Customers won't give you money unless you ask - <AUTHOR> http://blog.downie.com.au/customers-wont-give-you-money-unless-you-ask

<comment><USER2> This is some good advice. I would also love to see start ups asking for my money.

When there's a free plan, my usual activity goes like: \- Register \- Test \- Forget

But when I'm paying, it's much different. Not to say that all services shouldn't offer anything free. But at least in my case, charging is doing both of us good. And it also ensures that company will have some sort of revenue to live on and not die as a freemium company!

<comment> daniel-cussen Especially if the freemium startup becomes an acquihire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Free is always the spirit of the internet, but when starting a startup...I was told to spend as much time on my business plan (revenue), as I would coding.

When any website or app begins charging, or throwing ads out, there's always an outcry from the users that weren't use to it. Sure being free will probably make any startup grow faster, but to make your users happy...charge, have ads, or AT THE LEAST tell them that you plan to charge later, or aim for acquisition like Instagram :)

<comment><USER4> You should spend 90% focusing on profits, and 10% coding.

<comment><USER3> I think MySpace did that and if your goal is to build an audience on the basis of free99 then throw ads at them, you leave room to get taken over in your niche.

The view you present shows no pride in ownership, quantity over quality, and it still works though. As Seen On TV products are an example...sell cheap stuff so low, that it's not worth returning. Cereal and Chips and the packaging model is another successful example.

However, I still say, just like coding, there is an art in a business model, and the more dedication any entrepreneur spends on their implementation will determine their success.

<comment><USER4> _The view you present shows no pride in ownership, quantity over quality, and it still works though._

I wonder how you got that from my comment? All I said is that _in a business_ , the focus is on profiting. Code takes a back seat, because perfect code ever made anyone money. Though I'm not saying to develop a shitty code base. But in reality, the software is merely the product, and not the business. I take a lot of pride in my work, and do not ship/sell products built on top of bad code. But I do know that the focus is on the business side. That's why I'm able to successfully bootstrap while others fail with millions of funding. (:

Myspace failed because it did not adapt to the market. They got lazy.

<comment><USER3> What I got out of your comment was monetize at every possibility (maybe I misconstrued it).

>in a business, the focus is on profiting

This is what I agree with you. Websites/Apps are usually projects before they are cultivated into a businesses. Maybe it's semantics, but I think "profits," conveys the wrong message in your vague comment earlier.

If any developer wants to monetize their product (their code), I think what you're trying to convey (based on your response) is that much thought needs to go into the efficiency and risk/reward ratio. How much will your distribution cost? How efficient is Nginx vs Apache?

Basically, business practices will result in less cost (risk) for the project that turns into a business. Efficiency of the business model will result in the lowest costs for the project/business, to the point where profit is feasible.

<comment><USER4> What I got out of your comment was monetize at every possibility (maybe I misconstrued it).

No, that's not what I meant. Monetizing and profits are two different things.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I figured it was on me when you actually started talking about business. I thought you were trying troll and say it's all about money and greed :)

<comment><USER4> Once you get to know me, you realise that I don't think its about money and greed. To me money is merely but a tool. Greed is the worse drug that has ever existed. I'm more about creating new things and jobs. To give back to society, rather than take from it. Sure, I will make money off of it, and will have a good lifestyle. But I make sure that others do so as well. All the money in the world doesn't mean a thing if you have to live inside a castle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think I'm confused on what the term freemium means. I always thought it meant a product with both a free and paid tiers.

This doesn't seem to match with "For example, Freemium works really well when your user IS the product." Such services, like the Facebook example he cites, are free, not freemium. Right?

<comment><USER6> I think there's facebook credits or something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about the google apps route as an alternative to freemium?

1\. Give it away for free for a long period to build a user base, get feedback and iterate.

2\. After a while, switch to paid only for all new users. The old users continue for free so no-one has a right to get annoyed.

Seems a pretty good option to me.

<comment><USER4> Its a great option, _if you have millions and millions of dollars in the bank._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It does feel like a startup strategy is that if you can just manage to get a large amount of free users - then you'll be able to figure out how to monetize it later.

We all know that it works in exceptional cases. But many times when I see it, it reminds me of an old Saturday night live skit about "the change store" that provides change for any amount of money without taking a fee. When somebody inquires how they make they're money the owner replies "volume!"

</comment><comment><USER9> While a good article, i disagree with his statement that by providing a free service, you are implying it does not have any value. I think the free service model is much more deeper than this comment suggests.

<comment><USER10> It is a very common result in cognitive decision-making studies that people don't value what they don't pay for. Whether or not you think the issue is more complex, the fact of it is very well established: in general, absent other measures of utility, price signals are used by purchasers in their initial valuation of a commodity. It's a limit example of the anchoring bias, a cognitive effect to which most humans are ridiculously susceptible.

There is a flow-on effect in the way consumers interact with a service provider, too: per account, you'll receive more complaints from free users than paying ones; vice-versa, more constructive suggestions from paying users than non-paying users. This result is explained as a choice-supportive response [look it up; "the tendency to retroactively ascribe more positive attributes to a choice invested into"], since the opposite behaviour would be a source of cognitive dissonance. It can be a source of frustration to paying users that their suggestions/requests are not then more highly valued by the service provider.

<comment><USER3> >>you'll receive more complaints from free users than paying ones; vice-versa, more constructive suggestions from paying users than non-paying users

This is SOOOOOO true! It's because monetary value comes with commitment!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You can think of this article as a single case study, nothing really enough to build a theory. Freemium works statistically better than paid, as you can see presented at the recent Google I/O 2013: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ3wgPP7PWY>

</comment><comment><USER12> Good article, i will take it into consideration in the start up that i am currently working on. Only one thing that i don't agree, giving something for free dose not always implies it has no value.

<comment><USER13> Just curious, can you name any counter examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What if the demographic an app serves or aimed at is known to be notoriously cash-strapped i.e. university students ?

<comment><USER15> I think the notion of the "notoriously cash-strapped students" is a bit of a myth. Not that students typically have wads of cash, but most students I see around have iPhones, trendy clothes, spend money on booze and cigarettes. And even if you avoid generalizing students as trendy and cool, look at study aids students buy, they won't necessarily spare on a book or a laptop that would help them study.

At kenHub - we build a platform for learning anatomy. It makes students' lives easier and they can be more effective in their studies. As much as we'd like to give it away for free to all students, we need to make a living, and we need money to improve our products. Luckily, our audience seems to see the value and are willing to pay for it.

I think it boils down to the utility of your product, to students, grandmothers, or any other segment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Actual value vs Perceived value, a key question that many forget and that could solve many monetization problems.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sometimes when the service is not ready for immediate consumption, devs are bound to release it as a freemium or just free - if they have to release for some reason.

There are so many web services are coming out everyday, people cannot just find it very suitable for them and cannot find whether it's good enough.

Trial period is good but it is not as good as freemium.</comment>


Dancer.js : A high-level audio JavaScript API - <AUTHOR> http://www.jqueryrain.com/2012/10/dancer-js-a-high-level-audio-javascript-api/

<comment><USER2> Away with this link-spam. It actually has no content, feature list directly copied from the github page.

<https://github.com/jsantell/dancer.js> ( posted <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214087> )

Similar post below that just copies stuff off a github page. There's no way people are voting this stuff up.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4679373>

Suspect poster of operating a voting ring.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the information; I seem to have missed the earlier post. Flagging this one. :)</comment></comment>


'Apple' CNC – MIT researchers repurpose iMac box as a 2D CNC - <AUTHOR> http://monograph.io/james/apple-cnc

<comment><USER2> The title looks misleading, I did not fully read the article, but from what I read, what prevents me of using any other cardboard box or pieces to make this?

<comment><USER3> The title is accurate; they did use an imac box, and provide a cutting template for others to do the same. I did get a chuckle out of describing the various parts of the box as sirloin, rib, etc.

But yeah, I didn't see any good reason other card couldn't be substituted. They're just going for a known-constant - the imac box constitutes of the same card no matter what continent you find it on. Not all card is created equal, but all of this particular source is.</comment></comment>


A Functional Interface for Key/Value Store - <AUTHOR> https://www.lendup.com/engineering/post/functional-interface-key-value-store <comment><USER2> See also: [https://github.com/twitter/storehaus](https://github.com/twitter/storehaus)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there anything similar in NodeJS?

<comment><USER4> If you have a similar use case, you should probably just setup a Kafka and Hadoop implementation. You could probably get a lot better performance by using a shared memory store to keep the intermittent states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a Java similar library ?

</comment><comment><USER6> Link to correct url: [https://www.lendup.com/engineering/post/functional- interface...](https://www.lendup.com/engineering/post/functional-interface- key-value-store)</comment>


Quora and the Search for Truth - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/quora-and-the-search-for-truth/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I know Adam D'Angelo doesn't need any more money, but I'm super excited for Quora, they have a truly great site. I hope they keep getting the recognition they've deserve and I'll be more than happy to click on some ads to keep their business flying high. I get a ton of value out of it.</comment>


Buildily Accelerator offers £100,000 for early-stage tech startups for 0% equity - <AUTHOR> https://www.buildily.com <comment><USER2> _Credits_ , not cash investment...

£100k+ in Credits for your startup

As part of our equity-free startup accelerator, successful founders can receive up to £100k+ in credits from partners including IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Stripe and HubSpot.</comment>


WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/48e45fd4838b4e5d9f19166ef57841d4 <comment><USER2> Remember when Whatsapp got bought?

        Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp
        around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible [...]
        If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values,
        we wouldn't have done it. Instead, we are forming a partnership
        that would allow us to continue operating independently and autonomously.
        Our fundamental values and beliefs will not change. Our principles
        will not change. Everything that has made WhatsApp the leader in
        personal messaging will still be in place. Speculation to the
        contrary isn't just baseless and unfounded, it's irresponsible. [0]

Well, good news for them. They never outlined what exactly their principles were, so they weren't _technically_ lying. We just get to see how thin their principles (retroactively) turn out to be.

[0] [https://blog.whatsapp.com/529/Setting-the-record- straight](https://blog.whatsapp.com/529/Setting-the-record-straight)

<comment><USER3> Does anyone actually believe a word which these companies say? I think if at all there was a company which deserved some serious scrutiny under anti-trust, it was Facebook. Much more than Google or MSFT. They have done exactly the things which is supposed to be prevented by antitrust - I mean the "spirit of the law" and not the letter of the law. But hey, there are SO many social networks - look at LinkedIn, look at Google Plus, Twitter. Except that FB somehow ends up with all the data which everyone wishes wasn't stored in one place.

I think it is just a matter of time before FB starts influencing elections to suit THEIR agenda (assuming they have not already started). Remember the experiment where they tried to deliberately influence people's emotions? [1] FB is now effectively a super creepy uber-government.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook- users-emotions-news-feeds)

Question to anyone who works at Facebook: how come you promptly participate in the latest HN announcement of the newest JavaScript open source framework from FB and never bother to show up on these threads. Is ethics just completely off the table when you step foot inside the company doors? I remember someone talking about Zynga the company having "sold their soul". Not that Zynga doesn't rank very high on that chart, but boy, does FB absolutely top that list by a wide margin.

<comment><USER4> I agree with many points you have stated and feel the same way about Facebook (vs. Google or others), but I do believe there is a big difference between the ethics and values of many Facebook employees and the evil things that Facebook as a company and Mark Zuckerberg want to do. I'm sure they like working on things that make a difference (including open sourcing some big impact stuff) while at the same time not liking the privacy policies and what their employer does with data collection.

<comment><USER3> I am yet to see even a single FB employee openly admit he/she is not happy with "so and so" policy but wants to stay at FB to continue working on the things which make an impact. And please give me a reference if this is incorrect.

Put another way, the silence is starting to become too damning. What else do they know but never talk about?

And yes, I feel the same way about every single one of the megacorps. However, I fear FB the most. They already have a long track record of ruthlessness when it comes to pushing the boundaries of ethical behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm like 99% certain they've been doing this for a while. I've noticed that anybody I talk to using WhatsApp quickly appears as a suggested contact on Facebook. As far as I'm aware, I did nothing to enable this.

It does seem awfully creepy, but I guess if you care about privacy you're not using Facebook much anyway…

<comment><USER6> How creepy Facebook is finally clicked for me after I gave my neighbor my phone number once moving to a new neighborhood. You know... in case my house lights on fire or something while I'm out.

That night Facebook was suggesting I add my elderly neighbors as friends. We have 0 friends in common and I don't have Facebook installed on my phone (I just use the browser) so the only excuse I have is when they added me they must have some "share my contacts with Facebook" feature enabled. Now there's some forever connection between them and me on Facebook's servers even though I don't publicly link my phone number to Facebook, it's only added as a password/security recovery.

<comment><USER7> I am pretty sure Facebook also makes a friend suggestion to you when the other person searched for your name or looked at your profile at any time in the past. Maybe your neighbor searched for your name after you gave your phone number to them.

<comment><USER8> I believe FB also suggests based on location. If both were connected to FB on their phones when meeting in person, the location metadata is used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To avoid this, simply collect and destroy any phones owned by your friends who might have your phone number or email in their contact lists. I always use a sledge hammer for this, but some people prefer a sturdy boot. Don't forget to recycle!

<comment><USER10> I know it's a joke, but it got me wondering: What kind of treatment do you need nowadays to actually safely destroy flash storage? I doubt a single smash from a sledgehammer/boot has a good chance of destroying SIM _and_ internal storage _and_ µSD card such that forensic analysis can't recover its data. Thermite?

<comment><USER11> A microwave oven works really well... Only takes (literally!) 1 second. OK, 2 if you want to be thorough.

<comment><USER10> It's flashy, but does it really destroy the charge in the cells?

<comment><USER9> Why make everything so difficult? So many options that it's hard to choose: EMP, solar storms, lightning, pyroclastic flows.. just stand right next to any cataclysmic cosmic event and you'll be taken care of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's really sad how we lost control of our data.

I always refused to inform my phone number to facebook. But they definitely try to guess it . It's funny how sometimes the FB app ask me "is xxxx xxxx your number?" Well, luckily it still has not succeeded.

Once, I grabbed one of those guessed numbers and asked (over SMS) to that unknown person what was his name. It was no surprise when he told me that we have the same name and our surname started with the same letter.

I think now they will stop guessing.

<comment><USER13> It just gave you a random valid phone number, along with a name (yours)? Doesn't that qualify as leaking PII?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> They're Facebook's property. They have all the rights to grab whatever the heck they can find on you, to slice and dice the data for their advantage.

Stay two miles apart from their properties, if you do not wish to be touched.

<comment><USER15> I never was on whatsapp, but I can imagine signing up for a property pre- aquisition and then being powerless to stop more of my data being sucked up by Facebook. Is the only solution to never sign up for a service without a privacy policy that lets you remove your data from the company in the event of a sale? I don't think I have ever seen such a clause..

It's not that I don't want any of my data in Facebook, that's more trouble than it's worth. It's that I don't want every detail of my life collated in one place. regardless of what that place is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's the value of WhatsApp? It is the scale of the product. I use it because most of my friends are on it. There are many other alternatives to WhatsApp as pointed out by many in this thread, but none of them have nearly the same traction.

The only business model that allows such scale is the ad supported model. If WhatsApp was subscription based, I am sure they could not have achieved this scale. And I wouldn't have found value in it.

I realize that the ad supported model is what indirectly adds so much value to WhatsApp. Therefore, it makes sense to me to support that model if the model is reasonable enough. They have end to end encryption, which means my content is safe from prying eyes. That's already huge. So I really don't mind if they share my number with Facebook.

<comment><USER17> WhatsApp is Ad supported? I don't think so. I believe until last year they were subscription based.

<comment><USER18> They were and sometime last year turned everybody's subscription into a lifetime subscription. I think it's only a matter of time until WhatsApp will show ads. I see more and more content being shared through it - eventually it will rival Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The ads would come through a Facebook program called "Custom Audiences," which lets a business upload lists of customers and phone numbers or other contact information the business has collected from warranty cards or other sources. Facebook matches the list to users with the same information and shows them ads. Facebook says it doesn't give out users' information to advertisers."

What happens if the advertiser uploads only one phone number to their campaign? Will they then know for certain if the one user clicked on the advert?

</comment><comment><USER20> This has been going on for the longest. My Facebook is for family and friends and no coworkers. Google+ and Linkedin for coworkers. I have some of my coworkers phone numbers, and have never exchanged whatsApp messages with them. About earlier this year they all started showing up on my Facebook suggestions. I don't have Facebook app, I only use it through the web interface so it's not like they got to scan my contacts. This leads me to strongly believe that WhatsApp is the culprit.

<comment><USER21> Search is another explanation. Almost everyone I know, including myself, will search for pretty much anyone they interact with once they know a name. We're just too curious.

<comment><USER20> I don't use my real name on Facebook. Nor the email that's tied to my Facebook account with my coworkers.

<comment><USER4> It's possible that one or more of your co-workers just synced their contacts list, with all your email addresses and your phone number, to Facebook. That information, when intersected with the contacts list, with your phone number, any of your friends or family members synced with Facebook, could provide your details to Facebook (even if Facebook is not 100% sure, it might probably use it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Finally. I've been trying to give facebook my number for a while. I've tried:

* Downloading Instagram without reading permissions.

* Downloading whatsapp.

* Downloading facebook chat.

* Having friends upload their entire contacts lists to FB, WA, IG, and chat.

* Using the website on mobile and directly putting in the data.

* Using any of their services to message friends my number which becomes a perfectly formatted tel link.

* tweeting zuck.

Facebook has still managed to not retain my number. I mean, I'm still waiting for them to phone me up. If you see this FB, call me maybe?

</comment><comment><USER23> This is why using phone numbers as account identifiers is a bad idea. (For the users, at least. Not necessarily for the companies who want to own those users.)

<comment><USER24> My wife, who is rather dedicated about keeping away from Facebook, ordered a new pay-as-you-go SIM for use in an old Android phone specifically and only for WhatsApp.

It seemed a bit of an expensive tactic, having to top-up with an initial £10, but now I realise she was quite prescient.

<comment><USER25> Does she still have that number? If not, will the new owner get WhatsApp messages sent to her if they use WhatsApp?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Facebook paid a boat load of cash for WhatsApp. Why did you think they did it? out of the goodness of their heart? It's a business, people! and if you are not paying for it, their revenue stream must come from somewhere else. You are the product as much as the user. Get over it. If you don't like it, don't use it. Use Signal instead, which I do, and it's great.

