Ask HN: YC interview invites are sent. What's up now? - <AUTHOR> YC application and interview process could be tedious for founders.<p>I am curious which companies got selected, which didn't and why? How do you feel about it and what you are going to do? <comment><USER2> My startup was not selected.

This was the first accelerator we applied to, and I of course obviously hold no ill will. I may try again in the future. I do appreciate that they said I would have an answer today, and I received an answer.

We are in the process of having our MVP built (finalizes in November), and will continue on as we have been.

In one way I am kind of happy. This is the first rejection to overcome.. who knows how many more we have ahead of us, but our passion to bring opportunity to every person who wants it will not be stopped.

I wish every company selected this year nothing but the best of luck moving forward.

<comment><USER3> Great attitude! That's our attitude too. Best of luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our application got rejected.

We are from LookMobility([http://www.lookmobility.com](http://www.lookmobility.com)), developing a product on creating Virtual Reality experience for the people who can't code and design, it is going to be powerpoint for Virtual Reality.

We have no idea why our application is rejected and also there is no regrets on it. Just move ahead and think forward!

<comment><USER5> It looks really cool, got me hooked, but it fails to explain "how" you'll archieve what you're selling :)

I'm particularly interested in that area, I'd like to be notified when you go live! You should add a newsletter :)

I hope adding a demo or video is on your to-do list, it would help greatly :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the comment. We will let you know once our product is out. And other changes on website and demo video are in progress already. Will be ready in a week's time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Got rejected. In a painful process to figure out why. It will be fine if YC didn't carefully read our application. It won't be if they did. We will continue carry on, toward our roadmap, try to prove ourselves by product performance as soon as possible, and meanwhile think through what we might be missed and how can we do better.

<comment><USER7> The first reason why you think they rejected you is because you think they didn't read your application?

Not gonna lie but i am going to give my honest advice here.

There is nothing wrong with your idea, I think there is some kind of need out there for photo organization because people takes so many pictures nowadays that they dont even remember they have taken them.

But when I see your team is when I went, WTF? You have 8 people working on a __pre-alpha __photo app and you don 't even KNOW if people want to use it.

AND you are hiring? What are you hiring for? More people to argue with whenever someone think of a idea? You need speed and focus at the beginning stage of a startup and having 8 person on the team is game over for you already.

Instagram is built with 2 person only all the way from original idea to pivoting to launch, and they STILL only have around 10 people on the team.

In fact there hasn't been a software startup I have seen in YC that has that many people. Most startups had 2-3 person for the first 2-3 years.

You should really consider about the size of your team especially at mvp stage.

<comment><USER6> Hi, thanks for your honest feedbacks. No, I didn't mean that they didn't read my application. That's a joke. You misunderstood.

We have 8 persons is because we have a seed round already and we want to run fast. I am learning how to balance the cost with the speed of development. But I don't think the amount of people directly equal to the cost you have. :)

Thanks for your information about the team size you have seen in YC. But I don't think that's the reason we got rejected. Will consider how to match the development speed with the size though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We're working on a new sales platform called coldminer ([http://www.cold- miner.com](http://www.cold-miner.com)) that unifies the entire process by including millions of built in prospecting leads, virtual call center, help desk, real time communications between sales reps, optional integrated e-commerce store for both front end purchasing as well as the option for sales reps to select inventory and make the sale from the call center, mass email capability, sales rep training and more.

We've been in the prototype phase for the last 7 months with one company using the prototype as it's sole leads source and sales platform and its helped them open over 200 new accounts and raise sales by over 200%.

We need alpha/beta testers and would love to see some other startups use it to gain traction so if anyone is interested in it let me know and we'll set you up.

It does both b2b and b2c but we're still working on the b2c aspect (a lot more data points and moving parts on the b2c side, plus a hell of a lot more leads to deal with) so we're really looking for companies that sell b2b right now but will be looking for b2c companies soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> Proly all of the YC-R's are going through this: [https://www.wrike.com/blog_images/396910/graph-reactions- to-...](https://www.wrike.com/blog_images/396910/graph-reactions-to- change.png)

</comment><comment><USER5> See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467290)

I got rejected, but I was expecting it - we didn't do ourselves any favors with our video, and we were way too early in the cycle (we didn't even have an english version of our webpage).

The YC Fellowship would have been a better fit for us, I really hope the experiment works and they do it again! :)

In case you didn't know about it: [https://fellowship.ycombinator.com/](https://fellowship.ycombinator.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm the founder of Impact That www.impactthat.org. It's a reader engagement tool for news media. We weren't accepted this time. Watching and reading the examples I realized we're probably too early in our development, but I decided to apply anyway. Just going through the process was good experience. We're still going full steam ahead, and are going to apply again after we have our pilot project with our first customer up and running.

</comment><comment><USER10> I submitted my application for Storytella[0] two days late and I haven't heard anything yet. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

[0] [https://storytel.la/](https://storytel.la/)</comment>


Ning's Bubble Bursts: No More Free Networks, Cuts 40% Of Staff - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/nings-bubble-bursts-no-more-free-networks-cuts-40-of-staff/ <comment><USER2> As one of the 69 people who were laid off from Ning today (after a mere six weeks with the company in my case), allow me to say the obvious:

Need a Python/C/C++ engineer with an algorithmic bent and a strong knowledge of scalable data storage and analysis? Email me at email@example.com.

<comment><USER3> From my friend, HN'er, and recent ex-Ning'er rjurney (works at LinkedIn) :

<http://twitter.com/rjurney/status/12236580762>

<comment><USER2> One of the real challenges for me is that I was a remote employee, and I'm not based out of an area with a reasonable tech sector. Telecommute positions (especially with companies of Ning's caliber) are hard to come by, and I'm not significantly free to relocate for another 14 months. Finding an arrangement that satisfies both my personal (family) and professional needs is going to be a real challenge.

<comment><USER4> _I'm not based out of an area with a reasonable tech sector_

I know how you feel -- there were so few decent jobs in tech in the town I wanted to live in, I had to bloody make one to give it to myself.

<comment><USER2> Entrepreneurship just isn't in my blood, unfortunately. Nor is the risk particularly desirable given its potential effects on my kid's college fund :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a way, the stack exchange product and ning are very similar. Both tried to create an out-of-the-box product to fill a need. The reason both did not succeed is probably the same as well - too many half-baked communities with nobody behind them.

If hindsight is 20/20, what could Stack Exchange and Ning do different to make it work?

Or on another note, what sites out there have tweaked the model and are doing well?

<comment><USER6> They could take a hint from Hacker News. Creating a successful community is all about pre-seeding it. Of course, the problem is this can't be scaled. Making enough friends to found a domain specific website with a good group of them isn't easy work. Communities aren't easy.

<comment><USER7> SO did successfully create a community. I think they ran into the problem that SO itself was successful because of the 'personal brand' of Jeff Atwood and Joel and this didn't extend easily to other communities.

