Show HN: The Lead Sports – "A no bullshit sports newsletter for busy people" - <AUTHOR> http://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-lead-sports

<comment><USER2> Please don't link to ProductHunt, in a ploy to get more votes over there. Just link to your project directly.

The most recent newsletter has "Tebow" in the title, yet you position your newsletter as the anti-ESPN. Does not compute.

Also, there's a fairly popular sports blog called "The Big Lead". The similarity of the names might lead to some confusion.</comment>


Show HN: Is It Snappy? – Measure latency with your iPhone's 240 Hz camera - <AUTHOR> http://isitsnappy.com <comment><USER2> Tangentially relevant, but I've been part of several communities that have discovered a lot of interesting things about some video games using high-speed cameras.

Super Smash Bros. Melee: A game where input lag really matters a lot, the reason we still play using CRTs, not only has several frames of input lag, but it's not a constant number of frames of lag. It can range from 2 to _5_ frames of input lag.

Tetris the Grandmaster series: Another game where input lag has a huge impact not only has several frames of input lag (and people have resorted to all sorts of ways to reduce it, including AHK scripts that constantly move the mouse on Windows XP) but the first two games of the series _don 't_ run at 60Hz. TGM1 runs at a slightly lower rate, not really significant, but TGM2+ runs at 62.68Hz, which is quite significant and makes some of the challenges a tad harder.

Both of these communities took the measuring test a few steps further than what can be done with isitsnappy. They connected LEDs to the buttons so it was easier to know precisely in what frame the button was pressed.

Someone in the Melee community also placed photoresistors close to the screen and used an oscilloscope to know exactly when the brightness changed.

Not exactly the most relevant anecdotes, but I felt like sharing.

<comment><USER3> This is so great for melee, though. The led tool was amazing and well-done, but this puts the measuring tools right in the hands of people! This is an excellent idea that will let everyone measure the lag on their own screens with just a phone! I know you weren't saying anything to the contrary, but i just wanted to express my excitement!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. That reminds me, Carmack tweeted that he could send an IP packet to Europe faster than he could send a pixel to the screen[1], and this is unfortunately true on modern hardware. It's nice that phones are putting the kind of high-speed cameras that can measure this latency into the hands of consumers. Maybe this will allow gamers to put some pressure on hardware manufacturers to reduce the latency that they add to the systems.

I tried to measure the latency of my own system a little while back. I used a digital camera to record video at 240 fps and measured the time it took for a button press on a DS4 connected over Bluetooth to be reflected on a Mega Drive emulator running the 240p test suite. I can't remember the exact latency, but I think it was around 80ms, which is okay, though there is definitely room for improvement.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480622533120001)

<comment><USER5> Carmack also wrote a Super User answer [1] with a lot more background on that tweet.

[1] [https://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping- fa...](https://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-faster-than- sending-a-pixel-to-the-screen/419167#419167)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > This one's bizarre: the onboard keyboards on both the 2015 Macbook Pro and > Macbook Air have worse latency than an external keyboard. Plugging in an > external wireless keyboard improves response latency by 40 ms. What are you > doing, Apple?

I noticed this myself when I upgraded my wireless Magic Keyboard a few weeks ago. I haven't noticed any difference between the two (keyboards) before, and assumed that the new one felt snappier due to shorter travel.

<comment><USER7> Apple is very specific about their human interface experience, IMHO. Could be a case of Apple deciding for people the amount of lag that people want and being wrong.

<comment><USER8> I find it hard to believe lag could be a good thing in any way for an input device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> " The response latency of the real world is zero. When you pick up an object, your fingers and the object move in lockstep."

This is a misleading and mostly false statement.

The human consciousness requires time for discrete data to be combined by the brain into what we perceive.

It is NOT instantaneous in real life. There is multiple forms of biological latency from the maximum speed of electrical impulse propagation through neurons to the "compile time" of the brain to assemble and modify information into a cohesive output for internal human consumption.

It may seem pointless to point this out, but many sources indicate that the delay between real life and perception is ~80 miliseconds, around 1/10th of a second.

These are speeds which are highly relevant to the discussion of software lag, as a program running 60 times per second updates several times during the "brain lag" of 80ms.

(Oh and the reason why you can overcome the 1/10th of a second lag and have your hand move in lockstep with reality is a variety of compensation mechanisms, like proprioception, which allow you to estimate where your hand will be in relation to reality and achieve it successfully).

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/time-on- th...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/time-on-the-brain- how-you-are-always-living-in-the-past-and-other-quirks-of-perception/)

<comment><USER10> Not misleading or false at all. The latency of the real world _is_ 0\. Our internal perception latency might be non-zero, but that's on us, not the "real world". When you pile on additional latency between button press and screen feedback, the internal biological latency doesn't cover for it. It adds to it.

<comment><USER11> The latency of the real world is still limited by the speed of light, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER10> Which, in our real world, is 0.000… Picking up a cup, pressing a button, opening a window. The speed of light is irrelevant at these scales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My use for the timing capabilities of the 240Hz camera has been in measuring the shutter speeds of antique film cameras, which tend to get slower with age. So I find myself using a 240Hz camera from 2016 to calibrate and use a film camera from 1941.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great work! I've already measured 4 of my gaming systems. The NDS outperformed them all - Rhythm Paradise reacts in 33ms from tap to image change B-)

I can imagine screenshot test results from your app becoming a standard way to show the latency of a certain game setup in internet forums. Ideally, an easily sharable result would have to show several things all in one image:

\- 1 frame before you pressed the button

\- the frame when you pressed the button

\- 1 frame before something changed on the screen

\- the frame when something changed on the screen

\- plus timing data, obviously.

Since changes are sometimes quite small (like when mario jumps but he is kinda in the background because you have the joypad in the same shot), one would have to be able to zoom into a part of the screen for each of the 4 images. And maybe mark a part of the screen with a circle.

If you could do these changes, you've got a certified hit on your hands! Keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER14> _Ubuntu latency is better than Windows 10 on this hardware?! Way to go!_

Better check your videocard driver's settings. For NVidia on Windows, you can for example alter number of prerendered frames which IIRC defaults to at least 3. Putting that to 0 and turning off a bunch of other things listed in the settings, decent nVidia cards on decent hardware can get a latency of 2 frames which is probably the bare minimum. At 60Hz with a screen which doesn't add additional latency that is 33.3mSec (between the software issueing a render call and the actual output on the screen).

At work we measure latency using an oscilloscope, a photodiode pointed to the (top left of the) screen and some input event e.g. from a fast digital output card (i.e. less than a mSec to get an output high from software). E.g. in software we set an output high in the piece of code of interest then just measure the time between that high edge and the photodiode firing. But using a camera is a neat though somewhat more manual process.

<comment><USER15> On the Windows 10 performance, I did a single test and found something mildly interesting.

I tested in Notepad and have the "Hide pointer while typing" setting enabled, and found the first thing that happens on screen is the pointing becoming hidden. That happens after 50 ms. The character shows up in Notepad 16.7 ms later.

This was measured with a 120 FPS camera and an old 60 Hz monitor.

<comment><USER16> This is likely because the gpu has specific hardware for drawing the cursor on top of the current framebuffer, which can be turned off quicker than the character can be drawn to the framebuffer

<comment><USER15> Indeed it does. When using f.lux the color temperature of the cursor remains unchanged due to this.

<comment><USER17> You can also observe it in many cases while dragging a window - the composited window's position will lag behind the position of the cursor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love these high speed cameras on phones. I used my Pixel's 240 fps camera to expose a 120 Hz flicker on subpar LED bulbs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbenId_F2RQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbenId_F2RQ)

<comment><USER19> Believe it or not, I can see those with my eyes and when I tell people the light flickers, they usually don't believe me so I show it to them on my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Only slightly related, but your phone camera is also useful for checking if your television remote is working.

The otherwise non visible IR led in the remote lights up when viewed via a phone camera, as you press buttons on the remote.

Handy if you suspect the remote is broken, but aren't sure.

<comment><USER21> I thought most phones had IR filters these days and that this wouldn't work? Am I incorrect here?

<comment><USER22> They have basic IR "filters" which are used to reduce IR light, but they don't totally block it, which is why you can see a purple light coming from TV remotes and such [0]

0: [http://www.wikihow.com/images/6/60/Check-if-a-Remote- Control...](http://www.wikihow.com/images/6/60/Check-if-a-Remote-Control-is- Transmitting-an-Infrared-Signal-Step-6.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Our current benchmarks tell us what's happening after OS sends keystroke to the text editor and before we hand off rendering to the OS. This tool has potential to tell us what's happening outside these bounds.

I would like to see a visualization of the recorded sound, so that I can set the "input" frame to exactly when I hit the keyboard. I'll even pay to have this accurately aligned.

Good job so far!

</comment><comment><USER24> Last night I was going to use my video camera to measure the startup latency of a vibration motor by comparing it to a "Power On" LED. So this HN post is great _timing_.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome! I work in the cash register software development world, and our customers are sometimes quite picky about the latency of our systems as a whole (= the time between a scan of an item happening, indicated by the scanner beeping and lighting an LED, and the output being visible on the display). I found myself measuring this total latency using an iPhone (at that time it was a 4, without the high speed camera, but nevertheless sufficient to see whether we were below the critical limit of - at that time - 200ms), and it worked out very well, although I had to load all the videos into external software to count the frames accurately because the phones' own players weren't sufficient and there were no apps like this.