There are also alternatives like Wire, which is really good although it doesn't have the adoption WhatsApp has.

<comment><USER27> They removed paid subscription several months ago. It seems that they can make more money from matching WhatsApp and Facebook social graphs than from annual subscription.

<comment><USER28> That's truly remarkable. Facebook doesn't make that much money per users (about $1/user/month, as best as I can figure). I know people who would pay twice that for a privacy-keeping subscription tier.

<comment><USER29> Do you know 2 billion people who would pay more than that for their privacy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised it took them so long.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, it's probably what they purchased WhatsApp for in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What happens if a whatsapp user doesn't have a Facebook account? More interestingly, what if a someone never uses FB account on his/her phone, like I do?

<comment><USER32> The latter isn't relevant - Facebook has full access to the data and likely has some major index to tie the two together. The simple communication data from Whatsapp alone is enough to find enough reference points for a high- confidence match with a Facebook profile.

As for the former, also likely irrelevant - Facebook has been keeping Shadow Profiles [1-4] for some time now, and whether or not you have an account, Facebook probably knows a lot about you just from what you/other people/your browser leaks about you. This information likely will just be amalgamated into the existing profile.

[1] [http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly- is-a-...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly-is-a- facebook-shadow-profile/)

[2] [http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly- is-a-...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly-is-a- facebook-shadow-profile/)

[3] [http://www.wired.com/2014/10/privacy- friendster/](http://www.wired.com/2014/10/privacy-friendster/)

[4] [https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a- pr...](https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a-profile-of- you-that-you-never-created)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I for one disapprove

</comment><comment><USER34> The article specifies that we can opt out of it. But it doesn't say how to do it? Does it? Does anyone know how to opt out?

<comment><USER35> Technically, you can but you a limited time window.

[https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016](https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016)

This is a dark pattern. In fact, once you say "Agree" you only have 30 days to opt-out.

> After you agree to our updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you will > have an additional 30 days to make this choice by going to Settings > > Account > Share my account info in the app.

I can't see such an option on my phone.

<comment><USER36> > Technically, you can

Technically you can't

 _The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities._

<comment><USER35> There are some places where your phone number will be used regardless of your choice - spam/abuse and there are some parts where it would not be used - targeted ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm quite certain that maybe Apple has been doing this for a while as well. I can't seem to find any setting allowing FB to access my contacts but somehow people I've only texted, called or communicated over email are showing as suggestions too. But I'm not certain since they might have just cyber-stalked me.

<comment><USER38> Could it be that those other people are sharing that info to facebook? They only need one side to allow sharing contacts to find the connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> OK - I think we can all agree this is shit. What are the (serious) alternatives?

<comment><USER4> If you can convince even a few people in your network to try something different, I'd suggest trying Telegram, Wire and Signal. Then decide which works best for you to start pestering others too switch.

<comment><USER40> But the problem with that is that users will flock back to whatsapp, because everyone else is. We need a coherent movement to a single platform that doesn't fracture everyone across platforms. We've seen that happen when Whatsapp got acquired...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "My friends know not to call me" \- Ron (from Parks and Rec)

</comment><comment><USER42> What's the big deal?

<comment><USER43> WhatsApp has always said to take user privacy seriously. It's been one of their arguments of being a subscription-based app instead of free when they were not owned by Facebook yet: they didn't want to show any ads.

Now, this pretty much sums it up:

> Another change is potentially more controversial: WhatsApp says it will > begin "coordinating" accounts with Facebook by sharing WhatsApp users' > mobile phone numbers and device information, such as the type of operating > system and other smartphone characteristics. The company says Facebook will > employ the phone number internally to better identify WhatsApp users on > Facebook, so it can recommend friends or show targeted advertising.

<comment><USER44> >WhatsApp has always said to take user privacy seriously.

and google has always said 'Don't be evil' lol

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is anyone surprised by this move? This seems part and parcel of the $19B purchase price.

Maybe now, they can make FacePhone a reality. Not having to worry about POTS phone numbers when you're dialing someone is a killer feature.

</comment><comment><USER46> faceboook

</comment><comment><USER46> facebook</comment>


Pigeon Rank - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

<comment><USER2> Is this from 2002?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any programming language to argument thought processes? - <AUTHOR> I feel the need to argument a lot of stuff, product decisions, vision etc. I also feel the need to break down thoughts to simple facts to find where I disagree with others. A kind of programming language focused on that would really help and save time.
Just as an example of what I'm thinking about, here it is my thought process on why eliminating fake news from Facebook would really strengthen Facebook's dictatorship:
Facebook => Central authority
Fake news => Elections impact => Bad
Fake news => Eliminate
Eliminate (Fake news) => Binary decision + Central authority => Dictatorship <comment><USER2> The field of textual entailment in natural language processing is similar to that problem. Worth reading papers on this.</comment>


Data mining confirms that culture makes cities richer - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610934/data-mining-confirms-that-culture-makes-cities-richer/ <comment><USER2> I can't view the page in incognito. It worked just fine with JS disabled, while in incognito, though.</comment>


A Data Analysis Curriculum - <AUTHOR> http://www.mysliderule.com/data-analysis-intro

<comment><USER2> I don't find khan academy's videos to be that great to get at the intuition behind probability and stats. It's good for reference and surface explanations.

I recommend Harvard stats 110 youtube videos: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SOU6wwxB0uwwH80KTQ6...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SOU6wwxB0uwwH80KTQ6ht66KWxbzTIo)

These videos are more focused on probability, but they contain a lot of great intuitions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we'll be sure to take a look!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We (SlideRule) launched our first "Learning Path" on Web Development on HN a few weeks ago, to very encouraging feedback. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7501516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7501516)

This is our second Learning Path, on Data Analysis, built by the awesome Claudia Gold (MIT alum, self-taught data scientist, early at Airbnb). The aim is to list helpful resources in a sequence that a beginner can follow.

Once again, we realize this is _a_ curriculum, not _the best_ curriculum. We'd love your feedback on what we should change or add.

\</comment><comment>

Edit: Since we have your attention, here are some other ways in which you can help us:

1\. Tell us which new Learning Paths you'd like to us build.

2\. Collaborate with us to build a Learning Path on a subject where you're an expert.

3\. Request features that will help you take better advantage of Learning Paths.

We're at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER3> It would be nice to have a learning path on Computer Engineering and Computer Science which can guide a beginner all the up. Thanks for this one, will check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We'll try to add a full CS&E curriculum.

The closest thing we have is a beginners' web development path (not the same thing at all, I realize, but sharing if helpful) [http://www.mysliderule.com/courses/learning-paths/web- develo...](http://www.mysliderule.com/courses/learning-paths/web-development- python-django/)

<comment><USER3> thanks, I did sign up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love the idea of expert-curated learning paths.

With so many "free" learning resources online, we end up "paying" through the mental churn and frustration of trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is a great step in truly making free resources more accessible and meaningful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! That's exactly what we're hoping to do, create the "glue" around all the great content that's out there!

One question: How important are the credentials of the "expert" to you?

<comment><USER5> To me, the credentials of the "expert" are very important. They are the only indication I have going into an online course that the person who built it has any idea what they're talking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What are the ideal credentials that will give you confidence in the curriculum?

<comment><USER5> Extensive industry experience or a PhD in the subject, the same I would expect out of someone teaching in a traditional university or community college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the curation of free educational content in a specific area because it eliminates the guesswork, and duplicated effort, of filtering for high-quality resources. Thanks to Claudia Gold for the amazing amount of work she put into this. My main gripe comes with the majority of these data science courses/tracks.

It appears that no comprehensive treatment of applied data science exists. For the past few months, I've been searching high-and-low. I understand collaborative filtering; I've heard about the Netflix recommendation challenge ad nauseam; I grasp machine learning, bayesian statistics (prior, posterior, conjugate prior distributions, etc.) on a superficial level. Conversationally, I can hold my own with practitioners', albeit on a beginner level.

But what I, and others, want to learn is how to apply these techniques in a scalable way on a real production system. Right now, it's easy to conjecture about what could/should be done, but there's a lack of confidence in how to achieve the goals. I'm experimenting with a collaborative filtering problem using Cassandra as the data store for thumbs up/down ratings on products, and Hadoop for the MR pipeline; it'd be great to have more visible examples available. Is there any place I could find detailed information on real, online machine learning/statistical inference systems?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for your comments! I completely agree about the lack of hands-on courses. I found the same thing when I was putting this together. The capstone project is our attempt at including something more practical, but it's self- directed, so that's not exactly what you are after. (Creating individual courses was outside the scope of this project.) However, I'm confident it will exist someday, given the current popularity of both data science and online courses. I assume you've also done some Kaggle challenges?

I agree with the suggestion that you should attend meetups and tech talks (or watch them online if there are none in your area). You'll hear more about real life examples and have a chance to ask questions.

The other main way to learn what you're asking is to get a job doing it! You have more than enough background (assuming you also have knowledge of tools) and you will learn more from others and as you need the information.

<comment><USER6> You know, I haven't had time to try any Kaggle challenges yet. I'll have to sit down and attempt one this weekend. I appreciate the advice, from both you and Brenden, I'm going to look for more data science meetups and keep my ear to the grapevine for any exciting positions. Keep up the great work Claudia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love the idea of expert-curated learning paths - this is so much needed with the proliferation of all the competing MOOCs. Thank you for putting this together.