Or maybe it is because the coders who hang out on SO are a weird bunch :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really wonder what the 500M and 750M valuations are based on, or are those just the numbers needed to justify additional investment.?

Also, it would make sense that this is slimming up with the hope of being acquired. Reduce head-count, pour effort into premium services to bump revenue, then sell.

<comment><USER9> I'd suggest the valuations are based on perceived value by the investors. That's how we get insane valuations of $15 billion for Facebook when they were hemorrhaging money (not the case now of course).

Either way, I suspect its part voodoo and part negotiations when you're talking about speculative valuations like this

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want to point out something. The majority of these 'swing-for-the-fence' ideas are _expected_ to fail. It's what is supposed to happen. Doesn't mean anything is broken with the system.

<comment><USER11> Tell that to the people who ponied up the cash.

<comment><USER10> You mean the mega angel-investors-slash-repeat-founder or the venture capital funds?

Presumably, they all know. They probably insisted on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> from @dhh:

Ning raised spent $120MM of other people's money over 6 years to come to the conclusion that free doesn't pay.

<comment><USER13> If Ning networks had exploded as they had hoped there wouldn't be any emphasis on paid today. The plan was to have a billion people participating in 10 million different networks. That didn't pan out. If it had worked DHH would have simply said that they're one of the lottery winners.

<comment><USER14> Would he be wrong, though?

<comment><USER15> I'm stupid, but still not seeing how billion people would have translated into any $ for them...

<comment><USER16> Facebook has 300 mil, and they're profitable..

<comment><USER15> profitable? last I've heard they are cash flow neutral, and that's considering how many billions invested?

<comment><USER17> reference? I've heard conflicting reports.

edit: did some looking: [http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/200...](http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/09/facebook_climbs.html)

" On Tuesday, those concerns were momentarily quieted as Facebook announced that it's now free cash flow positive.

This doesn't mean the social network is a profitable operation yet. Rather, the cash it generates from advertising and other forms of revenue now exceed the cost of servers and other capital expenditures required to keep Facebook running. One-time costs, like the reported $50 million acquisition of Friendfeed last month, and operational expenses like personnel, are not included in this equation. Outside investments in the company, like the $200 million it raised from Digital Sky Technologies in May, are not accounted for either. "

So, it sounds like if they fired everyone and stopped buying stuff, they'd be profitable, if money kept rolling in as it does now.

I obviously don't know for sure, but I would guess that servers and bandwidth are cheaper than labour, for a company like facebook.

<comment><USER18> In what finance world does "free cash flow" NOT include operational expenses like [salaries of] personnel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Go to ning.com (logged out if you are a member) There is literally no attempt to sell you on anything unless you create a network. No feature listings, no pricing, nothing. There homepage is half dedicated to showcasing networks you might be interested in. To get a light overview of the features you have to go three clicks deep into the site.

They should be more focused on selling their product not the various networks. The networks should drive the traffic to themselves based on their own merit and efforts.

Compare that with a competitor, SocialGo, which is pretty clear in explaining what you can get from their service at various price points. Whereas Ning doesn't appear to be trying to sell me anything, let alone compare my options.

<comment><USER20> Looks like they spent none of their $120MM on that UI. That is rediculous, these VC's must be wildly out of touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> With $120M in funding, this blows my mind. I'm reminded of Ho Nam's Fat Startup Watch. Today's announcement suggests that despite massive growth and traffic, Ning did not find sustainable product-market fit.

[http://www.blog.altosventures.com/vc/2010/03/fat-startup- wat...](http://www.blog.altosventures.com/vc/2010/03/fat-startup-watch.html)

<comment><USER22> It's probably partly _because_ of that funding :)

<comment><USER21> Oh -- I completely agree. What blows my mind is the magnitude of the loss, both monetary and human.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The interesting part is that, if 75% of their traffic are from paid networks, all that much heralded viral growth must have really just been bizdev deals to get existing brands and communities onto Ning. If that's the case it's pretty shocking they didn't do this sooner.

</comment><comment><USER24> Free can work, if you can keep you overhead low. They clearly failed at that.

<comment><USER25> Absolutely. I find the notion that there's only one true business model that's ever successful to be extremely arrogant.

Organizations are like organisms, there are many different workable strategies. Take a look at nature, there's no one-best-way to be a successful animal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is just the beginning of a reality check for social media.

<comment><USER27> Once it becomes clear that Twitter has no viable revenue model, that Facebook's model will be undermined by the same effects that caused the videogame industry to crash in the early '80s, and that "Web 2.0" has largely turned into a fad, we'll probably face another Dotcom crash.

Meanwhile, genuinely emergent social media like IRC, Wikipedia, etc. keep chugging along.

<comment><USER28> For those of us that weren't around in the early 80s, what caused the video industry to crash back then, and what are the parallels to social networks?

<comment><USER29> I think it's pretty widely acknowledged that the gaming crash of the '80s was due to a glut of horrible software, since there was no approval process, crap flooded the market, and since people had no way to judge what was crap, they bought random games and hated them, and therefore stopped buying. I'm not sure this is relevant to Facebook.

Nintendo came along with an approval process (Nintendo Seal of Quality) and made games popular again. Sort of makes Apple look sensible for all their iPhone shenanigans.

<comment><USER27> I think it's relevant to Facebook, given that they're heavily focused on third-party apps, especially games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.

In the '80s, companies like Atari collapsed because third parties were publishing large amounts of crap for their platforms, and this ultimately undermined the platform itself. The increasingly common crap apps and scams on Facebook seem to parallel this.

In fact it may be worse for Facebook, because the Nintendo solution would be much more difficult to apply. With video games, the revenue stream for both the platform developer and the third-party developer comes from end users. But with social media, the revenue stream comes entirely from the third-party affiliates - who would pay to use Facebook? If the people pushing the crapware are also the ones paying your bills, it's a lot harder to dictate quality standards.

I think the endgame here is sites like Facebook having to decide between attempting to directly monetize the use of their service, or opening the floodgates to spam. Either option will drive users away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Regrettably, this probably means the end of Ning. It's the classic dot com business model. Once you engage in "community breaking" activities, like kicking off your users or trying to force them into paying subscriptions, the amount of animosity and bad publicity generated by users who have invested a lot of time and energy into the service usually ends up killing the company.

However, I'm not sure that this has wider repercussions for other social networking services. I assume that Facebook is making enough out of advertising to be sustainable (although I could be wrong).

<comment><USER31> PayPal did this. HotOrNot went from freemium to free to freemium again.

It's not unheard of, especially if (as the TC article quotes), the majority of the VALUE is being created by paying users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sounds like the perfect opportunity for Automattic to introduce a BuddyPress.com using the Wordpress.com model.

