Ask HN: What do you use MS Excel for? - <AUTHOR> I've heard that Excel is really powerful. Do you guys have any stories about that? Whether it's personal or for business what do you use it for? <comment><USER2> I use OpenOffice Calc, not Excel, but same basic idea. In my case, I use it for a couple of things.

1\. A file viewer for certain kinds of data (eg, CSV files and the like).

2\. A quick and dirty way to get simple summary stats from some data. Spreadsheets make it pretty easy to point at some data and get things like the mean, median, mode, std deviation, etc.

3\. Quick and dirty plotting of small amounts of data. This use isn't as frequent for me, as I tend to use GNUPlot for most of this kind of stuff, but sometimes if you're already in the spreadsheet program poking at some data, you want a chart with a trend-line or something.

4\. Exploratory models to play with "what if" analysis. Useful for a first pass at coming up with financial projects, evaluating pricing models, etc. The nice thing about a spreadsheet for this is that you write up all the various formulas you care about, and then you can update one cell and quickly see all the updated values. In a sense, spreadsheets are an implementation of a sort of Dataflow programming[1] and this kind of thing can be very handy.

It's good for getting answers to questions like "If I want this company to generate $1MM in revenue this year, and we set the price for our product to _z_ , how many customers do we have to sign up?" and others of that nature. Of course there are plenty of other ways to do this kind of analysis, but spreadsheets are pretty convenient here.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the information. I appreciate it. Your point #4 was very informative. I have learned something new today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I spent the last year building a predictive tennis model using Google Sheets which is basically the same as Excel. I have no technical skills so this was the easiest way to do it, plus it helped me learn SQL. Basically I have around 50,000 tennis matches in one sheet, filter them into another sheet, into around 100 comparative points, then in the end produce a probability for each upcoming match, and bet accordingly. I also use it to produce a little head to head stats visual and automated 200-word match previews.

It all works perfectly but obviously just for one user at a time. So I brought on a dev friend a few months ago and will launch a user facing site next week, as well as a b2b api for match previews / seo rich content.

I'm actually looking for seed funding up to around 25k, if anyone wants to reach out about that, or has other questions.

If you just want to follow some of the tips I'm running a very basic blog site at www.tennisacca.com sharing my most highly recommended picks (rather than listing 100's of games a week and needing a huge bankroll), which win at a ROI of 10%+ on average. It's mostly just for friends until the main site launches next week.

<comment><USER4> Hi! I did something similar a few years ago,instead I used python and machine learning algorithms + custom ELO implementations for tennis matches. Unfortunately it worked too well and I was banned from all the bookmakers.

<comment><USER3> nice, well done! Why not use betfair or Molly? Or also sell tips etc? Do you have a site?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't used Excel for 10 years. I use LibreOffice Calc.

I have used it to chart data extracted from syslog, journald, dmesg. For example trouble-shooting in a Wi-Fi subsystem or boot time optimization work.

And of course all kind of project management type stuff. My job forces me to do that in Google Sheets these days. Action points, bug lists etc. are easily maintained in a spreadsheet. On one side it's a bit of a misuse of the tool, but as long they are short and simple lists with 10s and not 100s of entries it can be the most efficient solution.

The main drawback is that version history is a pain. If something goes wrong (wrong formula, wrong editing) it can be impossible to understand what happened and fix the problem afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER6> Financial modeling. I work as a corporate finance consultant and am a former investment banker, and it's an extremely valuable tool in my opinion. I think people are crazy for trying to run a company without making heavy use of a financial model.

<comment><USER7> actually, I'd love to talk with you about this. I find that writing my own tools gives me what I need but takes me longer. I wrote my own ncurses spreadsheet that lets me add lambdas to be executed each cell (if the cell denies one)

I could use some advice on modeling itself too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a commercial real estate appraiser as a client once. She had a massive excel workbook for the calculations her and her employees used. Originally it was set up so they input everything by hand, used a calculator to figure everything out, input the answers back into excel then copy and paste everything manually into a report template.

I made it so after inputting less than ten variables it automatically calculated everything they needed, generated several charts and graphs, and a fully completed report at the press of a button. I turned it from a two or three day job into a 10 minute one.

Needless to say my client was fairly excited.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use it to log marathon training. There are a lot of fitness tracking apps out there, 2 of which I use, but it's nice seeing:

\- Plan for miles run every day of the week, side-by-side with what I actually ran, notes about pace, weather, and other factors

\- Sum of total weekly mileage done vs. planned, amount left to meet my goals

\- Number of weeks left until race

all in one "dashboard." It's nothing fancy, but the date and sum functions made it really trivial to make a template for this exactly how I wanted it.

</comment><comment><USER10> You're asking in the wrong place. The people who are doing the really crazy stuff with Excel are not going to be HN readers.

<comment><USER11> But we may have heard about it.

Like my father, who runs his entire gas station/towing company/repair shop with Excel macros. lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most excels I use are automatically generated as a build pipeline/Jenkins step (except 2 and 4)

1\. Accumulating results of performance tests over time. Add columns with results for each nightly regression and keeping additional columns like std/worst/avg for last10, last100 etc.

