Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2011/03/31/entrepreneurship-is-an-art-not-a-job/ <comment><USER2> "to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a "science," and anyone could do it."

Just because something becomes a 'science' it does not mean that everybody can do it. Something is a science if you use the scientific method in it: come up with falsifiable hypotheses. (Certainly this is the case in enterpreneurship.) But coming up with hypotheses is not automated in any of the sciences. In fact you have disruptive ideas, 'paradigm-shifts' (see Kuhn) and all those 'creative' things in science too.

Creativity is needed to create great things in different fields. Enterpreneurs, hackers, engineers, inventors, scientists, mathematicians, artists: all can be creative and be in the 'flow' when building something. Picking artists and enterpreneurs seems to be totally arbitrary for me. (Although feeling like an artist is probably cool. (See 'hackers and painters'.))

<comment><USER3> That's a really good point. And it reminds me that there is a really cool book titled _How Mathematicians Think_ [1] that goes into much detail about how mathematics is a creative activity and not just a mechanical process (as some people seem to believe.)

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/How-Mathematicians-Think- Contradiction...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Mathematicians-Think- Contradiction-Mathematics/dp/0691127387)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm skeptical of his perspective that there's something uniquely creative about founders that doesn't apply to everybody. Programs that make resources available, provide support networks, and teach skills all increase entrepreneurship (microloans are a great example). Totally agreed that there's an art to entrepreneurship, but the same can be said about programming, journalism, politics, or any other kind of profession.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would like to agree with this and hope this is true. As Steve Jobs once said he would much rather be considered as builder rather than trader. And so building part of entrepreneurship is more like an art. As unpredictable and challenging starting up a company is, I would like to think that it is the art aspect of it that makes it somewhat fun as well. As difficult, unpredictable & dangerous doing a startup may be, there must be this fun aspect of it(which is more artistic) that makes it fulfilling. Else it will be just like another exam(to be passed, graded to be acquired).

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, crazy timing. I caught up last night with a friend with an Angelpad startup that asked me what my criticisms of lean were and this essay explains the gist of it.

What we're really talking about is taste. All the main product development methodologies skirt around the issue, whether it's lean, ux, agile, or etc. You can gather feedback and iterate through product ideas all you want, but it's up to you whether you have good ideas or if you're just a monkey throwing poop on the wall to see what sticks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow. _Yesterday I wrote and submitted this exact same theme_.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2387227>

It's very interesting how when a community reads the same material, various people will have similar responses even though they do not coordinate with each other. You see the same thing many times with inventions: it's not unusual for separate inventors to invent the same thing on opposite sides of the world without either having any idea what the other is up to.

It's a weird feeling to spend time writing an essay, thinking that you are hitting a problem from an unique angle, then see another person who took the same route.

Of course Steve's essay is a lot better.

I think the key thing to note is that the _atmosphere_ that we live in as technologists -- architecture, programming languages, physics, science, engineering, etc -- prepares us in exactly the opposite way required for us to be successful entrepreneurs. Our world is full of information and culture on how to be good performers, not creators. Even when we do our best to share with each other what works or doesn't work, we do it in terms of performance -- exactly the opposite paradigm from what's needed.

Took me a long, long time to figure that out, and I still have a hard time with it. I wished somebody would have helped me with this when I was in my twenties.

EDIT: I want to hit this one more time, just to make sure I got it.

Let's assume we were all great music composers, like Beethoven. We set up an online community and folks drop by to share and talk.

To put it in Steve's terms, the things on the online community would all be about _performing_ , not _creating_. They'd have to be. That's the nature of how text works. We'd be talking about the various kinds of pianos, oddball musical scales and their effects on voice harmonization, how to deal with agents, controversies and scandals inside the music industry, or what our work habits are like -- exactly the kinds of article you see on HN everyday.

 _But none of that shit is important_ \-- or maybe it's better to say that _all_ of it is important, but only in how hundreds or thousands of these little pieces comes together to make a greater whole that's uniquely assembled by each entrepreneur, not in themselves. It's all details and shop-talk. People dropping by who also want to be great composers can easily drift into the idea that somehow these ancillary things are critical parts of what it takes to be a great artist. "John Williams was great. Did you see that sequencing tool he is using?" subtly becomes "If you want to write great music, you'll need a great sequencing tool" which then becomes "Top 20 sequencing tools to make your music shine" Then a hundred people read this and drift off and spend 3 months learning sequencing tools instead of learning how to write tunes that people love. This can be very harmful.

We're out in tools, gossip, and implementation-land when the key problem is learning how to create something people want. It's a creation problem, not an implementation problem. Nobody who knows what they are doing cares what kind of stool Beethoven sat on everyday while he was writing his Ninth Symphony. And those who do care either realize how microscopically insignificant it is, or are sadly ignorant of anything to do with composing.

This. This is why HN can only ever have very limited value to a person who wants their own startup. It's not the people, or the Arc program structure, or the even the topics that get submitted and upvoted. _It's that you don't teach creativity by sitting around talking and reading about it_. In almost every art, it's a mentor-apprentice, tell-share-do-observe-create-influence paradigm, not passive absorption of technical details and performance-related tips. This is one of the reasons the cofounder concept is so powerful, it's the reason that incubators help more than do-it-yourself-guys, it's the reason larger communities like SV end up spawning off so many crazily-unique ideas.

<comment><USER8> This is perhaps the most insightful comment I've ever read on Hacker News.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "But it's more likely that until we truly understand how to teach creativity, their numbers are limited."

I don't believe creativity can be taught. Not now, not ever. Although everyone can be creative to an extent, you must have the drive to spend time and effort thinking about what's in front of you, and how to creatively change that. Most people are interested in being participants, and not willing to put the extra mental effort to go beyond this. Some however enjoy the creative process more so than participating.

<comment><USER10> I tend to think of "creativity" as something like the physical attribute of "quickness" which is really disguised strength. If you have a solid intellectual background, good work ethic, and drive, then you've laid the basis for creativity. Doesn't mean it will actually manifest itself, but you've increased the likelihood.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. Solid intellectual background, good work ethic have nothing to do with creativity, nor do they lay a "basis" for it. From personal experience, I have know so many who have those attributes, but are just participants in the system. Sure, they excel, and are successful people, but devoid of creativity entirely. In fact you can argue, people who are successful inside the system because they have the attributes you mentioned, are the least motivated to challenge the status quo. They have much to lose.

<comment><USER10> And I disagree too. If you look at actual "creative" people throughout history they generally mastered what existed before them before making a leap beyond. Picasso was skilled at traditional art and sculpture before he created cubism. Shakespeare wrote sonnets, comedies, and histories (at that time, these were accepted, even tired genres) and was very much a "participant in the system" before transcending that same system. Leonardo Da Vinci was an apprentice to another artist during his early career.

We live in an era where ego gratification makes far too many people think they're creative when really they don't even have the tools developed to be creative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The simple idea that there can be a large creative component to activities like programming or starting a business seems to invariably send this community into a full-on circle jerk.

Yes, it feels great, but please consider whether it is a worthwhile habit to cultivate.

</comment><comment><USER12> Steve makes good points, but I can't agree with his conclusion. I believe that there are many other ways than education to encourage artists. Opportunity and necessity, for example, will by themselves lead to a great increase in the number of entreprenartists, without any changes in education methods.

My full thoughts here: <http://swombat.com/2011/3/31/entrepreneurship-art>

<comment><USER7> I'm not ready to go the full distance to Steve's conclusion either. I love Steve's work, but he has a tendency to over-generalize, systematize, and the regurgitate whatever he's been absorbing. It's a great habit, and it helps tremendously to advance the conversation along, but it can lead folks to believe there's a lot more surety in his conclusions than there actually is. Great structure and descriptions are a key part of finding a solution, but they are not a solution in themselves.

If we agree that art plays a huge role here, then the next logical question is: _how do you teach people to be a good artist?_

I'm not a guy who believes you are just "born with it". I think a vast amount of stuff can be ingrained into just about anybody. But I don't think this general problem has been adequately solved by anybody in any artistic field, must less entrepreneurship.

The cool thing is that it gives us a lot of places and communities to turn to in order to look at how various inculcation systems work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If Steve Blank could teach a really effective one semester course on how to be a successful entrepreneur, then anyone who could do well in his course could become rich and we'd have a lot more rich people. But having many more rich people encounters some problems with the size of the whole pie so that I have to doubt that Blank's course can do much! :-)!!

His current statement that entrepreneurship is an "art" seems to be an escape to the land where we don't understand artists and don't get blamed for not understanding!

Yes, suppose we accept that, except for luck, some 'creativity' is needed for successful entrepreneurship. Well, my view is that the first 20-30 years of life are not very good for teaching creativity!

I finally learned how to be creative in math, but the lessons were not taught or even hinted at in school! Here's a nutshell recipe:

First have to guess the result (theorem) and then have to guess at a good way to confirm (prove) it. The key is some good guessing. Here are five points about such guessing:

1\. Guessing Machine.

So, have a 'guessing machine', a bit wild and unconstrained! To find some really big, new ideas, let the guessing machine be wild!