</comment><comment><USER33> Google is looking for people with business and tech skills, come check it out!

April 29 - San Francisco open house <http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/landing/psomixer/>

</comment><comment><USER34> This sucks. Get Satisfaction tried something similar recently (eliminating even basic admin tasks from free plans), but realized their error and elected to grandfather in current members. Ning should do the same thing with their free networks, perhaps with a total traffic limit. (If even that's not economically viable, then I don't know what the hell they were _ever_ thinking.)

I sure am glad I never made an investment in building traffic to a Ning social network. I'd be pretty hot under the collar just about now.

</comment><comment><USER25> A few months ago I got contacted by some overly friendly recruiters working on behalf of Ning. I'm ignored them because I'm crazy happy at my current job and can't even really think about relocating.

Curiosity being what it is, I took a closer look and was surprised to find it such a large/heavily funded/fast growing organization that I had never even heard of.

I find my "thanks but no thanks" instinct vindicated today.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ning Free had way too much Ning branding.

<comment><USER36> You get what you pay for.

<comment><USER37> True, although the parent post could be read as follows:

Ning Free had too much branding _to attract the kind of sites that would later upgrade to pay plans_. It could be that the Ning branding interfered with the Freemium model.

I'm not speaking for the parent post, of course, just pointing out that there may be something interesting to consider...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Jeeze, never saw this coming.

<comment><USER39> Picking losers is a lot easier than picking winners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Thing that always bothered me about Ning was there no way to browse networks. At least I never saw such a thing, just featured networks and search.

</comment><comment><USER41> The longer investors pours money, the more money founders and top personal earns. That is the business model. =) The art is about chatting investors as long as possible and to leave on time - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_value_theorem>

</comment><comment><USER42> Free is not a business model. Within 12-18 months expect Facebook and Twitter to go the same route. Their burn rate is starting to catch up to them and Twitter's search deals will shrink.

<comment><USER43> Do you have any idea how much money Facebook is raking in with advertising? The targeting available on Facebook is unparalleled in human history, and they are making a mint on it.

<comment><USER42> Yes, I do have an idea. And it is largely do to their user growth. This growth is not sustainable and will start to taper in 6-12 months. Facebook clearly is making money from ads (I'm not discounting this). It's been estimated at somewhere in the $400-600MM range. Of that Microsoft and their own ads make up the bulk of that. That is starting to dwindle and they are going to be headed in the direction of virtual goods a la Tencent. My point is that social media sites like Ning, Facebook, and Twitter are figuring out that free is not a business. Ning is just the first to admit it.

<comment><USER44> Lets not come up with a crazy assed _WRONG_ meme like "free is not a business".

Free _IS_ a business, and has been proven time after time over the last few centuries if not longer.

Companies don't fail because they chose to offer something free, they fail for other reasons.

From the very little I've read about Ning, it's clear they took way too much funding for a start.

<comment><USER45> _"..has been proven time after time over the last few centuries"_

Could you come up with some examples of this? Not trolling here, but I can't come up with any pre-internet free models off the top of my head.

<comment><USER46> Broadcast radio and television.

<comment><USER45> Of course! Stupid me...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What programming language do I need to learn to take benefit of expert scarcity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-programming-language-or-application-do-I-need-to-learn-in-order-to-take-benefit-of-expert-scarcity

<comment><USER2> COBOL seems to still be in demand, with not many developers using it. It's pretty much career suicide, but if expert scarcity is the goal then it seems to fit the bill.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks to be a simple cross-posting of a question, rather than linking to an interesting/informative page.

I think an "Ask HN" post would more clearly point out what you are after.</comment>


Nobody Cares About Your Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.ecommercefuel.com/nobody-cares-about-your-business/

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit of a inflammatory title, but the underlying concept is valid. If you can approach all your marketing and SEO efforts in an attempt to help the OTHER party, you'll be much more successful.

</comment><comment><USER2> Very helpful. How have you done this to promote interest in your ecommerce sites ? Examples?</comment>


Let's make a shit JavaScript interpreter Part one. - <AUTHOR> http://renesd.blogspot.com/2010/06/lets-make-shit-javascript-interpreter.html

<comment><USER2> _The Crockford article is great, since it is free, short, and well written javascript. Unlike the 1973 paper it gets the ideas from... which is behind a paywall, long, and uses a 1973 language called "(l,(i,(s,(p))))"._

The article's goals are noble, but in this one spot, we seem to be flirting with flaunting one's ignorance and thinking it wit.

Anyhow, here's a slicker way of doing it. Grab an ANTLR grammar for ecmascript. A quick Google for "ANTLR ecmascript grammar" yields:

<http://www.antlr.org/grammar/1153976512034/ecmascriptA3.g>

In addition, there is a (somewhat buggy) Python target for ANTLR 3 which is probably good enough for a project like this.

<http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR3/Antlr3PythonTarget>

Voila, a way to generate a parser in Python.

<comment><USER3> > "(l,(i,(s,(p))))"

And Lisp doesn't even use commas (very much).

<comment><USER3>
      ((l i) (s p))

would have been better. Would have emphasized that functions are first-class citizens. (I know, this syntax works only in Scheme.)</comment></comment></comment>


PlayCanvas goes open source - <AUTHOR> http://blog.playcanvas.com/playcanvas-goes-open-source/ <comment><USER2> I analyzed their JS math library (2013) and was pleasantly surprised (optimized, lean object design).

Love what PlayCanvas is doing. They seem committed to the community and their people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like another WebGL game engine was open sourced recently: [http://news.turbulenz.com/post/49430669886/turbulenz- engine-...](http://news.turbulenz.com/post/49430669886/turbulenz-engine-goes- open-source)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone able to compare this with Phaser ([http://phaser.io/](http://phaser.io/))?

<comment><USER5> Broadly speaking phaser is 2D, PlayCanvas is 3D. (Though you can always do 2D stuff in 3D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have experience with using this versus THREE.js?

<comment><USER7> I haven't used it, but I remember looking at the minified code a while back when it was first released. It looks very well done, by someone who has excellent game-engine design experience.

<comment><USER8> Developers behind the engine are actually have major experience in such companies as Activision, Sony, EA, Rebelion, and few others, so yeah, they know their stuff :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any JavaScript engine is always open source. I mean, it is not illegal to view page sources?

<comment><USER10> Just because you can view the source code does not mean that it is open source.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should I go about learning? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I am a full time student. No job or anything. I have an interest in web/web application development. I have a basic understanding of javascript but I want to know the best way to learn. At times I feel like I do not understand what I am writing even though it works. I want to use the most efficient way to learn. My school offers CS classes and I will be taking them next semester. I am purely motivated at the moment and I want to keep learning as much as a can. <comment><USER2> Discere faciendo (learn by doing).

This answer is a cliche, but it is a cliche for a reason -- it really is the best way to learn and lucky for you it is highly applicable to development where access to computers is cheap and access to all the information you could ever want is even cheaper.