I will definitely give this tool a try, it could vastly improve future measurements using the same technique :D

<comment><USER26> interestingly, your 200 ms are close to the 150 ms telephony standards regard as the maximum one way delay for good speech quality. Seems to be in our physiology..

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> End-to-end latency is definitely something that deserves attention. It'd be interesting to modify mouse&kb by adding LEDs in series with the switches. That way you'd get good visual indicator when the event happened without any added latency. Combine that with 144hz monitor and actual high-speed camera (I hear good things about Chronos camera), and you could do very accurate software latency measurements

This MSR video from few years back is also pretty cool wrt touch interface latency: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4)

</comment><comment><USER28> Re: the gotchas, it's possible that this is due to how the app is architected in combination with how the phone and OS are architected. The input rate of 3D Touch, for example, is tightly coupled to the display output frame rate, which, in turn, is tightly coupled to the things you do on the main thread. I don't know off-hand if the camera input is coupled to anything in this way, but it's something to look into, and Apple's documentation should indicate this sort of behavior.

</comment><comment><USER29>
      > The response latency of the real world is zero

No, it's actually the speed of light.

<comment><USER30> I thought "instantaneous" essentially be on the order of 100-200 ms given human reaction times, but apparently we can visually detect latencies down to the 10-20 ms scales.

<comment><USER31> Microsoft Research showed that anything above 1ms latency is noticeable on touchscreens: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Very cool use of standard tech!

<comment><USER33> Yeah definitely! No later than yesterday was I asking myself how I could measure the latency of my bluetooth controller connected to my retropie setup. The latency seems quite high and I find myself struggling to play Super Mario World correctly. Now I can tell if it's a technical issue or more of a 'getting old' problem.

Thanks for this project, it's really cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Unrelated to the article but coincidental post about the iPhone camera's speed on Reddit yesterday:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/63117n/the_speed_of_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/63117n/the_speed_of_iphone_7s_camera/)

</comment><comment><USER35> > It is interesting that Atom's latency gets worse by two frames when Haskell > syntax highlighting is enabled.

Heh, that's not so surprising to me. There are several vim plugins for Haskell, and one of them had some _very_ slow features that made the latency go into the "many seconds" range :D

The Macbook keyboards one is ridiculous though.

<comment><USER36> This is likely related to the Macbook keyboards being connected via SPI internally rather than USB. Maybe a lower polling rate than USB or a higher latency where the interconnect occurs.

This was mentioned on HN[0] late last year regarding 2016 Macbook compatibility.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924051)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What a crazy cool idea!

Question: what is the standard human physiologic "click" time?

How fast or slow does it take to make a click. A mouse click takes longer than a screen tap, no?

Sometimes one will hold a mouse click if they are unsure.

What might be a better way is to record a scenario and measure response time on the replay?

Cool idea regardless

<comment><USER38> > Question: what is the standard human physiologic "click" time?

According to Disney in the 1960's, it takes from 3/4 to a full second[1]. :)

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHGI_5BaSQ&t=570](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHGI_5BaSQ&t=570)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Oh, you could use this for treadmill calibration:

[http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Treadmill_Calibration](http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Treadmill_Calibration)

</comment><comment><USER40> This is great! Measuring latency is the first step to fixing it, and it's a step most never take. I've previously worked on a method of measuring latency in an automated way without cameras, which may also be of interest: [https://google.github.io/latency- benchmark/](https://google.github.io/latency-benchmark/)

</comment><comment> semi-extrinsic Would be nice to also see latency in cmd.exe and in bash on the XPS 13; and also the latency inside BIOS/UEFI menus.

<comment><USER41> Very curious to see the numbers for Sublime Text using his same methodology, as Sublime is often praised for its speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Awesome! This is also very visible in touch based interfaces, especially in scrolling. I did a video with high speed camera to show how laggy real interfaces are [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EhJo2OPR44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EhJo2OPR44)

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm building a similar app for measuring UI latencies, but as a desktop app (for regressions checks on CI). Your app seems much more universal and platform-agnostic, really cool idea!

</comment><comment><USER44> Could something like this work with the pixel's camera?

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know if it's accurate but it also works on iPad Air 2 which supposedly only does 120 FPS.

The app crashes when attempting to delete captures though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes! I'll see if I can reproduce. Thanks for the bug report!

<comment><AUTHOR> Fix is in the App Store! Update should come soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Used a similar trick with an old Casio ages ago. Maybe it was a EX-10? not sure. I think it did 120 fps at 480p in like 2010.

</comment><comment><USER46> The next level would be a desktop app that syncs up with your phone and flashes the screen at a precise time while you record video. Then monitor lag could be tested without expensive hardware.

But maybe UNIX time isn't precise enough for that sort of thing? I actually don't know.

</comment><comment><USER47> Thanks for this! I've been looking for something just like it!!

</comment><comment><USER48> Would love this for Android! Hell, i'd happily buy it!

<comment><USER49> Are there any Android smartphones with 240Hz cams?

<comment><USER50> Pixel and Nexus 5x, for a start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I used a similar trick when evaluating mice and monitors for gaming, but only had 60fps, but used some tricks (seperate lcd based display displaying microsecond timer in frame, some other timing hacks) to discover my trusty old crt outpreformed even the best flat panel in latency and black level. Still use it for gaming, and scrounging for another for when it finally goes. Other discoveries were being able to vary the ps2 keyboard polling rate (although the correct way seems broken in linux), and that even with higher polking rate on usb, the ps2 interrupts handled faster. Mouse ended up better as usb due to thruput issues with serial. Take care to find an uncorrected sensor output to avoid microjitter and variable response time. Only a few sensors do this, so finding mice by sensor is how I approached it.

<comment><USER52> A lot of Quake players still prefer CRT for this reason. I remember when I had a 170Hz CRT with 1000Hz USB rate back when it was more difficult to achieve and it was incredible. What mice did you evaluate and decide on?

<comment><USER53> 60Hz on a CRT always looked bad too, it was a last resort. I could really see the flicker at 60Hz on my old Trinitron. 75 was pretty OK but it still looked smoother at 85 which is what I usually had it on. Above that I couldn't visually see any more improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Surprised that the author is quoting latency of editors to 0.1ms, when the precision of the camera is only 4ms. Are they really repeating these tests 40+ times?</comment>


The laser unprinter - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122415-the-laser-unprinter

<comment><USER2> I don't get the environmentalist angle. The paper industry is a net carbon sink; much more carbon is captured in growing the forests of fast-growth trees they plant and cut down than in manufacturing paper or lumber products from it. Every sheet of paper you buy is that much carbon in your hand that would otherwise be in the atmosphere, and will now stay out of the atmosphere as long as it's not burned.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified exactly this as the most effective man-made carbon sequestration method we have. [http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment- report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-cha...](http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment- report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter9.pdf)

So, paper is cheap and producing it is a net positive for the environment. What about the coal-burning power plants generating electricity to shoot lasers at the paper so we can reuse it again? Is the electricity cost to blast off the toner going to be less than the cost of a sheet of paper?

<comment><USER3> _The paper industry is a net carbon sink_

How is that? Neglecting processing-related effects, isn't this zero-sum since they're planting trees and then turning them into paper which eventually decomposes and releases the carbon? A reduction in paper use would leave the existing trees standing.

<comment><USER4> The trees that the paper companies plant would remain standing? I think you missed part of the argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reused paper tends to be crumpled and warped, especially if you try to feed it through a (laser) printer multiple times. It's more trouble than it's worth, unless they make printers that can handle less-than-perfect paper.

<comment><USER6> If you'll just use a sheet of paper once, then there's only so much it makes sense to pay for it. But what if you'll be reusing it 20 times? Perhaps there's an opportunity there. Kind of like how paper plates are generally flimsy, but normal plates are very durable.

<comment><USER7> True. But there are other trivialities that need to be considered. The first thing I do when I've got 5+ pages is either hole punch or staple them. The second thing I do is scribble on it or highlight things. If I wasn't going to do that, I probably wouldn't have printed it out in the first place (unless it was for record-keeping, in which case the paper will probably never be reused anyway).

If this becomes popular there will be a new industry around non-destructive paper management (more than our current choice of paper clips and highlighters).

But I think the critical factor for success is if the technology development outpaces paper-thin, writable LED displays or even tablets (which have progressed a LOT in the last few years). If you can give your "paper" a WiFi connection is anybody really going to invest in traditional (but reusable) paper?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Tim-Boss So I guess everyone has given up on the paper-free office ideal now?

It seems like only yesterday I had to sit through a two hour meeting to convince us that printing things is a needless expense now we're all supposed to be using laptops and iPads! Wait a second....it was only yesterday!

<comment><USER8> Might I suggest a job search? I'm not some paper fanatic, I rarely print anything out and I'm physically incapable[1] of making substantial use of a pen or pencil, but any company spending two hours on the subject is one I don't think I want to work for.

It was bad enough the day I sat through a 10 minute speech by a CEO on proper urinal usage...

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia#Motor>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't help but wonder if the same ultra-short pulses of laser light can be used to vaporize dark pen ink, giving users the ability to erase or alter things like signatures.