2\. Intuitive Models.

Have some 'intuitive models'. Why just intuitive? Because typically don't know enough yet to make them solid.

2.1 Connections.

Sometimes two apparently quite different parts of math seem to have a glimmer of something in common, and maybe they do and the glimmer is from something deep and powerful. Broadly a relatively powerful approach in math is to get to the same result two different ways, thus, showing something in common and getting some new connections.

2.2 Patterns.

Sometimes work by patterns and analogies: E.g., once I had a result that said that, along with some other properties, I could have a function differentiable k times for any positive integer k. So, then by a 'pattern', a guess would be that I could still have those other properties and a function infinitely differentiable. Yup, a few hours later, I did.

3\. Filtering.

3.1 Constraints. Use what already know is true and is false to constrain or filter guesses. Be a little flexible and not too literal on the filtering: Maybe some small changes would make something true now false or something false now true.

3.2 Intuitive Models.

The intuitive models can be used to filter the results from the guessing machine. So, maybe guess that A is true. Then roughly, just intuitively, it looks like maybe B and C are true. But then D would have to be true, but we know that D is false. So, if want to invest more time in this guess, then check more carefully that B and C have to follow; otherwise save time for now and guess that A is false.

4\. Special Cases.

Typically do understand some special cases, maybe just some very simple, contrived special cases. With these can do some more filtering.

5\. Proofs.

So, when have what appears to be a theorem, do some more guessing about how to prove it. Commonly the guessing that led to the theorem will also help in guessing how to prove it. In the guesses, be sure actually to make some crucial use of all the hypotheses or just drop any unused hypotheses. If you are fairly sure that all the hypotheses are needed, then in looking for a proof realize that need a proof that actually uses all the hypotheses.

Such means, and likely more, worked for me in being 'creative' in math. Your mileage may vary! Adapt, revise, extend, and improve as suits your work!

For business in Web 2.0 and 'consumer Internet', sure, need to give the users something they like enough to become "engaged" (F. Wilson).

One way to do that is to play on 'art' as in the common definition "the communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion". Look at some examples of art and see how well this definition fits. More generally, get some understanding of what gets or might get people "engaged". To check ideas, look at examples of where people do get engaged.

For guesses at what might get a lot of people engaged, look at someone you know best of all, yourself. Or, for something less general and simpler, start with a problem you would like to have solved.

For how to be as 'creative' as in, say,

Notre Dame

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts5t_5HeECE>

Meditation

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zmgfBKuIrk>

Lohengrin

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7prUFflX0_E>

Tristan und Isolde

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fktwPGCR7Yw>

Parsifal

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPn3JV3GHRE&NR=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPn3JV3GHRE&NR=1)

clearly that's doable but more difficult!

For more, no doubt the central key is that mechanism we do not know how to explain, human intelligence. Typically that work is done between two ears in a quiet room considering all that know and can guess, sometimes considers 'causes', and has enough freedom to find some really good, new ideas but enough discipline not to go off into nonsense land.</comment>


CrimsonDB: A Self-Designing Key-Value Store - <AUTHOR> http://daslab.seas.harvard.edu/projects/crimsondb/ <comment><USER2> I keep reading about key-value stores with this and that property.

But for the Web site for my startup, early on it was clear that I needed a good key-value store as a Web user session state store (server). So, I designed one, coded it up, and have been using it. It seems to work fine.

But on key-value stores, I don't _get it_ because what I did was easy, too easy, really, to say much about it except how easy it was to do.

So, a Web server has a user and their session state. For the user, I also have a GUID (globally unique identifier) that is the _key_ for the user and their session. The session state is in an instance of a class I've defined.

So, the Web server _serializes_ the instance of the class to a byte array and passes that and the GUID key to a subroutine that uses TCP/IP sockets to start a TCP/IP session with my session state store. To Windows, my session state store is just a simple, console application.

The session state store is listening for a TCP/IP connection request, accepts the request, and gets the GUID key and serialized object instance with the session state.

The session state store has two instances of a standard .NET collection class, say, A and B. Instance A uses the GUID as the key and the serialized session state as the value. Class B uses the then current system time-date (GMT) as the key and the GUID as the value.

So, whenever the session state store runs, before it returns, it looks at the earliest time-date stamp in instance B and deletes from A and B all the key- value pairs that are too old, that is, timed out, that is, have encountered session time out.

The code of the session state store is simple -- single threaded. Then the code needs a first-in, first-out (FIFO) queue, and for that I am using just what TCP/IP offers with a maximum queue depth of 100 which I hope is enough -- will be able to tell by looking at the site log file.

That's about it.

It's simple. It's darned fast and nicely scalable via virtual memory and, then, _sharding_ , etc.

I designed the whole thing in a few minutes and implemented it in about a day, but I'm no expert in session state stores, key-value stores, Redis, etc.

So, what is wrong with what I designed?

Thanks.

<comment><USER3> Nothing is wrong with what you designed. It's simple, it does exactly what you want it to do and best of all: you understand it end to end.

However, if you're asking why people spend so much time writing Key-Value stores, the answer is that what you've designed is, I'm assuming, using the filesystem to store session state for each user, which is pretty much a Key- Value store unto itself. So people who write databases feel the need to reimplement the algorithms in that filesystem layer, and expose them over a TCP api rather than system calls. There can be performance and scale reasons for this. But the filesystem is the oldest trustiest Key-Value store and if it's good enough for your purpose it's so much easier.

<comment><USER2> > I'm assuming, using the filesystem to store session state for each user, > which is pretty much a Key-Value store unto itself.

No, in the key-value store, the storage is all in the two instances of the standard .NET collection class and, thus, in main memory. If the classes get really big, say, GBs, then maybe Windows will use some virtual memory. Or maybe someday, if I have a big company, I'll program some big, 14 TB or so solid state disks as direct access files, say, B+ trees, to do the storage.

But for a long time, the storage for the key-value pairs will be just in main memory.

So, for a user a second, 20 minutes active time per session, and after that 40 minutes of time until session time out, can calculate how many key-value pairs need and, if I just look up the size of the values, get a decent estimate of the main memory needed.

I did that: For the 16 GB of main memory for my first server, the storage seemed reasonably small.

E.g., assume users arrive at 1 a second. Keep each user's session state for 20 minutes for their active time plus another 40 until time out for 60 minutes total. So, after running for 60 minutes, the server has reached a steady state of

         60 * 670 = 3,600

sessions. If each session takes, say, 2 KB, we're talking total space of 7,200,000 = 7 MB, plus some for collection class overhead, maybe 10 MB total, and, on a 16 GB main memory server, that's trivial.

Besides, if I get a user a second and they interact with my Web site for 20 minutes each, I'll be getting a new Corvette in a few weeks and have lots of money for new, larger servers, racks, UPS boxes, emergency motor-generators, etc.!!! :-)!!!

Thanks.

<comment><USER4> How is that not just a normal hash map?

<comment><USER2> I'm guessing that the .NET collection class is likely AVL trees (in Knuth's _Sorting and Searching_ ) or red-black trees, in something by Sedgwick, and not hashing, at least not normal hashing. E.g., hashing can have collisions.

Sure, there is

Ronald Fagin, Jurg Nievergelt, Nicholas Pippenger, H. Raymond Strong, 'Extendible hashing-a fast access method for dynamic files', "ACM Transactions on Database Systems", ISSN 0362-5915, Volume 4, Issue 3, September 1979, Pages: 315 - 344.

with a graceful way around collisions.

Our group used that paper in our work in a high end, _cross memory_ (one address space gets data to/from another address space, calls code, etc. in another address space), _active_ (generalization of, say, _triggers_ common in relational database), _dynamic_ (the object definitions change during execution) object store.

There is also a good article with good details and some Python code at:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extendible_hashing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extendible_hashing)

Actually the code we used was nicely simple -- I have some notes someplace, but the paper itself is good enough documentation.

But also have to have some _persistence_ of the session state across different HTTP POST operations from the user; so, if have no user affinity with a particular executing instance of the Web server software, and I'm looking forward to having several executing instances of my Web server software, I want no such _affinity_ , then I need something in a different Windows _appdomain_ , e.g.,

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/system.appdomain.asp...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/system.appdomain.aspx)

process, address space, etc. like an external server for the session state data.

Sure, that server could use the extendible hashing paper. But, since the .NET collection class is there, and no doubt by now used successfully more often than McDonald's has served a hamburger, I just used what Microsoft provided. I'm willing enough to beg, borrow, buy, or (hush!) steal a wheel instead of reinventing it!

I did my DIY session state store partly because I guessed that I could write my own code in less time than it would take me just to understand how to use something highly regarded and off the shelf.

I guessed that I wrote my code in less time than I would need just to understand Redis. That IBM work was intended as a high end object store -- I knew how hard it was to use something like that. And from some of my notes I see

"Microsoft Unveils FASTER – a key-value store for large state management"

as at

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/microsoft- unve...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/microsoft-unveils- faster-key-value-store-large-state-management/)

and

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17267403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17267403)

But I discovered this option long after I wrote my own. Again, I suspect that I wrote my own is less time than it would take me just to understand the Microsoft documentation for their FASTER. If my DIY work gets weak in the knees from too much load, etc., then, sure, I'll consider options off the shelf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we see some source code for this project?