Instead of defining your goals in terms of "I need to learn X, Y and Z about JavaScript and HTML", define your goals in terms of "I want to build this website which I'm pretty sure might require X, Y and Z in JavaScript", all of which I will have to learn as part of the process.

I don't mean this to be a dig at you personally, but as a 40 year old who had to learn mostly out of whatever paper books and manuals I could scrounge up from local libraries, I'm kind of flabbergasted by questions like this appearing because... well, I've got to assume you have access to the Internet. Which has, like, everything on it. Everything! Perhaps in a way we swung too far too fast and the issue now is information overload, but 15 year old me would have killed for access to the type of information that is now just a google away.

<comment><USER3> I have to second this comment. When I went to college Google was just getting started. It hadn't become a concept to search for answers yet. Thus, I was discouraged by a few CS courses I took and studied something else.

Nowadays you can pick up what you need to know so easily. After a decade I finally learned some programming and built some apps. A bug in your code is no longer a show stopper because 99% of the time a quick StackOverflow search has the answer.

You don't need any intense focus or passion about the technicals - all you need to know is what you want to build. And you'll get there.

I built my first app at first only knowing python. Took ages to build the backend and then BAM! "Darn, I only learned half of it!" Then learned JavaScript after finding out there was no way around that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Protocademy.com teaches by doing (the proto part comes from prototyping). Its a paid program, due to how many benefits you get. It works because you learn by doing (which is the best way).

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of protocademy.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Here you go:

[http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/CoursePage.php?...](http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/CoursePage.php?course=WebApplications)

</comment><comment><USER3> Udacity CS101 Codeacademy

I did those two and then started to build simple web apps.

Next step would be to pick a framework and project to build.

<comment><USER6> I'd highly recommend picking up a copy of Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby, as no other introduction-level book that I've read comes close to how accessible and well written it is, and Ruby is an excellent little language for beginners. Assuming you stay with Ruby, then pick up The Well Grounded Rubyist, and get coding.

Somewhere in there, start learning how to use Sinatra (Rails is awful for beginners, IMO, as it doesn't require you to learn everything about HTTP verbs and the real dirty stuff, which hurts you when trying to make more complicated things). Then maybe pick up Rails one day.

HTML/CSS/JavaScript have excellent introductions on Codecademy, but I'm no expert in any of them - I like to scrape by with Bootstrap on personal projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Try Codecademy or Lynda or your local code meetups, depending on where you are.</comment>


Problems with the Golang runtime and toolchain - <AUTHOR> http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/golang-is-trash/ <comment><USER3> At this point, I suppose I am as responsible for the code and decisions the author is complaining about as anyone.

Different people come from different backgrounds and, based on that, find different tools useful. Ultimately you need to use the tools that let you get your job done most effectively, however that is defined in your particular case.

The Plan 9 toolchain has worked and continues to work well for Go. Most importantly, it has been something we understand completely and is quite easy to adapt as needed. The standard ABIs and toolchains are for C, and the decisions made there may be completely inappropriate for languages with actual runtimes.

For example, no standard ABIs and toolchains supported segmented stacks; we had to build that, so it was going to be incompatible from day one. If step one had been "learn the GCC or LLVM toolchains well enough to add segmented stacks", I'm not sure we'd have gotten to step two. (Later, for gccgo, Ian did have to add segmented stack support to the GNU gold linker, but Ian also wrote that linker, so he was uniquely prepared.)

As another example, Go 1.4 replaces segmented stacks with stacks that grow or shrink, as needed, by moving. And Go 1.4's garbage collector (GC) is also completely precise wrt stack references into the heap. These require precise information about which words on the stack are pointers and, for the GC, which words are initialized and live. Go 1.5 will use that same information to introduce a concurrent (bounded pause) garbage collector. Getting the information through to the runtime was non-trivial but possible for us to do with the Plan 9 toolchain. If we'd built on GCC, it would have required first threading all that stack map information through the GCC or LLVM backends and into a form that the runtime can use efficiently. Like before, I doubt we'd have gotten to step two. (I don't know how gccgo is going to tackle this. It's a big undertaking. I expect gccgo will have segmented stacks and imprecise stack scans for a while yet.)

The toolchain is quirky and flawed in many ways. Some people don't like typing shift so much in assembly files. Some people don't like the center dot hack (glad the author didn't find the Unicode slash!). Those are really cosmetic details, and if you stop there, you miss the point, which is that it's a small toolchain that we can keep in our heads and make arbitrary changes to, quickly and easily. Honestly, if we'd built on GCC or LLVM, we'd be moving so slowly I'd probably have left the project years ago.

The linker in particular is a piece of code in transition. The author is 100% right that it's not great code. But it does work well, and it is being put to production use at many companies as you read this. The code to produce ELF object files and dynamically linked binaries in particular is new, is my fault, and was quite difficult to fit into the original structure. The linker is overdue to be replaced. The new linker is in the Go tree in src/cmd/link, but it's unfinished.

Using a standard linker instead doesn't work well for a managed language. The Go runtime needs to know where all the pointers are in the data and bss segments, and a standard linker won't put that information together for you. The Go linker does that. The Go linker also writes out runtime information for unwinding stacks during GC and translating program counters to file:line for use in stack dumps. Again, this is all much easier to do with a toolchain that we control entirely than having to build into existing ones. (I am not aware of any way to get file:line information through an existing linker except in DWARF tables, which is overkill. And then there's OS X and Windows, where you _really_ have no control over the toolchain.)

The calls to throw everything away and start over are at best hyperbolic. Certainly there is room for improvement, but the custom toolchain is one of the key reasons we've accomplished so much in so little time. I think the author doesn't fully appreciate all the reasons that C tools don't work well for languages that do so much more than C. Most other managed languages are doing JIT compilation and don't go through standard linkers either.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for posting that. It was never a mystery why the project started with the Plan 9 C compiler (if you're Ken Thompson, of course you'll use Ken Thompson's compiler) but the detail on the evolution of the thing is interesting.

It is a bit embarrassing that our self-moderation here did not cause your comment to rise a little higher toward the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He could have made the couple of points he made worth making without all of the douchebaggery. Also can't tell if he's just trolling with all the stuff about Unix vs Plan9 and calling Rob Pike out as an amateur or if he's just woefully unaware of the history of both Unix and Plan9. In either case the first paragraph is illuminating as to whether any of this matters to you:

"In the process of working on getting cgo to work on illumos, I learned that golang is trash. I should mention that I have no real opinion on the language itself; I'm not a languages person (C will do, thanks), and that's not the part of the system I have experience with anyway. Rather, the runtime and toolchain are the parts on which I wish to comment."