I've noticed that there's a growing demand for performance and reliability engineering types of roles in the tech. Can that become a learning path? The courses for that could be: 1\. OS 2\. Computer Networks 3\. Distributed Systems 4\. Intro to Algorithms 5\. Intro to Statistics 6\. <Some course on best practices of general systems-level troubleshooting?> 7\. <Some course on best practices of software debugging?>

I know it sounds almost like a full-fledged MS program in CS. But this could be a great opportunity for those who are not enrolled in those programs but love systems in general and would like to make a career out of it. Apologies if this type of "learning path" makes no sense to most of the industry insiders.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. I wonder how this compares to Coursera's Data Science specialization[0], from what it looks like they both have very similar curriculum.

[0]: [https://www.coursera.org/specialization/jhudatascience/1?utm...](https://www.coursera.org/specialization/jhudatascience/1?utm_medium=listingPage)

<comment><AUTHOR> We got asked this question before, and here's our analysis of the differences.

1\. Coursera focuses solely on R for Data Science. SlideRule covers additional tools (e.g. Python, SQL) which a practicing data analyst will find handy. It seems there's a bit of an R vs Python debate in the data world, so we think it's useful for people to know both.

2\. SlideRule's path has an (optional) "intro to programming" section for beginners. Coursera assumes some prior programming experience.

3\. Most of the courses in the SlideRule path are "self-paced", so in theory someone studying this full-time could cover it in 4-6 weeks. Coursera has fixed start and end dates, so the fastest one could complete the track (accounting for interdependencies of courses) is ~24 weeks.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the response, that definitely makes sense. I guess it really depends on the specific technology you want to learn and the type of learner you are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Login page keeps redirecting me to the sign up page. There I'm told I'm about to login to the django server (why the django server bit, just say I'm about to login), but when I enter my email address, it says a user with that email already exists and I should try logging in instead. The cycle continues.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, we're working to fix it! For now, you can access the Learning Path by dismissing the sign-up modal (X in the top-right corner).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be great to add an elective course for Growth Hacking where you can assume the knowledge of data analysis and provide a survey/use cases of effective examples of using analysis and other methods to inform product development and/or design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! A Growth Hacking path is on our wish list. Know anyone awesome who could help us build it?

<comment><USER12> Ian Landsman

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi! I'm Claudia Gold, the author. Happy to answer any questions you might have. :)

<comment><USER13> Hi Claudia, thanks for putting this together, I've already found it very useful.

I didn't see any linear algebra anywhere here, and from my (probably naïve) understanding of data science, it seems to be core to a lot of the main ideas. Do you know of any good resources in this same vein as the rest of the track? I've been watching Coursera and EDX and it seems linear algebra offerings are somewhat sporadic.

<comment><USER7> Hi, Glad you're finding it helpful! The reason I didn't include linear algebra is that it is possible to do the day-to-day work of most entry level data science jobs without it. That said, it is great to know for a deeper understanding and if you are writing your own machine learning algorithms. This MIT OCW class provides a good introduction, with video lectures and problem sets: [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear- algebra-...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra- spring-2010/)

There is more discussion on this topic here: [http://www.quora.com/Big- Data/What-concepts-of-linear-algebr...](http://www.quora.com/Big-Data/What- concepts-of-linear-algebra-should-one-master-to-be-a-good-data-scientist)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find that your "Apply to YC" path is also very interesting. [http://www.mysliderule.com/apply-to- Ycombinator](http://www.mysliderule.com/apply-to-Ycombinator)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha thanks, that was just a fun side project when we were applying to YC S14. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We took "Show HN" out of the title because this site had a Show HN recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7501516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7501516).

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay.

Could we please reinstate the "built by a former Airbnb Data Scientist", though? That's material information, in that this is not just _any_ curriculum, but one that's expert-curated. As people on this thread have indicated [1], the credentials of the person building a Learning Path are important.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7816100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7816100)

<comment><USER15> HN tends to take authorial information out of titles, especially when it's promotional, as part of a general aversion to linkbait.

Anyone who clicks on the post can easily see the credentials as you've highlighted them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> and the Data Analysis hipe continues..

</comment><comment><USER17> "Data science" my ass. It's called statistics, econometrics and programming.

<comment><USER18> One thing has multiple names. Welcome to the wonderful world of human language!</comment></comment>


Huawei and other mobile "tech giants": you should break free from Android - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gael_duval/huawei-and-other-mobile-tech-giants-you-should-break-free-from-google-android-28955d49439a <comment><USER2> The article states they are too dependent on Google/Android? If the author have used a Chinese version of android he would think its another OS and not android.

The localization engineered on it is just awesome when I saw one. The hand writing on screen without even showing a keyboard to type their weird characters and the speech recognition is really good. I think it is a big setback not having Google on your side but that company is rich they can throw a lot of resources to their current problem.

I do agree that Playstore/Appstore is a bad monopoly and the world needs another worldwide distributed appstore.

</comment><comment><USER3> So a piece by the founder of /e/ on how phone manufacturers could use /e/ instead of Android. Though their website doesn't explain what /e/ actually is. From the screenshots is it just Linage with f-droid?

</comment><comment><USER4> I must be missing something. How can Google revoke HuaWei's Android license when Android is licensed with Apache and GPL v2? ([https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses](https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses)) What is Google actually doing?

<comment><USER5> its not android itself but the google ecosystem tats being revoked, no gapps or services etc

<comment><USER6> > its not android itself but the google ecosystem tats being revoked, no gapps > or services etc

Doesn't seem like that'd make much of a difference, since the "Google ecosystem" is blocked in China, so all the Chinese makers already have their own app stores, etc. The revocation may just cause the Chinese makers to internationalize and export their own ecosystems. In the end, who knows if that would hurt or help them?

<comment><USER4> That's an interesting insight. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, please not PWAs... Android itself goes more and more towards native applications instead (Kotlin Native as the main driver of the modernization). So PWAs are definitely not future.

</comment><comment><USER5> people are saying this is game over for huawei but i see it the other way, right now they have a good hold in the market as do other chinese manufacturers, they have the funds and resources to create a solid alternative which i imagine would be swiftly accepted by other manufacturers who will no doubt face the same issues huawei have

on top of that people are starting to become wary of the slight monopoly google have, many people are ready and waiting to jump ship, rather than the death of huawei as a major player i think this may be the start of google losing their stranglehold on the market

<comment><USER7> I am sure Google wasn't happy about this decision either. But this highlights the overreliance on its services on almost every mobile device. Hopefully more alternatives will appear soon.</comment></comment>


A self-healing, transparent, highly stretchable material - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/8634.html <comment><USER2> And very importantly -- it can contract and expand with electric current. It can be used as an artificial "muscle" and if it is cut in half it will re- attach and be usable within 5 minutes and almost fully re-connected in 24 hours.

<comment><USER3> Am I crazy (or naive) for immediately thinking about the robotics potential?

<comment><USER2> Not at all crazy or naive. That is one of the applications listed in the subtitle of the article. Efficiency and longevity of the properties are going to make a big difference in that area. E.g. muscle wire -- cool but very inefficient. Also, does it maintain these properties for a long period of time or will the properties (self-healing and current response) wane after a year or so.

<comment><USER4> Another important dimension of longevity is how well it behaves in real life. What happens when it gets hot, cold, dry or wet, when it gets exposed to UV from the sun, etc?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This link might be better for you.

[http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v8/n6/full/nchem.2492.ht...](http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v8/n6/full/nchem.2492.html)

This professor's research looks pretty fucking cool [http://www.chaowanggroup.com/publications.html](http://www.chaowanggroup.com/publications.html).

We can dream of a future where our computers' processors are biological or organic, where the distinction between life and machine dwindles.

</comment><comment><USER6> This says nothing about the durability or strength of the material. How much force can it impart when retracted?

<comment><USER5> This might help you:

[http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v8/n6/full/nchem.2492.ht...](http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v8/n6/full/nchem.2492.html)

Also this:

[http://www.chaowanggroup.com/publications.html](http://www.chaowanggroup.com/publications.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how self healing properties affect maintaining original shape. Would it form a blob after being folded and compressed? Does it stretch out if it self heals while stretched?

</comment><comment><USER8> self healing properties would be a labor savor in outside-facing building materials (e.g. roof and stucco patching compounds, window sealants, elastomeric paints, wood putty)

probably too expensive for such mundane uses though.

maybe this stuff can extend the working lifetime of the equipment on NASA space probes

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been reading about these "self-healing" materials for years. They have always been overhyped and never made it out of the lab. The only way to have truly a "self-healing" material, it to make it with nano technology that has self-organizing, swarm properties. All these other "breakthroughs" are just gimmicks with limited use potential.

<comment><USER5> > As a result, the iron–ligand bonds can readily break and re-form while the > iron centres still remain attached to the ligands through the stronger > interaction with the pyridyl ring, which enables reversible unfolding and > refolding of the chains.

"Self-organizing" and "swarm" are buzzwords in your usage. Do you consider a proton and an electron self-organizing because there exists a bound state? What do those words _even mean_?

<comment><USER9> Self-organizing has a very clear definition. Wikipedia has an entire article on it. I suggest you look it up. None of the many self-healing claims of the past, including this one have ever been self-organizing. As a result, have no programmable group memory. The amount of damage that can be repaired, stress fractures that can be repaired, etc is an incredible small range compared to any biological system. This is no different.