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds kind of similar to CMU's Peloton.</comment>


Shifting Baselines Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2013/07/shifting-baselines.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "Our vision is narrow and subjective; we are zoomed in on a small part of a line graph that is, in reality, much longer and plunging more steeply than we perceive. It's hard to zoom out and internalize those changes stacking up across generations."</comment>


The Chinese Lingerie Venders of Egypt - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/learning-to-speak-lingerie

<comment><USER2> "While Lin and Chen were building their small lingerie empire, they noticed that there was a lot of garbage sitting in open piles around Asyut. They were not the first people to make this observation. But they were the first to respond by importing a polyethylene-terephthalate bottle-flake washing production line, which is manufactured in Jiangsu province, and which allows an entrepreneur to grind up plastic bottles, wash and dry the regrind at high temperatures, and sell it as recycled material.

"I saw that it was just lying around, so I decided that I could recycle it and make money," Lin told me. He and his wife had no experience in the industry, but in 2007 they established the first plastic-bottle recycling facility in Upper Egypt. Their plant is in a small industrial zone in the desert west of Asyut, where it currently employs thirty people and grinds up about four tons of plastic every day. Lin and Chen sell the processed material to Chinese people in Cairo, who use it to manufacture thread. This thread is then sold to entrepreneurs in the Egyptian garment industry, including a number of Chinese. It's possible that a bottle tossed onto the side of the road in Asyut will pass through three stages of Chinese processing before returning to town in the form of lingerie, also to be sold by Chinese."

Heh. Awesome.

One thing I always notice when you see documentaries of travels in under- developed countries, that there's always a lot of rubbish sitting around, and also a lot of people sitting around. I always wonder why they don't just start by picking up their trash? I don't pretend to understand the dynamics of a place through a TV show, but keeping your own area tidy would seem to be a simple thing to do to improve your own quality of life, and it can cost virtually nothing.

<comment><USER3> What do you with the trash after you pick it up? The kind of underdeveloped countries with piles of trash sitting around also have no functional municipal garbage collection, at least in those areas with piles of trash sitting around.

<comment><USER4> Yes I believe this is the main reason for not picking it up, and for it lying around in the first place. However if there is a way to profit from it, that could mean the private sector can turn things around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Made me see the world a little differently. "The Chinese will sell people anything they like. They don't ask any questions. They don't care what you do with what they sell you. They won't ask whether the Egyptians are going to hold elections, or repress people, or throw journalists into jail. They don't care. The Americans think, If everybody is like me, they're less likely to attack me. The Chinese don't think like that. They don't try to make the world be like them. Their strategy is to make economic linkages, so if you break these economic linkages it's going to hurt you as much as it hurts them."

<comment><USER6> the modern chinese philosophy is to mind your own business, and survive, generate wealth for your children. Try to co-exist, and try to not make enemies (which doesn't mean you make friends), ut if you're troublesome, then stay the hell away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The most important word in the lingerie dialect is arusa, or "bride." The Chinese pronounce it alusa, and they use it constantly; in many Cairo neighborhoods, there are Chinese who go door-to-door with sacks of dresses and underwear, calling out "Alusa! Alusa!" In Chinese shops, owners use it as a form of address for any potential customer. To locals, it sounds flattering and a little funny: "Beautiful blide! Look at this, blide! What do you want, blide?""

really? Is this stereotype actually true, or is this embellished? This just seems over the top.

<comment><USER8> Especially considering that Mandarin Chinese differentiates between R and L sounds; Japanese is the one that doesn't[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_of_English_/r/_and_/l/_by_Japanese_speakers)

<comment><USER3> The immigrants in the story are from Zhejiang, so they likely natively speak a Wu dialect that does indeed not have an /r/ sound:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou_dialect#Phonology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou_dialect#Phonology)

And even the sound we write "r" when romanizing Mandarin is pretty distant from an Arabic /r/ (ر).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese#Initials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese#Initials)

<comment><USER8> Thank you for the correction. I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Peter Hessler is the author of (among other things) "Country Driving", whose insipid title hides a fascinating story of China's evolution viewed from the ground level.

[http://www.amazon.com/Country-Driving-Chinese-Road- Trip/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Country-Driving-Chinese-Road- Trip/dp/006180410X)

</comment><comment><USER9> I feel Egypt's "Zabbaleen" should be mentioned here : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabbaleen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabbaleen)

There was an excellent documentary on them a few years ago :

[http://www.garbagedreams.com/](http://www.garbagedreams.com/)

<comment><USER10> As it happens, in addition to writing the article under discussion in this post, Peter Hessler also wrote another New Yorker piece about one of the zabbaleen:

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/tales- trash](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/tales-trash)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My wife and I just visited Egypt for two weeks. It was quite interesting to walk down a street in Cairo and look at hijab/niqab shops right next to seriously raunchy lingerie shops. We though it might be a cosmopolitan thing, but we noticed it even in the more conservative towns we visited.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a fascinating read! I released my app a while ago and found most users are Arab. I am eager to learn more about my customers and this article provides great insights.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great read. Now I know not to try a manufacturing business in Egypt. Unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER14> Such a riveting read!</comment>


Quadratic Payments: A Primer - <AUTHOR> https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html <comment><USER2> Great article; very interesting and well written.

A bit of a tangent, but something that bothers me is the assumption in economics that the amount of money one is willing to pay for a good is equal to the utility provided by that good. And then it follows that if I am willing to pay €2 for a coffee and another person is only willing to pay €1 for that same coffee, then I value the coffee twice as much as the other person.

But to me that doesn't make much sense. What if I am a billionaire and the other person is very poor? It could very well be that the other person values the coffee a lot more than I do, but because I have so much more disposable income than they do I am willing to pay more for it. To me, the assumption should be something like the amount of money _as a percentage of my total wealth_ that I'm willing to pay is equal to the utility of the good.

And because this assumption is so fundamental to economics, it determines the conclusions that the field reaches. For example, the definition of an "efficient market" or the optimal level of production of some good both embed this assumption that willingness to pay equals utility. And then one can imagine that policy decisions and such are influenced by this assumption. (And in fact the article itself mentions this problem: "Another challenge is that quadratic payments, being a payment-based mechanism, continues to favor people with more money.").

So I'm wondering if anyone has looked into an alternative formulation of economics with a different fundamental assumption (perhaps something closer to the one I proposed above). If so, do certain things that are determined to be "optimal" in classical economics turn out not to be optimal in this alternative formulation (and vice-versa)? Apologies if this is a bit of a naive question; Econ 101 is the most I've ever studied the subject.

<comment><USER3> Economics specifically _does not_ make that assumption. You will see it in cost-benefit analysis, but it is not anything like a fundamental assumption in economics. I don't know where you got the idea that it was -- if you learned it from your econ 101 class you should demand your money back.

The fundamental idea in economics is "Pareto efficiency". Something is Pareto efficient if there is a no way to make someone better off without making anyone worse off. An idealized perfectly competitive market would be Pareto efficient, but the bulk of microeconomics these days studies market imperfections.

A level of production is "optimal" if it's Pareto efficient. Again firms in idealized perfectly competitive markets will produce a Pareto efficient output, but real markets can fall short of the ideal. For example, a polluting industry will overproduce, unless pollution is taxed.

IIRC, there are conditions where your alternative criterion matches Pareto efficiency, but they are somewhat special.

<comment><USER4> > Economics specifically does not make that assumption.

As everything in economics, it depends on which branch you're talking about, but this assumption is the core of the _marginalist revolution_ which is fundamental to the whole _classical_ branch and it's derivatives, which makes the vast majority of mainstream economics nowadays, because the _neoclassical synthesis_ made the biggest part of the Keynesian school move toward this assumption (say hello to micro-founded macro).

Anecdotally, claims that [insert a foundational hypothesis of classical economics] isn't really that important in the whole model has been the favorite defense of neoclassical economics against criticism since at least Friedman in 53 ( it might have existed before, but none of them had the popularity of his _Essays in positive economics_ )

<comment><USER5> I don't see how micro-founded macro models equate utility with willingness to pay? Work-horse New Keynesian models begin with a representative agent so willingness to pay of different consumers doesn't even make sense in this context. Moreover, these models are (to my knowledge) seldom used for welfare analysis but rather to examine things like the effects of montetary policy on employment and growth. Models with heterogeneous agents certainly don't assume willingness to pay is the same as utility. I'm an econometrician not a macroeconomist though so perhaps I'm missing something.

<comment><USER3> They don't equate the two in macro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This post describes a system of voting/payments where you can make multiple votes, depending on how strongly you value your preferred outcome, but each vote costs more than the vote before.

Identity management and collusion are big issues with these systems, as the essay points out.

For programmers, one way to think about this is that each voter has a state, n, that tracks how many of times they've voted. And each vote is more expensive than the last. Eventually you either run out of money or you lack the desire to spend more money on another vote.