For anyone not working in the internals of the golang compiler/runtime, as long as the language is good and the tools produce the proper output when given the proper input, who cares whether they offend someone who writes only in C (and keep in mind I say this as someone who wrote code in C/C++ for almost 15 years, and still has a very soft spot in my heart for C... but not C++, fuck C++).

There seems to be a separating line between people who love and hate Go (well, one of a few such lines) which involves the Go team's convention of making stuff that should be scary for most programmers look and feel scary (see: unsafe package, some of the stuff in cgo, etc). IMO, they take the right approach (keep the easy stuff easy, make the hard stuff possible, and warn of landmines [both explicitly and implicitly] early rather than later) but some subset of people seem to get offended by these choices and lose sight of everything else Go offers.

<comment><USER6> he's just rage quitting on his last day of work. see the next post on that site, where pike is called a "world-class jackass" and Plan 9 "a colossal failure".

referring to anything Plan 9 as "colossal" is a new one, i admit :)

<comment><USER7> Hey, as going out rage quit rants go -- I honestly enjoyed it... it had a spark. I don't agree with (most of) what he thinks, but at least he did it with some style. Hope he enjoys the potato farming life, or whatever the heck he does next.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The real toolchains everyone else uses were not invented at Lucent nor > Google

Plan 9 is not a product of Lucent. It is a product of Bell-Labs. Lucent killed Bell-Labs. Calling it a Lucent product is akin to the worst insult to us you could come up with, unless you said it was GNU-like.

Plan9 C is a product of Thompson, Pike & Ritchie, you can't get more C than that, whatever your standards committee thinks.

> Without the benefit of decades of lessons learned running Unix in production

I'm not sure what the author of the rant thinks the people _who invented Unix_ were doing all those years.

<comment><USER9> > _I 'm not sure what the author of the rant thinks the people who invented > Unix were doing all those years._

I'm not sure what you think they're doing, but they were not running Unix in production.

I've read an interview with Ken Thompson taken around the nineties, and he mentioned they were using Windows desktop machines. And true to the words he had Windows on the monitor on his desk.

And of course they were doing academic and researchy stuff. Not running Unix in production.

<comment><USER10> What horse pucky. The first Unix systems were used by Bell Labs' patent department to process patent applications. It was this first customer of the Unix group that sponsored the development of Unix for many of its formative years.

<comment><USER9> > _The first Unix systems were used by Bell Labs ' patent department to > process patent applications. It was this first customer of the Unix group > that sponsored the development of Unix for many of its formative years._

That's the seventies. Or at best early eighties.

We're talking about the last 30 years.

Not to mention that whatever customers Bell Labs had, doesn't translate that Richie, Pike and co were running Unix in production or cared about those systems and those customers themselves...

They had moved on to other researchy stuff...

<comment><USER8> POP was written in 1999

The last Unix release with people from the the Lab was UnixWare 7.1 (1999), the last from AT&T in 2001.

Anything else _is not Unix_.

We know Rob wrote Utah 2000 in that year.

That's 15 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree with the author's main point that the golang toolchain has a bad case of NIH syndrome, and many of the specific problems he mentions have already been Solved™ in other tools for some time. But there are reasons to have full control of your entire toolchain, one of which is not having to deal with getting patches merged upstream (in any of the dependencies). Another is having the toolchain easily deployable on a multitude of platforms including windows and plan9. The solutions he mentions are heavily reliant on specifics of the unix environment, and most such projects would not welcome platform- neutralization. (If your windows toolchain deployment includes "install MinGW and use Cygwin", it's no longer "easily deployable" there.)

<comment><USER12> >I agree with the author's main point that the golang toolchain has a bad case of NIH syndrome,

the blog seems to be from a Sun old-timer who pretty typically suffers from ... err ... enjoys this superiority style complex of "we have already invented everything, why stupid word chooses to go its stupid way instead of that great way we think it should go". This complex (and, as a major result of it, refusal to accept reality) is one of the major things while Sun went down. (hi! to Sun guys. Have you seen the abomination what FB did to our nice offices in MPK!? :)

<comment><USER13> I hear they have a Sun sign there, to remind employees what happens to companies that stop trying. Or perhaps that's another office - or maybe just rumour.

<comment><USER14> It's on the back of the sign in front of the campus: [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-suns-logo-is-on-the- back-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-suns-logo-is-on-the-back-of- facebooks-sign-2014-12)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This guy seems to have a vendetta against Pike & Co:

> Unsurprisingly, Plan9 is a colossal failure, and one look at the golang > toolchain will satisfy even the casual observer as to why; it was clearly > written by people who wasted the last 30 years. There are plenty of other > problems with Mr. Pike and his language runtime, but I've covered those > elsewhere.

From [http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/](http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/)

<comment><USER9> What vendetta? Besides Plan9, which was decent for what it attempted, those are more or less true statements. Golang doesn't have anything that show it kept up with 30 years of advances in computing/PL design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author sums up his attitude in one of the first sentences: "I'm not a languages person (C will do, thanks)".

Go is not C, and it's not going to be like C. It's not really reasonable to expect it to have the same toolchain conventions as C. I'm not saying the choices to Go authors have made are necessarily good, but I don't dislike them _only_ because they're different from C.

<comment><USER9> > _Go is not C, and it 's not going to be like C._

And yet, it's not much above C -- and in some cases, it's less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So much ad hominem – arguing of motives for designs and decisions. It makes for an odd contrast of technical opinions and unsupported speculation.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ignoring the rhetoric for a second, are there examples of these design decisions being asked about and being dismissed or flat-out not answered?

Most of us have seen the back and forth over generics in Go, including Rob Pike's own blog? post about why Go doesn't have them. With that said, though, I feel like I've also seen a lot of internals-related discussions with good discourse from all sides.

Whatever the existing design is or isn't, it doesn't seem fair to go off on such a rampage unless there's some sort of documented example that they are actively trying to avoid simplifying things and really are seeking to fulfill all of the things the author wrote. So... is there any evidence of that?

<comment><USER19> This is only remotely related, but the golang maintainers have refused to include support for the (insecure, but used on some legacy systems) ECB encryption mode, because it's insecure: [http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=5597](http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=5597) .

<comment><USER20> Although they don't have an ECB func, You can trivially implement it from their AES library. I imagine the thinking goes something like, if you don't know enough to write a couple lines to implement ECB, you probably shouldn't be using it. It really doesn't take a deep understanding of crypto understand ECB.

ECB is the simplest AES mode, you just encrypt each block of your message using the same key. Here is an image of a penguin encrypted with AES- ECB:[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Tux_ecb.j...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Tux_ecb.jpg)

Do you see the problem?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, this. Didn't realize people actually saw this as an issue worthy of worrying about.

