Ask HN: Best replacement for Skype - <AUTHOR> Skype just announced a significant (67%) increase in price for a SkypeIn number.  The price increase together with a nearly non-functional user interface, a buggy Linux application and poor sound stability, suggests that it may be time to move on. What other suppliers have products that can be used to replace Skype? <comment><USER2> Use [http://textnow.com](http://textnow.com) if you _need_ an incoming/outgoing phone number. It's free also. If you just want calling, and you care about open-source and security, use Riot. [http://riot.im/app](http://riot.im/app) and if you want something a little more simple I suggest ooVoo.

</comment><comment><USER3> > a buggy Linux application and poor sound stability, suggests that it may be > time to move on

Be hacker! Just "fix"[0] good-oldyie Skype 4.3 for Linux[1][2] after install it:

      sudo sed -i 's/4\.3\.0\.37/8\.3\.0\.37/' /usr/bin/skype

[0] [http://www.opennet.ru/tips/info/3039.shtml](http://www.opennet.ru/tips/info/3039.shtml)

[1] [http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-ubuntu- precise_184.108.40.206...](http://download.skype.com/linux/skype-ubuntu- precise_220.127.116.11-1_i386.deb)

[2] [http://download.skype.com/linux/skype- debian_22.214.171.124-1_i386...](http://download.skype.com/linux/skype- debian_188.8.131.52-1_i386.deb)

</comment><comment><USER4> Since MSFT touched Skype it was a slow and accelerating downhill.

I was super impressed by sound quality and stability of Telegram app talking friend from europe over average wifi.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you run your own voip software (asterixt, freebpx, etc), you can get a DID (Dial-In) number from $2 per month (depending on the country).

Just google {country} did number ;-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Discord for sure

I switched and never looked back. They have pretty slick apps for desktop and mobile too.

</comment><comment> black-hole Wire. Its end-to-end encrypted and has applications for all major platforms (electron though)

<comment><USER7> This actually looks pretty cool. Thanks for the link ;)

I can also recommend Cyclops for group video conferencing. Chrome only. But WebRTC based so its as easy as distributing a URL!

[https://www.cyclops.io/](https://www.cyclops.io/)</comment></comment>


Coffee consumption and mortality: Does the brewing method matter? - <AUTHOR> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2047487320914443 <comment><USER2> Phew, I'm on the right method then.</comment>


How I Got Kicked Out of Y Combinator and Then Raised $1.5m for My Startup - <AUTHOR> http://joncrawford.com/how-i-got-kicked-out-of-y-combinator-and-rais <comment><USER2> Every batch there are some groups that fall apart between when we agree to fund them and when YC starts. Sometimes we tell them not to worry about it and do YC anyway, and sometimes we tell them they should take some time to repair the damage and reapply for the next cycle. It depends on how bad the breakage is. If a team of 3 loses 1 person, that's no problem. Whereas if a team of 3 loses 2 people, that's bad.

In this case, the breakage was not only on the bad end of the spectrum, but we weren't told about it till the last moment. IIRC Jon told us an hour before he got on the plane here. That affected our decision more than the breakage itself. At the scale we operate on, we can't afford to have people around who aren't upfront with us.

I'm glad Jon got funded though. As he says, I was quite enthusiastic about what they were working on.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the guy had to manage an unscheduled move from kansas to sf, including family in one week. At the same time he had to figure things out with the cofounders. In such a short timeframe, isnt it understandable that YC werent notified earlier?

<comment><USER4> If I were managing an incubator with 1000 applicants twice a year, and 2/3s of a founding team decided they didn't want to join the program, I would take that as a vote of no-confidence from those two members.

In a lot of situations in life, you have imperfect information and you have make the best judgment call based on what you have. Maybe those 2 guys didn't go to YC because of family obligations although they'd really love to, but maybe they just thought the startup team didn't really have legs and was just a side project.

At that early in the game, the 2 cofounders knew the author better than PG did. I'd make the same call.

<comment><USER5> FYI, we were all full-time, the business was already profitable and we were all living off of the income it was generating. The startup clearly had legs then and still does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _In 2010, I got accepted and kicked out of Y Combinator, lost my cofounders, and raised $1.5M from A-list investors_

Sounds like it was more "our team was accepted even though they had no idea what I was up to, I subsequently lost my cofounders, and Y Combinator revised their decision based on that."

I'm surprised that YC accepted "them" after meeting just one of the co- founders. Also, what is not very clear is why he went by himself to get money and how he continued the company by himself without his cofounders. Meaning that it sounds like it's just that they didn't want to move to SF with a week- notice, not that they gave up completely on the startup...

<comment><USER5> I came to SF the first time by myself because I was the hustler in the group. I talked to my team members every day. They knew I was in SF talking to investors and they knew I was interviewing for YC. They just hadn't heard of it until I was already doing the interview.

As to how I was able to continue, as I explain in the article, they spun off a t-shirt printing business that we had been running. It was a more predictable business. Less risky for them. More of a 9-5 thing with a steady income.

To be fair, they still believed in the business. They just didn't want to tattoo it across their face and sell their first born son like I want to.

<comment><USER7> what's your asking price for your first born?

<comment><USER8> That's what I'm wondering, I bet there's good money in child-flipping. You know buy a 3 month old, get them to the walking+talking phase and boot them off to someone willing to drop top dollar.

(FYI for the downmodders: that's what's called a sick joke)

<comment><USER7> well, thanks for posting that publicly: there goes the idea for my YC '12 entry.

<comment><USER9> Not at all - ideas are worth nothing, but if you can prove the execution you're good to go. So own the idea, go forth, and execute some kids better than anyone else.

<comment><USER10> You'll all be out-marketed by a company run by Amy Chua.

<comment><USER8> Ah, but she only seems to deal with kids beyond the walking-talking phase, so there's potential for a partnership supplying her with kids for her to mentally whip into later life therapy.

<comment><USER10> I smell the potential for a vertically integrated megacorp.

That, or a sitcom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow really shows how Y Combinator values co-founders...

No co-founder....no soup for you!

To be fair, they did get accepted based on having the whole team.

Do you think you would have been excepted if you applied as just yourself?

<comment><USER5> It's hard to say. To be fair, YC never met the rest of my cofounders. I was the only one they'd ever spoken with.

\- Jon (The guy who wrote this story. :)

<comment><USER12> )

<comment><USER5> The smiley face/close parenthesis move is completely valid. (Otherwise you get double lips. :))

<comment><USER13> Actually, then it's time to get all fancy (that's right, I'm talking Reverse- Smiley! (-: )

But then it's like he's bald.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We use storenvy at grooveshark (<http://www.storenvy.com/stores/3605-grooveshark> and <http://store.grooveshark.com/>) and its super awesome. I love the emphasis they place on community as that is something we value very highly internally as well. Great work and thanks!

</comment><comment><USER15> I was kind of hoping this would be a story of Yuri Milner tracking down the one that got away.

<comment><USER16> Can you please explain?

<comment><USER15> Who downvoted this? That's not cool. Asking for an explanation is always ok.

Anyways, Yuri Milner (with Ron Conway) recently announced a blanket offer to all YC companies: $150k in no cap convertible debt. The title could have been to a story where a YC company dropped, presumably forfeiting the offer, only to be tracked down specifically and offered much more.

[edit: typo]

<comment><USER17> Love your name alexophile. I also love the explanation for it in your profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious in how things would have turned out had he not been kicked out of YC. My guesses are he probably wouldn't have been that much better off. My analogy for this would be the situation of a Harvard drop out. You've already accomplished the toughest task - getting ACCEPTED. Whether you graduate or not seems pretty insignificant since it's so much more unlikely for an average high school student to be accepted into Harvard, compared to an average Harvard student finishing the program he was accepted in. Ultimately he was able to demonstrate his ability to network and raise fund despite not completing YC. What I don't know is how much did having that YC stamp of approval (despite being taken away later) helped in those endeavors.

Edit: rephrased my question a bit, still seems awkward...

</comment><comment><USER19> As my cofounders are no doubt tired of me saying: "Keep your hat on, we could end up a long way from here."

<comment><USER20> \+ "but please don't wear your hat inside. That's impolite."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Jon/Storenvy is a case study in refusing to die.

<comment><USER22> dunno, imho AirBnB story was more thrilling.

<comment><USER21> It's not a contest, there can be more than one :)

<comment><USER22> well, at least they were as close to death of a company as it gets. Not getting funded by YC is hardly death, IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Love Jon and Janette and everything they are doing. I remember getting calls from Jon when all of this happened and so happy to see where he is today.

</comment><comment><USER24> Glad I could be a part of this story of boy meets incubator, boy loses incubator... boy still gets the funding. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> The article makes it sound that PG and co allowed this guy to pick up and move to SF only to tell him to suck it the next day.