But if you can create a new voter account as easily as you can create a new Gmail account, then once n gets sufficiently high, you just switch to a new account to lower the price of your vote.

Or if a really rich voter with a high n-value pays someone with a low-n value to make a vote on their behalf, the system collapses as well.

Enforcing strict identity management (e.g. requiring valid state-issued ID cards) and implementing secret voting can help address these problems, but my guess is that if there is a strong enough incentive, people will try their hardest and come up with novel ways to thwart these safeguards.

<comment><USER7> I don't think secret voting is as much of an issue as people make it out to be. Vote buying would in theory be a problem with today's usual voting systems, but in practice doesn't seem to be an issue. If we're voting on Proposition 1234 and I really really care but you don't, I should be willing to pay you to vote my way. But we don't see that happening.

<comment><USER8> You don't see it happening (much) because we have a secret ballot. If I really care about Proposition 1234 I can sell my vote to you, collect the fees, and still vote however I want. There have been cases where someone felt compelled to vote for something they didn't want because they didn't want to be seen voting the other way [their boss would fire them, or such situations], thus we no longer allow anyone to find out how an individual voted.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I thought this was about another kind of secrecy emphasized in the article:

>We don't just need votes to be anonymous and private (while still making the final result provable and public); _we need votes to be so private that even the person who made the vote can 't prove to anyone else what they voted for._ [emphasis theirs]

This is the part I was saying doesn't seem so necessary.

<comment><USER9> I think that goes along with what the parent mentioned. If someone can prove how they voted, then Person A can buy Person B's vote and request proof that Person B voted that way. However, if Person B can't prove which way they voted and it is just based off trust then Person B can lie and still vote however they'd like.

<comment><USER7> You can do that today. You could have sold your vote in the 2016 election. It just doesn't seem to be a thing people do.

<comment><USER9> How can you do that today? Can you get the equivalent of a receipt from voting?

<comment><USER7> One possibility that comes to mind is filling out a vote-by-mail ballot and letting them verify and send it in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a fascinating collective decision making scheme. One potentially serious nitpick. In the "one dollar one vote" scheme, it makes a simplification that seems really bad. It's the same flavor of mistake as when you have the option of making a bet. If the expected return is positive, it says you should bet all of your money. In reality, people don't do this. Rational actors shouldn't even do this.

I'd love to see what an attempt at this same sort of number-of-votes-is- proportional-to-value comes to with a less simplified model of behavior. If I value outcome A at price $x and outcome B at price $y, I might not be able to afford $x^2+y^2, and this model doesn't say what I would or should do. A corresponding model that talked about how people _allocate_ their finite money rather than a unit by unit _spending_ description seems like it would better apply to reality.

<comment><USER10> It's simply not true that if EV is positive, you should bet all of your money. There's a classic formula called the 'Kelly criterion' to calculate how much of your money should be bet given your expected edge. The original paper (which came out of Bell labs, based upon noise over a transmission channel!) is a good read:

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

[http://www.herrold.com/brokerage/kelly.pdf](http://www.herrold.com/brokerage/kelly.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Can I check something - reading the wikipedia article on Kelly Bets it seems that one should take the expected chance of winning, double it and subtract 1.0 and use that as percentage of bet size

So when I win 3/4 times, that's .75 -> 1.5 -> .5 of my total wealth.

But this basically means never gamble till the odds are in your favour. (ie above .5 chance of winning)

What does this say about founding a startup?

<comment><USER12> The most insightful thing the Kelly criterion says about founding a startup is "don't bet unless you have an edge".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think this idea is actually implementable in a large-scale, real-world setting. One person, one vote democracy is pretty understandable to an average Joe who doesn't even remember what "squared" means. I think that a normal person would have no idea how much to spend on a particular decision, as the formulas would seem like black magic to them. Normal voting is pretty intuitive, quadratic is not. This problem is not that noticable for HN people, as our average intelligence is probably way above the societys', but before deploying this on a large scale, it has to be considered. I don't think that internal workings of democracy should be something that an average school child can't easily grasp.

<comment><USER14> part of the reason the so-caleld "average Joe" doesn't remember what squared means is becuase they don't really have to.

If this scheme were part of the world form the minute "Joe" is born, Joe would _have to_ understand this.

education must improve. the current paradigm of education is reminiscent of an assembly line. if kids aren't manufactured goods, why is their education treated as such?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We tried quadratic voting for our team choosing a new name, and we did not find it to work well. I think the analysis that the scheme even converges makes simplifying assumptions that aren't well justified, particularly that everyone knows the marginal probability of each candidate winning (when that itself is behind a fairly inscrutable voting method.) Without that assumption I think it falls apart.

The optimal strategy is to vote maximally for your preferred most likely contender, and maximally against the nearest competitor, but if you don't know who those are, the system provides no means of discovery. So strategic voting is not just possible, it is critical to have any influence, but the evidence needed for optimal strategic voting is neither obvious, nor revealed by the system, (and from our experience I don't think it has any stable Nash equilibria.)

After a few days with the system, we finally abandoned it and switched to a condorcet election.

</comment><comment><USER16> While reading I wasn't convinced this was going to work due to the collusion problem, until I read the comments on collusion which add an extra condition: "we need votes to be so private that even the person who made the vote can't prove to anyone else what they voted for."

However, this condition is not enough, it doesn't cover the case where someone is being watched while they are voting. The condition should be something like:

"we need votes to be so private that only the voter can know what he voted on"

I don't see many solutions to this, except the '19th century' way of voting at a voting station, or a voting machine that can read minds. Obviously it would be pretty strange inputting your vote through thoughts, especially since this system might never allow you to confirm what you voted on.

However, I guess even ballot voting could suffer from collusion since it's not fundamentally private. You could take a hidden camera into the voting box and record your vote, and afterwards get a payout.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always enjoyed the concept of exponential costs for incremental gains. I've had the benefit of only really utilizing them in strong-identity systems (games) but I've considered some of the drawbacks of using them in weak- identity systems and come to a few ideas:

1) A participation barrier can be used to prevent identities from participating until they've overcome something. A simple example would be an age barrier (identity must exist for some period of time before participating) which prevents spinning up multiple identities on-demand to try to increase voting power. Ideally, in practice there would be multiple barriers that would be naturally-occurring for a real participating identity but too expensive to create/maintain several identities.

2) Similar to (1), have an ongoing cost to maintaining identities. Something such as a "subscription fee" may serve as a deterrent as the value of one identity needs to be weighed against the cost of maintaining it. This can be made additionally effective if the issue being voted on recurs every period rather than one-time (i.e. revisiting regulation votes every cycle instead of just voting once and having the regulation remain until stricken). For the normal participant, the value of this subscription could be offset by access to a non-scaling benefit - i.e. access to private content/events.

3) While the article focuses on the economics in terms of dollars there's the very real question of allowing votes to be purchased with other forms of currency that either complement or replace traditional currency. This is common in MMOs where you can have multiple characters (weak identities) each with their own in-game currency that can be acquired from in-game activities and may or may not be exchanged with real-world currency depending on the stance the owners of the game take.

Suffice it to say there aren't really silver bullets to "general purpose quadratic payments with weak identities" but you could create some limited- purpose constraints that are particular to the problem/community and make some strides from there.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems like solving the Sybil problem (a prerequisite to this scheme having any use whatsoever) might be something better on which to focus attention first, as it has other useful applications, even in one-person, one-vote democracies.

<comment><USER18> Pushing this idea doesn't mean other problems in the space aren't being thought about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really great to see Vitalik working with Glen Weyl's ideas. Weyl's collection of "radical ideas" may actually become more than just thought experiments.

<comment><USER20> They actually authored a paper together: [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656)

On arxiv: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06421](https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06421)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The main topics of interest here are how non "quadratic" voting converges to quadratic via influence peddling or subquadratic in the form of rigged/kabuki elections.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting article.</comment>


Startup falling apart? Silicon Valley's fairy godfathers are at your service - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/15/startup-falling-apart-silicon-valleys-fairy-godfathers-are-at-your-service/ <comment><USER2> I know these guys, sound crew.</comment>


Why I removed my sensitive files from Google Drive - <AUTHOR> http://vagosec.org/2014/02/google-drive-clickjacking-vulnerability/

<comment><USER2> If you're storing sensitive files on Google Drive, it is a good idea to encrypt them: [http://www.syncdocs.com/how-to-set-up-google-drive- encryptio...](http://www.syncdocs.com/how-to-set-up-google-drive-encryption/)

<comment><USER3> Or maybe not willing upload sensitive files to other peoples servers. Don't upload anything that you can't live with being public.</comment></comment>


Congress is about to reauthorize the Patriot Act - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fightfortheftr/congress-is-about-to-reauthorize-the-patriot-act-as-part-of-a-must-pass-spending-bill-7e5b6ddb9d05 <comment><USER2> Is there a name for the phenomenon where supposedly temporary measures (like tolls) have a disturbing tendency to become permanent because they benefit those in power in some way?