The Matasano Crypto Challenges I did way back when were in Go and the ones involving ECB were just done as for loops over the standard library AES Decrypt/Encrypt methods, something like this:

      for i := 0; i < blockCount; i++ {
        start := i * blockLength
        end := start + blockLength
        aes.Decrypt(decryptBuffer, input[start:end])
        output = append(output, decryptBuffer)
      }

<comment><USER21> The fact you can still see the penguin is the least of ECBs problems. If you can do an adaptive chosen plain text attack then you can easily retrieve the key when ECB is used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The headline "Golang is trash" is very misleading. The author has nothing to say about Go the language, but spends a lot of time on the toolchain - <USER2> is arguably not part of the language at all.

In any case, it's not surprising that much of the `C` toolchain was ditched. There are few things more frustrating than trying to compile and link complicated C programs across platforms (the only thing that comes to mind are C++ programs).

</comment><comment><USER10> Wait til Keith discovers Go passes arguments on the stack, totally ignoring SPARC's register windows.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it's sometimes good to ignore what has come before and start fresh, if you have the resources to throw at that, as the Go team at Google apparently does. Platforms and toolchains accumulate cruft over time; I guess the Go team decided it was time to simplify by, for instance, using their own link editor. I think that in an ideal world, they'd forego dynamic linking entirely; Plan 9 doesn't have it, after all.

The things wesolows pointed out about the Go asm dialect do seem weird, though. And what's with the Unicode dot character?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem, honestly, is that they _didn 't_ start from scratch: they used a bunch of their Plan 9 tooling to jumpstart it. While I don't quite share Keith's invective, I _do_ have a lot of questions that haven't really been answered about why it was done this way. In particular (and a point that Keith only makes in passing), the fact that the Go runtime directly encodes the system call table is a very peculiar design decision that makes the system much, much less portable. And lest anyone point to the many ports: it has been ported to other systems only with great frustration -- which is part of what you're seeing in Keith's rant here...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Expectations are really important. I tend towards higher level languages (Python, JavaScript, toyed with Haskell), but I can empathize with the author's frustration of using a tool that breaks his assumptions.

Software is complicated business, and making new things that work similar to old things is a reasonable (and often successful) way to deal with the complexity. However, if it isn't close enough to the original, it might cause more problems, as it did for the author when he was using this not quite real assembly language.

I really hope that some knowledgeable HNers will weigh in on this, it is fascinating to read about.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Writing in normal (that is, adult) assembly language is not fraught at all.

The author identifies as someone who enjoys C programming (so I do not doubt their sincerity here), but for those of us using languages with memory safety, I think this may not apply. Particularly when I consider security, I cannot help but worry about any C/assembly I write.

</comment><comment><USER26> In other news "This hammer is trash because it doesn't screw in nails properly!"

I'm not interested in compilers, I hate writing code in low level languages, I cannot for the life of me understand assembly and Go works extremely well for what I want to do. I've used PHP/C#/Javascript my whole life and I'm more concerned about writing software than writing code. I don't want to nitpick on the tiny details of a running software with memory registers, cpu cycles, cache miss, etc unless there is an obvious bug or performance issue I need to fix. Those things should be abstracted away from me as a developer and go is a great compiled language that looks and feels like an interpreted language from a developer point of view.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems down: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6M3QrOv...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6M3QrOvuh1gJ:dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/golang- is-trash/)

</comment><comment><USER28> This post was briefly killed by user flags. It's not hard to see why: its deliberately outrageous linkbait title violated the HN guidelines. Please don't do that again.

The post itself is substantive [1], so we've unkilled it and attempted to give it a neutral title.

1\. Edit: though dismayingly not free of the same drama-mongering. Hopefully the HN thread will stay substantive in response.

<comment><USER29> I think this post _is_ linkbait. The author's title is "Golang is trash," but the post doesn't discuss anything about Golang. Golang is a programming language, and the author admits that he has "no real opinion on the language itself" (his words). This blog post discusses some pretty esoteric details about a particular toolchain, which is not even the only production-ready toolchain available for Golang at the moment, as the author freely acknowledges. If there were a blog post titled "Lisp is trash," that proceeded to talk about obscure implementation details of a certain version of CMUCL, I think it would be flagkilled-- and this should be too.

I also feel like there are some factual errors. He chides the Go developers for "arrogantly ignoring" existing tools for linking code. But the gccgo integration was done by Ian Lance Taylor, who is on the Go team at Google. I believe Rob Pike is on record as saying that he wanted multiple implementations of Go to increase the robustness of the language.

I would appreciate a good critical look at the Golang runtime and toolchain. How does its performance stack up, how fast does it compile, etc. But this ain't it. This is a guy complaining that he doesn't like the naming of registers in machine-generated binary files. I will literally never need to care about any of this. I don't even need to know this to make use of assembly language in my Go programs, since I can use the C library integration for that.

<comment><USER28> I probably should have been clearer. By "substantive" I meant substantive enough not to be flag-killed. In most such cases we typically replace the title with a more neutral one and, if the thread goes flamewar, penalize it. It's rare for a controversial post about programming to get killed outright, unless it's obvious junk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> echo `curl [http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/golang-is- trash/](http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/golang-is-trash/) | html2text | wc -w` words of seething envy

<comment><USER30> Oh wow, didn't know PS crowd so strong on HN.

<comment><USER30> Ha, joke's on you: I've learned NOTHING!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> how does go compile so quickly? [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2976630/why-does-go- compi...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2976630/why-does-go-compile-so- quickly)

because they fucking forgot incremental compilation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_compiler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_compiler)

<comment><USER11> Wait, it's fast _because_ they didn't include incremental compilation?

<comment><USER31> It's fast because of dependency analysis. They forgot about something called incremental compilation.

This is what they should have spent their 20% on: [https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/IncrementalCompiler](https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/IncrementalCompiler)

<comment><USER32> Actually they do have incremental compilation at the package level. Use go install and you'll get it. Use go build and you throw away intermediate build artifacts so you don't get it. This is all documented.

In practice compilation times are not a pain point for golang.

<comment><USER11> Even better, `go get ./...` installs all dependent packages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Golang is trash" is the first line of this article, and yet somehow it makes HN front page.

<comment><USER9> Articles are supposed to be technically correct.

Is there any rule about also having to be tactful if they fulfill the first criterion?</comment></comment>


The Magic of having a Team  - <AUTHOR> http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/10/startup-team-magic.html

<comment><USER2> You should check out Boo. <http://www.facebook.com/Boo>

<comment><USER3> Someone beat them to the business plan!</comment></comment>


Now, 'standing room' on airlines - <AUTHOR> http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/jul/16/slide-show-1-airline-plans-standing-room-for-more-passengers.htm

<comment><USER2> Logically speaking, I don't understand how this would work. You're sitting on a stool when the plane takes off, you're going to call backwards and onto the floor of the plane. You can't expect someone to hold onto a bar during something like that, like you can with trains or buses. And don't even think about holding onto that during any sort of plane turbulence. You're all going to fall into each other.