<comment><USER10> I used to work in a integrated circuit debugging lab. We had a pulse laser that we would use to ablate the layer of glass on top of the metallization so we could probe the die.

While goofing around I discovered that I could vaporize the ink of dollar bills. The largest area per pulse was pretty small, 25 microns if I remember right. Maybe 100. So it wasn't very practical, but it worked.

I don't remember if I tried it with pen ink. It might work okay for ball-point as that mostly lays ink on top of the paper. You'd still have the impression in the paper from the pen though.

Ink that didn't soak in but lay on top of the paper would probably stand a good chance of working. Maybe gel ink?

<comment><USER9> Thank you. That's what I thought: any dark ink that just lays on top of (i.e., isn't absorbed by) the paper could probably be vaporized in similar fashion by a pulse laser.

Anyway, when I wrote that, I had an inkling that someone in HN would know probably something about the subject matter, but I never expected anyone to have real-world experience using pulse lasers to vaporize ink from a piece of paper, let alone dollar bills!

Awesome.

This is why I _love_ HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about the fumes and such from the ablation of the toner? Seems like it could be a serious health hazard.

</comment><comment><USER12> Toshiba is releasing a technology for removing the printer up to 5 times from printed paper, but it uses a special toner

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-- y9VvSTyg&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-- y9VvSTyg&feature=player_embedded)

</comment><comment><USER3> So it's the new eInk but with a refresh rate of a few minutes...

</comment><comment><USER13> Will you have to unjam the paper first before unprinting?

<comment><USER4> Very likely. I used to work in the HP printer division, and used paper was the bane of the existence of the mechanical engineers that designed our paper handling systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Paper is going the way of the stone tablet with chiseled etchings, it is too heavy and slow, let the paper tech die peacefully next to the stone chisel tech. Don't revive paper tech just as we are getting into cool stuff, getting to the root of why paper exists, to exchange ideas between brains.

</comment><comment><USER15> What else would a laser unprinter be used for besides sensitive documents? Paper is cheap, wouldn't it be easier to just use a new piece of paper and recycle the old one.</comment>


You Dont Need a Good Idea To Start a Great Company - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2011/01/you-dont-need-good-idea-to-start-great.html

<comment><USER2> JERRY: So you're saying, I go in to YC, and tell them I got this idea for a startup about nothing.

GEORGE: We go into YC.

JERRY: "We"? Since when are you a hacker?

GEORGE: (Scoffs) Hacker. We're talking about a startup.

JERRY: You want to go with me to YC?

GEORGE: Yeah. I think we really go something here.

JERRY: What do we got?

GEORGE: An idea.

JERRY: What idea?

GEORGE: An idea for the startup.

JERRY: I still don't know what the idea is.

GEORGE: It's about nothing.

JERRY: Right.

GEORGE: Everybody's doing something, we'll do nothing.

JERRY: So, we go into YC, we tell them we've got an idea for a startup about nothing.

GEORGE: Exactly.

JERRY: They say, "What's your startup about?" I say, "Nothing."

GEORGE: There you go.

(A moment passes)

JERRY: (Nodding) I think you may have something there.

<comment><USER3> Straw man argument.

'You don't need a good idea' != 'You don't need an idea'

<comment><USER2> You're taking this too seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're going to talk of great companies, you can't leave out the two juggernauts of our time.

Neither Google nor Facebook started as a company.

Both search and social networks were written off as markets when the two current leaders entered the space.

I don't want to invoke another semantic wrestling championship between execution and ideas, but you have to give credit to Facebook for realising that social networks are not just about dating. It was their idea of exactly replicating offline social relationships on the web, executed to near perfection that made them successful. Great ideas are a combination of many small seemingly trivial good ideas. They do matter, otherwise one wouldn't know what to execute.

I'm afraid this article does rather poorly on the swombat-o-meter - [http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup- advic...](http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advice- articles)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree re: Facebook and Google. But to your point, both Facebook and Google could have been seen as bad ideas since, as you state: >Both search and social networks were written off as markets when the two current leaders entered the space.

The point of this post is not "Are good ideas bad for a startup". Obviously good ideas are much better then bad ones, and great ones are much better then good ones.

The point of the post is "don't think you need the most amazing idea ever to start something. it is more important to start something and learn what the great idea is along the way".

<comment><USER4> Sorry, this topic is bound to lead to a semantic merry-go-round!

Facebook and Google are examples of great ideas executed well creating huge markets, which did not exist when they set out. So how would have their founders fared if they chose to focus on a great market at the start? We would have yet another portal with banner advertising and a dating site.

I agree with the point of the post you mention here, but your post doesn't really support that.

Your advice is to focus on a great market. One of the hottest markets right now seems to be photo sharing. But I highly doubt the next great company will come out of there.

Can you give me an example of a great market today?

<comment><AUTHOR> :) Thanks for the points above.

"Great market" /= "hot market"

Great market to my mind is a market that has a lot of users who will use your product (and better yet, you can make money off of them using your product). Maybe I will write a post on how to identify a great market, as that is a pretty big topic. But one example is often markets where user behavior is fundamentally shifting, or where there is a sudden change (e.g. adoption of truly smart phones) leading to opportunity.

I think certain areas in ecommerce are a good example today of changes in user behavior and business model leading to high growth companies (Gilt Group was just the beginning, and some really cool companies are getting started today around fashion/women's goods online).

<comment><USER4> _a market that has a lot of users who will use your product_

Photo sharing fits the bill just right. Facebook has shown you can also make money off it.

Ecommerce is always a great market, but it's too vague because it's just commerce through a new medium. I'd prefer and love to read blog posts discussing specific ideas. Take that as reader feedback :-P

Did you see this Mixergy interview with the founder of Gemvara? <http://mixergy.com/matt-lauzon-gemvara-interview/>

It is one of the most innovative ideas I've come across recently, and apparently executed very well too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

To be honest I didn't want to name specific markets as I didn't want to create too much interest in areas where friends of mine are working. I didnt want to add attention and make it more crowded. :)

<comment><USER4> Haha that made me chuckle.

"It is all about execution. Even if you have a great idea - 5 other people will have it at the same time."

Just quoting a blog post...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, GroupOn out executed everyone and is winning. But their getting a high profile has also hurt them by creating 1001 competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You don't even need an idea at all. All you need is to find a crossroads where two fields intersect and that has not been discovered by anybody else. Those crossroads are discovered, not invented and every time a new field is made by someone with a new idea a thousand new crossroads instantly spring up.

Remember when 'on the internet' was the only thing changed in all those patent applications compared to what was going on before then? Suddenly appending 'on the internet' to something made it worth investigating. New fields open up all the time, if you're observing new findings in popular science it's very hard to not see opportunities enough for several lifetimes to scroll by in a single sitting of reading. Whether they're worth pursuing is another thing but the opportunities are there for the taking, no need to have a good idea or any at all to get off the ground.

Another way to start a great company that is pretty effective is to take an idea that already exists and simply do a better job of it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Problem is that it's hard to drop a steady job and be motivated about an idea you know isn't very good.

You need to have an idea that you can believe has a chance of being successful.

<comment><USER7> Conversely, dropping a steady job for a crappy idea might be just the kind of motivation you might need to become successful. Full disclosure: I'm trying to convince myself of this every single morning.

<comment><USER8> Burn the boats: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn- boats...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/06/andreessen-media-burn-boats/)

disclosure: I burned my boat

<comment><USER9> "disclosure: I burned my boat"

made me laugh :) I burned mine too!

<comment><USER8> I'd drop you an email to say hi but your HN profile is empty :)

<comment><USER9> email@example.com - thanks for reminding me to update that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm...I agree to disagree. I think the best companies start with an idea. It may not be a product idea, but a goal (ie: let's bridge the gap between technology and social = facebook).

The best products aren't slapped together using existing solutions. They are built from the ground up to solve a problem. If your company is building a solution to solve a specific problem, you are a great company.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would think you don't need a great idea to have a great company, but you need an idea that is worth something.

</comment><comment><USER11> The last time I saw a post like this on HN, I replied that both idea and execution are important, with a contrived example. The creativity of the responses made me rethink my stance.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404428>

</comment><comment><USER12> It's all about getting the right people on the bus: [http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to- gr...](http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html).

</comment><comment><USER13> It's true some successful company are the results of serious pivots. But I bet some 80% of them are the result of an initial good idea.

IMO you shouldn't build a company from a bad idea, but you can in your spare time try to validate an idea you're uncertain about. But don't quit your job at Google.

<comment><AUTHOR> Support from Fred Wilson's blog that most of his successful outcomes (success defined as "exit) were pivots:

"Of the 26 companies that I consider realized or effectively realized in my personal track record, 17 of them made complete transformations or partial transformations of their businesses between the time we invested and the time we sold. That means there a 2/3 chance you'll have to significantly reinvent your business between the time you take a venture capital investment and when you exit your business."

Source: <http://unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/why-early-stage.php>

<comment><USER13> Are you sure we're talking about the same "transformation"? Also that 17 lumps major and minor transformations together...

For example if someone starts a dating site but later transforms into a general social network, I would call that a complete transformation.

However if you start out making a ruby IDE but later realizes that real money is in MMORPGs or whatever, well you might have as well as waited.