If that is what happened, they deserve some scorn for playing with a person's life like that. That's just not on. If, however, they were clear about their reservations and just wanted to meet the guy again to discuss, it was really stupid of him to transport himself from his home to a hotel.

Such a cavalier attitude to risk actually might be a very good reason that this guy should not be running anything, and YC made a sound choice.

Either way, don't know any of the actors in the story and wish them all the best. Thanks for sharing this rather strange story.

<comment><USER26> "Such a cavalier attitude to risk actually might be a very good reason that this guy should not be running anything"

I read this story very differently. Jon was fearless, took a calculated risk, and, when the initial outcome didn't role in his favor, just kept plugging in the face of obstacles - to his success.

If you think that "Flying out to Silicon Valley on a reasonable chance that Y Combinator was going to fund his startup that already had a community, but with several months of cash regardless of that funding" is a cavalier attitude to risk, I would love to think what your thoughts about what some of the _really_ hair brained things that startups do to become successful.

The sheer _act_ of deciding to create a startup is easily one of the most risk prone acts one can take - so, ironically, per your logic, anyone who does so should not be running anything. :-)

I loved the story, loved how he rolled with the punches, and loved his positive attitude at the end towards everyone. I have almost no doubt that he's going to deliver great things.

<comment><USER27> It was risky. But, I also believe that there are two key points from the story that made it easier.

1\. He married a woman who is extremely supportive and dialed in. 2\. He had a savings that he could fall back on. So, getting kicked out of Y Combinator was heartbreaking but not soul crushing.

Basically, he had some good protective factors which made it possible for him to take risks.

Congratulations and best to you and Storenvy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You can say all you want about resiliency, but I think it was the ninja-moves animated gif.

</comment><comment><USER29> IMHO - one of the very best HN posts ever. no way for YC to be right about founders every time but the rejection feels devastating (we got interviewed then rejected for Winter 2010). But truth is that the vast majority of startups don't do YC or other incubator programs. Hustle, more than anything stands out as the factor that turned a rough situation into a success. good stuff Jon!

</comment><comment><USER30> I love this guy's writing style. Great read.

</comment><comment><USER31> YCombinator has a very narrow niche for the kind of companies they fund. They reject many companies, not because they aren't good companies, but because they don't fit the YCombinator style. This isn't a bad thing for YC. Everybody needs to specialize. And it means there are plenty of good startups out there that aren't getting funded by PG/Yuri Milner.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Love this story and can vouch for its authenticity!

</comment><comment><USER32> _"... Still, a couple hours later, I boarded a plane with my wife, dog, and all the necessities for the summer stuffed into a suitcase and flew to SFO and hoped for the best. Seven days isn't nearly enough time to find a proper housing setup in SF, so we checked into an extended stay hotel where we would end up living for an entire month.

The next morning, Paul emailed and arranged a meeting with the entire YC team for us to discuss the future of Storenvy in YC. Since we didn't have a car, and I didn't have enough time to figure out something better, Janette and I took a $100 cab ride down to Mountain View. ..."_

Anatomy of determination.

<comment><USER10> Yes, he pretty much burnt the boat on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I couldn't be more proud of Jon, Janette and Storenvy. Serious ass-kickers.

</comment><comment><USER34> Good job.

I'm curious why you list SF as the location, giving how well everything started out for you even though you were spread out geographically.

</comment><comment><USER35> Amazing storry. I just wished I was one of his co-founders, I would never say no to that. But I guess this just goes to proof that not everyone has a startup goal in their minds.

I wish you the best of luck on your project, it is a true inspiring story. Congrats

</comment><comment><USER36> Its important to note that YC isnt "at fault," or "did something wrong." They did what they thought was best, and that decision drove Jon down a different path. The end result (at least at this point) is net-net positive for both. Being in YC as a single founder would have been really hard on Jon, and would have probably netted a different short-term result, given the learning and potential shift in direction an accelerator can bring (YC, TS, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is awesome. One thing about storenvy though, if I were to trust my business with you guys, I would want to know that there is a future and you aren't just figuring it out as you go along.

I would say figure out a way to monetize it in the short-term (perhaps transaction fee on all the sales), that way, your sellers can be confident that you are a going concern.

Just my $0.02.

<comment><USER5> This is covered. We'll be releasing loads of new stuff involving $$ in the coming year. But it's still free!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great story! And guys, I personally think the discussion should focus more on "...and Then Raised $1.5m for My Startup". He clearly has no hard feelings for YC and even said "they did the right thing".

To me the story speaks of the rewards of true hustle. That and making sure you're family is 100% involved in your start up too, as his wife sure helped too!

<comment><USER5> Couldn't agree more.

This is about the future! We could sit around and dissect events from the past all day long, but I'm way more interested in building a team and destroying the e-commerce space together. If you're a UI designer or Ruby hacker, please get in touch! :) <http://www.storenvy.com/jobs>

<comment><USER38> An enthusiastic +1 for you. Not only do you possess the open mind to see all these business decisions as rational as humanly possible (I envy that in a startup founder ;-)), you also turn that experience towards strengthening your business in multiple ways. Class act @NewMonarch.

@vocabgenii @tm65

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The way I see it, Paul was willing to take a huge gamble on this company from the outset because of a strong gut feeling. Y Combinator didn't have to let them in and was being incredibly generous, going as far as setting aside their own rules for this one special case. They went above and beyond the call of duty. And then, to hear word that they'd have to yet again do things differently than they are accustomed to for this one company probably just didn't feel right anymore. I am happy for the writer and I bet he'll be very successful, but where he went wrong (if my facts are correct) is expecting YC to allow him to stay in the program because of "protocol." They made the first decision based on a gut reaction, and they reserved the right to make a second decision "on gut" as well. Also, to be clear, they didn't kick him out, they respectfully asked the founder to apply again next quarter. My purpose isn't to declare a winner. I have a lot of respect for the author and his perseverance. But I hope he sees just how much he was asking from YC, what an incredible achievement that was to convince Paul to take the first leap of faith, and why he probably should have just swallowed his pride and accepted YC's decision with genuine gratitude.

</comment><comment><USER40> Awesome insight Jon. Thanks for the honest look back. I never found you inspirational, but you fake it well, ha.

<comment><USER40> Sorry for the bad sarcasm community. I love Jon and Janette. I met Jon way back in 2009 and he was hustling with just an idea then. As a fellow Midwest entrepreneur it's awesome to see him "graduate" from our area and succeed in the valley.

<comment><USER41> Imagine how hard could be for foreign entrepreneurs that have to deal with immigration and visa also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wow. Your wife was really supportive.

<comment><USER5> She's amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Really inspiring story. I can attest you and Janette were experiencing "the trough of sorrow".

</comment><comment><USER36> vision is something Jon is not short on...great post!

</comment><comment><USER20> Great story. Happy to know you guys

</comment><comment><USER44> The most intriguing point is "Why doesn't Storenvy accept other payment modes than Paypal??? "

<comment><USER5> [http://www.storenvy.com/help/articles/can-i-use-any- payment-...](http://www.storenvy.com/help/articles/can-i-use-any-payment- systems-other-than-paypal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why did you have to move to San Francisco? I understand the benefits, but I thought YC funds companies based outside CA, so was that a condition of the funding that they made?

<comment><USER46> A startup batch has to all be physically present for the YC period. That is because they meet in person frequently. So for 3 months you have to live where they are holding it.

Originally YC alternated between Boston and Silicon Valley. However they have now changed to always operating out of Silicon Valley. So you have to live there for that period.

This does not stop companies from moving there for 3 months and then moving back. As a notable example, Wufoo is based in Florida.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> On another note, storenvy.com is really well-crafted. I just spent an hour browsing the products on the many stores. The UI is really a job well done.

</comment><comment><USER48> Awesome story! I am building a startup in a small town in Nebraska (not too far from KC, MO) so I feel like I can relate to a lot of what you said.

</comment><comment><USER49> So are you like a competitor to shopify? It seemed like you'd disrupt their market with your free shopping stores.

</comment><comment><USER50> Great post, Jon. This mix of tenacity/hustle/risk can't be learn. DNA.

After reading this I'm even more excited to be an investor

</comment><comment><USER17> I would love to know what the traffic is like on this article - because this has just shot through the roof.

</comment><comment><USER51> Is there a way that I can apply to be kicked out of Y Combinator without being in Y Combinator?

</comment><comment><USER52> Awesome post!</comment>


Cloud-based Microsoft Excel? - <AUTHOR>

webtesting.io is cloud-friendly, and is one the first automated testing solutions to fully integrate Microsoft Excel with the power of cloud. QA teams may share their Excel-based test data in real-time automatically. http://www.webtesting.io <comment><USER2> Google Docs, Office Online?