<comment><USER3> What if there was a thin wall that you leaned against during takeoff, with a half seat attached to it? Then on landings you turned and faced the back of the plane and leaned on the half-seat facing the back of the plane?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Man, rediff.com is an irritating site.</comment>


Modular documentation: How to make both writers and users happy - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/17/9/modular-documentation <comment><USER2> An insightful article that signals poorly because of

* hate for DITA * lack of depth (it's a new enough idea that it really should be longer) * not informed by specific cases (although it talks all about being so) * ultimately a teaser for a talk that most of us won't be able to attend (as conferences seem to be one of the few ways to monetize open source)

I hate to be so negative, but I am training an A.I. to find good stuff on HN and I had to do this

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzv3ncEQQVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzv3ncEQQVI)

for this article.</comment>


Ask HN: How long need to wait an answer for YC apply - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday i applied to YC S15 and interested in how long need to wait for an answer? <comment><USER2> [http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/](http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/)

<comment><AUTHOR> i know what written on there i just want to know need to wait till 10 april or they can answer earlier

<comment><USER2> They can probably answer earlier if you have a compelling reason why they should - firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for info</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arthur Eddington was innocent - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070910/full/070903-20.html <comment><USER2> > _In any event, an analysis of the plates in 1979 showed that, together, they > supported Einstein 's prediction rather well, and that the original teams > made assumptions in their calculations that were justified even if they > couldn't be conclusively supported at the time._

Are the original photographic plates still conserved somewhere? Is there an online scan of them?</comment>


The Fees and the Darkness - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-05-25/calpers-shows-need-for-disclosures-like-fiduciary-rule <comment><USER2> When people ask me about the fiduciary rule, they are usually shocked to discover that this hasn't always been in effect. It's a basic anti-corruption rule.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such a beautiful example of the anti-regulation fallacy that so many people for some reason believe in. It's beauty is in that there is literally no argument against the rule, except the vague notion of "freedom", which in this case means freedom to violate the rule which...

        "...demand that advisors act in the best interests of
         their clients, and to put their clients' interests
         above their own. It leaves no room for advisors to
         conceal any potential conflict of interest, and
         states that all fees and commissions must be clearly
         disclosed in dollar form to clients."

I bet almost everyone would have expected this to have been the law all along–in fact I don't quite understand why it wasn't fraud before to give suboptimal advice while collection undisclosed kickbacks. For any advisor conducting his business with a modicum of common decency, nothing changes (except that it will become easier to compete ethically when everyone is playing by the same rules)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand how a financial company can charge an arbitrary amount (of their choosing) if the fund is doing well. How can anyone trust them to not take an absurd amount if the advisor is crooked? I guess if every financial business does it you have no choice as a customer.

<comment><USER5> It seems like the idea is that a hurdle is guaranteed to be met by the financial firm, and, so long as that hurdle is met, everything else is gravy. The firm could choose to take everything over the hurdle or share the surplus with the client for goodwill boost. It's not so much a charge as a bonus.

It would look like a good deal to the client, who gets legibility and reliability, and for the firm, which can get a reward for its efforts.</comment></comment>


New Microsoft Tablets Will Take Aim at the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/microsoft-to-announce-new-slates-targeting-ipad/ <comment><USER2> I just do not get Microsoft. The place is full of smart people so how come the company acts so dumb.

The ipad love it or loathe it works because it's not trying to be all things to all people. It has limitations, sure, but within those it does some things very well indeed (and in fact I would be utterly lost without mine - or rather I would be unhappy to take the step back into the past that not having it would represent).

Microsoft seem to be interested in the world of work (although judging by my recent (enforced) use of Word, making more work seems to be their goal with that product) so why not take the same approach - a new device , a new niche and come up with something? it might just be a slicker netbook with a trimmed down OS or it might be something else. A physical interface for the Office suite perhaps - Spreadsheets are not great on the ipad, for example, so there _must_ be a way of making them nice to physically interact with that is not the tablet/slate kind of way. (or actually why not do cheap research by porting things like office to the ipad and seeing if you can make them really work in that form factor or if something else is needed?)

They say that people want something like this - work oriented - and then they give them an "everything but the kitchen sink" style monstrosity that is not one thing or the other.

This works for Google because android has other selling points but Microsoft can't just throw everything at it and hope something sticks. They need to pick something and think about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I cannot understand why Microsoft keeps on trying to play catch-up with Google and Apple. They have a tough fight ahead if that is to remain their approach (even with all of their resources).

There are a few brights spots for them - Kinect looks amazing - but their obsession with doing everything that Apple and Google are doing may hurt them in the long run.

(I am not concerned whether MS succeeds or not - I haven't used an MS product in years - but I am astounded that a company filled with so many clever and creative folk is loath to innovate on its own terms.)

<comment><USER4> The weird thing is that they've had tablet technology for a long time, but they've constantly been talking about it, doing small demos, showing how you could work with a tablet, bringing the windows experience to tablets, etc, but they've never actually released a polished consumer product.

It's all talk, talk, talk, and then when someone else launches they struggle to catch-up. So is all of their talk empty?

<comment><USER5> I don't know... I've been using Windows tablets since the early 1990's, when I had a Compaq Concerto running "Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing". I've also had a Dauphin DTR-1, a Compaq TC1000, and a Thinkpad X61.

Do you mean that you expect Microsoft to make their own tablet hardware and release it? While they do make some of their own products, that's not really how Microsoft "rolls": they develop software for OEM integration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> MS should probably be more concerned about Android given the low price points of Android devices. Can Microsoft develop a hardware product that a tablet maker couldn't instantly turn into an Android device? Given the choice, will the average consumer want or need anything in the Windows world anymore? Can Windows match the performance and battery life of the more mobile/instant-on optimized Android OS?

It's never been so easy to imagine a world without Windows (at least on the consumer side).

</comment><comment><USER7> Two problems: Windows 7 was not engineered for tablet usability like iOS was. Third party OEM's can produce cheaper hardware (the PC effect) but generally can not produce higher quality devices than single party controlled ecosystem (iPhone v Android/WP7).

This does not bode well for Microsoft. But competition is always good for the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER8> "It also includes a unique and slick keyboard that slides out from below for easy typing."

one of the things that apple has done consistently well is know what _not_ to include on their hardware.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think MS tablets will take off until they take an approach similar to what they did for Windows Phone 7 and force a very specific set of design limitations on their partners.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, why cancel the courier then?

</comment><comment><USER11> Ahahahahahahahahaha.

<comment><USER12> Seriously.</comment></comment>


Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41876942 <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15630646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15630646).

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh come on: If the fact that Moscow owns part of Twitter and Facebook isn't HN worthy, HN simply isn't following politics and tech.

This leak is inherently intesting to HN or nothing is.

</comment><comment> the-dude Is this called an article nowadays? There is no substance here.