<comment><USER14> Does it matter? I think the point is that (Great People) + (Profitable Idea) = (Success)

Consider: The variant of (Poor People) + (Profitable Idea) = (50/50 Success) and the variant of (Great People) + (Unprofitable Idea) = (Failure). If (Great People) it is far easier to get (Profitable Idea) then to change (Poor People) to (Great People).

To use your example, if you're making a Ruby IDE and no one pays you, you will never be profitable. If you make a Greate Ruby IDE and no one pays you, you will never be profitable. Discovering that MMORPG's are more profitable one day, you build one, and people pay you, you might be profitable. You could consider the time you spent on your Ruby IDE a waste, or you could consider that you've learned something about software development as a business. It is far easier to change the idea then the people.

<comment><USER13> But that's implying that working at Google won't be as rewarding. There's a lot of pressure to execute and iterate and so on when you're doing a startup. People sometimes forget to sit down and relax. Being in a less risky, less stressful position at Google can give you the important insights you need when you really start your business.

I also submit that it'll be easier to quit Google when you've discovered your home run idea than to change your entire business.

<comment><USER15> "Being in a less risky, less stressful position at Google can give you the important insights you need when you really start your business."

You could not be more wrong on this point. Being at google is a recipe for complacency. Quitting your job is incentive to actually figure out how to build something good. Because it's do that or fail.

<comment><USER16> If this is so, why are there so many startups started by ex-Googlers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The real point this guy has is: don't wait for the best idea possible -- just pick something that's promising and start. You probably won't end up doing what you start with anyway, but it's better than just spinning your wheels waiting for inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think link is down for this article. Could you please check?</comment>


Model beats Wall Street analysts in forecasting business financials - <AUTHOR> https://news.mit.edu/2019/model-beats-wall-street-forecasts-business-sales-1219 <comment><USER2> Time series methods have been applied to economic data since time immemorial. There is nothing particularly newsworthy here beyond the fact that another wannabe mathematician is trying to find a way to make a quick buck off of unsuspecting investors in the markets. "Outperformance" is an hackneyed phrase that has long lost any real meaning when uttered by an MBA; there are just too many ways to cook the books in order to produce the desired outcome.

Surprised not to see Andrew Lo's name associated this "groundbreaking research." It would be totally within his "working style" to trot out some fancy-sounding mathematics that pretends to solve some impossibly messy financial problem, and brag about it in some journal that real scientists (who sometimes collaborate with him in hopes of landing a job on Wall Street after their academic career starts to flounder) do not take all that seriously.

On a more serious note, the former deputy dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management (Gabriel Bitran) is currently serving time in a federal penitentiary with his son for a similar sort of chicanery (fancy mathematical pricing formulas that were complete bullshit according to SEC indictment) in order to screw his investors out of millions of dollars.

This was not long after Bitran narrowly escaped charges for sexually assaulting one of his secretaries at the same institution. In which case, I guess there may be some truth after all to the old saying about a man not "getting lucky" twice :)

<comment><USER3> Disappointed to hear this about Lo. Was just looking at a course MIT will be offering online that he's co-teaching!

<comment><USER4> Most folks these days are more interested in enrolling in one of Lo's classes for the future contact, not the course content.

I remember walking by Lo one afternoon and overhearing a medical doctor trying to catch up with him in order to tell him what a "lifetime admirer" he has been of Lo's work. It could have been anything from Lo's latest antics claiming that he knows how to "harness the power of greed" to cure cancer (the so-called Cancer-X project) to this poor fellow thinking that he had discovered a new way of beating the stock market (perhaps after reading this classy title that Lo published with one of his more attractive acolytes several years ago: ___The Heretics of Finance_ __.)

<comment><USER3> Well, I was more interested in the science side of the course, anyways! Taught by Harvey Lodish. Still, disappointing to hear that.

[https://www.edx.org/course/the-science-and-business-of- biote...](https://www.edx.org/course/the-science-and-business-of- biotechnology)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The model makes use of "alternative data" – such as credit card purchase > data, smartphone location data, satellite imagery and so on

The problem with predicting markets is that they suck up information.

When these predictions become public or anyone acts on them, the market automatically adjusts. Then the cycle repeats with people looking for even more leading indicators because the old ones are already priced in.

So, while it's interesting that these "alternative" data points seem correlated with prices, I'm dubious that anyone will profit off them at above- market returns for any sustained period of time.

<comment><USER6> To build on what you've said, I've learned from experience that alternative data can be misleading in the presence of unusual tail events. It's the fundamental bias-variance tradeoff. I was benchmarking one of our simple models (based on known causal variables) with another from a third-party that claims to be augmented with alternative data. When things were normal, both models behaved similarly. When things were out of left field, the alternative data model tended to be more wrong, whereas the simple model tended to be more robust and _less wrong_.

This is a surprising but well-known phenomenon in mathematical modeling [1, 2] -- simple models tend to outperform complex models in complex situations.

Complex models can give you accuracy refinements during normal situations but need to be detuned/weighted-reduced during abnormal situations.

[1] [https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/09/17/robustness-of- simp...](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/09/17/robustness-of-simple- rules/)

[2] [https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-forecasts-fail- what-...](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-forecasts-fail-what-to-do- instead/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would anyone say that? Why wouldn't you just make a few billion and prove it?

I'm going to guess its because it doesn't do it at a rate which matters, or in a manner that's actually scalable.

</comment><comment><USER8> > On the 34 companies tested, the MIT researchers' model beat an aggregate > Wall Street analyst benchmark in 57.2 percent of quarterly predictions > tested in the experiment.

Sorry but I'm not impressed by this number, for various reasons:

\- aggregate benchmark means some average of predictions from wall street investors, which is not the "state of the art" to beat, you should beat the best performing funds. Related: the best (and worst) funds are private and don't (all) report performance. Therefore, they are likely not included in the benchmark used and therefore the benchmark is biased.

\- 57% doesn't seem that much (only slightly better than chance). Also, there is no variance number

\- if they 'win' 1$ in 57% of the cases but 'lost' 2$ in the remaining 43% of the cases it's still a net loss. No numbers are given

\- not clear if they are after-casting, i.e. whether they tuned the predictions after the fact happened. In other words: How well does the algorithm perform if you turn it on now and leave it for a year?

<comment><USER9> If they don't report performance, how do they gain new investors?

<comment><USER8> Any number of ways. For example pitching behind closed doors to potential customers.

Others don't have customers, they trade with their own money (not just small- time traders, by the way).

<comment><USER9> Eventually, there'd have to be a leaked anonymous source?

"Fund beats S&P by 20% for 20 years straight" is a good story?

<comment><USER10> Not at all, you've probably never heard of tgs management for example, a fund comparable to rentec

<comment><USER9> You're correct, I never have.

I am not understanding how a fund could remain open/transparent enough to build trust with potential investors. But still maintain secrecy over the years.

<comment><USER11> Because they don't trade outside money - tgs and others like it only trade their founder/employee's money. They also enforce strict NDAs with all their employees and business counterparties (data vendors, prime brokers, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> MIT says a lot of things.

This basically amounts to "good data from other sources, provided granularly and processed intelligently, can predict asset movements."

</comment><comment><USER13> This was discussed here just less than a month ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21894862](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21894862)

</comment><comment><USER10> Predicting key metrics better than analysts with alternative data is very easy, the hard part is making actionable trading insights. Alternative data gleamed metrics are only a small part of the overall market price.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've never seen a backtest that I didn' tlike.

</comment><comment><USER15> Url changed from [https://www.enterpriseai.news/2020/01/22/mit-says-its- foreca...](https://www.enterpriseai.news/2020/01/22/mit-says-its-forecasting- model-outperforms-wall-street-benchmark/), which points to this.</comment>


Even CEO can't figure out how RadioShack still in business - <AUTHOR> http://www.theonion.com/content/node/60924?utm_source=onion_rss_daily <comment><USER2> This is satire, right?

<comment><USER3> If you're not familiar with the onion, I'd recommend taking a break from whatever important stuff you are doing at the moment and browse around for awhile. You'll find articles like these:

<http://www.theonion.com/content/news/scientists_create_largest_novelty_atom>

<http://www.theonion.com/content/news/itunes_to_sell_your_home_videos>

<http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28660> (No Jennifer Lopez News Today)</comment></comment>


7 timeless lessons of programming 'graybeards' - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/article/2894748/core-java/7-timeless-lessons-of-programming-graybeards.html

<comment><USER2> I am completely convinced that despite my extensive experience of _shipping_ many top-quality commercial software products, I cannot get a job because my hair is grey.

In the days of yore, I worried about memory. Today I worry about the CPU data and code caches. It's actually worse now, that we have cache. An ARM Cortex A8 with 8192 bytes of data cache, and 64-byte cache lines, will have only 128 cache lines. If you read one single byte from main memory, 64 bytes will be read, then loaded into a cache line. Was that a wise choice, to read one byte?</comment>


Animate NBA shot events with Paper.js - <AUTHOR> http://opiateforthemass.es/articles/animate-nba-shot-events/ <comment><USER2> This is very, very cool! After looking at this, I was interested in how this data is acquired and used and found this podcast episode that touches on it: [http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/11/the-science-of-moving- dots-...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/11/the-science-of-moving-dots-the- oreilly-data-show-podcast.html)</comment>


Waymo releases self-driving open data set for free use by research community - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/21/waymo-releases-a-self-driving-open-data-set-for-free-use-by-the-research-community/ <comment><USER2> Read the license on this thing. "open data set" is a stretch here. It's against the license terms to publish a trained model, or its weights, or even use the dataset for models that are run on a physical vehicle (supposedly even if that's just a research vehicle).