As far a swarm being a meaningless buzz word, again I beg to differ. From biological to robotic swarms, very simple instructions can achieve amazingly complex results. I have a high confidence that when we actually do have a real self-healing technology, swarm will be an apt description of its nano tech.

<comment><USER5> > Self-organizing has a very clear definition.

Not true. The "definition" in Wikipedia is essentially saying that a complex system exhibits self-organization if there is order observed at various scales. I didn't read the paper -- but based on the abstract, it looks like there is some sort of structural phase transition at T_c = 253K (please correct me if this is wrong) which allows these molecules to energetically favor reassembly. This would classify, according to Wikipedia, as self- organization at a microscopic scale. Self-organization can be evident at some scales (but not others) in systems which are not self-similar, but you already know this, since you read the Wikipedia article.

> From biological to robotic swarms, very simple instructions can achieve > amazingly complex results.

No one is denying the beauty of complex systems. That said, the versatility of the word "swarm" word is _precisely_ what makes it trivial! One can only beg for more words. What kind of swarm? At what scale? A physicist will find behavior that can be poetically described as "swarm" in one place, and a chemist will find it in another place, and a biologist will find it in still another place, _and_ at a different scale!

> I have a high confidence that when we actually do have a real self-healing > technology, swarm will be an apt description of its nano tech.

This is meaningless! It's trivially true. Let me try it: "I have high confidence that when we actually do have a real self-healing technology, sinusoidal will be an apt description of its nano tech." You can't use those terms to describe what self-healing "should look like" since those terms are vague and non-mathematical (self-organization could be defined more mathematically).

In reality, I think _you_ have an idea or imagination or intuition of what you think "real" self-healing technology should be, and you just aren't satisfied with what we're at right now. This -- I can accept, and I might even agree with you. But don't go around hand-waving buzzwords about what technology should look like, because there's no content there.

<comment><USER5> I think a really good example of this is boson gasses versus fully connected neural networks (phase only). A cold enough boson gas will undergo a phase transition where each particle falls into the ground state. A fully-connected strongly coupled random phase network will lead to each neuron having the same phase (i.e. same state). You would readily call a neuron matrix "self- organizing" or "swarmy", since it leads the EEG signals we measure, but how is that any more self-organizing or swarmy than the Bose-Einstein condensate if the math is the same?

The premise is that it isn't. That's why it seems silly to claim that this paper's statistical system is not self-organizingy or swarmy enough, and that "real" self-healing systems are "more" self-organizingy and swarmy.

<comment><USER9> The way biological neurons self-organize into a neural network could correctly be described as swarm behavior. In fact there is quite a bit of research into this and it's amazing how during development you can move a neuron from one part of the brain into another area, and it will self-correct and take up the proper role in the new region. There are complex emergent properties here, which your Bose-Einstein condensate lacks. Which is also why it has not practical use beyond theoretical research.

I subscribe to the cellular automaton interpretation of quantum mechanics, that our most fundamental laws work like the game of life. A basic part of their program is to increase entropy. This results in homogenous and lack of complexity. These is where your counter point falls apart. Your Bose-Einstein condensate is less complex. Unless we could change the laws of our universe, we have no way to program its behavior and is therefore not useful. So if you must, I will quality my original assertion that it will be a programmable swarm-like behavior. Although whether it be from computer code or DNA, this is a characteristic than any traditional swarm behavior possesses.

<comment><USER5> Honestly mate, I appreciate the conversation and your response, but this is starting to reek of quantum spirituality, which is fine, but you're presenting ideas which I can't argue against.

Regarding interpretations of quantum mechanics, the interpretation is unimportant -- the math is the same is the same is the same. If you want to think about particles as being controlled by fairies who are locked up in hidden dimensions, that's kinky and totally fine -- as long as we use the same math, I don't really care.

If your fairies end up predicting new phenomenon that exist, which are not predicted by the Born/Copenhagen interpretations, sign me up -- I'll go to wonderland. Until then, let's leave interpretations out of our conversation.

My point in bringing up boson gasses and neural networks was to show that two vastly different systems at different scales can both exhibit self- organization described by similar mathematics. I am not saying those systems are equivalent, but I am saying that self-organization is a very versatile term and that throwing it around with no context warrants more content.

<comment><USER9> > reek of quantum spirituality... particles as being controlled by fairies who > are locked up in hidden dimensions

With the cellular automaton interpretation everything could be calculated and is deterministic. More importantly, there are no silly paradoxes like cat's being both alive and dead at the same time until it is observed. The universe at its most fundamental level are bits of information, or automaton. The speed of light is the speed of causality. It's the clock-rate of our reality. No need for fairies, multiple worlds, or collapsing probability waves that lead to paradoxes.

> that self-organization is a very versatile term and that throwing it around > with no context warrants more content.

No argument that you could "cheat" by going low enough to claim anything is a result of self-organization. But it's not cheating if the actual mechanism is. For example, saying that cells in a neural network are self-organizing is not cheating. Say that a neural network is self-organizing because of some fundamental laws of physics that's many layers down is cheating.

> how that two vastly different systems at different scales can both exhibit > self-organization described by similar mathematics.

That is the unreasonable beauty of mathematics

Finally, yes a hammer is not very useful if you have no way to control its behavior. While your magical hammer might provide a plethora of data for people who study it. You need to control what the hammer hits to use it do useful work.

There might be some use from this self-healing tech or any of the past claims. It's the hype that I object to. Then again, I also object to people calling Telsa's cars "self-driving".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Releasing new version of Datacol(a self hosted PaaS on Google cloud) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/datacol-io/datacol/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha.5 <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, will be glad to answer any questions you have. I have added following improvements into the new version -

* Provisioning and linking cloudsql postgres instance. [1]

* Streaming logs

* Support for Heroku Buildpack

[1]: [https://www.datacol.io/docs/cloudsql](https://www.datacol.io/docs/cloudsql)</comment>


Detailed review of MIT's OCW course "Introduction to Algorithms", Part I: Analysis of Algorithms and Asymptotic Notation - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/mit-introduction-to-algorithms-part-one/

<comment><USER2> I've watched this course online, and it's a great one.

A few random comments:

* It is a good idea to download the course materials from [http://ocw.mit.edu/ans15436/ZipForEndUsers/6/6-046JFall-2005...](http://ocw.mit.edu/ans15436/ZipForEndUsers/6/6-046JFall-2005/6-046JFall-2005.zip)

* The video lectures can be downloaded if you hack the URLs a bit. Full instructions at: [http://amazingstuffs.blogspot.com/2007/10/download-data-stru...](http://amazingstuffs.blogspot.com/2007/10/download-data-structures-video.html), but it doesn't bode well if you can't figure it out for yourself

* The math gets significantly less heavy after the first few lectures. If you get lost, plow ahead and revisit the first few lectures after you've gotten further.

* Erik Demaine rocks. He went straight to the top of my list of "computer scientists I'd like to have a beer with sometime..."

* I found the discussions of Red-Black Trees and the graph theory "trilogy" to be especially enjoyable, but that could just be me.

<comment><USER3> For anyone else interested in downloading MIT lectures, I wrote a way to do it without using realplayer.

[http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/ripping-and- encodi...](http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/ripping-and-encoding- streaming-rm-or-how-i-defeated-realplayer/)

<comment><USER4> Just download the files direct:

[http://mit-ocw-thai.eng.chula.ac.th/OcwWeb/Global/OCWHelp/he...](http://mit- ocw-thai.eng.chula.ac.th/OcwWeb/Global/OCWHelp/help.htm#26)

<comment><USER3> That still leaves you with a .rm file. Also, my method works on .rm streams that don't offer you a download option like MIT does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice, especially the idea to share your lecture notes. The best way to really learn a subject is to teach others...

</comment><comment><USER6> there is lots of content (mit open courseware, lectures from many universities in iTunes, free books being released online) available for self-learners.

is there a "virtual university/classroom" website that helps different people to study together?

something simple & free -- like craigslist.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.lecturefox.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to hear more about the projects this guy works on. I recall he wrote a command line tool for navigating HN.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great quote from his blog: "There are only two industries in which customers are called 'users' ".

</comment><comment><USER10> I watched these for one of my classes but I sould of just bought the book instead.</comment>


How to Build a Remote Team: Resources and Advice from Remote Companies - <AUTHOR> https://remotehub.io/blog/build-remote-team <comment><USER2> How about be willing to hire experienced engineers who don't have remote experience?

Every time I've applied for a remote job, this seems to have been the sticking point. I'd just like employers to start with the assumption that I'm a professional who wouldn't slack off all day if I didn't have someone to babysit me.

<comment><USER3> I think this just depends on the employer. I saw that statistic from an Upwork report. 40% of companies are not good with remote. If you have ever worked out of a coffee shop or home, you have remote experience!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just wanted to buy a ticket for the Running Remote conference, and then I saw that there are only on-site tickets ...

</comment><comment><USER5> One thing I have been thinking about is that remote companies will have difficulty with leadership that doesn't understand the tech they are working with. When I look at my current company even one or two levels up there are people who have no understanding of a lot of technology and aren't able to make quick judgement calls. So they need a lot of meetings and salesmanship within the company to make decisions. When I look at successful remote companies like Automatic, 37 Signals or StackOverflow they all have very strong leaders who can't be bullshitted in technology but have a pretty good idea what they want to do. They also can judge the output of their people. It's hard to be the boss of a remote worker whose work you don't understand. How can you tell if somebody is good or not?