<comment><USER3> The link is just some videos showing using excel to access urls and produce output in cells.

I'm not real sure how "cloud" fits in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the video shows the test execution part, and not a clear understanding of the cloud integration. Sorry for the confusion. That said, the cloud comes into play when the automated tests are ran successfully, and the results are sent to a Web server to capture, and share the test results with the team. The test summaries are also updated and shared with other team members. I hope this helps. New videos will do a better job with highlighting the cloud integration.

<comment><USER3> The headline implies a "cloud" based spreadsheet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, and brings up an interesting question. How does one properly articulate "Desktop Microsoft Excel with integrated online data storage?"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs – MIT Sloan Distinguished Speaker Series - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI <comment><USER2> Something about he way Jobs speaks is mesmerizing.

Don't know whether it's the structuring of the content, his voice or what.

Very very persuasive.

Heck, I watch the original iPhone unveiling video sometimes when I am bored, and never get bored of it.

</comment><comment> crypto-boy-tkn Love him or hate him, he was always a great speaker. Also recommend the lost interview of him if you can find it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you stay in shape? - <AUTHOR> I've found that any time I'm employed full time, I'll inevitably gain 20-30 pounds. Sitting all day and eating out for lunch adds up quick. What's worse is after a full day + 1 hour commute each way there's no time or energy left to exercise. How do you avoid this? <comment><USER2> I was late to the game, but the last few years have been a steady progress for me.

I am not someone who can stick to a routine for really long. I am trying to build that skill and I admire those who do that. Building the habit is the best!

Now, things that have worked for me. \- The 7 Min Workout on weeks when I absolutely have no motivation to spend 1-2 hours at the gym was what I started with. Doing it in the mornings has worked out better. Because mustering up the motivation to do it in the evenings is much much harder. \- Note that just one set of 7-min is not enough and you should atleast build it up to 3-4 repetitions to make it worthwhile. \- Once I got comfortable with a few of the exercises, I switched them with a few kettlebell exercises like swing, turkish kettlebell etc.

I realize time is a factor with your commute, but if you can, the time you set apart will be worth it.

\- Group classes worked a long way. Crossfit/Crossfit like intense classes of one hour. The group dynamic helped me push a lot more than I would have otherwise \- Stronglifts 5x5 - This is what I stick with now. Strength Training has given me huge improvements with just the few simple exercises.

<comment><USER3> Morning exercise was a game changer for me, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As much as I can, trying to make each of the following goals and being honest with myself that I will fail occasionally, but won't have to give up everything if I do.

Walking over lunch hour and then eating at my desk. Tracking steps and striving to break 10k daily. Small sugar/junk food snacks less than 1x weekly. Cut down on alcohol. No eating after 7 pm. Get 10 hours of sleep every night. Drink lots of water. Apples and almonds for snacks. Have a scale and track your weight.

Like learning to play music, keeping your weight down is an investment in your future happiness.</comment>


Popcorn Time yet another fully working version - <AUTHOR> http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html#.UyjLv6pvraT.hackernews <comment><USER2> Any particular reason why you decided to work on your own fork instead of the one maintained by YTS?

[https://github.com/popcorn-team/popcorn-app](https://github.com/popcorn- team/popcorn-app)

<comment><AUTHOR> Firstly, I loved the project when I see the simplicity of it, secondly, it is good to have alternatives in case that, they got shut down, and maybe go down a wrong path, thirdly I was the first person ever to fix and distribute a working binary version :). BTW, I also linked to repo you mentioned, not to let my users in the dark :)</comment></comment>


Copy the practices that were in place when a successful company (e.g. Google) was truly innovative - <AUTHOR> http://andrewhargadon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/googling-the-causal-confusion-syndrome.html

<comment><USER2> He's wrong though -- many of those things were around early on. Charlie (the chef) was hired in 1999, long before Google was the dominant anything. The notion that treating your employees well isn't "scalable" is nonsense.

<comment><USER3> The question, Paul, I have for you (and other Googlers/ex-Googlers reading along) is this: Is it really the perks or the people that make a successful company recognizable? Shouldn't a company's actions and performance always speak louder than its scooters and ping pong tables lining the hallway?

I think this causality (smart people -> smart idea -> smart execution -> profitability -> more tweaks -> dominance) seems more realistic than what the author intended to document.

<comment><USER2> Thinking of these things as "perks" is the first mistake. Is having a chair and a good computer a "perk"? For some jobs perhaps, but for people writing software they are a lot more important (though I'm sure someone will dispute that chairs are necessary). Likewise, good food and other environmental factors are very significant.</comment></comment></comment>


Inside Socl, Microsoft's Social Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/15/2517610/microsoft-socl-inside-the-companys-secret-social-network

<comment><USER2> Why would Microsoft even bother?

<comment><USER3> they almost always bother to have a go at $saturated_market, since they have enough of a thought-gravity-well to get /some/ people using it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Like Google, Microsoft has a huge user base in their Live product family. Adding social features to that seems like ano-brainer to me. The recommended strategy for this space is "if you can't dominate, fragment".</comment>


Why I believe Facebook's stock is going down - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/2fd3723ec79b

<comment><USER2> If Facebook can successfully buy out every other significant social network, then they can maintain market leadership. And their stock will stay pretty high.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does anti-trust ever become an issue in that case? What about availability of cash (they just spent 35% of theirs)? What about properly valuing users?

<comment><USER2> Those are good questions, not really sure. I think in the very long run, Facebook's continued success depends on if they can quash net neutrality and make it very difficult or expensive for social networking startups to gain traction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm up over 120% (bought around $30.) Yay.

<comment><AUTHOR> You've got to love that! Great entry point.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Audio Programming - <AUTHOR>

Could you please point me in the right direction how should I get started with audio programming?
I'm a self-taught web developer without college degree. I know PHP, Python, and a little Scheme. I'm not a very good programmer to be honest.
But recently I became interested in creating audio apps for iphone, particularly I'm interested in virtual instruments, synthesizers and such. I use dozens of audio apps on my iphone all the time, so I thought why not try creating one?
Well, I purchased couple of books on audio programming but they are very difficult right from the start. Core Audio is also very complex.  And they use C or C++ which are very foreign to me. As far as I understand this is a difficult field in general, so it requires low level programming, math and all these advanced topics.
I was wondering if it's possible to learn all these things by myself? For the last month I've been studying some math at Khan academy, and I also got Kernighan and Ritchie book on C, but I feel like there's very little progress and it gets harder and harder (currently learning about pointers and memory for the first time).
I'm really looking for some sort of roadmap, so if anyone could recommend more gentle approach to audio programming, or some books for very beginners, or provide some guidance in this field I'd really, really appreciate it. <comment><USER2> I would start with Octave. You can use it to quickly learn the math behind music synthesis and experiment with the various methods. It is open source and available for Windows,Linux,Mac and Android (at least, there are probably other ports).

Then you can concurrently learn a programming language (IMHO based on your post, Python might be a good place to start).

You might also take a look at CSound which is a dedicated environment and programming language for sound synthesis. The CSound documentation pages also have references to a wide variety of other available systems (like Max and Reaktor).

If you are going to ultimately create audio apps for the iphone then I don't think you can avoid C/C++/Objective C but you will have an easier time doing the sound synthesis experimentation in an environment tailored to that function.

</comment><comment> T-A Of the languages you already know, Python is definitely the best choice for audio. There is a lot of code to learn from:

[https://wiki.python.org/moin/Audio/](https://wiki.python.org/moin/Audio/)

[https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonInMusic](https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonInMusic)

I would start there and learn the audio & music concepts. Once you understand that part and know what you want to do, you will also be in a better position to decide on programming language.</comment>


No country has found a sustainable way to finance dementia care - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/08/27/no-country-has-found-a-sustainable-way-to-finance-dementia-care <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/ayRUg](https://archive.vn/ayRUg)</comment>


OSKit: A set of components oriented to creating operating systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/ <comment><USER2> For something more recent, less academic and more production-ready, and with a much better architecture, Genode, which has just had a release[0].

[0]: [https://genode.org/documentation/release- notes/20.08](https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/20.08)

</comment><comment><USER3> OpenEmbedded[0] for those not familiar is great for building a custom distribution.

[0] [https://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://www.openembedded.org/wiki/Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember playing with this when I was at uni - I thought it died off around that time as well?

[ed: it is dead, last update is 2200]

</comment><comment><USER5> 2002, apparently. That's the most recent item in News.