<comment><USER3> Sounds like every production environment I've seen in the last 20 years. [Stuff] hits the fan -- quick, apply this hastily assembled patch so we have time to think about how to fix it properly.... except we never do go back to fix it properly.

<comment><USER4> I agree, seems like it's always like this. Shady measures are taken up or new laws approved just for a bit, for that situation, and then they stay forever</comment></comment></comment>


We Don't Dream Big Enough - <AUTHOR> http://vijaysblog.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/we-dont-dream-big-enough/ <comment><USER2> I am sorry to say it, but most Indians are conformists - they are not creative. It's the culture. The nail that sticks out is beaten down. Americans are simplistic.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an industry where older age is a positive? - <AUTHOR> I'm beyond the median age in the tech industry. I still love it but I'm facing facts. What industry (or industries) actually values the wisdom and experience of older workers more than the malleability of younger ones? <comment><USER2> Come to Google. At least here in our Waterloo, Ontario office we have plenty of very smart and capable engineers continuing to write code and be respected for it well into our graying years.

I myself am surprised how fast I went from 'youngest guy on the team' to 'oldest coder on the team'. But it hasn't been a liability here.

<comment><USER3> That's not a realistic option for most people in tech, older or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will you be willing to share which country you live? In some countries, there are policies to hire older worker or people of diversity but it will depend on the country you live.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am not sure if they really value the wisdom of older workers but medical companies seem to have older workers in average.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just find a place that makes you happy, if your colleagues or wherever you are applying for not happy about you there, don't force yourself.

<comment><USER5> I think you mean well but this is not very helpful.</comment></comment>


Canaan Creative Sets Terms, Plans to Rake in $100M in Upcoming US IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.koinsbook.com/xinwen/blockchain/3133.html <comment><USER2> Another plagiarized story, ripped verbatim from Cointelegraph with actual author byline stripped:

[https://cointelegraph.com/news/canaan-creative-sets-terms- pl...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/canaan-creative-sets-terms-plans-to- rake-in-100-million-in-upcoming-us-ipo)

Please flag down clickbait-plagiarism content farms.</comment>


Ask HN: What do/see in SF - <AUTHOR> Travelling to SF for an interview - I'll be staying around Soma/Hayes. What are some cafes/restaurants/sights/weird shit to check out while I'm there? Trying to get a sense of what it would be like to live there <comment><USER2> Catch the BART out to Lake Merritt in East Bay, wonder around and head to one of the many great bars / restaurants on 19th / Telegraph.

Go to North Beach, check out Spectacles + City Lights bookstore. Grab a pizza at Tonys (sit at the bar), then walk it off up to Coit Tower.

Bart to 24th in the Mission, wander down 24th St and grab a coffee at Haus on corner of Folsom. Find a taco joint for $1 tacos. Climb up Bernal Heights then drop down into Courtland Avenue for a beer.

<comment><USER3> As a data point, I agree with this itinerary. Especially visit haus coffee, when I first moved to the Bay Area, it served well as a home away from home

<comment><USER4> Haus is starting to get pretty crowded now that more people are finding out about this hidden gem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "What are some cafes/restaurants/sights/weird _shit_ to check out while I'm > there?

You will find your weird _shit_ in the Tenderloin. SF is perhaps the most depressingly Dickensian city in the world. Before seeing it I'd never imagined a city with so many billionaires would let its residents suffer so.

</comment><comment><USER6> Go to an event at PianoFight.

[https://www.pianofight.com](https://www.pianofight.com)

<comment><USER7> Their tinder disrupt series are pretty funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Get a burrito in the mission, try to avoid stepping in human shit.

<comment><USER4> El Farolito right by the 24th Street and Mission BART station is worth the wait in line. Carne asada super burrito!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Check out Haight Ashbury, it's where the whole hippie thing started and honestly it never stopped there. there's also a ton of cool, weird stores along the road.

<comment><USER10> I used to visit Haight / Ashbury with my stoner friends every time we visited SF. When I had the opportunity to move to SF for a job, I almost didn't take it because I thought the Upper Haight was representative of all of SF. I _hate_ that area, and most of the people that bum around there totally suck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Trying to get a sense of what it would be like to live there

The past few times I went for an interview to a new location, I first went to a meetup / group. Asked folks (who have lived and have no stakes in your interview) what they like and don't like. Also, walked few blocks around interview spot in the evening and morning for as long as I could to get a better feel of the area.

</comment><comment><USER12> My recommendations:

Cafes: Caffe Trieste (North Beach)

Restaurants: The Ramp (Dogpatch), Sunday morning brunch at Thai Temple (Berkeley), Fish (Sausalito)

Sights: Twin Peaks, Coit Tower, Berkeley hills (Grizzly peak)

Weird shit: The Saloon (North Beach), Ruby Room (Oakland), parties at 20 Mission (Mission), Li Po Cocktail Lounge (Chinatown)

</comment><comment><USER13> Neptune Society Columbarium. Look it up!

<comment><USER7> Ironically, The building overlooking it is a gerontology inpatient clinic...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Visit the Prelinger Library prelingerlibrary.org

</comment><comment><USER15> Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley.</comment>


Ask HN: How Much Reliance on 3rd Party Tech Is Too Much? - <AUTHOR> My partners and I came up with an idea for a product and simultaneously started building a product and scouting around the market to see what competition was out there.  In that process we found a couple of API's available to use that basically took care of the data processing we needed to be done, so we started using them.  So now our product is essentially repackaging these API's* and selling to the customer (with very little of our own proprietary IP). We're finding demand in the market place for the service and signing up customers. We all use 3rd party tech at some level (from AWS up the stack), but this tech goes to the core offering. I'm wondering what people think about businesses like this?<p>*Our API usage is in compliance with the terms of service, so this is really a business question, not a legal one. <comment><USER2> Congratulations. What a great way to prove out the usefulness of your service. Minimal effort to fulfill a need.

1\. Try to form a relationship with the companies whose APIs you depend upon. Try to find out their plans for the APIs, if they'll keep them up, if the terms of service will stay okay for you, and if they are likely to become a competitor.

2\. Depending upon one, either put your resources into expanding into new areas or replacing the APIs. Expanding would be preferred, but you may need to do both if one of the companies may become a competitor.

Again, sounds like you are in a great spot. More value provided with less effort is always a good thing. Sounds like an eloquent solution. There's risk, but you recognize it which is important. Focus on growth if you can rather than de-risking the API usage since there are probably a bunch of other unseen risks and growth will help you find these and deal with them. Then gradually de-risk the API usage as you grow.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is something I often debate as well. On one hand, it allows you to go to market faster. On the other, your business is perhaps less defensible. That said, even if you went out built your own solution from the ground up who's to say someone else wouldn't come along and just piggyback the API you're using now?

As long as you're aware of the potential business risks and are taking at least some steps to mitigate it (or have plans to), you might as well keep adding as much value as possible to further position yourself in whatever market you're playing in.

Focus on the value add, and if you start to reach a scale where pricing becomes prohibitive, great! Now build your own.

If their API changes, well, that's a bit harder to handle. The second you start to see any level of serious traction you'll probably want to either a) lock down a long term contract or b) build a replacement that frees you from this dependancy.

</comment><comment><USER4> If the company whose api you're selling, goes out of business or changes their service to no longer off the service, can you carry on doing business?

What if they keep offering the service but at 10x the price?

for reference i would say the same about more generic things like app servers, databases, email processors. The moment you rely on a vendor specific thing, you have a dependency on them. Some are unavoidable, and/or low risk. Some are avoidable and/or high risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> If they pull the API we would be scrambling to find an alternate solution. Likewise, if they 10x the price our business metrics would be turned upside down. So that is a massive risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reinvest any profit you make into weening yourself off the 3rd party tech. Starting with the most mission-critical tech...

</comment><comment><USER6> Is the API something that would be difficult or impossible for you to replicate on your own? If that's the case, you might have to just stick it out. There's nothing inherently wrong about building a business on top of an API, just there's a higher risk factor involved if say, the company pulls a Twitter and guts the API or goes under etc.

Otherwise, I would advise possibly building a functional clone of the API in earnest (if you have the cycles available to do so) and keep it on the backburner until needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> The API could theoretically be replicated - its not based on proprietary data from the provider - but it would be a resource intensive effort to do so. And would involve an ongoing to hill climb to match its performance.

<comment><USER6> Ah, a tricky situation. Honestly if you can, the best choice would be to buckle down and at least replicate _some_ functionality on your own - that way you have at least a safety net if the API is revoked or pricing goes way up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's definitely value in wrapping APIs - an API is useless to someone who doesn't know any programming. If you can provide an easy interface for non programmers to use the service, that definitely has value, even if the API does all the actual work.

You should aim to have a way to switch on the fly between 3rd Party providers though. On my (small) e-commerce website the payment processor would occasionally have issues with a customer, so I had actually signed up for multiple services that I could switch between at any time. That was useful when one of the providers I'd signed up with ended up getting out of the consumer e-commerce space at short notice.