</comment><comment><USER6> Building a successful remote company is no different than building a successful on-site company.

It's about culture, and about setting the right processes with the right toolset.

Establishing a great communication flow [1] is key for remote companies, and you have to help your teams to:

· Create a community feeling

· Get to see each other face-to-face daily

· Be open about feelings

I recently wrote a few tips on how to set the right environment for remote work [2].

[1] [https://standups.io/blog/communicating-better-in- distributed...](https://standups.io/blog/communicating-better-in-distributed- teams/)

[2] [https://standups.io/blog/a-productive-environment-for- remote...](https://standups.io/blog/a-productive-environment-for-remote-work/)

<comment><USER7> Also, your posts you linked to are kind of fluff pieces (no offense intended). For example "By creating a strong community feeling and a sense of commitment to your company, your employees are excited about team calls and much more open with one another". Yeah ok, but how? I don't think creating community is a point of contention, but you're not explaining how to do so in a distributed environment.

</comment></comment><comment> em-bee we are just building a new remote team, and what we are missing is a good/affordable collaborative whiteboard or mindmap solution.

something where we can visually structure our work.

for the rest we have etherpad (as alfernative to google docs) and gitlab with all its tools to structure issues

</comment><comment><USER3> Made a virtual office space for my team for just these reasons! [https://www.mydigitaloffice.io/](https://www.mydigitaloffice.io/)

With over 40% of companies allowing some weekdays to be at home, this is the future!

<comment><USER8> COOL! How's this compare to Sococo?

<comment><USER9> Sococo has been around forever and always gets a major eye-roll from the HN community whenever mentioned in a thread.

But I don't think I know a single engineer that has actually used it.

I like the idea of seeing who is chatting with who. If I'm working on something, and I have two colleagues that are also working on the same project and I can virtually see them chatting, I'd probably approach to see if there's anything I know or if they're discussing ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article appears to end prematurely - last item I see is "Start Slowly"

<comment> em-bee same for me. it feels like there should be more</comment></comment>


Using Open Source to Grow Business. Month #6 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/epicmaxco/using-open-source-to-grow-business-month-6-2f11d2b8b416 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone. We've been struggling a bit and now have a story to share :)</comment>


What Is Cuneiform? - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-heck-cuneiform-anyway-180956999/?no-ist <comment><USER2> It was going so well until "Fifteen languages were developed from cuneiform" \- no languages were developed from cuneiform, since it is a script. Old Persian and Akkadian aren't even in the same language family (the former is Indo-European, the latter Semitic).</comment>


Microsoft's Ballmer: MSFT will acquire 20 companies a year - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/18/microsofts-ballmer-msft-will-acquire-20-companies-a-year/

<comment><USER2> We all know what this means, approach them at the end of their fiscal year when they haven't made enough acquisitions to meet their annual quota. Guaranteed buyout :P

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds silly... Why would you throw out a number like that? Is he trying to impress investors?

</comment><comment><USER4> Adquisition competence is always good for all of us :)

</comment><comment><USER5> from a USV analyst at web2.0:

<http://twitter.com/andrewparker/statuses/345733572>

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice picture of Ballmer there.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4c2mqlE_0></comment>


Show HN: Public Key Login Using Keybase - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jzila/kb-login-ext

<comment><AUTHOR> If you'd like to try the extension, the README has an overview. However, if you don't want to peruse the code before trusting the extension with your private key, you can create a test Keybase.io account and try it out with that.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is it odd to discuss about salary among friends? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've heard it being poor practice to discuss this with coworkers because it can lead to resentment and pettiness and such but I've never had a problem talking with friends about such things.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, it's not odd, it's quite normal. Where did you get that idea?</comment>


CSSDeck Codecasts: Learn HTML5, CSS3, Javascript in a new way - <AUTHOR> http://cssdeck.com/codecasts

<comment><USER2> I think it's a great way for get a non-programmer interested very quickly, but I personally was quite turned off when I clicked on the "realistic physics" based bouncing ball module and found that the ball doesn't actually stop bouncing, EVER.

The problem occurs in the following code:

if(ball.y + ball.radius > H) { // First, reposition the ball on top of the floor and then bounce it! ball.y = H - ball.radius; ball.vy *= -bounceFactor; // The bounceFactor variable that we created decides the elasticity or how elastic the collision will be. If it's 1, then the collision will be perfectly elastic. If 0, then it will be inelastic. }

Basically, when the ball hits the ground (the collision check), it should no longer be receiving a gravity modifier as it's "on the ground". Additionally, because there's a user set velocity variable, there needs to be a check against the crest of bounce to slowly reduce that variable down to 0 so the ball will stay stationary.

Call me a stickler, but seeing a "physics" demo no matter how loosely it's based get stuck in an infinite bounce just rubs me the wrong way.

<comment><USER2> Btw, I know these are user created, but if you're going to showcase it, you should check these for bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would love to see a modularize Javascript app recorded in this manner that uses the DOM. Maybe a mini 4x4 minecraft game. As someone trying to teach himself , watching the order in which the developer writes would be really enlightening. Regardless, this is a great site.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this is a great new feature to an already impressive site. I find myself coming back to CSSDeck for bits and pieces of code very routinely.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks cool, but is it really any different from CodePlayer? <http://thecodeplayer.com/>

<comment><USER6> Indeed they are very similar. Thanks for sharing, though CSSDeck seems to have more samples. Have been procrastinating on learning HTML5/CSS3, this would be great place to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> After watching one of the videos, I mentally started clapping! Really amazing! And both the site and the editor are uncluttered.

</comment><comment><USER8> A bit OT but what tool did they use to do the deck? Looks gorgeous with the 3D CSS transitions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like the site. However I do wish there were more CSS Design/layout techniques.

</comment><comment><USER10> In case anyone else is missing this, when one of the demos first loads -> ctrl+f -> "play", click it.</comment>


An Interview with Brian Kernighan: Breeding Little Languages - <AUTHOR> http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/04/an-interview-with-brian-kernig.html

<comment><USER2> > Should examples--even beginner examples--include the error-handling code?

> Brian: I'm torn on this. Error-handling code tends to be bulky and very > uninteresting and uninstructive, so it often gets in the way of learning and > understanding the basic language constructs. At the same time, it's > important to remind programmers that errors do happen and that their code > has to be able to cope with errors.

The lesson we learn from this is that we should design languages so that error-handling code does not have to be "bulky".

<comment><USER3> Do you know any language where it's not bulky?

<comment><USER2> > Do you know any language where it's not bulky?

Good question. Off the top of my head, I'd say, "no".

OTOH, one can look at _relative_ bulkiness. E.g., I've found that dealing with exceptions in Python is significantly less work than in C++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I gave up on awk when Perl became available, and after that, Python. However, after reading this interview, I think I should relearn it.

<comment><USER5> It's very handy when you're working with delimiter-separated data. I've never bothered to learn the more powerful features of awk, because Python is generally better for sufficiently complicated text processing, but for little one-off scripts, awk is a nice thing to know.

<comment><USER6> Right. Awk is great for the sweet spot of 1-3 line filters, and the subset of the language needed for most of those could fit on half a page. You could do bigger stuff with it, but at that point it's probably better done in another language. There are surprisingly many cases where a few lines of awk is good enough, though.

Perl is logically a superset of awk, but there's so much more in the core language that I kept forgetting parts of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> bwk is a great writer. I enjoyed reading "Practice of Programming" and "The AWK Programming Language".

<comment><USER8> I completely agree (and the list doesn't stop there of course; it's pretty sobering when you look at just how many great books he has co-authored). Every single one of them is a great example of crystal-clear and concise writing.</comment></comment>


Lightshow – Test grammars with GitHub's syntax highlighter - <AUTHOR> https://lightshow.githubapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's an example shared earlier today on the Racket Users mailing list:

[https://lightshow.githubapp.com/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&scope=from-u...](https://lightshow.githubapp.com/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&scope=from- url&grammar_url=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fsoegaard%2Fracket- highlight-for- github%2Fmaster%2Fracket.tmLanguage&grammar_text=&code_source=from- url&code_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fnitinchandrol%2FBackgammon%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2Fproject%2Fproject.rkt&code=)

<comment><USER2> Allow me to highjack the thread. If you happen to be an expert in Textmate/Sublime/Atom language grammars and know how to handle multiline comments, I am very interested in hearing about it. More details here:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27460207/matching- nested-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27460207/matching-nested- constructs-in-textmate-sublime-text-atom-language-grammars)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to recognise patterns and problems in everyday work to blog about? - <AUTHOR> I feel I struggle to recognize things worth sharing with others, although I would very much like to blog (for many reasons: I believe knowledge should be free and shared, to develop/improve my writing skills, to get some visibility to my name to increase career possibilities).
Yet when I read blogs like Coding Horror, Joe Duffy's Blog, freeCodeCamp, etc I feel like I am not able to come up with anything of this quality and insight, although I work in an adtech company with quite some technical challenges.
I've came to realize it's a skill most bloggers have that I lack: being able to notice and find pieces of knowledge worth sharing in an every day job.
How do I develop this skill? Should I just begin blogging about whatever I do and then it will naturally come? Or should I apply some "techniques" to extract and distill what is the most important in what I do? <comment><USER2> Two methods I use:

1\. I write about the mistakes I make. Mistakes aren't that hard to spot, if you're paying attention: "Oh crap, I wasted 3 days" or "oh crap, I shipped a bug."