</comment><comment><USER6> UEFI basically fulfills this purpose nowadays.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h To me it feels more like a unikernel.</comment></comment>


A utility to convert JSHint and JSCS files into ESLint files and vice-versa - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brenolf/polyjuice <comment><USER2> I'm currently using JSHint and JSCS together. Are there any good reasons to switch to ESLint?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've switched a day ago, with the help of this utility. It's a blurry line between style guide and linting advices jshint might give you (they're deprecating what they consider style-related things). Ability to configure rules to be either warnings or errors is welcomed too, especially when you have it integrated in build process where you might want just to slap someone on the wrist with a warning, but not halt build. Additionally, I find eslint rules much more readable then either jshint (too short) and jscs (too verbose). Everything's off as default is a good choice.

And, if you can get one tool that does the job where two used to, use it.</comment></comment>


What does "frequency" mean in an image? - <AUTHOR> https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/40401/what-does-frequency-mean-in-an-image <comment><USER2> The one thing missing from these answers is that "spatial frequency" (as this is called in vision/neuroscience) is a biologically-meaningful concept too. Neurons in early visual areas extract spatial frequency information, and it's maintained in (largely) separate channels as that information flows through the brain.

There's a neat Dali painting which sort of abuses these properties to combine two portraits: [http://archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;i...](http://archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=152;type=101)

<comment><USER3> I honestly can't see Abraham Lincoln there, except the small portrait at the bottom left. Is that the point?

I just don't get modern art- anything after the impressionists. I normally make an exception for the surrealists, like Dali, but this one is not in the "exception" group, I think.

<comment><USER4> Lincoln is hidden in the low frequencies in the image. One way to filter out the high frequencies is to step back a bit from the display, another is to squint your eyes, resize the image, or just use a low pass filter in an image editor.

[https://imgur.com/a/NK5GFGn](https://imgur.com/a/NK5GFGn)

<comment><USER5> Or, if you're a myopic glasses-wearer, simply try on-off. I love this trick for images of all kinds because it allows me to apply a uniform blur, no computation required.

<comment><USER6> I can just let go of focus, like a thousand yard stare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Conversely, moiré patterns can be understood as a result of high spatial frequencies being folded to lower frequencies due to insufficient band limiting (provided by an optical low pass filter in front of the image sensor) and thus violating Shannon's principle. This isn't an accident, we simply prefer sharper images that possibly contain spatial aliasing over less sharp (i.e. less high frequency content) images that never contain spatial aliasing.

The reason why moiré patterns are generally colourful is because each pixel is not sampled at a point, but with the colors distributed over some area. Hence each color component of a pixel sees a slightly phase shifted component of the signal, i.e. it gets rainbowy. You would expect the moiré exhibited by a planar sensor like the Foveon X3 to show this effect to a lesser degree.

</comment><comment><USER8> The best answer to this question is actually provided by Ouss which is only at 1 up vote. Showing the 1d case for frequency of an image is far more illuminating than showing the 2d case.

Most people with a mathematics, or music background of any level understand frequency in terms "hertz". Aka speed of vibration. Translating it to speed of change of pixel value per pixels is difficult without the 1d case.

<comment><USER9> > _The best answer to this question is actually provided by Ouss_

Could you share a direct link? I don't see any such comment here.

<comment><USER10> It was the second post by the time I got there, but the rankings are fluid so here's a permalink: [https://photo.stackexchange.com/a/112702](https://photo.stackexchange.com/a/112702)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An interesting - and somewhat intuitive - observation is that the sharper the focus the higher the spatial frequencies go (this is pretty obvious when viewing a composite video signal on an oscilloscope while adjusting the camera focus - the peaks are 'pointiest' at best focus).

In the 1D case, consider a dashed line. With perfect focus this is equivalent to a square wave (which is a sum of all the odd harmonics of the fundamental frequency). Loosely, the blurrier the image of the dashes the lower the frequency content - eventually blurring to 50% grey which is essentially DC.

</comment><comment><USER12> We also use this approach in physics to describe things like fluid flow in a computational domain.

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

</comment><comment><USER13> When stackexchange or wikipedia articles appear on HN I always wonder what the context is. Presumably something triggered interest in this topic recently?

In this case image frequency can be useful in many things from image/video compression to hashing images (to efficiently compare if images are similar, even in the presence of cropping etc). So I'm curious as to what in particular motivated posting this now?

<comment><USER10> I think it's just interesting to a lot of the HN audience. A modal HN reader stumbled across the post, they found it interesting, they thought it would be good to post on HN, and it was.

I think it's interesting to the modal HN viewer because although FFTs are pretty neat intrinsically, but most people are exposed to FFTs through sound processing (if they are exposed to Fourier Transforms at all, I don't think they were a required part of the CS curriculum at my university, they were only required for the EE courses), so the application of FFTs to images seems like total magic.

The explanation that jpegs use FFTs is ho-hum if you spend a bunch of time doing signal processing at your day job, but there are many intellectually curious developers who spend their day job gluing together CRUD apps.

<comment><USER13> Oh undoubtedly it's interesting. But interesting things often go by with few votes. Often there's some reason it quickly gains the upvotes needed to appear of the front page. For example, if the topic is mentioned in another thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is very useful - I'm an MR tech and image formation is the job. It is entirely dependent on how we obtain the frequency information, what order we obtain it in and which corners we cut to obtain it. Image artefacts can be interpreted and the cause corrected. Blurring, movement, phase wrap, slice wrap, ringing and a host of others are directly related to the way the raw data is obtained.

<comment><USER2> K-as-in-"Kill Me" space!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In physics, we call the spatial analogue of temporal frequency the "wavenumber", or if you're thinking quantum mechanically the "momentum". Neither seems to have caught on elsewhere though.

</comment><comment><USER16> I find spiritual comfort in the fact that all functions can be reduced to sine waves in a Fourier transform.

"It's all vibrations, man". AMIRITE?

</comment><comment><USER17> I like to think of frequency as the quantum of a pattern.

<comment><USER18> That sounds interesting, could you elaborate more?

<comment><USER17> A pattern is something that repeats. Frequency is a mathematical description of repetition or cycles [1] . That's why spectral techniques and their relatives are so useful when dealing with patterns and information. So if you want to think about how patterns are constructed, frequency components are useful as the building blocks of those patterns.

And from the other angle, if you stop thinking about frequency as "cycles per unit" and more in terms of just _cycles_ or repetitions, then it's more intuitive when you talk about spatial frequency.

[1] or to get really into it, it's one part alongside magnitude/phase components of linear/nonlinear combinations of time varying exponentials which abstract any pattern/signal/system.</comment></comment></comment>


Optimizations in C++ Compilers - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3372264 <comment><USER2> > I went home that evening and created Compiler Explorer.

Nice try. You can't escape being known as a verb now.

Everyone knows the tool as godbolt.

<comment><USER3> Interesting tool I've never used, for the uninitiated:

[https://godbolt.org/](https://godbolt.org/)

<comment><USER4> Interesting, but broken in Firefox. Could not get it to run and then I thought "maybe in Chrome..." and then got it to work.

<comment><USER5> What did you do to get it to work?

<comment><USER4> Opening in Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Compiler Explorer (aka godbolt) is awesome; I use it at least weekly.

It's amazing how many more code generation questions occur to me now that there's so much less friction in getting the answers.

<comment><USER7> I host it locally for myself too and got the CLion plugin, it is amazing. Seeing actual codegen in projets with multiple files is really something and having the same scrolling with ASM or source too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The floating point comment leaves out that one can use

        #pragma omp simd reduction(+:res)

as a more precise way to achieve vectorization in the reduction (compile with -fopenmp-simd to only use it for SIMD without linking an OpenMP library): [https://godbolt.org/z/17oTz1](https://godbolt.org/z/17oTz1)

Unfortunately, the pragma is not supported with the new-style class iterators in a released compiler, though it works in clang-trunk: [https://godbolt.org/z/hbP11W](https://godbolt.org/z/hbP11W) Note that Clang disables floating point contraction by default (so no vfmadd instructions), despite them being more accurate. One usually wants this globally (-ffp- contract=fast) except when trying to bitwise reproduce software compiled for pre-Haswell.

</comment><comment><USER9> > I hope that some of these optimizations are a pleasant surprise and will > factor in your decisions to write clear, intention-revealing code and leave > it to the compiler to do the right thing.

This was my key takeaway from this article. Writing clear code that is easier to maintain will have good enough performance most of the time. I was particularly impressed with the devirtualization optimizations and will be less likely to shy away from using polymorphism in future due to performance concerns.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Tail call removal. A recursive function that ends in a call to itself can > often be rewritten as a loop, reducing call overhead and reducing the chance > of stack overflow.

Most important: this optimization enables pipelined execution.

When people talk about a CPU executing an integer add instruction in ~1 cycle, what they actually mean is that the add has this latency when the CPU pipelines are full.

If you have an 11 stage pipeline... the add can often have a latency of ~11 cycles... if you write the _right_ code for it.