</comment><comment><USER8> What I would do:

1\. Determine your liability to the customers in the event the APIs are discontinued

2\. Assess the risk of the APIs getting shut down

3\. Have a contingency plan in place in the event you have to scramble.</comment>


MongoDB bug has thousands dbs vulnerable - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2015/02/security-gaps-discovered-39890-online-databases

<comment><USER2> Misconfiguration is not really a bug though. case of RTFM</comment>


Ask HN: Telehealth market trends? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know what are the technology trends in the telehealth (remote medical consultation) industry? What would be the best direction for a remote physiotherapy application? (Mobile, WebService, Device, Tablet, etc?) Thanks! <comment><USER2> Who will be using the application?

<comment><AUTHOR> So far, patients and practitioners in allied health. It's already in the market, but we're looking at trends and bus. models to plan ahead.. neorehab.com</comment></comment>


Programming Languages - Hyperpolyglot - <AUTHOR> http://hyperpolyglot.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> As a python hacker, who also uses WordPress for fun and profit-- this site is a dream resource. We use postgresql and redis with django, and we use mysql with php for WordPress. So, the "Interpreted Languages" pages, and the "Databases" pages are always pinned in firefox.</comment>


Alleged hacker Lauri Love to be extradited to US - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-37385201 <comment><USER2> What's scary to me is that the crime doesn't fit the punishment. We're going to take a genius away from civilization where he could use his potential in constructive ways, and lock him up for something that, realistically, isn't as bad as when bankers launder many millions of dollars, or when identity thieves steal. So we will probably give this guy a life sentence for being smarter than 90% of the American workforce and almost uncovering secrets that shouldn't be being kept anyway. Why can't we throw the book at corrupt politicians and businessmen this hard?

<comment><USER3> He's a genius? I thought the US was embarrassed by how dumb the vulnerabilities he exploited were. Which is it?

<comment><USER4> Well, in fairness he is somewhat smart. Most people don't successfully hack the FBI and the Federal Reserve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's stories like this that make me, as the parent of a high-functioning child with autism spectrum disorder, scared shitless. My son, as he gets older, shows over and over again that he has an amazing aptitude for pretty much anything he decides to learn.

He's not even a teenager, and can:

* Play the trombone better than peers two years older than he is, all because he inherited a trombone from his late grandfather, and wanted to honor his memory

* Compose music in GarageBand on his iPhone or Mac, and arrange covers of songs from memory, as well as play them on the trombone or piano/keyboard

* Write properly-formatted screenplays, direct and produce (with iMovie) and create VFX (with Apple Motion) for his own creations

* Write automation scripts for various Mac tasks with JavaScript

He has an amazing ability to understand advanced math and science concepts, and recently started positing theories about dark matter (!) during our nightly reading and chatting time. And he's proven that he'll effectively learn (and put into practice) anything he wants to, given the resources to do so. He's expressed more and more interest in computer programming, and I've indulged that interest by teaching him JavaScript (his first request) and now Swift.

And one day, he's going to frighten someone with his skills, and he won't understand why; for all his genius and talent, he's still on the autism spectrum, and one common disadvantage for those on the spectrum is an inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes. He cannot understand why others don't think exactly the way he does, or understand the intentions behind his actions. It is completely alien to him that subterfuge is employed by others, that words and deeds should be taken by anything but their literal or face value. He can't begin to comprehend why his stated intentions behind his words or deeds would not be completely and unconditionally believed by everyone else. It simply does not compute.

He gets services in school to help with his pragmatic communication, and I do everything I can to guide him as well. Once he's out of school, I can only hope we've made enough of a difference for him to live productively and happily in a world that vilifies people with above-average intelligence but below-average pragmatic or social communication skills.

<comment><USER6> Would there be an opportunity to take advantage of his ability to learn anything he puts his mind to in the sense of understanding everyone else's motivations for why they do and say what they do some kind of fascinating project - treat it like a game. Perhaps spinning social function around like this will help him to grasp that empathy and understanding of others motivations(?)

I ask this rather than put it out there as a solution mostly because my only understanding of autistics that have come and gone in my life have all had this thread of bottomless abilities to absorb information on topics that fascinate them as well as loving things they can game. Would turning understanding emotions into a game assist his learning here?

<comment><USER7> > understanding everyone else's motivations for why they do and say what they > do some kind of fascinating project - treat it like a game

Worked for me, although 'game' is perhaps unduly reductive; for me, it's more in the sense that this is how I can best make myself worthwhile. I don't claim to be on the spectrum, though, so I'm not sure how much 'worked for me' is worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Seems like his mental conditions (psychosis, Asperger syndrome and depression according a psychologist who testified on his behalf) should have been enough to have the request denied.

Edit: Apparently he's facing 99 years for the charges (yes I know he might get much less). I wonder if he can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. I know in the past they've said whole-life sentences are ok but I can't see how such a sentence wouldn't be considered inhumane for computer hacking.

<comment><USER3> No. He _will_ get "much less". If he's given a custodial sentence at all (he could plausibly be given probation, given his cognitive issues and the fact that his crime was non-remunerative), it'll almost certainly be low single- digits.

These "99 year" sentences are conjured by taking every charged count of an offense, assuming the maximum possible sentence for that class of offense, and then adding all the charges together.

But that's not how federal sentencing works. Like: at all. What happens in reality is that "like" charges group, and you're sentenced only according to the most severe count in the group of charges.

The federal sentencing guidelines are freely available. You can read through them to get a ballpark of where this case will land. There's a reason most convicted hackers who aren't running giant credit card rings spend single digit years in prison: the sentencing guidelines won't allow for a different sentence.

<comment><USER8> Single digits is still excessive, we are talking 5 or 6 years in jail for crimes which were void of any financial gain. I'm thinking g of weev and swartz who are both dealt with in the article.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/41-months-weev- underst...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/41-months-weev- understanding-how-sentencing-guidelines-work-cfaa-cases-0)

<comment><USER3> I agree†. Sentences in general are too long. I don't think there's a corrective goal that a 5 year sentence for a non-financial computer crime that isn't served just as well in 1.

† _With the nit that I don 't believe a 5 year sentence would be in the cards for this particular offender._

<comment><USER8> I'm not so certain, his targets meet the "official victim" requirement, they will be free to choose the loss value which is unlikely to be Conservative, means of identification is likely met as it is a simple as accessing email addresses and even though they attacks have been called simplistic and the weaknesses well known they will claim that sophisticated means were used by virtue of a computer being involved. This on the face of it seems worse than weev as there were multiple targets involved.

<comment><USER3> He's not the first person to get caught hacking the USG, and thus far insane sentences haven't been a consequence of that sort of thing. We'll see, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is Asperger's _really_ a valid excuse for this sort of thing? People on the autism spectrum aren't incapable of understanding that actions can lead to consequences and that some things are wrong. Otherwise there would be an epidemic of autistic bank-robbers and murderers.

I will agree that it is bullshit thaw you can get extradited to a country you've never even been to and tried under their laws for committing a cyber- crime, though. He should remain in Britain for that reason alone. It's also pretty disgusting how if he had committed the exact same crime under the employment of the government they wouldn't have even filed charges.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like BBC has updated the title to say he is being extradited. Why did the UK not veto this, as we did with Gary McKinnon?

<comment><USER10> Possibly because of Brexit, the UK wants to keep its ties with the US as strong as possible by bowing to demands like this

<comment><USER11> This situation shows why, unfortunately, movements like Brexit are inherently legless. Here we have a case of a British citizen breaking a British law on British soil, yet being abducted by a foreign justice system under treaties that have destroyed national sovereignty. Yet because the UK is currently pushing back against one such agglomeration of power, it will actually supplicate harder to a different power rather than simply acting as its own country!

(And I say this as a USian who is actually concerned with the disastrous effects that exercising world jurisdiction is having on _our own_ society. Why bother spending the effort to secure computers when you can just assuredly throw the witches into cages for decades?)

<comment><USER12> US citizens get extradited to Britain too. It works both ways.

In this instance we have someone who's pretty clearly committed a serious crime (stealing credit card info, for example), being extradited to the country which has jurisdiction with respect to the offense committed. It's a completely normal and proper instance of extradition. I'm surprised to see people here falling for the guy's rather overwrought sob story.

<comment><USER11> It's only "normal and proper" if one believes such treaties are reasonable. Clearly I do not, and just insisting it is does not form an argument.

I reject the idea that merely communicating with some place creates a legal nexus giving that place jurisdiction over you - it contradicts the general concept of freedom of speech. By such reasoning, holocaust denial is effectively criminalized in the US because such speech will reach Germany and possibly change people's minds there.

<comment><USER12> Lauri Love wasn't merely communicating, he was hacking into US government computer systems and stealing credit card info.

If you are just opposed to all instances of extraposition, then ok, but that has nothing to do with this specific case.

<comment><USER11> The specific crimes you list are generally accomplished completely through communication, and this seems to be true in this case.

(I assume you meant to type 'extradition'). I'm not opposed to all instances of extradition. It seems perfectly reasonable that if someone commits a crime on US soil and flees, that their destination isn't a a safe haven and they be brought back to the jurisdiction they were in.