Is this normal for 'open datasets'?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's an FT version:

[https://www.ft.com/content/2eed925a-c3cf-11e9-a8e9-296ca6651...](https://www.ft.com/content/2eed925a-c3cf-11e9-a8e9-296ca66511c9)</comment>


Turning 10 bucks into $1600 – How I gambled against a dotcom millionaire and won - <AUTHOR> http://jere.in/turning-10-bucks-into-1600-how-i-gambled-against-a-dotcom-millionaire-and-won <comment><USER2> A fun article. Very clickbaity title though.

I've have been playing Cordial Minuet for a couple of days and I really like it. I will be spending too much time with it just like I did with The Castle Doctrine.

<comment><USER3> A very clickbaity title, yes! But crucially it's 100% true.

Part of the reason I wrote this is because CM is not getting much exposure right now and I'm worried it is going to die quick death within months after launch (like TCD).

I just posted the article this morning (my plan all along... I was a _bit_ irked when Jason posted it last night). So if you want, take a look.

<comment><USER2> It's sad that TCD didn't get enough players to keep it going longer. I guess it's niche game with a limited audience but it really do deserve to get more attention. It has imho a great theme and the idea is very well executed.

Cordial Minuet as a real money game which requires skill probably has a larger audience and I hope it will do well. If not, artistic integrity aside, it might be worth to relaunch it with an "easier theme".

I'm hoping to get my hands on one of the amulets, but playing from Europe timezones I guess the chance is low (not that many players around).</comment></comment></comment>


The Growing Complexity Of Facebook Is Confusing Your Mom - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/06/the-growing-complexity-of-facebook-is-confusing-your-mom/ <comment><USER2> The growing complexity of Facebook is confusing ME.

Granted, I haven't been active on it in a while, but I went on it for the first time in a couple of months and it took me far too long to figure out how to change my profile picture.

I think for the moment they can get by keeping their users through sheer strength of numbers, but they're going to go too far and start losing people if they keep switching up their design.

</comment><comment><USER3> Speaking from experience, this article is spot-on about it's suggestions. Facebook really does need a tutorial and easy "paranoid" checkbox at registration to simplify privacy settings.</comment>


Why Space Elevators Could Be the Future of Space Travel - <AUTHOR> http://futurism.com/why-space-elevators-are-the-future-of-space-travel/ <comment><USER2> As long as a major component of space elevators is unobtanium any kind of discussion about them in a terrestrial context should focus on materials science and how to advance it to the point that it becomes feasible. Anything else is not productive, akin to deciding on how to spend your first billion when you have $50 in the bank.

<comment><USER3> Firstly, the tether of a space elevator could be tethered (EDIT: tapered), which reduces the required tensile strength a bit.

Secondly, there are some intermediate space elevator-like constructs that have similar ideas but are much more feasible. For example the skyhook ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_(structure)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_\(structure\))). Rather than tethering to the ground it would 'hook' into the air at high altitude, and rotate the earth at high but airplane achievable speeds. There are a lot of engineering challenges, but its theoretically possible with existing materials.

<comment><USER4> > Firstly, the tether of a space elevator could be tethered

Uh... Aren't connectors already supposed to be connected?

<comment><USER3> Oops, typo. I meant tapered. As in varying in width. You could imagine a tether that has a 5mm diameter at the surface (in a sort of ribbon shape), but has a diameter of 500mm at the geostationary orbit.

According to this ([http://sustainable-nano.com/2014/04/01/space-elevator-a- last...](http://sustainable-nano.com/2014/04/01/space-elevator-a-lasting- dream-for-a-sky-reaching-tree/)) a carbon nanotube has a factor between ground and orbit of 1.6 or so, and for steel it's something crazy like 1.6e33.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A whole article about why space elevators would be better than rockets with only the slight problem that we don't know of any way to build one with any materials we have.

If we are allowed to do that, I think we should use star trek transporters. They would be even cheaper and even better. We don't know how to build those either...

<comment><USER6> Starting construction without having the needed materials is the approach followed at ITER. This way of working is based in a very reasonable idea: available materials have been improving since ever, there is no reason to think this progress will stop now.

<comment><USER7> But it's hard to even imagine what something stronger than carbon nanutubes would look like. How much stronger than diamond-like molecular bonds can you get?

<comment><USER6> According to simulations, 58% [1]. Experimental confirmation is still needed. Although we are still far from it, it is something that we could see in our life times.

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16610-diamond-no- long...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16610-diamond-no-longer- natures-hardest-material/)

<comment><USER8> Hardness is not the same as tensile strength.

<comment><USER6> I know. From the linked article: "The simulation showed that wurtzide boron nitride would withstand 18 per cent more stress than diamond, and lonsdaleite 58 per cent more." The title of the article is misleading.

<comment><USER8> The title of that article is accurate, where it says "stress" they are really referring to hardness and not tensile strength. The quoted 58% comes from this paper, it talks about "hardness" and "indentation strength" in the abstract:

[http://sci-hub.cc/10.1103/physrevlett.102.055503](http://sci- hub.cc/10.1103/physrevlett.102.055503)

<comment><USER6> You are right, I stand corrected. They actually talk about tensile strength in the PRL article:

"It is noted that lonsdaleite exhibits almost identical ideal tensile strength and only slightly larger pure ideal shear strength compared to diamond. The significant enhancement in its indentation strength occurs under biaxial stress loading conditions. The situation in w-BN versus c-BN is similar. All past calculations have shown that diamond exhibits the highest strength under various loading conditions compared to other materials, which was consistent with all available measurements. Here we show for the first time that w-BN and lonsdaleite exhibit higher strength than diamond under indentation."

So, indeed, diamond is still the winner here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While a space elevator is constructable on the moon or mars, making one for earth would needs exotic high tensile strength materials that we don't know how to build.

A launch loop, on the other hand, has many of the benefits of a space elevator; but the nicest feature is that it can be constructed from conventional materials. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop)

<comment><USER10> How about a active structure, like a space fountain?

<comment><USER11> rockets connected to each other ascending and descending constantly?

<comment><USER12> Iirc, Robert L Forward's variant was an electromagnetic cannon launching metal pellets, which were slowed down at the top and fired back down.

The pellets would go up and down like a juggler's balls was thrown.

Since you'd regain much of the energy when you slowed them down, it wouldn't be so energy expensive as it seems. And yes, you need vacuum pipes. And a stop in electricity would have side effects ("Timber!"). :-)

<comment><USER11> some kind of ubend, and the "pellets" are magnetised?

say we drop a rocket into this ubend and it redirects the energy back up into space?

and in orbit there are rockets that lift them the rest of the way, remove the passengers and then drop them again.

<comment><USER12> I was clumsily trying to explain Space fountains. :-) This do discuss the Forward thing and so on:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain#History)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is the heaviest planet where we could build a space elevator with current technology? Would it work on Mars? The Moon?

<comment><USER2> The moon, yes:

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

Mars, edge case?:

[http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/33547/space- eleva...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/33547/space-elevator-on- mars-with-todays-technology-possible)

Good post on the subject:

[http://tsanad.blogspot.nl/2011/03/space-elevators-where- to-p...](http://tsanad.blogspot.nl/2011/03/space-elevators-where-to-put- them.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> With the U.S. Navy having working railguns, we already have the tech to launch unmanned cargo into orbit quite cheaply. All we need is a standardized shell casing that can hold the cargo and provide the horizontal thrust once the package reaches apogee.

Space elevators are cool, but why chase something with so much missing tech when we have a solution in front of us?

<comment><USER15> I agree with you, although I should note that the current Navy railguns are not capable of putting shots in orbit. However, the logic behind choosing guns over elevators is simple:

I. Actively supported towers are easier/more likely to be built than a space elevator made of unobtainium. II. The technology to build a space fountain or actively supported tower is more difficult than a gun, because you first have to have a gun which can shoot objects faster than orbital speed, and then add the recirculation plus the momentum transfer to the tower. So, an orbital gun is a subset of the technology needed for an active tower.

One other thing which is often overlooked when discussing shooting stuff into orbit, is that the size and cost of the gun is proportional to the size of the projectile. If shooting from very high in the atmosphere, very small projectiles could work without significant atmospheric losses. A railgun or light gas gun on an airplane could easily shoot literal tons of small projectiles, machine gun style, then land and reload (and with current tech, replace barrels).

If a target in orbit was shot at, you wouldn't even need to have a rocket in each projectile to provide thrust at apogee. Instead, you hit the target and embed into it. By hitting the target at different parts of its orbit, you avoid substantially changing the shape of its orbit, balancing out the momentum change to keep the orbit how you want it.

This wouldn't work for anything besides bulk materials which can be broken down into small pieces and shot like tiny bullets out of a hypersonic machine gun. But the cost per kg for bulk materials could be very low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems that getting information out of a gravity well is much easier than mass. There's a bit of a bootstrapping problem to to develop the initial infrastructure, but once in place it would be much simpler to just build in space.