<comment><USER11> FWIW, at least on intel cpu call instructions are fully pipelined and effectively zero latency (although, like all jump instructions there is a limit of one call every other cycle).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's a cool bag of tricks. But I'm impressed when compilers start optimizing programs in the big-O sense.

<comment><USER13> Did you see the sumToX() example in the paper?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Godbolt sounds like a top quality brand of quidditch broom :-D</comment>


Layoffs at Code42 (makers of CrashPlan) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/_sabeek/status/1083061615770128385 <comment><USER2> I have an open support request with Crashplan right now. After confirming my subscription in September, in October they deleted my account - and data.

And the original hard disk was broken and I was trying to restore.

These layoffs come a couple of years after they transitioned from being a backup company for everyone, to "enterprise" only. With that has come a huge drop in customer care. I can't see layoffs improving the company's customer support or services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. I'm leaving too.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What services do you use alongside GitHub to get "Atlassian" features? - <AUTHOR> Atlassian has a pretty convenient offering. With a single service you can get:<p>- Version Control (Bitbucket)<p>- Issue Tracking (Jira)<p>- Team Chat (HipChat)<p>- Wiki (Confluence)<p>- CI/CD (Bitbucket Pipeline)<p>- and soon Project Management (Trello).<p>To construct a similar set of services but centered around GitHub, what would/do you use? Any services for features not listed above? <comment><USER2> Possibly not quite what you were after, but JIRA integrates _almost_ as well with GitHub/GitHub:Enterprise as it does with Bitbucket/Bitbucket Server.

With GitHub + JIRA you get:

\- associated branches, commits, and pull requests displayed on the JIRA issue view

\- the ability to search for issues based on whether they have branches, commits, or pull requests associated with them

\- the "Release Hub", which tracks issues that have outstanding pull requests, or have code but no pull request

\- automatic issue transitions, which transition JIRA issue status based on repository events

It's flexible, but the usual automatic issue transition workflow is:

 _branch created_ : issue -> "In Progress"

 _pull request created_ : issue -> "In Review"

 _pull request merged_ : issue -> "Done"

Which works just as well with GitHub as it does with Bitbucket.

The main thing that Bitbucket + JIRA's integration adds is backlinks from Bitbucket to JIRA. Plus the ability to create branches in your Bitbucket repositories directly from JIRA.

If you're dead set on GitHub over Bitbucket, the best way to get "Atlassian" features is to adopt the Atlassian suite and replace GitHub with Bitbucket.

Disclosure: I worked on JIRA's DVCS integration.

edit: fixed formating

</comment><comment><USER3> We're almost 100% Atlassian at my $WORK (as OP's original list but Jenkins for CI/CD). For my side projects, I don't need anywhere near as much team communication, so free services work for me:

\- Version Control (Bitbucket)

\- Issue Tracking (Trello)

\- Team Chat (Slack)

\- Wiki (None, but I'd love to hear recommendations for free, private wikis)

\- CI/CD (Wercker.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anecdotally, JIRA and Confluence are a common pairing, along with Crowd for authentication. More recently I've seen HipChat come into the mix. But the others, I have not worked with.

Confluence has a really neat feature that I think is not very well known. You can add a database driver such as a JDBC driver and you can set up a data source with an alias.

Then inside Confluence's markup language, you can do SQL and get back a table, without any coding. But the really cool thing is that you can wrap that with JFreeChart and do any charts or graphs that you want. I've never seen an easier way to make a dashboard out of SQL. I suspect it interfaces with NoSQL as well but have not played with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently using

\- Version Control (GitHub) \- Issue Tracking (YouTrack) \- Team Chat (Slack) \- Wiki (Stopped using) \- CI/CD (Jenkins) \- Project Management (Aha.io) \- Documentation/what we used to use wiki for (Google Docs, markdown in the repo)

Was previously at startups and companies that were all atlassian.

</comment><comment><USER6> With the possible exception of Team Chat, Assembla has offered those features for a while now, and has recently added GitHub integration.

One question: Jira has a Kanban/Card-wall view. How do you see Trello "Project Management" as being different from that?

</comment><comment><USER7> Gitlab & Mattermost get me all of those in a single product.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you branch? - <AUTHOR> Looking for some use cases from people that use git branches effectively.<p>Do you branch when you are building a new feature? Or only when you are making major changes? Or never? What about deployment, do you have a specific branch for Heroku or AWS? <comment><USER2> At my current company, we use a lightly-modified GitFlow workflow:

[https://www.atlassian.com/git/workflows#!workflow- gitflow](https://www.atlassian.com/git/workflows#!workflow-gitflow)

Previously, at my startup, we used long-running feature branches and merged to mainline as seemed reasonable.

Branches are pretty much the only reason to use git--and a damned fine reason they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> That link is awesome, I haven't locked down a comprehensive workflow yet and this helps a lot.

<comment><USER2> No problem!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> See "github flow": [http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github- flow.html](http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sole developer on my project, but I run something like this (looking forward to see if it scales to multiple developers).

        - master (deployed/live version)
          - develop (next version)
            - feature/* (feature branch)
              - feature/*/* (optional sub-branches for big features)
            - fix/* (bugfix branch, may be off master if urgent)

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes. We use branches a lot at our startup. Typically our workflow goes as follows:

1) git checkout master

2) git pull // to fetch latest version

3) git branch _issues /feature name_

4) git checkout _branch name_

//...do work on branch...//

5) git add .

6) git commit -m "Description of commits"

7) repeat 5) and 6) until feature/issue is fully implemented/fixed

8) git push origin _banch name_

9) git checkout master

10) git merge _branch name_ // only after the issue/feature is tested and debugged

11) git push origin master

</comment><comment><USER6> We use mercurial. For anything that is not a small fix we branch it off. It is extremely easy, and if that doesnt work you just kill that branch and you don't worry about anything. If you are a team of 12 then branching is definetely easier than having everyone constantly pushing into the live system

</comment><comment><USER7> At one company, we use the Development, Test, Beta and Master branches unless we are working on a major, long-term feature. Then, we create a special branch for that. At the other company, we use one branch for every FogBugz case. They both work just fine.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes.

Master

QA/Staging that tracks master (but can be merged to first for staging environment testing)

Feature/Release branch (once the project is stable, these are more granular) get merged into QA/Staging first.

<comment><USER8> QA/Staging can also be used as a place where features that are functional, but not complete can be tested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes? Branching (and the speed with which "git checkout -b" runs) is half the point of git!

(Never going back to the bad old days of 'branching' in SVN.)</comment>


The Fallacy Of Bimodal Returns - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/10/the-fallacy-of-bimodal-returns.html

<comment><USER3> My take on this is that the unrealized valuations in the portfolio approximate a power law curve, however the realized outcomes will be bimodal _if you manage your investments for bimodal outcomes_. Venture capitalists are not passive investors, their behaviour is a material component of their portfolio dynamics.

So, if Fred the Investor is managing for returns across the curve, he will eventually end up with great returns in the middle of the curve. However, if (to make up a name) Bjarne the Investor is managing for bimodal returns, he will force the companies in his portfolio to give up all hope of any sub-home run outcome in the hope of having a faint hope of a home run. Bjarne's portfolio will end up realizing bimodal returns.

Speaking from my own experience, I recall taking investment from a firm who managed for bimodal returns. They were always pressuring us to hire up, and they were always telling us to stop worrying about managing our burn rate. They spoke of profitability as "premature optimization," and in fact they wanted us to spend more time talking to "strategic partners" that might end up issuing press releases about us and less time talking to customers that might end up paying us.

That kind of behaviour is going to skew the realized returns towards bimodality.

</comment><comment><USER4> I appreciate Fred's candor in this post and I find his position reasonable.

This seems to be a response to PG's essay about superangels, including this section of it:

"So I think VC funds are seriously threatened by the super-angels. But one thing that may save them to some extent is the uneven distribution of startup outcomes: practically all the returns are concentrated in a few big successes. The expected value of a startup is the percentage chance it's Google. So to the extent that winning is a matter of absolute returns, the super-angels could win practically all the battles for individual startups and yet lose the war, if they merely failed to get those few big winners."

Recent blogs have taken issue with this claim, but I would like to see more throw their hats into the ring and specifically address the shifting dynamics among VCs, superangels, and founders.

<comment><USER5> Another issue - backing the next google may not be as profitable as you think. The founders keep a large portion of the shares, and the IPO will raise a lot but that goes into new servers or acquisitions. Then those pesky employees want stock options.

The VC firms who backed google brag about how they got 25% of a company that's now worth $600B. They don't like to mention that they were diluted (by both the IPO and employee stock options). I think they made a 100X return, which is certainly very good, but it's not as great as they make it sound.

Andy Bechtolsheim, the angel who gave them $100,000 made out like a bandit though. Something like a 10,000X return, I think.

<comment><USER6> > backing the next google may not be as profitable as you think

No, I'm sure it's pretty damn profitable, if you're lucky enough to invest.