I then try to figure out what the cause of the mistake was, and that's where patterns start showing up. But the mistake is a good starting point, which makes it all easier.

(Results at [https://softwareclown.com](https://softwareclown.com)).

2\. Think about one specific problem. A lot. And write about it. A lot. A lot of what you write initially will be boring, unless you're better writer than I was when I started doing this. But eventually focusing on that one thing (in my case testing) will give you more insights, as you start seeing patterns.

<comment> le-mark I'll piggyback on this and add; writing about things I spend a lot of time figuring out. Like if some problem (programming related) you have doesn't have clear explanations available via the search engines of the day, jotting one down can be greatly appreciated[1].

[1] [https://xkcd.com/979/](https://xkcd.com/979/)

<comment><USER3> I remember I was looking for a way to fix something. So I googled and found an answer that just detailed _everything_ I needed. I was blown away by how thorough it was. I said "I love you, stranger!", looked at the nickname, and it was me. I had a pretty big laugh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The TL;DR is "input == output".

The key is to not spend time thinking about what to write, but instead constantly be doing things and writing about the process.

When you have a lot of input, you can produce a lot of output.

Trying to "invent" a blog post is a pretty bad idea. It needs to be based on a real experience.

I'm not at the Coding Horror level but I do post about once a week and have been blogging for ~2 years. Check my profile for a link to my site.

</comment><comment><USER5> Identifying what's worth writing about is not a skill you have naturally, it's something you develop from practice. I know it sounds trite, but just start writing, and do it consistently, and you'll build the skill.

I've been blogging almost weekly for over a year. My first 5-10 articles garnered almost no interest; even now they have only a handful of reads on Medium. I was writing about jQuery tips for god's sake. But I eventually learned from my mistakes and now I have maybe 10 articles with more than 100 recommends on Medium, and I've had two articles make the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER6> "...although I work in an adtech company with quite some technical challenges"

There is your topic. Tell us about the technical challenges that come with implementing framework X or programming language X in the adtech space. Make your writing exclusively about the space and consistently blog whether it's once a week/month etc but be consistent.

If you listen to the Software Engineering Daily podcast, for example, you will hear the main host Jeff Meyerson talking about various technical challenges associated with detecting bot traffic etc. Maybe write about that as well?

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER7> Document your pain.

Blogs tend to be at a level commensurate with the person writing the blog, there is a lack of good stuff from your average day to day devs point of view because those types of devs don't typically blog.

</comment><comment><USER8> The dread of programming is always a good starting point, notice the patterns, make short notes, aggregate then combine into a blog post.</comment>


Show HN: Mathematico – A mathematics tutorial every day for the whole summer - <AUTHOR> https://mathematico.org <comment><AUTHOR> Maker here. I'm a teacher in the UK and I needed a way to help my students keep learning as we're not allowed to go to school. I've been teaching myself javascript for a while as I've wanted to make an education website for a long time. Spurred on by recent events I just finished the first chapter and thought it would be a good time to share. Maybe it can help some HN readers learn or relearn some useful skills!</comment>


Understanding the Chain fountain - <AUTHOR> http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/470/2163/20130689 <comment> Ono-Sendai This part of the explanation demonstration video is pretty similar to a skateboarding ollie which also is somewhat unintuitive physically: [https://youtu.be/-eEi7fO0_O0?t=436](https://youtu.be/-eEi7fO0_O0?t=436)

<comment><USER2> A nice video of slow-motion ollies: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jig3uiYsb4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jig3uiYsb4w) (no fluff and exposition, so you can tell it was uploaded 7 years ago...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Discovered (re-discovered?) in 2013 by Steve Mould, as shown on its youtube channel : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dQJBBklpQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dQJBBklpQQ)

<comment><USER4> He then talked about its discovery and follow-on in a TEDx talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmFi1xhz9OQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmFi1xhz9OQ)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Play Ogg Vorbis files containing loop metadata, in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jkarneges/playloop <comment><AUTHOR> Wrote this for fun while learning Rust. It's intended for playing video game music, where the intro part of a song is played once followed by a looped section that repeats forever.

</comment><comment><USER2> Just a question. Can an .ogg audio track be looped without a gap (silence)?

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean without specifying looping positions in the metadata? I would assume so, as long the length of an ogg doesn't require padding and you have a capable player.

One issue I noticed with the Lewton library is it wouldn't let me seek to granule 0 nor the first granule with audio samples. This means looping an entire ogg may not be possible using a single instance of the decoder, and if you set LOOPSTART=0 then playloop will crash. But, this could almost certainly be worked around by making a new decoder and reopening the ogg.</comment></comment>


Former NSA Director Patenting Computer Security Techniques - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/08/former_nsa_dire.html

<comment><USER2> The difference between Alexander and Snowden: the secrets are for sale.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's absolutely a story worth re-discussing. With that said, there's additional HN discussion from the ForeignPolicy.com story that Schneier links- to here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8101938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8101938)

</comment><comment><USER4> So he was at NSA for 9 years, time in which he came up with his "own ideas" about cybersecurity, that he _never shared with the NSA_ in all this time, which means he didn't do his job very well _on purpose_ , but then used for his private company weeks after he left NSA?

That sounds less plausible than him just stealing NSA technology/secrets that he then begins to sell/use in the corporate world.

<comment><USER5> It makes you wonder, given what he knows (or knew) about the NSA why he would do this and not have at least a little fear of them spying or coming after him. Do they have less capability than we give them credit for??</comment></comment>


High-Powered Laser Pointers Pose Risk to Pilots - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/us/22lasers.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1295686880-AA6h5jCEDgUuTKFwBeDElA

<comment><USER2> Got to see a 1 Watt blue, handheld laser recently. I cannot think of a much more dangerous item for $300. I won't link but it's easy to find online.

If one knows how to use it, the risks can be minimized. But you package something to look like a flashlight and have 1 Watt of 445 nm light coming out of it... that has bad idea written all over it. 10 microseconds of exposure is much greater than the max permissible exposure (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IEC60825_MPE_W_s.png>).

100 mW is sufficient for star-gazing purposes. I can't think of any good reason for someone to have a 1 Watt laser on public property. As much as I hate regulation, I think a reasonable law at minimum is the battery cannot be in the laser during transportation over public property. What you do in your own home is up to you and your cornea.

<comment><USER3> It's still far less dangerous than a gun. The problem is people don't view in that category. "It's just a flashlight" vs "This is dangerous and if I use it improperly I can go to jail for a long time".

PS: When you consider how much damage someone can to with a car I think you will find causing damage for the lulz is not really that common.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that the beam propagates so far that, unlike if you want to injure someone with a car or a handgun, you are far removed from the effects of your actions and are much less likely to be identified.

I'd say that in terms of the combination of the range at which you can permanently disable someone, the ability to conceal the device, and the low visibility of "discharge", this is one of the most dangerous things I can think of.

<comment><USER5> Lasers are really hard to aim at long range. Simple trigonometry means you basically need to set up a computer and a telescope to get anywhere near your target.

If you want to cause damage there are plenty of ways of doing it. An iron bar sitting on a thin layer of electric insulation then sitting on the third rail of a subway will produce a shit ton of casualties once a subway car runs over it.

<comment><USER4> They're no harder to aim than a gun at the equivalent distance, and you get the added benefit of continuous emission rather than a single shot (and no wind drift or lead).

However, the tech specs for that laser show the "Nominal Ocular Hazard Distance" at which a 0.25s unprotected exposure does not cause lasting effects to be 149m. That's far, but not THAT far. So as long as the subject doesn't stare into the beam (which probably is more likely than you think given the brain's almost compelling instinct to look at sudden movements), you still have to get pretty close. (Unless you fit it with a collimator, of course.)

<comment><USER3> Bullets are dangerous when they hit a 1m^2 target, 1w lasers are dangerous when they hit a 1cm^2 target. Aiming at a 1m^2 target at 150m is hard, aiming at a 1cm^2 target at 150m is next to impossible.

<comment><USER4> At 150m, the beam is 1.5m across (the divergence is 1.5mrad). Putting a 1cm^2 target at 150m within a 1.5m beam is not at all hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People who do that are absolute psychopaths.

It's not the same, but I came to know a graffiti "artist" up close and personal. No, not the clever, cultural-references and political-stencil type, but the sign-your-name-on-everything fuckwit. Absolute monster! He would look at the nicest part of town and get physical convulsions, just aching to spray his name on it (funnily, his real nickname which is also his myspace handle, in graffiti font) He made absolutely no effort to hide is actions or intentions.

I bet these people flashing lasers are similar idiots who are bragging about it to someone. If not in person, then online. The freaks tend to "think aloud" and can hardly keep it to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER7> Driving through Gilroy, I had someone light up my car repeatedly from behind with a high power laser. They must've been in another car, heading in the same direction. So, it's not just pilots.

If they'd done it from the front, or got a lucky reflection off of one of my mirrors, there could've been a serious accident.

It's a shame that there are so many people out there who can't act responsibly.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like there might be a market for installing one way mirrors in people's car windows.