But that's not what happened here - the alleged crime was committed while on British soil, and I don't think he's ever visited the US. So "extraditing" him is actually _exporting_ him to a completely foreign jurisdiction!

<comment><USER12> You originally said that Love was "merely" communicating. That is not the case. He was also committing a crime. To say that he was merely communicating is like saying that a Nigerian scammer was "merely sending an email", or that a double agent was "merely carrying some documents in a briefcase".

There is no legal precedent for limiting extradition to instances where the person being extradited has been physically present within the jurisdiction in question. If you hack into US government computers, it obviously makes sense for the US government to prosecute you.

By the way, in relation to your Holocaust denial example, you should look into the concept of "dual criminality".

<comment><USER11> It is "mere communication" in the sense that the whole action is communication, as opposed to eg also physically gaining access. The strict sense you're attempting for "mere" is nonsensical - every communication is for some ultimate purpose, and so can be described as that purpose. By a strict sense, asking Aunt Mildred for her cookie recipe wouldn't be "mere" communication, because you're also "making cookies".

The dual criminality thing isn't surprising because it's the crudest way of resolving the immediate conundrum. But this case precisely highlights its flaw - a person has only violated the law if they are found guilty in a court. Lauri has not been found guilty in a UK court, and therefore his actions have not been found illegal under UK law! Not to mention the vastly different punishments between the places (owing to societal differences that he never opted into). So either the principle needs to be extended to take these things into account, effectively making him stand trial in a UK court but perhaps with a US prosecutor, or another basic principle needs to be found.

Obviously there is no legal precedent, because if there were we wouldn't be having this conversation (it is the tendency for these systems to grow and erode rights). But I'm arguing that there should be - if someone is not physically present in a jurisdiction, how can they be said to have positively assented to that jurisdiction?

In the age of instant global communication, we either have one world jurisdiction (role currently being filled by USG) or we need to adopt logical demarcation points between different ones. I believe freedom of speech scaled up to nation states makes a lot of sense, for the same pragmatic reasons that it makes sense applied to individuals - a receiver of information is able to easily filter much garbage, and so the onus should be on them to prevent being affected by it.

<comment><USER12> If that's what you mean by 'mere' then it doesn't matter that he was 'merely' communicating. Clearly it's possible to be 'merely' communicating in your sense and yet also committing a crime. The Nigerian scammer is 'merely' sending emails and yet also committing fraud. The idea that freedom of speech somehow makes hacking, fraud, or other such crimes permissible is simply silly.

You're also misunderstanding how dual criminality works. The requirement is that the offence for which the individual is being extradited must be a crime in both countries. That requirement is met in Love's case but not in your hypothetical Holocaust denial case.

I don't see why people should have to assent to being under any given jurisdiction. I didn't assent to being under British jurisdiction, but since I live in Britain, I am. You seem to be suggesting that the physical location of a person should impose hard-and-fast restrictions on which country's laws they may be subject to, but see no reason why that should be so.

<comment><USER11> Reread my comment if you think I didn't understand dual criminality. What I'm pointing out is that the concept needs to be extended or augmented for the modern networked world.

Previously it was adequate because one basically had to visit a jurisdiction to commit a crime there. But taking a look at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_by_region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_by_region), surely you wouldn't think it just for someone to be extradited from Iceland to Sudan for setting up a pornographic website.

I started off this thread explicitly saying that I reject the idea of communication creating a legal nexus. Borders and physical locations are a strong Schelling point for determining jurisdiction. I'm referencing free speech for its aspect of "what is said cannot hurt me", which is another Shelling point.

The Nigerian scammer is still committing fraud, but _in Nigeria_.

<comment><USER12> Your previous comment certainly appeared to misunderstand dual criminality since you thought it was relevant whether or not Lauri had been convicted of a crime in the UK. Clearly, however, that is not relevant to the satisfaction of the dual criminality requirement, which is the requirement that the _offence_ for which the person is being extradited is also an offence in the country they're being extradited from.

With regard to your Iceland example, I doubt that Iceland and Sudan have an extradition treaty. If they do, I don't see in principle why someone who lived in Iceland but was involved in producing pornography in Sudan should not be extradited for it. In practice, however, the probable lack of an extradition treaty, and the probable flaws in the Sudanese justice system, would make it very unlikely that an Icelandic court would approve such a request.

I'm not really sure why you bring the example up. People don't in fact get extradited from Iceland to Sudan, so it's not as if it highlights a problem with the present system.

>The Nigerian scammer is still committing fraud, but in Nigeria.

I don't see how that is necessarily the case, if the victims are in other locations.

<comment><USER11> > _Your previous comment certainly appeared to misunderstand dual criminality > since you thought it was relevant whether or not Lauri had been convicted of > a crime in the UK_

An action can only be an _offense_ if it illegal. And something can only be illegal if found so in a court of law. So, in abstract, dual criminality would require a proper trial in the extraditing country to determine if an offense was committed. The actual implementation takes shortcuts (because bureaucrats' goal is focused on achieving punishment), but this is an erosion of the legal system as I've been pointing out.

Surely you don't think that someone in a country with due process should be mechanically extradited to a country with no due process, but you're relying on a merciful extradition court to essentially try the case and provide due process before extradition.

> _I don 't see in principle why someone who lived in Iceland but was involved > in producing pornography in Sudan should not be extradited for it_

And _distribution_? eg just setting up a website that isn't not accessible from Sudan? I made this example because it shows how something can be technically "illegal" in two different places, yet have entirely different criminal procedures and punishments.

> _I don 't see how that is necessarily the case, if the victims are in other > locations._

I have repeatedly stated that I'm rejecting the idea that communication can create a legal nexus. In this context since the fraudster has not left Nigeria, all his crimes are happening within Nigeria. This has been my main argument the whole time.

Rather than directly addressing my main point, you've only countered with how things currently are. Obviously if I thought the current state of affairs was worthwhile I would not be making this argument, so it's hardly a refutation.

<comment><USER12> >So, in abstract, dual criminality would require a proper trial in the extraditing country to determine if an offense was committed.

No, dual criminality requires that the person be extradited for (allegedly) doing something which is a crime in both countries. So for example, you can be extradited from the UK to the US on a murder charge because murder is a crime in both countries. Whether or not you have been found guilty of murder in the UK is irrelevant.

>Surely you don't think that someone in a country with due process should be mechanically extradited to a country with no due process,

That is why extradition treaties are generally only signed with countries which have due process. But all of these extradition requests have to go before a court; they're not "mechanical".

>I have repeatedly stated that I'm rejecting the idea that communication can create a legal nexus. In this context since the fraudster has not left Nigeria, all his crimes are happening within Nigeria.

This is just wrong on the face of it, and you've provided no supporting argument. If the fraudster is defrauding people in another country then his is potentially subject to the jurisdiction of that country.

<comment><USER11> >> _I 'm rejecting the idea that communication can create a legal nexus_

> _This is just wrong on the face of it, and you 've provided no supporting > argument_

All of my comments have contained the supporting arguments, to which you've merely responded with how things _currently are_. This does not make for much of a refutation.

IMHO this is one of the problems with a common law legal system. It's all too easy to forget that its various principles and precedents are actually _man made_ and not manifest immutable truths.

<comment><USER12> Your arguments were based on various hypothetical scenarios (extradition to Sudan on pornography charges, etc. etc.), which could not happen in the present system due to some combination of (i) the dual criminality requirement, (ii) the probable non-existence of the relevant extradition treaties, and (iii) the discretion that courts have to refuse extradition requests to countries which are unlikely to give a fair trial, or where disproportionate penalties are applied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The US seems like it has a very undeveloped policy on digital defense. It seems like with this issue and the large breaches in security in the past, and the FBI pushing for even more weakening of encryption that the US government lacks a strong internal advocate to promote the development and installation defensive infrastructure for both in gov't and the US tech infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> _Every country in the world_ has underdeveloped digital defense. There is no secure country anywhere. It has nothing whatsoever to do with encryption policy (one of the rare tech policy issues that I agree wholeheartedly with the HN conventional wisdom on). It's that software security is simply an unsolved problem, but the world is plowing full speed ahead into deploying more and more of it, and will continue to do so.

<comment><USER13> I guess I'm thinking less about the state of the technology deployment (which will always be in some sort of play), and more about the political/bureaucratic organizations within the government and their focus. It feels, from a very, very outside position, that the gov't (NSA, et al) used to put more resources on systematically figuring out how to move defensive side work forward. Maybe the orgs that used to be tasked with that were reorged or demphasized, I don't really know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Says Lauri Love's lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes I wonder how US prosecutors live with themselves.

<comment><USER16> For the ones with the best intentions they probably think that, on average if not in every particular case, they're pulling the switch to make the trolley hit one person instead of five (so to speak), and that _not doing so_ would make the world a worse place.