<comment><USER5> My numbers might be wrong. But I think they make 100X, not 10,000X their investment. Which is still magnificent, but not enough to say that the only investement that matters is the one that turn into the next Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm confused - isn't this the wrong graph? Shouldn't we be looking at a histogram showing return multiple on the x axis and # of companies in that group on the Y?

Or, alternatively, return decile on the x, and total return value on the Y - this would probably end up looking somewhat bimodal, right?

<comment><USER8> [http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/1431828646/paul-graham- is-r...](http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/1431828646/paul-graham-is-right- using-avcs-data)

<comment><USER9> Yes, I think there's a good deal of confusion about the appropriate axes - <USER2> at least talking past one another on these points.

If you take those data and throw them on a graph that looks more like Fred's, you get something that's downward sloping, but not nearly as smooth or severe as a power law curve: <http://christinacacioppo.com/downloads/irrData.jpg>

This isn't to say that one way of looking at this is better than another -- just that there seems to be two trains of thought right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For me it looks like we arrived to non-contradictory conclusion: There are two winning strategies.

The first approach is to search for IPO-capable startups, accept the large amount of misses and not care about valuations. The second strategy is to aim at multiple acquisition exists, be more selective, and pay attention to valuations. Both strategies can work, if executed well. The second strategy is trending now, but it does not overwrite the first one.

</comment><comment><USER11> The way I interpreted PG's statement is that although (obviously) there are different ROI's for startups the main decision is not _how much_ ROI you make but _if_ you will be able to make any at all.

It's much more important to understand the dynamics at the decision point of investment (like Fred also says) whether or not you invest. Obviously the decision to invest is bimodal (you do or you don't) and you do this depending on what the investor believes the outcome (also bimodal - success or failure) to be.

From an entrepreneurs perspective you don't really care if you make 10x or 3x because at that level it's a success either way.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool post and great that he backed up his argument with data.

My only beef with this article is that it does not follow logically that "bimodal" returns means that you want to get in every deal. That's the "throwing good money after bad" flaw that leads to addictions to video poker and the lottery.

</comment><comment><USER13> can we not call things "power law curves" just because they are curved like that? all distributions have underlying reasons. arrival time? mean reversion? preferential attachment? go looking for and describe the underlying causes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not that it's relevant to his point, but he's only showing the current portfolio, which presumes only the companies that haven't failed.

I wonder what it would look like if he included their failed investments from the past as well, the companies no longer in existence.

<comment><USER15> The fund has not been active very long, so there's not been much opportunity to fail yet. Still, the two rightmost companies are valued well below 1x - they seem to be bankrupt or nearly so.

<comment><USER16> one was sold in a fire sale

the other was shut down

neither did a bankuptcy

<comment><USER15> Sorry! I didn't know a better word for "stopped operating as an independent entity with some haste", and used "bankruptcy" without considering the possible implications for your business. (I see [http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/1431828646/paul-graham- is-r...](http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/1431828646/paul-graham-is-right- using-avcs-data) uses the same word, I don't hope I inspired him.)

I'll try to choose my words more carefuly next time.

<comment><USER16> no worries

i just wanted to add to the discussion

you can call them bankrupt if you'd like</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Salt Lake Screaming Eagles, a football team controlled by fans with smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_salt_lake_screaming_eagles_a_football_team_controlled_by_fans_with_smartphones.html <comment><USER2> Hey folks, I am the back-end/infra dev on this project, AMA. It's built with a combination of Elixir/Phoenix, Rails, and React (+Native). If you'd like to work with me on stuff like this feel free to apply by shooting us an email with some info about yourself. You can find the contact at [http://www.crossfield.com](http://www.crossfield.com)

<comment><USER3> Pretty cool idea and the implementation seems on target too.

Just a quick note on one possible way to adjust votes: weighting by success. A vote from a fan that consistently votes for a successful play (defined as 0 or more yards gained?) should count for more. A vote from a fan with a bad record should count for less (though maybe just keep it at 1 as the minimum and favor success more).

This might also help with gaming the system by opponents (especially if non- successful votes move you down faster than successful votes move you up).

This could also lead to fan promotion opportunities... "fan of the game" or "best 5 fans of the game"... "fan of the season"... etc.

<comment><USER4> You should go from 1 to -1; being consistently wrong is useful information, being randomly right or wrong is not.

<comment><USER5> you probably want this? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_score)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a really cool idea. I wonder if the play calling is a pure democracy or if they have an algo to make good play callers have more sway.

They could do something like, for every play I vote for that wins, the results of that play add to the weight of my vote. So, for a sack, interception, etc, I lose weight, but I gain weight for every play with positive yardage.

Obviously that's a bit naïve, but you get the idea.

However weights are assigned, they could carry over from game to game and lead to the best play callers in the crowd having the most sway. It would also solve the problem of non-fans trying to sabotage the game.

<comment><USER7> Good point. Instead of just achieving "engagement" from the fans, they could attempt to crowdsource the best calls.

They could also extend the tracking / rating of play calls to fans at home. Their votes wouldn't have influence like fans at the game, but award / subtract points just the same if their calls succeed. Then when they _do_ attend games, their rating already exists.

At home vs at game could be determined by having purchased a ticket.

<comment><USER8> They could even use that to monetize people who want to vote but don't want to go to the game (and even monetize away games). Purchase of an at-game ticket comes with a free voters pass. Or can can buy a voter pass on a game-by-game basis or a season pass.

<comment><USER9> That's a really good idea. Now I'm thinking of other situations that could apply to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat to see this coming back.

In the 1980s QUBE cable had a similar system where people at home could vote on plays in a football game. I have a vague memory of doing this once at a friend's house ... they had this new thing called cable TV.

"QUBE tried a wide array of program formats for two-way participation, including games, talent contests, astrology shows, exercise classes, interactive games, football games in which viewers called the plays, town meetings and public hearings involving Federal agencies."

[http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/28/arts/two-way-cable-tv- falt...](http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/28/arts/two-way-cable-tv-falters.html)

The Qube "remotes" were connected via a cable.

[https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5468/8894868401_4e3a88b540_b.j...](https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5468/8894868401_4e3a88b540_b.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER11> Norm Macdonald is apparently a part-owner of this team and was even doing some play-by-play / color commentary from the booth, to the great dismay of fans of his podcast.

</comment><comment><USER12> The other obvious control mechanism is AI: not one person, not _every person_ , but _no people_. I really want to try that now.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm waiting for 4chan or the like to catch wind and punt on every first down.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea but couldn't this somewhat easily be 'hacked' with a botnet type of thing allowing one crafty person to basically take over and play-call circumventing the crowd?

Taking it further couldn't this person make poor calls for the opposing team, aka punting on first down... seems like they gloss over the challenge of preventing this type of exploit but maybe it's not as easy as it seems?

<comment><USER14> The threat of a botnet is something any service that depends on popular vote has to overcome; it'll take engineering and operations effort, but it's not a showstopper. As for the hostile vote exploit, remember that a play is "bad" mostly because it doesn't work well against the opponent's strategy, not because it's inherently bad (if it were, it wouldn't be listed as an option by the team). Making this exploit work requires you to know the results of your team's vote ahead of time. My guess is that it doesn't reveal vote results until after the play, but I haven't used the app so I wouldn't know.

<comment><USER15> The article mentions that the vote results are only revealed to the coach, who speaks to the QB over the headset to tell him what play he should run. As you surmised, the vote results are revealed to the app users after the play is run. This is also to prevent the opposing defensive coordinator from logging into the app, seeing the results and countering the play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First time I saw the headline, I read "megaphones".

<comment><USER17> It certainly fits the "Screaming" Eagles theme:

Salt Lake Screaming Eagles, a football team controlled by fans with _megaphones_</comment></comment>


Show HN: The Hollywood Film Studio for Your iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.apperto.com/videorama/ <comment><USER2> It left out the first most important part, the script writing. Amazon released a movie script editor on the web, the storywriter, just for people to use to submit scripts to them.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to search and sort threads here by topic? (eg: Health Tech) - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm a health tech nurse in Silicon Valley and only interested in stories here about healthcare technology.  Is there a way to sort all your articles by that topic, or no?  I feel like your news forums move so fast that I can't keep up with all the posts and am wondering if I am missing good or cool articles.
Thanks :)
Randy <comment><USER2> Yeah, I have this problem too. I think they are trying to avoid diluting the the value by having too much content like reddit and adding categories would cause an explosion of content. Think of Hacker News like a national newspaper where only the most important stories are shown each day.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense. Thanks for explaining it. It would be nice to have sector tags but I guess I'll keep digging through to find those healthcare articles!</comment></comment>


Mistakes I made as a young entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://ryancarson.com/post/35870237288/3-mistakes-i-made-as-a-young-entrepreneur

<comment><USER2> Nice article. One nit tho:

> _When it came time to sell my events business, it turned out our Balance > Sheet was in bad shape because we had collected a lot of revenue that we > couldn't recognize because it was for a future event. That means it was a > liability, not an asset. Ouch.