<comment><USER9> Not going to work. "One way mirrors" aren't -- they're just glass with a partially reflective metallic coating. Turn back 90% of the incident light and you've effectively got a window tinted about as much as a pair of mirrorshades (which isn't going to help with night driving). But the jackasses can just use a more powerful laser for their potentially-lethal lulz. Up the power tenfold and they can deliver the same amount of energy to the driver's eye.

The only really appropriate response is to enforce criminal sanctions against -- people who shine lasers into other peoples' eyes. Assault should cover it; no need for any new legislation. The issue is detection and enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if it would be feasible to coat airplane windshields with some sort of narrow-band filter which would block light at the specific frequencies of commercial lasers, but let light at other wavelengths pass.

<comment><USER4> Probably more feasible to make pilots wear goggles when landing. Though the number of frequencies are increasing, so such goggles may not be easy to make without making them prohibitively dark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article is so poorly written as to be distracting. From the non sequitur in the first paragraph to "20 times as powerful than what the law allows". NYT!

</comment><comment><USER12> Talk about mixed feelings.

As a libertarian I'm completely against the idea of some new set of laws about what I can or can't do with light, for cripes sake.

But as a pilot, and a passenger, hell if we can put up with people attacking airliners in this way.

We've reached a point where each individual has a lot more power over the rest of us simply because of technology and population density. For instance, 100 years ago if you lived in a cave up in the mountains I could care less if you had six tons of dynamite up there with you. Now the kid down the street going to online laser stores with his mom's VISA card is a bigger threat. Some random jackass hurts a bunch of people with tech, then we all collectively punish ourselves in an effort to prevent future random jackasses. It's a feedback loop that doesn't look so healthy for society.

It's interesting that for many decades scientific doomsayers have been saying the Earth cannot support the expected population growth due to lack of ability to grow food, or provide power, or some other problems. But what may actually be the hard-stop in terms of growth isn't actually providing for the people: it's having an increasing number of increasingly powerful individuals living in increasing close proximity to each other. It's as if you found a saloon full of drunken cowboys in the 1800s, locked the doors, then handed them all pistols. If they live through that their reward is that you cut off their dominant hands (to prevent future use of pistols) and then hand out hand- grenades, if they live through that, you cut off their other hand (to prevent future use of hand grenades) and then distribute foot-operated laser weapons, etc. The situation both cannot remain the same and it cannot keep changing the way it is. Fascinating problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> Damn bastards. I heard its very common at the Dubai airport too.

Presumably a couple of frequencies are favoured by these devices, so can't they kit out the pilots w/ safety goggles for approach? Sure its a band-aid fix, but its a start.

<comment><USER2> I'd be surprised if some pilots aren't already doing this.

There are only really 2 or 3 wavelengths right now with commercially available >100 mW lasers. However, they also happen to span the visible spectrum (red, blue, green). So you'd need a narrow band filter for each of those wavelengths so as not to block vision entirely. Narrow band filters get expensive fast.

<comment><USER14> > Narrow band filters get expensive fast.

Way less expensive than a new airplane, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Been meaning to get one of these now that they're only a few hundred dollars. Guess I'll have to do it soon before they're banned...

</comment><comment><USER16> I hear about this happening all the time, but what amazes me is that people actually get caught. Days and weeks after the incident. If you're thousands of feet in the air, sure you can get a generally vicinity of where it's coming from on the ground...but how then do authorities actually track it down? Presumably the person is long gone...

</comment><comment><USER17> This was covered years ago in an episode of CSI: Miami, believe it or not (I don't remember too much else of the plot, though - something about an exploding manila envelope, IIRC).

</comment><comment><USER18> I think what we need is some stylish safety glasses for every day use.

Yesterday some workers were grinding some metal in a busy street. I was just waiting for the shrapnel.

And the ever lasting threat of old ladies with umbrellas with steel rods just in eyes range, got one on my nose some time ago and keeping waaay clear after that.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to crunch 3 weeks work into 2? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I'm working as a dev in a brand new startup. The team is new (but experienced) so there was some learning / setup overhead but it's now fairly minimal. We use Clubhouse so we have some insights into our velocity.
Now, base on our realistic projection we need at least 17 days before we can deliver our initial Epics. However, management could no longer wait and they have set an arbitrary deadline by the end of month. They are now asking us to work through the weekend at a remote location so we could be undistracted to deliver the work. Management thinks that the 3 days away undistracted will yield twice the productivity so the math ends up somewhat working (2 work weeks plus weekend = 12 plus 3 days with 2x output = 15 days).
I'm not entirely convinced that this is possible but management believes so. My biggest concern is that the team will not deliver twice the productivity over the weekend for 3 days and still keep up with normal productivity the week after. I'm wondering if other HN members have similar stories to share (both success and failure) and if there's any recommendation I can make to management. <comment><USER2> Triple constraints: schedule, cost, scope.

The typical software team (not great at project management) would do best to attempt "least cost" development which is mostly attained by "squeezing risk" with effective planning to avoid wasted work.

Compressing the schedule past that adds risk and cost, often sharply.

Think of these things:

Is there some way you can simplify the deliverable to shave time off?

Can you outsource some of the work?

These work at the margin. If you doubled the team size you would waste time getting people up to speed. Feed 10% of work to a wizard, find 10% you can skip, so are having an impact.

Crazy work arrangements work if you have a tiny team (say 5 people) and strong morale (100% consensus that this isn't just OK but it's a gas gas gas). If anybody on the team is going to be resentful about it, however, it won't work.

How about going into a reply reduced interruption environment during the week?

</comment><comment><USER3> The amount that your dev's will benefit from the distraction free environment depends how much they're distracted in their day to day environment, unless that's a lot then a 2x productivity increase seems unlikely, more like 1.2 - 1.3x. Stress of a tight deadline and no time to recouperate may also work against the dev's depending on how they deal with stress.

My first stance to management would have been if they want to cut the deadline, they also need to cut the features. Unless there's some kind of launch / public event this seems like a silly thing to do for the sake of 1 week!</comment>


Levitate Exploit Development Platform [in NodeJS] - <AUTHOR> http://levitateplatform.org/nodejsdoc/ Use the Levitate Platform to develop exploits to test your security. --- Byte manipulation, Packing, Unpacking, Decoding, Encoding strings, File processing, Digests, Float type single precision hex representation, HexDump, Regex (ongoing), ExpandIt - Flexibility for expanding your own methods and bases, etc. <comment><USER2> There are a number of significant features here. Decent modules for a 0.1 version</comment>


SIP and Fragments: Together Forever? - <AUTHOR> https://200ok.info/2017/03/31/sip-and-fragments/ <comment><USER2> Unless I'm missing something, the ending is... weird?

> But with SIP/TCP, the re-registration storm can be substantial, and > disruptive.

Why would the endpoints reregister? We can do TCP failover already by replicating connection state between SBCs. It's complicated, but should work (almost?) all the time with mostly idle connections.

Also, the "use TCP to avoid fragmentation" was in the RFC for what... 2 decades now? This was really frustrating to me when working with VoIP. There's no SIP standard: there's Linksys SIP, there's Avaya SIP, there's MS SIP, ... One will be UDP only, one TCP only, one will crash on fragments, another will have really low default MTU.

</comment><comment><USER3> TCP is the way to go. Another benefit is the significant reduction in customer support especially when it comes to residential customers.

<comment><USER4> Technically we should also be encrypting SIP, but hardly any telco offers that. The funny thing about UDP vs TCP is that UDP actually requires far more traffic to keep working than TCP in the typical residential setting - re-regs have to happen less than every 30s to keep the virtual UDP connection in the NAT open. Telco forbids / does not support TCP, not to speak of TLS or DTLS. Completely nuts. (VoIP for residential use, especially if you want an actual telephone (you know, thing with a handset and a cord goes to the phone with keys and a big display?), creates so many problems. Literally and in every aspect not worth the money; both analog and ISDN worked far better and were far cheaper than VoIP for the consumer). You can't even have better voice quality, since HD has numerous compat problems, depending on the other side. Such a clusterfuck.

I am glad that telcos have as little say in internet affairs as they have.

<comment><USER2> SIP providers who aim to support general public are in a crap position. I worked for one as a VoIP engineer and you get a weekly request: some phone you never heard of, or a new version of one know fails with feature X - why? So you dig through the network dumps, try to reproduce different scenarios, put in a very specific hack for that phone. Or you discover that it's a home router fault because it rewrites the addresses according to some broken rules. Or you find that it's a model-specific implementation you just can't support.

It's a clusterfuck, because you have to support the lowest common denominator with bad hacks. The things you mentioned? UDP is the lowest common denominator. So is the 30s reregister (because that's the Nat timeout on some home routers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> About 5 years ago I did a large pcap and saw several % of all traffic was IP fragged at under 600 bytes. This was on a popular VoIP reseller platform.

Of course, the issues with TCP aren't a big deal and SIP should never have specified UDP in the first place.

<comment><USER2> As in the first fragment was below 600? You may want to report that to them. Smells like misconfiguration.

<comment><USER5> There's some common transport with an MTU of 576 or so. This was packets headed to us, the provider, from many different customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone responsible for an IP-PBX that is about to reach 3,000 endpoints, thank you for posting this. I will absolutely be planning some pressure testing and setting up monitoring for it.</comment>