</comment>


Snopes.com prevails in tentative court ruling over finances, ownership - <AUTHOR> http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/technology/sd-fi-snopes-tentative-20170803-story.html <comment><USER2> Is there some standard mechanism in silicon valley for avoiding divorce- related ownership problems? I imagine that VCs wouldn't be happy if a founder's ex-spouse (who had no direct participation in the startup) ended up with a significant stake in a company, for example.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not saying this is the scenario here (AFAIK there are no VCs involved either); as matthewmacleod put it, "this made me think about divorce generally" \-- or more precisely, this is something I've wondered about for a while and this seemed like an opportune time to satisfy my curiosity.

<comment><USER3> > a founder's ex-spouse (who had no direct participation in the startup)

Since both you and another comment so quickly zero in on the divorce aspect in this story, it's worth pointing out that Barbara Mikkelson was, in fact, a proper co-founder when snopes.com started, and worked alongside her husband for 20 years.

This situation is no different than any other founder leaving the company and selling his stakes. HN will have to find another way to blame this on women.

And, yes, there are mechanisms to prevent such problems. First among them would be the right-of-last-refusal: Before you sell, you have to offer the stock to the other co-founder(s), at the exact same terms you're offered. But that's not automatic, and has to be established early on.

<comment><USER4> The comment you are replying to literally did not mention women or sex or gender at all. You brought that into it.

It seems like you're the one assuming it'd be a given that the woman didn't contribute. Nobody else said anything about them.

<comment><USER5> But OP wrote: "ex-spouse (who had no direct participation in the startup)" => woman didn't contribute. Even though she did.

<comment><USER4> That's still _you_ saying that an ex spouse that didn't contribute can only possibly be a woman.

<comment><USER6> Come on. The spouse in this case is a woman. Ok, OP already said s/he wasn't referring to this case, it "just made him/her think about divorce generally". Let's leave it already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's complicated:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170731/11351837890/fact-...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170731/11351837890/fact- checking-snopes-own-claims-being-held-hostage-vendor-well-complicated.shtml)

<comment><USER8> The biggest oops here is that Snopes/Bardav is an S Corp and neither Barbara's nor Proper Media's lawyers structured the deal well (or they're just totally unfamiliar with S Corps and/or tax law in general).

S Corps are treated as partnerships for tax purposes. Proper Media, an LLC, wanted to buy out Barbara's stake. LLCs are not permitted to be shareholders in an S Corp so instead of selling her stake to Proper Media, Barbara split it up among the members (i.e. the owners) of Proper Media.

If a competent lawyer had done this deal, they would have created a trust to re-consolidate Barbara's stake with the owners of Proper Media as beneficiaries and Schoentrup alone or Schoentrup and Richmond as the trustees.

I know this because I am not a lawyer, I'm not even American, and it took me only a few minutes to figure out that:

(a) trusts may own shares in an S Corp so long as the beneficiaries meet the requirements to be an S Corp shareholder (b) trusts are permitted to own shares in an S Corp for the purpose of consolidating a stake in the corporation (i.e. voting rights)

I'm not really sure that anyone can own shares in an S Corp for the benefit of an LLC since that would create a trust whose beneficiary does not meet the requirements to be a shareholder in an S Corp. So Proper Media really has no standing to sue Bardav nor Mikkelson. This should be a minority shareholders vs majority shareholders lawsuit and rather easily resolved that way.

<comment><USER9> Proper Media appears to be a Turkish company - that would explain why they've got no clue about American law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like it could be a future story for Silicon Valley on HBO. I'm sure this sort of thing happened before, both spouses contribute to the startup and then they divorce and fight over ownership/control.

Most people have prenups to handle this sort of situation.

Kind of strange how up until 2016 they just did urban legends, myths, chain letters, scams, etc. Then took on political fact checking in 2016 and by 2017 they divorce after Snoops is picked by Facebook as one of the offical fact checkers.

I was given a link by one of my friends and posted it on my brothers timeline as it was about vaping and side effects, but a day or two later it was flagged as fake news and censored and I was not given a link for explination. I kind of hoped for a link to an article as to why it was fake news and how they debunked it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh, it's a divorce-related issue. Ex-wife sold half ownership.

<comment><USER12> Haha. Is there a joke on HN about this? I swear every thread discussing Snopes has someone say the exact phrase "oh, it's a divorce-related issue". It gets me every time.

<comment><USER13> Ya, I made that comment when the gofundme was first posted. In business disputes I always wonder "how did it go wrong", especially with smart people like the Mikkelsons.

<comment><USER14> > In business disputes I always wonder "how did it go wrong", especially with > smart people like the Mikkelsons.

It's a complex problem though. Even after 30 years or so of carefully nothing 'how things go wrong' there still appears to be an infinite supply of new reasons how things go wrong.

<comment><USER15> This is a good start though,

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook- fac...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker- arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes- escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


7 Habits that will make you a better developer - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/NlZdVtYVo3E <comment><AUTHOR> Habits are the cornerstone of success. At least that's what I believe. In case one wants to become a great developer, good habits are vital.

In this short video, I list the 7 habits I believe have made me a better developer.</comment>