... When someone buys your company, the transaction is done on a 'zero balance sheet' meaning they pay extra for assets or take away cash for liabilities.

This was a timing issue and if I had understood it, I could've timed the sale of the business more effectively to maximize the purchase price._

Unrecognized revenue is an asset with an offsetting liability. (And if you're using cash-accounting instead of accrual, it's not even revenue yet.) Honestly, the whole thing sounds more like a negotiating tactic, and that you got taken advantage of for not understanding the balance sheet.

Put another way: If you had competing buyers, no one would really have cared that much about whether the revenue was recognized yet or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was down to the fact that I couldn't accrue future staff costs towards the event. Yes, I would've had much more power if their was multiple interested buyers but it wouldn't have changed this very real accounting problem.

Essentially, I hadn't optimized the BS pre-sale (>1 year in advance) as I should've.

<comment><USER2> > _It was down to the fact that I couldn't accrue future staff costs towards > the event._

You lost me: Unaccrued staff costs are quite different than unrecognized revenue, which is what you originally mentioned. In fact, such costs would be on the liability side, so a sensible buyer would love to see you put them on the balance sheet since it would lower the assets in the company. (Buyers are always trying to accrue costs in advance, sellers are trying to accrue revenue in advance.)

I'm obviously not getting what you're saying.

<comment><USER3> You describe perfectly what I understood him to be saying, then say you don't understand.

As you said, a sensible buyer would love to see those costs on the balance sheet since it would lower assets in the company. Which is exactly what happened, and the buyer spent $150K less. However the OP was the _seller_ , and so was significantly less delighted to find at the last minute that $150K less money than expected would be received.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author still does not understand how a P&L or balance sheet works. If you are selling a business and you can show the buyer you have a $175k contract that is profitable pending, it will only add value to the business. Showing guaranteed revenue and income to a potential buyer would only make a buyer more confident in buying the business and more willing to pay more, not less.

What it seems like happened is the customer paid all or a portion of the contract in advance. As such, the business recorded an increase in cash and had a corresponding liability recorded for unearned revenue. What likely happened was this cash was used to pay expenses and/or pulled out of the business and all that was left was a liability. Thus, it wasn't the fact that he had a future $175k contract that made the business worth less, but the fact that he used the funds he had been paid with for something other than the event. Thus, the author had less cash than he should have, which the buyer deducted from the sales price.

</comment><comment><USER5> _That mistake cost me around $175,000 personally as the buyer knocked that amount off the purchase price._

I don't get this. If you didn't have the event, the $175K wouldn't have existed in the first place, right? If the event took place, then you'll be only left with the profit after the event expenses (which I think should be a lot less than $175k)

$175K can't be a liability. It's obviously cash. Your liability is your obligation to do the event. Your assets is the cash remaining after the event expenses.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am in finance for 18 years, of them 7 as CFO, I passed my CPA exams 11 years ago. I really don't get this finance part and it makes by head spin :-O

>> because we had collected a lot of revenue that we couldn't recognize because it was for a future event. That means it was a liability, not an asset. Ouch.

No. This is called Deferred Revenue or Prepayment. You can not recognize it in P&L, but you are required to recognize it in Balance Sheet as an asset (I think this would be Debit Cash / Credit Prepayment | Deferred Revenue).

>> It was down to the fact that I couldn't accrue future staff costs towards the event.

You can not accrue future staff costs - that is not appropriate. See Cash Based Accounting vs Accuals Based Accounting.

However, if you failed to accrue the legitimate expenses - that would results in overpaying profit tax and restatement of financial statements. Not sure about consequences for the CPA, who signed off your books.

Chaps, finance is not that difficult! Configuring network, hardening web servers, compiling nginx with proper modules/flags is way more difficult.

May be I shall trade finance lessons for devops lessons? :-)

<comment><USER7> Maybe I'll take you up on that trade. Just emailed you :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Traffic generation and product development could have progressed in parallel. We approached it in a serial manner and wasted valuable time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Completely agree with #2.

The only way to properly manage people and ensure execution and good performance is by delegating right tasks to right people and doing regular formal and irregular informal follow-ups.

There is great book on this topic - "Execution. Getting things done" by Jack Welch's right hand. Have read it at least 3 times. Highly recommend.

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems to me like a lot of startups featured here make his #1 mistake - treating employees like friends (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4790767> immediately comes to mind). A lot of the job offers featured here mention fridges packed full of beer and going out together after work. I'm all for having fun together as a team, but I think younger entrepreneurs probably often have a difficult time drawing the line between their business/personal relationships with employees, especially those around their same age.

<comment><USER10> I've worked with managers who could successfully drink with employees as well as fire under performers (often in a way which didn't end the beer relationship), but all of them had multiple decades of experience.

I suppose it's much, much easier to avoid the need for a line entirely than to learn how to draw it.

<comment><USER11> I had to fire a guy and we managed to remain friends. I think it depends a lot on the employee not taking it too personally. Also helps if you don't fire them in a nasty way, but more in a way that the situation didn't work out. Also offering to provide a reference if you feel the person has good qualities - that can help because they will need that to get another job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's probably just the wording, but I wouldn't like to be an employee with a "delegated" list. It just seems too much like you're a stupid droid with no saying on your task lists. Call it "tasks" or "working on", and I'd be happy. It's probably even closer to the truth -- after the first month in any company I start creating my own tasks, and from then on the discussion with my bosses become one of prioritization more than delegation.

<comment><USER13> Nobody really says "here is a task I am delegating to you." Delegation sounds more like "I need this by Friday" or "How long will XYZ take?" or "Let's put this task on the top of your priority list."

Learning to delegate tasks is a tricky hurdle to get past if you start to get into management. For one you have to get over the guilt of assigning other people tasks. You just can't be a good manager if you don't learn to delegate. There's also a weird thing when you are too nice and timid about assigning tasks then it tends to create problems due to, I guess, lack of respect for the boss. If you're pretty confident and no-nonsense about it then people don't seem to question it. It's a weird thing. Assuming of course you're being reasonable, aware and considerate about people's abilities and workload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My number one takeaway from this article and the comments here on the article: _Learn basic accounting,_ especially how to read a balance sheet and financial statements. The time spent in the short term will more than pay dividends in the long term.

As other commenters have noted in greater detail, how future revenue is booked depends on your accounting method. If you use the "cash" method (default for everything except C Corporations), meaning that you generally book revenue when received and expenses when paid. Under the accrual method (C Corporations), revenue is accrued when earned and expenses when owed regardless of when payment is made or received.

Ryan's company was a C-Corp, so the accrual method applies. The $175k prepayment is thus not booked on the P&L until earned. However, it is booked on the balance sheet as an asset. To account for the fact that the $175k has not yet been earned, it is _offset_ by a "reserve account" liability (i.e,. "refund reserve" or "unearned income reserve") to reflect the amount that the $175k could have to be reimbursed to customers. Generally, the reserve account is less than or equal to the prepayment and reflects the dollar amount of uncertainty as to how much of the prepayment will be retained. Thus, the $175k could increase the net assets of the company by anywhere from $0 to $175k.

<comment><USER6> No, no, no...

Step 1 - receive cash from customers

Debit Cash Account [Asset] Credit Prepayment / Deferred Revenue Account [Asset]

Cool - everything balances.

Step 2 - you render services.

Debit Prepayment / Deferred Revenue Account [Asset] Credit Revenue Account [P&L]</comment></comment>


Study: U.S. Alzheimer's rate appears to be dropping - <AUTHOR> http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/health-and-fitness/health/20140715-study-u.s.-alzheimer-s-rate-appears-to-be-dropping.ece <comment><AUTHOR> Is it possible this could be related to removing lead from gasoline in the 70s?</comment>


Stackify Launches Free CertAlert.me Service to Monitor SSL Certificates - <AUTHOR> http://www.stackify.com/stackify-launches-free-certalert-me-service-to-monitor-ssl-certificates/ <comment><USER2> hah, i did the same thing this weekend :) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5281794>

care to merge these?</comment>


Ask HN: Rules of thumb for website valuation - <AUTHOR>

The recent Ask HN post asking who has a side project for sale got me to thinking about rules of thumb for valuing websites. One commenter on that post stated a rule of thumb that a website would typically be worth 9-10 months of revenue. This seemed rather low to me. What are some other rules of thumb for website valuation you have heard of, and does the rule change depending on the revenue model, ie, advertising only versus paid subscribers? <comment><USER2> You can't make a blanket statement for the value if a business's website due to how dynamic business is, and how dynamic the use for a website is.