For the ones with the worst intentions, it's likely something to do with chasing material and/or social rewards. (edit) And they don't much care about how much it hurts others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The US should give him a job hacking China

<comment><USER18> Like they did with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Stacks – A bookshelf for your online courses - <AUTHOR> https://stacks.courses/ <comment><USER2> So many:

> __Udemy has not yet provided a link for this course __

Is it a scraping limitation?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, this is intentional. I plan to monetize the site with affiliate links and so far only edX has provided them. I would be willing to put regular links in if this is too much of a drawback.</comment></comment>


Most wear-resistant metal alloy in the world engineered at Sandia Labs - <AUTHOR> https://share-ng.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/resistant_alloy/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like the perfect metal for a knife for outdoor use.</comment>


Bootstrap 2.2.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getbootstrap.com/2012/10/29/bootstrap-2-2-0-released/ <comment><USER2> It doesn't look like a lot has changed in this release, but just a reminder for those who can't upgrade right away: I'm hosting all the old docs at <http://bootstrapdocs.com>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this.

We were left stuck in 2.0.4 for a project , it will certainly come in handy.

<comment><USER4> You may already know this, but if you download the full master, you get the docs included in each release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hijacking the thread a bit here. Foundation (<http://foundation.zurb.com>) also released 3.2 on October 26th:

<http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/changelog.php>

<comment><USER4> It's kind of bad PR for Foundation junkies to try to ride on Bootstrap's coattails every time there's a Bootstrap thread on HN. I get that there's bad blood there, but it really makes the Foundation guys look desperate when you beg for attention like this.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough. Zurb isn't desperate for HN traffic or users. It's only fair that some of the other equally good frameworks get due attention.

<http://www.getskeleton.com/>

<http://gumbyframework.com/>

[http://titanthemes.com/titan-framework-a-css-framework- for-r...](http://titanthemes.com/titan-framework-a-css-framework-for- responsive-web-designs)

[http://www.angrycreative.se/wordpress/plugins/less- framework...](http://www.angrycreative.se/wordpress/plugins/less-framework/)

<comment><USER6> That's what a separate thread would be for.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps I should have worded it differently then. My goal was simply to provide other relevant alternatives to bootstrap.

 _"Then why are you posting on a completely un-related post for Bootstrap, instead of letting it stand on it's own merits?"_

Actually, other popular css frameworks highlighting responsive design are _very_ relevant to Bootstrap. Normally, one could let these frameworks stand on their own merits, but it seems that any bootstrap post on HN hops the popularity train right to the front page.

<comment><USER7> "...that any bootstrap post on HN hops the popularity train right to the front page...."

Doesn't mean you should jump on someone else' headline to promote Foundation. That's rude.

Make you own thread. If it isn't as "popular", that's your problem.

<comment><USER8> Disagree - there is nothing rude about this. The thread is not "someone else's" - it exists to benefit the community. I, and others, found these additional leads useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing Bootstrap guys should avoid doing is to modify previous css declarations. It becomes very difficult to get on the new version without breaking existing design. And by breaking I mean it will look different (line heights, spacing, etc..)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice, this finally fixes modals in small browser windows. <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/javascript.html#modals>

<comment><USER11> The modals are a trainwreck in a lot of different ways. I suggest you use this code: <http://jschr.github.com/bootstrap-modal/>

<comment><USER12> Every single demo on this page is buggy in my browser! (OSX, latest chrome).

<comment><USER11> Define buggy. The guy who wrote the new modal code is pretty responsive to fixing any issues.

<comment><USER12> Good pun ;P

Click on "View Demo" for the Responsive Modal. Modal appears with content, and disappears immediately when it reaches center of the screen.

Same thing happens for Stackable, and Full Width.

Click on "View Demo" for AJAX. 'Okay' button doesn't dismiss the modal, as I would expect it to.

Same thing happens for Custom Manager.

<comment><USER11> Weird, I can reproduce it now. It seems to be something with clicking around to various different ones. I'll report it to the author and see if we can get it fixed. Thanks for giving more information.

<https://github.com/jschr/bootstrap-modal/issues/8>

<comment><USER12> I don't quite know how to use github yet. Thanks.

<comment><USER11> It's been fixed now. Clear your cache and reload the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have already started making used of 2.2.0 with media-list for my tweets (<http://www.millwoodonline.co.uk/>). Nice to see <http://www.bootstrapcdn.com/> already have the new version in their CDN.

<comment><USER14> Extremely off-topic, but when I visited once during the Food Festival, I was wondering if Abergavenny had any semblance of a tech scene :-) Congratulations on living in such a beautiful place!

<comment><USER13> Thanks, and FYI there isn't much of a tech scene here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does it fix the bug In the most recent version whereby dropdowns wouldn't work on ios safari?

<comment><USER16> Its still not fixed on iOS chrome. I like bootstrap but it's a disaster on ios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone else feel like every time they release a new version of Bootstrap it is never backwards compatible? I feel like lots of divs on my site need different classes than were used before.

<comment><USER18> There should be no problems upgrading from 2.1.2 to 2.2.0—no features were removed and none had their classes changed.

<comment><USER11> Two changes that I found affected me:

.label's are now display: inline-block. In my particular usage, I needed block in one area.

tooltips used to default to html: true and now they default to html: false - The issue with this is that popovers are now html: false as well. I think popovers should default to html: true given their nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be lovely if they didn't hotlink placehold.it for their images as that site requires captcha approval before showing their images so mine is just a bunch of broken image links.

<comment><USER20> They went behind CloudFlare because of DDoS attacks. That is why you are seeing captchas. <https://twitter.com/placeholdit/status/256201151266045952>

<comment><USER21> I really don't understand most people. Why would you ever DDoS a CSS library's website?

<comment><USER22> Accidental DDoS? For fun (a la 4chan etc.) etc. But yeah I understand what you mean.

<comment><USER23> If it's accidental, is it really a DDoS? Or a poorly deployed/coded app? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like bootstrap but my lessc parser under Ubuntu sucks. Bad error messages (errors dont understand importing), no autocompilation and hard to install (have to install the whole Node.js world).

Anyone found a solution that works well under Ubuntu? (I use it with WordPress and Drupal; Rails would be nice but there I run for Sass/SCSS).

</comment><comment><USER12> In the Carousel example... there is something very wrong with the header scrolling/timing. Click the arrows a couple of times and roll across the menu. It goes crazy.

<comment><USER25> I get the same behavior. First no response from the carousel when clicking the arrows and after a few seconds it's going crazy. Windows 7 wit Chrome version 22.0.1229.94

<comment><USER12> OSX, 22.0.1229.94

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What is the easiest way to customize Bootstrap _without_ changing Bootstrap code? I mean, the easiest way for its intended audience, CSS amateurs.

<comment><USER23> It's really easier to re-compile your CSS from modified LESS files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Bit weird linking to a zip of master, but nevermind.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does Google CDNs host bootstrap, with less or sass similar to the way they do with jquery and some other javascript libraries?

<comment><USER29> no, but <http://cdnjs.com> does, although I don't think they have the CSS

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> carousel.html (one of the new examples) is really sexy. i think they learned lots of people are lazy and just leave their sites as pretty much stock bootstrap for a long time - so might as well make stock bootstrap look amazing. well done!

Here it is <http://dev.82.io/carousel/>

There seems to be a bug with the carousel though. Clicking next doesn't work and the images randomly start skipping really fast etc, at least for me (Chrome/OS X)

<comment><USER31> The official example appears to work as expected: <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/examples/carousel.html>

<comment><USER32> I get the same bug there as well. Chrome/Windows

<comment><USER33> Me too, Firefox/Mac

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm mainly a backend guy but do some frontend work from time to time. I keep seeing all this talk about a dozen different CSS "frameworks", and I just don't get it. Can someone explain to me what the purpose of these things is? Bootstrap's site for example doesn't even try to tell me what I would want it for, it just says I want it "because its for nerds" (do I have to dress in faux-nerd chic and live in the valley to use it?) and that it uses grids (that's the opposite of a selling point guys).

From looking at the code, all I see is a bunch of boilerplate CSS that seems to deliberately work against the nature of CSS (protip: the C stands for cascading), and is very brittle and tied to specific classes and markup rather than using selectors to be general and reusable. Is that really all it is, just a "I'm too lazy to design my site, so I'll just use twitter's design"? Perhaps it is just the word "framework" throwing me off since it doesn't appear to be a framework in any way? I know this is going to sound needlessly critical to some people, but I am expressing genuine confusion here, I really don't understand what I am supposed to use this for, or how it would help me in any way.

<comment><USER35> And here we have it again: the textbook middlebrow dismissal, anchored to the top of the thread.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4714217>

The reality of course is that calling Bootstrap a "framework" isn't at all controversial, that you cannot simply mimic it with a "default stylesheet" as suggested by this poster below, that to find a respected source vouching for the use of grids (and other systems of measure) you need look no further than Robert Bringhurst, that the Bootstrap site is atypically clear about its goals (maybe this poster didn't bother to scroll down half a page to see), and that the use of grid systems isn't remotely controversial in web design (where a good starting point to the use of grid systems in typographical and graphical applications would be Khoi Vinh).

<comment><USER36> Reading papsosouid's other comments in this thread, I think a more accurate description would be "troll".</comment></comment></comment>