<comment><USER4> Looks like a rush-job to be the first rather than a serious analysis?

<comment><USER5> Multiple major media outlets have been planning this news dump for a while. They had time.</comment></comment></comment>


If BitTorrent were designed today, what would be differences in protocol? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/BitTorrent-protocol/If-BitTorrent-were-to-be-designed-today-what-would-be-some-key-differences-in-the-protocol

<comment><AUTHOR> Question in full:

If BitTorrent were to be designed today, what would be some key differences in the protocol?

Had to sacrifice grammar to make the 80 character limit.</comment>


Kids are making friends in the Arab world - via Call of Duty - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottbraddock.com/2011/03/freedom-fighters/

<comment><USER2> Whilst obviously I see it as ultimately down to parental discretion and judgement, I just don't understand the mindset that sees a parent buying their 12 year old child COD Black Ops.

<comment><USER3> That was my first thought as well. The games are rated 17+ for a reason: graphic violence and strong language in a "fun" context is not something I would want my 12-year old experiencing for hours on end.

<comment><USER4> Why are you letting your 12-year old play video games 'for hours on end' to begin with?

I used to play 18 rating games when I was 10 because I bought them (UK legally enforced rating system FTW), when 3/4 of the games I was killing zombies with green blood and my parents didn't see much difference between what I saw in video games and what I saw on TV.

Incidentally I'm literally talking about Carmageddon (released 1997) and Star Ship Troopers (released 1997). The former was rated 18, the latter was rated 15 in the UK. The former involved killing Zombies and destroying cars. The latter involved human-on-human violence, people being ripped limb from limb, aliens being mutilated and tortured, a cow getting ripped to pieces, and multiple scenes with full-frontal nudity. Also released that year was Titanic, which again had a nude scene and a sex scene, it had a suicide attempt, a suicide on screen, it had someone killed with blood while trying to escape a sinking ship, it also dropped the F-bomb and a dozen shits amongst other swear words; it was rated 12 in the UK.

I'm sorry, but the themes in video games (at least when I was growing up) tended to be more child-friendly than most of the movies children were permitted to see or we allowed to see by their parents.

If you don't want your kids playing violent video games, then don't let your kid play violent video games. You have zero justification to impose your rules and values on anyone else.

I also find it very foolish that you cannot see that video games are rated insanely over the top with almost no common sense applied "because they're interactive".

Honestly, I think your 12 year old likely has received more life-time emotional and mental damage by being in school surrounded by other children than they ever would being exposed to violent video games. Also note that it's a very limited subset of gamers that _only_ play FPS games.

<comment><USER5> > Star Ship Troopers > human-on-human violence, people being ripped limb from > limb..

> Titanic > a nude scene and a sex scene, it had a suicide attempt, a suicide > on screen, ..

You seemed to complain that the rating organization requires older age on the viewers of Star Ship Troopers than Titanic. Do you really consider these two scenes as being equally bad for the kids?

Moreover, I bet that being immersed in an interactive scenario and controlling parts of scenes is more captivating and can influence you more than merely watching something passively. Not to mention the number of hours kids typically spend playing such a game is vastly higher than what they spend watching a movie of the same level of violence/nudity.

As for real-life violence, I do not think "people being ripped limb from limb" is a usual happening in any school playground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I played CoD4 for $$$, (playing on international teams), traveled to more than 6 different countries to play tournaments, and after a while nationality really did become irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER7> A similar thing happened in my own family a while back. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226987>

<comment><USER8> Do you think it's possible to have such a game with out mortal combat as the central theme and still make a big impact in the gaming world. Cooperative but not cooperating to kill the other team?

<comment><USER9> Worth noting is that "kill the other team" is a blanket term that encompasses many different levels of violence. Yes, in some games you do actually kill people, but there are so many variations - in platformers you often just jump on their cartoon heads, in strategy games it's more about conquest, like playing Risk.

Looking through my own gaming library, there are a lot of completely non- violent games where you could class it as "mortal combat" - for example in Osmos you play a single-celled organism (sort of) trying to survive by absorbing those smaller than you and avoiding those bigger than you.

There are many games out there less violent than Call of Duty that kids could play to bond or make friends, but they get overlooked because they get lumped into a category, and then the media parade the most extreme examples from that category in front of us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks. Now Glenn Beck's gonna have "Call of Duty" up on his blackboard screaming "Islamic terrorists groups are now recruiting American children!"

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a case of this. I met these motherfuckers from Turkey and Bahrain through the community surrounding that little flash game "n". Also several (?) people from Finland, a guy from Bulgaria, and another from Singapore.

<comment><USER12> Odd. The context of the article and the rest of what you wrote, I would have expected a word like "friends" or phrase like "cool guys" in place of the vulgarity.

Did you dislike these people?

<comment><USER13> perhaps it is subculture-appropriate slang for 'cool guys'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having played my fair share of COD, MW2 and Black Ops I would unfortunately say that the 'Make a friend outside of the US' vs. 'Screw you towel-head' ratio in general does NOT provide a base for improved foreign relations or 'bridge building'.

Glad that it does happen though.

<comment><USER15> Ugh not to mention the constant stream of gay slurs and swastika emblems.

<comment><USER16> What's the problem with swastika emblems?

Do you live in Germany?

<comment><USER17> It's not a swastika emblem which is quite common it's the red, black and white Nazi Swastika which symbolizes extreme hatred and violence.

You don't have to live in Germany to be affected by it, I'm sure quite a few of us have grandfathers who are no longer here because they fought against the hatred and violence which the Nazi Swastika now symbolizes.

<comment><USER18> I don't know how to say this nicely, but nobody seems to care about displaying the Soviet flag, though they killed a lot more. Maybe it's just time to bury the hatchet.

<comment><USER19> Although I would typically be the first to attack any positive mention of the Soviet system, the number of people who died under Soviet regime (yes, it was probably larger as you mentioned) is mostly due to the extreme power wielded by Stalin during his time at the helm. After Stalin's death, the communist party tried to distance itself from the crimes committed by him. So it's a bit unfair to compare fascism to communism -- you should compare fascism to stalinism instead. In addition, even if you compare fascism to stalinism (both very scary systems), fascism looks a bit worse, not because of the number of people who died, but because unlike stalinism which was mostly a culture of fear, fascism was really a culture of hate all the way down the hierarchy.

<comment><USER16> Yes... Also this "road" can lead us to US slavery period... Should we prohibit from display all flags, emblems from that era?

<comment><USER19> Not sure how you can draw that conclusion from what I said. The USSR flag, while it is a flag of an oppressive totalitarian regime, does not carry the symbol of hate meaning as much as the Nazi flag does (and probably not even as much as the confederate flag is). My argument was to say that even though a lot of people died during the Stalinist era, I do not consider the USSR flag to be at the save level as the Nazi flag, and I would not treat the two in the same way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>