A webapp's website will be more valuable then say a manufactur who's website acts as an over glorified billboard.

Attempting to develop blanket statements for website's value is as futile as making a blanket statement for the value of an executable file. The devil is in the details.

<comment><AUTHOR> A rule of thumb is just a rule of thumb, I don't think anybody would say that a particular rule of thumb is exactly how you would value a website. Maybe we can generate a hierarchy website valuation by the type of site. I would guess (number of users/visitors being equal) that a website that simply serves as a manufacturer's billboard would be worth less than a blog generating ad revenue which would be worth less than a webapp generating revenue through ads which would be worth less than a webapp generating subscription income.</comment></comment>


Creating Android applications without Java from TXLF 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.deepbluelambda.org/events/live/decaffeinated-robot-source-slides-and-audio

<comment><USER2> I attended this session. It was very impressive. Obviously quite a lot of work went into surveying the whole field of Android development environments.

I've been playing with python and the Android Scripting Environment for Android stuff, but after this talk I will probably look at writing some "native" apps in C/C++.</comment>


First Google Titan Security Key Unboxing - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-first-google-titan-security-key-unboxing-e53896bc773f <comment><AUTHOR> I've taken the photos and video; uploading to that page as I assemble them from my digital camera now! Let me know if you have questions or want to see another view not shown.

</comment><comment><USER2> There have been plenty of hands on reviews and product/box images since September

<comment><AUTHOR> These were pre-release review units, no?

<comment><USER2> Not to my knowledge. Titan had been released to GCE customers before hitting the Google Store. It's also just rebranded Feitian keys, which have been out for some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Added several photos. Working on some video now, too! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> secured as well as google+ ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, if the same team was involved in its design it is likely to forget that I'm a person...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How secure is smartcard technology with securing laptops or any device? - at-fates-hands I work at a large corporation who just spent a ton of money upgrading everybody's laptop to new HP models that allow the use of smartcard technology.<p>I'm wondering how secure this method is of securing your laptop or any device that uses this technology. <comment><AUTHOR> Smartcards can be used in one of three ways:

\- Secure the physical device (i.e. if no valid smartcard is provided the laptop won't boot, and the drive cannot be decrypted). This is rarely used as it is a PITA to set up/manage, is vendor specific, and duplicates what Windows provides anyway. This is what HP calls their "ProtectTools."

\- Windows authentication: Active Directory can be configured to force certain devices (e.g. off-site laptops) to require a smartcard and to validate the smartcard during login. This stops someone attempting to authenticate with AD or login to the laptop without the smartcard. Combined with Bitlocker, it is fairly effective.

\- VPN authentication: This is extremely common. In order to get onto the corporate network you need a smartcard in addition to credentials. This means you physically need the business's hardware to even attempt to break into the VPN (even with stolen credentials).

Many businesses that deploy smartcards are doing #2 or #3, with #3 (VPN) being by far the most common. Combined with bitlocker full drive encryption, and policies that force a password on each wake, it is "good enough" security for all but top-secret levels (and those shouldn't be off-site regardless).

So in answer to your question "secure enough." More secure than not having it.

</comment><comment><USER2> "I'm wondering how secure this method is"

Well this depends on whether the firmware has been scrutinized and hardened over time, similar to how Yubikeys just get better and better. FIDO and other initiatives are more secure because they have more eyeballs on them</comment>


Iceland election: Pirate Party triples seats - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37813564 <comment><USER2> They might've tripled their seats, but the election results didn't produce a clear majority for any one party or coalition. The four-party coalition the Pirate Party belongs to has 27 seats. 32 is required for a majority.

It'll be interesting to see what's going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rated ARR. Makes me want to move to Iceland!

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't mind Sweden too...</comment></comment>


Subprime Auto Loans Are Turning Car Ownership into a Trap - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/02/subprime-car-loans-buy-automobile-lending-debt-trap/582652 <comment><AUTHOR> We really ought to be working on reducing infrastructure costs: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york- subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway- construction-costs.html) so that fewer people have to deal with the extraordinary financial burden imposed by cars.</comment>


Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler Operator Reloaded - <AUTHOR> https://banzaicloud.com/blog/k8s-hpa-operator-reloaded/ <comment><USER2> No offense, but as a user I cannot grok k8s because they did a poor job making things. Honestly, what is a pod? The word makes me think of an 80's Sci-Fi film where aliens are born on a pool. Am I alone here?

<comment><USER2> Naming* (ironic right)</comment></comment>


Trump May Attempt to Force Long-Time H-1B Visa Holders Out of U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/25/trump-may-attempt-to-force-long-time-h-1b-visa-holders-out-of-us/ <comment><USER2> The article states exactly why any attempt to do this would be futile.

"First, section 212(a)(5)(A) states that a labor certification should be done "at the time of application for a visa and admission."</comment>


Sparklines in Excel - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2009/07/17/sparklines-in-excel.aspx <comment><USER2> Apparently Microsoft filed for a patent on this in May of 2008. It's fascinating to me that Edward Tufte isn't mentioned anywhere in the patent application.

<http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2009/0282325.html>

Interestingly, that's the same month that someone else started posting mockups for the feature:

<http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html>

I wonder where that leaves these companies:

[http://www.bonavistasystems.com/Products_SparkLiner_Overview...](http://www.bonavistasystems.com/Products_SparkLiner_Overview.html)

<http://www.bissantz.com/sparkmaker/index_en.asp>

<comment><USER3> I was planning to use them in a web app. I wonder where that leaves ... everybody?

Will Tufte have to license his own invention for a future book or app? It would be odd, considering that Microsoft names Tufte as the inventor on the posted page.

"For Excel 2010 we've implemented sparklines, "intense, simple, word-sized graphics", as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence. "

<comment><USER4> It's still just an application, so there's a chance that it will be rejected or limited in scope before it's approved. You may also be able to design around their specific claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's very cool.

It's nice to see there's still innovation going on in the spreadsheet arena. I used to think that Lotus 1-2-3 v1.01a was all that I'd even need (much as WordPerfect 4.2 seemed to be the natural end-point of word processing), but it's nice to be surprised from time to time with something new.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, those are useful. When can we expect them in OO.o?

<comment><USER7> now. [http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/eurooffice...](http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/eurooffice- sparkline)</comment></comment>


PostmarketOS's new roadmap to fight e-waste - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/groups/postmarketOS/-/milestones <comment><USER2> It's basically: buy a new phone. These two phones, specifically (the pinephone and the librem 5 -- both not even available to the general public at the time of writing).

I view this as a complete failure of the project: to bring back old phones to an usable state.

I've always objected that postmarketOS, while great, fails at being real-world usable.

AFAIK, there currently is not a single phone which is 100% supported, and not a single phone that can make calls, send/receive texts, and browse the internet.

You know, the things that you would use a phone for.

One of their flagship phones, the google nexus 5, only partially works and btw, last time I followed their installation instructions, it didn't boot.

I still admire their accomplishments, but they failed to deliver on the original core idea.

I really hope that they manage to deliver... In the meantime, if you want to make calls, you're stuck to regular phones.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the issues' comments some people are using the pinephone as a daily driver and phone calls are working.

Regarding the original vision there are not yet there, sure, but they are relentlessly pushing the platforms where Linux can run.

Once the 2 Linux native smartphones are 100% working, it will be easier to add more and more devices.

On the other hand, I've successfully flashed an old Nexus7 tablet which now can be used as a server rather than as a dead brick.

<comment><USER2> > From the issues' comments some people are using the pinephone as a daily > driver and phone calls are working.

Yep, but they had to buy a new phone to do that. pmOS mission was to let users keep using their old one. So e-waste keeps adding up.

> Regarding the original vision there are not yet there, sure, but they are > relentlessly pushing the platforms where Linux can run.

Yes but there is no single platform that can make/receive calls. That's what phones are for. Text messages? nope. Wi-fi? sometimes, on some devices.

> Once the 2 Linux native smartphones are 100% working, it will be easier to > add more and more devices.

Why would that happen? please elaborate on that.

> On the other hand, I've successfully flashed an old Nexus7 tablet which now > can be used as a server rather than as a dead brick.

I used to run ubuntu on the nexus 7 in 2013, without much fuss. Booting Linux is not the problem. The problem is supporting the basic use cases. Which for a phone is, again, phone calls and text messages.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Why would that happen? please elaborate on that.

Because then it will just be a matter of drivers. Currently, as you say, they need to polish other things like camera handling, audio etc... But once this work is done, it's done. Then porting to new devices should be just a matter of drivers.

> I used to run ubuntu on the nexus 7 in 2013

Today they are bringing an usable touch interface which was not the case.</comment></comment></comment></comment>