The problem with that of course is that terrestrial refineries and factories are highly soecialized to their products, which means multiplies the amount of base inf needed to construct even simple materials. If orbital manufacturing emerges, I think it would need to adopt a new paradigm of custom fabrication such as with 3d printing and similar technologies.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not even carbon nanotubes are strong enough to make a space elevator on Earth. Individual CNTs (the molecules) are just barely strong enough, but you cannot make a macroscale fabric out of them that's just as strong as the individual molecules. And even if you did, there's no safety margin.

It's never going to happen on Earth.

However we could make an elevator today on the Moon or Mars with already existing fabrics like Kevlar.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article mentions a study saying CNTs are too weak. Here's a New Scientist summary of the flaws in CNTs: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093356-carbon- nanotube...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093356-carbon-nanotubes- too-weak-to-get-a-space-elevator-off-the-ground/)

</comment><comment><USER19> hum... silly thought of the day. Why we still launch rockets from sea level and not from some high mountain? Wouldn't be less expensive and more safe that building 3-5km extra of space elevator?

If the mountain is higher enough, zero probability of birds crashing against your structure, Neither clouds nor hurricanes, high visibility, free solar energy all year around...

</comment><comment><USER20> funny that they mentioned 2009's "Gundam 00", but haven's said a word about Authur C Clarke's 1979 novel "Fountains of Paradise", the whole novel is about this.

</comment><comment><USER11> Could a space elevator be warp based?

the early versions of warp would have to be huge anyways, so why not take advantage of that by creating a space elevator using warp?

With warp you could technically send things through the earth's core as a form of teleportation too.</comment>


We Could Not Look the Survivors in the Eye If We Did Not Follow This Lead - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/we-could-not-look-survivors-eye-if-we-did-not-follow-lead <comment><USER2> Oh, please. This rationale just doesn't make sense: _The San Bernardino litigation isn 't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice. Fourteen people were slaughtered and many more had their lives and bodies ruined._

We already know who did it: Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik. They're already dead. By some accounting, justice has already been served. By other accounting, I suppose that nobody was found guilty by a jury of peers and punished, but that happens sometimes. So "justice" really doesn't enter into it at this point.

From the beginning, Comey's argument is flawed. No need exists to read the rest of the article. Comey has some other motive to try to get Apple to backdoor that phone. He's just trying to divert attention from that other motive.</comment>


To Catch a Rapist - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/to-catch-a-rapist.html <comment><USER2> I would like to applaud the even-handedness of this article and its coverage of a sensitive subject. At no point during reading it did I feel like it was trying to push a particular narrative, unfairly blame a group, target elite schools, use buzzwords or associate itself with any of the typical "outrage culture" messages that usually come along with the media's coverage of rape. At the same time it manages to draw attention to what is likely a very real and underreported problem.</comment>


Hofstadter's butterfly - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_butterfly

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how someone can create a page like this and not find it necessary to explain the name

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Some very cool physics involved-- a lot of basic quantum mechanics (electrons hopping on a lattice), but it has a lot of really broad implications about symmetries. There is a lot of recent interest in the butterfly [1,2].

It turns out that it is a very important state to study the Quantum Hall effect[3], and the fractional Quantum Hall effect[4], which seem to be in vogue in Condensed Matter physics these days.

Sorry to bog you down with details, I just wanted to mention how neat it is that Hofstadter's butterfly is still being studied today!

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7451/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7451/full/nature12186.html) [2] [http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/118](http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/118)

</comment><comment><USER4> Odd to think that physics has found so few naturally occurring fractals.

<comment><USER5> Physics has found lots of naturally occurring fractals.

<comment><USER6> According to the article

        It is one of the rare fractal structures discovered in physics, along with KAM tori.

What are some other examples?

<comment><USER7> [http://www.wired.com/2010/09/fractal-patterns-in- nature/](http://www.wired.com/2010/09/fractal-patterns-in-nature/)

<comment><USER6> I think it's somewhat clear that "physics" and "nature" refer to two fairly different concepts in this context.

<comment><USER5> This is now entirely a semantic argument. I would argue "physics" and "nature" are almost interchangeable here. KAM tori naturally occur in ocean currents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hope I am not the only one that thought this had something to do with Leonard... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Hofstadter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Hofstadter)</comment>


Synthetic Depth-Of-Field with a Single-Camera Mobile Phone - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.04171 <comment><AUTHOR> Article-submitter here: Do the Pixel phones allow raw access to the sensor- level image and depth-map information?</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to negotiate startup equity for CTO role? - <AUTHOR> I've been offered the role of CTO in a startup whose business idea I am very interested in.
There are 3 other founders, one of which came up with the idea. I do not know what their equity stakes are.
What's the best way of negotiating a good and fair equity stake, if I take the CTO role and become lead developer? <comment><USER2> Depends on how far along development is and whether you are coming in as a founder CTO or first-employee CTO. 1) if still very early, then 100/4 seems fair because you could be in business for a very long time with these people so it makes sense to all be equal partners. 2) if some type of money has been raised then it's a trickier proposition. Questions you want to ask: a) how much money raised if any, b) other founder's shares, c) founder CTO or employee CTO, c) how far along development is..... In case you haven't seen them, some Quora answers: [https://www.quora.com/What-would-be-the-standard- equity-perc...](https://www.quora.com/What-would-be-the-standard-equity- percentage-given-to-a-technical-CTO-co-founder), [https://www.quora.com/What- would-a-CTO-compensation-equity-b...](https://www.quora.com/What-would-a-CTO- compensation-equity-be-for-a-small-startup), google the question and see responses from a whole host of startup websites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for a great response.

A) No money raised, but the three existing founders are all committing personal money to it (I may be asked to do the same). B) I can find out other founders equity stakes. C) Pretty sure it's a founder CTO role, but can double check this. D) No code developed so far, except an initial demo that I wrote for them, which bagged me the offer for the position.</comment></comment>


Jetpacked: News.YC an example of next phase of social news - <AUTHOR> http://www.jetpacked.com/newsycombinatorcom-startup-news-done-right/ <comment><USER2> A post by Shanti Braford, news.yc user sbraford, saying niche network news sites are on the rise and giving "entrepreneur, Lisp hacker, and best-selling author/essayist, Paul Graham"'s news.yc as an example.

</comment><comment><USER3> the jetpacked guy invited me to do a guest post on his blog - why not share some news.YC goodness with his readership? =)</comment>


Toddlers becoming so addicted to iPads they require therapy - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10008707/Toddlers-becoming-so-addicted-to-iPads-they-require-therapy.html <comment><USER2> Surely this is not the first case of children being angry when someone takes away their toys. Is using an iPad causing any more damage than say, a Game Boy?

</comment><comment><USER3> Parents are paying _£16,000 for a 28-day "digital detox" programme_...... this is totally going to be my next startup.</comment>


The formula for success - <AUTHOR> http://www.contrast.ie/blog/the-formula-for-success/

<comment><USER2> 10 000 hours of focused deliberate practice. (at least this is more evidence based [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.169...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.169.9712&rep=rep1&type=pdf.)) rather than all these BS pseudo scientific blabla (no evidence) "advice" blog posts using mathematic formula.

<comment><USER3> The advice may or may not be good, but those pseudo-formula always make me cringe. (At least they used multiplication and not addition, that way they can wiggle out of questions of units/dimensions much easier.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >The luck variable represents everything outside of your control.

If we understand _luck_ as being in the right place at the right time, the right attitude can transform the wrong place (a frustrating obstacle) into the right place (a challenge worth taking on).

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's another quote I really like:

"If you think you can do it, or you think you can't do it, either way you are right."

<comment><USER6> If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both; whether you marry or you do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world's follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it; if you laugh at the world's follies or if you weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world's follies or you weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a girl, you will regret it; if you do not believe her, you will also regret it; if you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both; whether you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both. If you hang yourself, you will regret it; if you do not hang yourself, you will regret it; if you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum of all practical wisdom.

                --Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Success doesn't -require- luck. It can help, but it's not required.

Here's the formula for success: Take care of the customer. Charge them for it. Repeat.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget to rinse,

These "formulas" don't amount to much, but clever hindsight.I like the burst of inspiration from reading something like this, but it's a generalization.</comment></comment>


Weebly (YC winter 07) scores 1 million users, reaches profitability - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/03/weebly-scores-1-million-users-reaches-profitability/ <comment><USER2> There are a handful of companies in YC (aside from my own) that I would love to personally invest in (if I were in the position to invest). Weebly is definitely near the top of the list, and was from the first moment I saw it during Winter '07. They're totally pragmatic, and just get things done...not one information astronaut in the bunch.

And they work in that space where nobody wants to be: technology for newbies. A couple of folks in this thread are criticizing Weebly for the very things that make it so explosively successful. I'd advise anyone who thinks they're smarter than the Weebly folks to pause for a moment, and think about traffic, and what it means for there to be 1 _million_ websites at Weebly. That's one million occasions where someone browsed to the site, filled out the form, and went through the process of creating a website. How many people have signed up for your web application? How many made it to actually using it to do real work? And how much money does your app make if you imagine 1% of those users being willing to pay you a monthly fee? When the number of people committed enough to create something with your site reaches a million, you almost can't _not_ make money with it.

<comment><USER3> <cough> Facebook </cough>

<comment><USER2> Facebook _could_ make money. They've just opted to focus on other things...probably to the detriment of their long-term health as a company. But, they've decided that the network effects of having the most users is the most important thing for them, and they've put aside all other considerations. I don't for a second think Facebook is worth $15 billion (but _maybe_ the ~$4 billion internal valuation that people within the company are getting for their shares when they sell privately).

But, Facebook is having to try pretty hard to outspend their incoming cash. They've hired very aggressively and made decisions that are more befitting a much larger/older company. I don't know enough to say if it'll all come crashing down...but it'd be possible to make Facebook make money tomorrow, if they laid off some of those hires and got as smart as Google about infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats. On a side note, venturebeat is full of funding announcements today, kind of a counterpoint to all the sky is falling stuff from the last two weeks. Good companies seem to be thriving.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find out how much Weebly charges for the pro accounts and I still don't know. What is it with websites hiding their pricing? Argh.

<comment><USER6> I agree, it's not easy to find. I had to log into my account, and was then offered the choice to upgrade.

FYI, its 3.99 a month.

<comment><USER7> So weebly also uses a deceptive pricing scheme ... exactly how are 3.99 different than 4?

Does anybody have hard data on market consequences of pricing to round numbers?

And why should one price near $4? If it was in Europe, it would be 4 euro instead?

Why 3.99 and not 3.56, since credit card payments don't care anyway?

In any case, congrats to weebly whose profitability enables this discussion.

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing>

Many of these issues are covered in basic marketing 101. As to how the pricing scheme is deceptive is beyond me.

There are multiple different psychological price theories in use. As mentioned in the article, the .99 pricing scheme is fairly prevalent, although some retailers use a .00 pricing scheme to reinforce quality. Walmart has used a somewhat random pricing scheme (.32, .67, .18, etc) to try to have consumers come to the conclusion that the only rationale behind the price is that Walmart shaved every possible penny it could.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing. The random pricing scheme reads most evil of all. Perhaps a conclusion is that there is no such thing as a naked price--all pricing schemes have psychological load, whether intended or not, because the consumer will add it.

<comment><USER9> Why is random pricing evil?

<comment><USER7> Because of the pretension of being real--as in, adjusted to the real price-- when they are not.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I'm still not following (I could very easily be missing something so I apologize if this is the case). As long as the buyer isn't being forced to buy, how can variable prices be evil?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> congrats to the weebly crew, this is an awesome product, I recently used it to help my mom setup a simple website and within a few minutes we were adding content and photos, no dumb server to deal with and no constant barrage of new versions to worry about. It was way easier than wordpress and fit the need perfectly. its dope to hear about small startups, building incremental value and reaching key milestones, far more interesting than another huge VC funding round for a company with no business model.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome work. The p word is one of the most beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's really great. I've got all my relatives using that now to build their websites. It's good to know Weebly will be around for a while :-)

<comment><USER12> Me too. My father-in-law needed to create a website for his church. He asked for my help, I showed him Weebly, and that was it. So what I'm saying is, thanks Weebly.

<comment><USER8> thanks guys, appreciate the support! most of our new users come from word of mouth referals, and every little bit helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess you can say....

Little weeblys wobble but they don't fall down!

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats!! I love Weebly - a few weeks ago I was doing a post about how easy it is to create an online web shop using a local startup, and even after wasting 20 mins trying to fiddle around with a similar site, I was still able to get the site up in under 2 hours. Absolutely the right balance between ease of use for noobs and flexibility for more advanced users. <http://tinyurl.com/weeblyrocks>

</comment><comment><USER15> yep congratultions guys. have to say that i love weebly so much i had to pay up for 2 years. im also looking forward for their implementation of new features which are said to include, complete control over the html and css.

</comment><comment><USER16> Encouraging!

</comment><comment><USER17> pic <http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/120/onemillion.png>

</comment><comment><USER18> Congrats Weeblers

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats, guys. Your product is excellent.

</comment><comment><USER20> wow, I remember Weebly when they were presenting at LeWeb3 2 years ago when they had 6000 users.

</comment><comment><USER21> You inspire us all.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is great...

</comment><comment><USER23> Not to be negative but they have existed for 3 years and that is all they have produced? Maybe I missed something when I tried it a couple of months ago but it seemed more like something that had been around for 3 weeks. I really wanted something like it but for sure there wasn't much to it. Some simple drag and drop features but nothing that let a noob create a cool webpage by just dragging and dropping.

Did I manage to miss the point?

<comment><USER9> Most people in the world are n00bs.

<comment><USER23> That answer means you must have misunderstood what I said. Anyway, I was mostly looking for an explanation of what is so great about Weebly because I didn't get it.

Surely we must be able to critisize here right?

<comment><USER24> It makes something that most people are unable (or unwilling to take the time) to do a simple matter of mouse clicks. And it does so pretty nicely.

Sure, most people on HN can create pretty slick sites that just are not possible with Weebly. But then again, most of society isn't on HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Measures of entropy and complexity in altered states of consciousness - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.07061 <comment><USER2> It is then obvious to ask: Do we all have an equally "large" consciousness when fully alert? Or are some of us more conscious than others?

<comment><USER3> I don't believe there's a generalized definition of consciousness. Nevertheless, from a fully experiential approach, my answer would be yes. Meditation, yoga, and even learning from psychology have definitely let me become more aware in the last years, and I've seen the same effect in people close to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's new? This was already known 15 years ago.</comment>


Scrunch time: The peculiar physics of crumpled paper - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228441.700-scrunch-time-the-peculiar-physics-of-crumpled-paper.html?full=true

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the fixed point theorem. Take a sheet of paper, scrumple it however you choose without tearing it. Place it over an unscrumpled copy of the original, without going outside the edges.

Some point in the scrumpled version is exactly above its original position.

<comment><USER3> That's actually an illustration of the Contraction Mapping Principle.

Another way of illustrating it is that if you're in city X and place a map of city X on the ground, then exactly one point on the map will be above the corresponding physical point.

<comment><USER4> Contraction mapping is not really required for this phenomenon. Contraction would mean that any two points are closer after the crumpling/mapping than before. In fact contraction will guarantee that there is only _one_ such point which lies over the other.

For the aforesaid property any form of crumpling that does not tear the paper would suffice. Provided no part of the crumpled paper extends beyond the boundary of the pristine sheet (or the city, in your example). The phenomenon relies of Browder's fixed point theorem.

If it helps to reduce one dimension: think of a continuous curve defined over a part of the x-axis [0, 10]. As long as the curve stays inside the box [0,0], [10,10] and every point in the [0,10] part of the x-axis is mapped, it would be impossible to avoid the diagonal. Just try it.

Incidentally, a generalization of the theorem above, called the Kakutani fixed point theorem underlies John Nash's proof (that won him the Nobel) of the existence of equilibria in games.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me that in Argentina in primary school we would make an improvised football (as in: soccer) by crumpling some paper and then wrapping it in scotch tape. It was of course much smaller than the real ball, but it worked surprisingly well (and broken windows were not an issue). Now I know why :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you, like me, wonder how one can even get funding for research on crumpled paper, Prof. Menon's research area is on condensed matter, "primarily on soft- condensed matter systems".

Article passed on the interesting tidbit about Britney Gallivan (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britney_Gallivan>) and her paper folding result.

</comment><comment><USER7> Understanding the physics of why crumpled paper resists with a specific force can help you design vehicle crumple-zone systems in cars which will save occupants from head on crashes into trees, by having the entire engine crumple with a pre defined resistance.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> I understand how guessing at the particular pattern of a crumple is a hard physics problem. What I do not understand is why understanding the macro- properties of crumpled paper is a hard physics problem. For example:

"Do the balls absorb vibrations by trapping pressure waves or by dissipating them? Nobody knows, says Menon, 'but it means there are still plenty of beautiful problems to keep me interested'."

This seems like a rather odd thing to say. What does "trapping pressure waves" even mean? Is Menon asserting that, when I take my shipment out of the container, all of the vibration that the package suffered on its journey is still swirling around in all the crumpled paper?

It's laudable to study everyday physics, but at least when it comes to macro- behavior of crumpled paper, these research questions appear laughable.

<comment><USER9> "What I do not understand is why [several things]..."

"... these research questions appear laughable."

How about before declaring these questions laughable, you try a little harder to understand why they are interesting? For instance, the fact that we don't have computers powerful enough to simply simulate the question being asked provides one clue of a possible reason why this is more interesting than you think.

Either one of "I don't understand this research" or "this research is laughable" I might accept from a given person, but the combination is unpleasant.

<comment><USER8> I have a degree in physics, so I guess it was a mistake to leave out the (two) punchlines and leave them implied:

1\. "absorb vibrations by trapping pressure waves" is a meaningless concept in physics. Sponges, rubber, styrofoam, springs and crumpled paper all "absorb vibration" in the same way - converting mechanical energy into heat. Apart from a rather pedantic system in which somehow air pressure is used to add angular velocity to a flywheel, there is no sense in which vibrations are "stored". There is also the case of an irreversible deformation, as when a car crumples. And in that case, the object would become monotonically less capable of absorbing energy - a curve that would be easy to measure (place crumpled paper in a vice, repeatedly attempt to squeeze a bit, measure maximum and minimum circumference, repeat, graph)

2\. Thermodynamically, any excess energy is going into heat. Period. This could be tested by very carefully measuring the temperature of the crumpled paper before and after being deformed several times, as with the vice above. Eventually (and with paper, sooner rather than later) there's going to be microscopic breakdown at the fiber and even molecular levels, and that increase in entropy must be factored in, too. (Now that is an interesting experimental challenge: how to measure the "looseness" of paper fiber in a crumpled sheet. There are some easy destructive ways but I cannot think of any non-destructive ones.)

So yes, I call shenanigans on this professor and, apart with the (already admittedly) interesting problem of describing the geometry of particular crumples, I think his research is laughable. Although I would enjoy being shown how I am in error, if that be the case.

<comment><USER9> "I have a degree in physics,"

... in which case you really ought to know better than to accept a popular press summation of somebody's research as accurate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The History of Random.org (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.random.org/history/ <comment><USER2> I really hope that people don't use random.org in prod. Use /dev/urandom instead.

[https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/02/25/safely-generate- rando...](https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/02/25/safely-generate-random- numbers/)

<comment><USER3> You wouldn't believe how many "engineers" I've seen open up random.org's string generator, and fiddle with the settings + copy a string from it only to drop it into a terminal for a root password/etc.

Point-in-case, I saw 2-3 "DevOps" engineers do it in my last position... over a screen share..! When you'd bring it up to people they would just roll their eyes and call you paranoid. =(

<comment><USER4> Devops = not quite a dev + not quite a sys admin.

<comment><USER5> Devops usually means "it's faster and cheaper because we don't have a dedicated sysadmin". The union of good developers and good syadmins is narrow like that of developers and designers.

<comment><USER6> I think you mean 'intersection'.

<comment><USER5> Totally, unfortunately I'm too late to edit my mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kind of surprised at the lack of information about the current setup, which is certainly most sophisticated and therefore the most interesting. How did they manage to distribute the servers? What are they using now as a source of randomness? Are there still notes on these nodes to keep away?

</comment><comment><USER8> Really cool to see this here. Mads supervised my undergraduate thesis, I remember him explaining the random.org setup when I asked about the servers & radio sitting in the corner of his office. A super friendly and smart guy.

Of note, his office also contained a pretty legendary kendo sword linked up to sensors (this was early 2000s). Ostensibly to assist with technique, but Im pretty sure it was for light sabre visualisations...

</comment><comment><USER9> Australian National University generates a random bit stream by measuring the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. [http://qrng.anu.edu.au/index.php](http://qrng.anu.edu.au/index.php) A few years ago I created a F# .NET library to consume this stream in varying ways. [https://jackfoxy.github.io/RandomBits/](https://jackfoxy.github.io/RandomBits/)

<comment><USER10> The fatal flaw of course is that everyone accessing their stream gets the same random data, making it substantially less random in the sense of others not being able to predict it. So do not use for cryptography!

<comment><USER9> I'm not a crypto expert. But I do know this stream is a firehose. Somewhere on the site is says how much data is generated. I forget. Naively I would think at least for some applications there would be no way to determine what part of the stream had been sampled. And the stream connection is over https.

<comment><USER11> > there would be no way to determine what part of the stream had been sampled

So the problem become to determine the offset of the stream you looked at, which is an integer that probably fits in 64 bits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it a little concerning that RANDOM.ORG doesn't make it clear that it a _trusted service_ , and cannot be relied on for secure entropy. The only mention is this, buried in the FAQ:

>anyone genuinely concerned with security should not trust anyone else (including RANDOM.ORG) to generate their cryptographic keys.

But the problems go beyond cryptographic keys. If you use RANDOM.ORG to pick lottery winners, you're trusting that the numbers you get are as truly random as they claim. In particular, the operators of RANDOM.ORG could trivially inject deterministic entropy (generated from, e.g., AES-encrypting successive integers) and this would be completely undetectable, even to statistical tests.

IMO the site needs a big, scary disclaimer on the front page that describes what applications it is appropriate for, and which ones should use a more secure source of entropy.

<comment><USER13> Typo? Did you mean s/that it a/that it is not a/ ?

edit: given stan_rogers' comment bellow and a direct communication with nemo1618 the typo is just the missing "is". The sentence should read:

"doesn't make it clear that it is a trusted service."

<comment><USER14> No. The idea is that you use their service as opposed to running something on your own machine, which eliminates you as a nefarious source of hanky-panky. Think about running their list randomizer to pick one or more names from, say, a list of raffle entrants. The "trust" isn't that the result is going to be cryptographically random or anything like that, it's just an external service you can't monkey with, which avoids accusations of cheating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I keep a silly little script that could, in theory, be used to pull random entropy from a remote source:

      strace -CTiv -ttt nice -n 19 curl -LNv $URL 2>&1 | shasum -a 512

$URL could be "[https://news.yahoo.com"](https://news.yahoo.com"), "[https://news.google.com"](https://news.google.com"), "[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random"](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random"), or some other website that returns a large, unique result for each request. Even if someone was sniffing or logging the HTTP response, they wouldn't know all the local timing information reported by curl and strace.

<comment><USER16> Why visit a website, when you could do it yourself?

        #!/bin/bash

        read -p "How many digits?   " numlen

        head /dev/urandom | LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'A-Za-z0-9' | fold -w $numlen | head -n 1

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> all one has to do is to find their microphone and play repeated noises into it!

[https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys- images/Film/Pix/pictures...](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys- images/Film/Pix/pictures/2009/4/30/1241095118372/John-Cusack-in-Say- Anythi-002.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=81710795e7c24c765ddfbadc3287ec5c)

</comment><comment><USER18> As awesome as the original post is, for me the best part of this was becoming aware of Michael Larson and Press Your Luck. Just a great story.

<comment><USER19> Tragic ending though :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How does one take a biased noise source source (like atmospheric noise with a certain spectral density) and convert it to a stream of uncorrelated random bits? I've never understood this.

<comment><USER21> Simpler problem: how do you take a biased coin and convert it into a perfect source of random bits?

You flip the coin twice. If it comes up differently, you pick the first one. Otherwise you repeat. That will produce 50/50 random bits, no matter what the probability of the coin is.

<comment><USER20> This case is easy because the coin toss is independent. Radio noise is a time- dependent signal.

<comment><USER22> I always had it in my head that the way to do this with a random noise source was to do what is done with radiation. Because radiation is emitted randomly, but time dependent, you can measure the time differences between three (four?) events. If the time between A-B is greater than the time between B-C, the random bit is a one otherwise, it's a zero. I think it works with just three events, but I'm not sure.

You could do the same with audio noise by looking for peaks above a certain value and using a similar time function.

I don't know if that is really how it is done, so I might be misremembering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I bet their email servers get a huge amount of spam. I've made up a fair few addresses for airport WiFi using "[xyz]@random.com".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well fortunately they're .org. But next time, consider example.com/net/org.

<comment><USER15> Or mailinator.com or one of its many aliases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Related: Cloudflare offices in SF has a lava lamp wall called LavaRand lava lamps as a secondary source of randomness for their production servers.

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in- produ...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-production/)

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the- nitty...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/lavarand-in-production-the-nitty-gritty- technical-details)

[https://www.fastcompany.com/90137157/the-hardest-working- off...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90137157/the-hardest-working-office- design-in-america-encrypts-your-data-with-lava-lamps)</comment>


The Mathematics of Origami: Complexity in Creases - <AUTHOR> http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/articles/LXVII1/origami.html

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in origami math, there's a conference this summer: <http://www.origami-usa.org/5osme>

</comment><comment><USER3> Oddly enough I was just watching a TED talk on origami and math and applications thereof by this same author. ( [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html) )</comment>


Forget Anonymous: Evidence Suggests GOP Hacked, Stole 2004 Election - <AUTHOR> http://www.benzinga.com/news/11/07/1789905/forget-anonymous-evidence-suggests-gop-hacked-stole-2004-election#ixzz1Ssy99Dmv

<comment><USER2> No, the evidence does not suggest that. At best, it asserts that it may have been possible. There is no evidence that it happened.

<comment><USER3> Harvey Wasserman, who wrote a book on the stolen 2004 election, explained that the combination of computer hacking, ballot destruction, and the discrepancy between exit polling (which showed a big Kerry win in Ohio) and the "real" vote tabulation, all point to one answer: the Republicans stole the 2004 election.

"The 2004 election was stolen. There is absolutely no doubt about it. A 6.7% shift in exit polls does not happen by chance. And, you know, so finally, we have irrefutable confirmation that what we were saying was true and that every piece of the puzzle in the Ohio 2004 election was flawed," Wasserman said.

<comment><USER4> One guy making a claim and exit poll discrepancies do not equal evidence.

<comment><USER5> [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/19/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/19/VOTERFRAUD.TMP)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Greg Palast has been someone worth looking into when it comes to these issues

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm>

<http://www.gregpalast.com/2004/>

<http://www.gregpalast.com/store/?id=13>

</comment><comment><USER7> Unless that's a time machine in your pocket, the only thing useful to take away from this in 2011 is that we should work towards more open and accountable voting methods in the future.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel like I've just been teleported half a decade back in time.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is just ridiculous.</comment>