2\. Keeping indexes with locations of our data, and their meta data. So we can quickly find data that matches to specific problems we need to solve.

3\. Specification files for our performance tests. Listing KPIs for specific cases, KPIs per type of machine, how to measure (bst5, avg5, single), tracking what should show up as red/green/orange in our dashboards.

4\. Running FMEA using an excel FMEA template that automatically fills/calculates certain columns based on answers in the other.

5\. All sorts of automatically generated regression overviews for our unit tests over periods of time. Showing trends, violations with specs, etc.

6\. Sheets that are connected to our TFS so we can have overviews and do mass updates on items.

7....

</comment><comment><USER13> Any time I have some repetitive numerical calculation or procedure I am going to want to do multiple times (whether because it's a common task, or I want to try many different inputs in a row), I quickly throw an Excel sheet together for it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looking for biz ideas? :)

In one place where I worked, someone had programmed financial models in Excel. It used to run for a long time, crash often etc. But it was good enough for his team and they used it until I left. That one single Excel file was worth a lot

</comment><comment><USER15> This is going to be a boring answer, but I use it to fill in data for sql inserts. Its also nice for repetitive backend server commands. Since excel places a carriage return after each row, copy and paste into terminal is nice.

</comment><comment><USER16> My previous company uses a set of Excel files to create construction tenders. They included a lot of formulas and vba to calculate quantities, costs, labor hours, etc. I had to set up dedicated backup jobs for those templates.

<comment><USER17> Did you work specifically for a construction GC as a project manager or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some one made a 3d engine using excel: [https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CBel/20180208/308549/3D_engi...](https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CBel/20180208/308549/3D_engine_entirely_made_of_MS_Excel_formulae__Enjoy_this_Doomxls_file_.php)

Here is someone doing paintings in excel: [https://pasokonga.com/](https://pasokonga.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Not me personally, but the amount of complex workflow that I've seen relying on tortured Excel and VBA is mind-boggling.

In the hands of someone who knows how to use it, Excel is incredibly powerful. Though at some point it crosses the threshold of "why don't you just get a junior developer to code this?". And the answer is always "we are technologically dinosaurs, and we think that any devolopment project costs at least $200k"

<comment><USER20> In some very large enterprises, that's not far off the mark unfortunately.

Large corporate governance is at best, a shitshow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder whether anyone with some proficiency in Python will have an easier time doing things in Jupyter (with Pandas, etc.), than a spreadsheet.

I'm curious to hear about things which are easy to do in Excel, but hard in the Jupyter workflow.

</comment><comment> cbm-vic-20 Maximizing profit for my EVE Online industrial and trading corporation.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use it to do super quick data analysis sometimes, and also I made a few spreadsheets to help my wife to manage our personal finance.

<comment><USER23> Did the same for a while, usually to have a short-term period, then I tried gnucash (no undo) and hledger which nowadays has some features for planning ahead. But still, I decided to write my own webapp for my personal finances and long-term budgeting.

If your excel files have anything for forward planning and you want to share those files, I'd be interested.

<comment><USER22> > If your excel files have anything for forward planning and you want to share > those files, I'd be interested.

Unfortunately there was no planning involved, one spreadsheet was just for her to put stuff she bought and the spreadsheet would calculate how much she spent in the month/week. Another one was for her to calculate how much the Saturday children center she is running would earn per month.

Since you made a webapp for personal finances, let me mention you the one a friend made: [https://spendbook.net/main](https://spendbook.net/main) it doesn't do planning but I think he'll still be happy to get some feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Plots. Pulling performance numbers from log files, simple statistics, curve fitting and moving averages.

Even from JSON or XML.

<comment><USER25> Have you tried using Mathematica instead? Mathematica has instant visualization and makes it very easy to import json/xml/csv.

The other advantage is that you have a full language (Wolfram Language) in the event you want to do further evaluation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Less and less anymore. I tried to make a graph in excel with like 5k? data points and it froze every time.

</comment><comment><USER27> As a marketer, it's a pretty vital tool for understanding detailed attribution data.

</comment><comment><USER28> Personal finance!</comment>


Dieting vs. Exercise for Weight Loss  - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/dieting-vs-exercise-for-weight-loss

<comment><USER2> Interesting fact. I will show this to my mom.</comment>


John Carmack on hacking Doom and Quake (.plan file from 1998) - <AUTHOR> http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/johnc_plan_1998.html#d19980204 <comment><USER2> He mentions going away to stay at a hotel for a week doing research (only leaving to get diet coke). That sounds pretty cool, does anyone have more information about that?

I remember reading a similar thing about Bill Gates checking into a hotel and disconnecting the phone for a couple of days to finish MS DOS before the IBM deadline or something like that. Are hotels the dirty little secret to hacker greatness?

Also, what was the 'trinity' game he was working on at that time? I have never heard of it.

<comment><USER3> Steve Yegge, too:

"I've often idly wondered what the ideal innovation environment is. I know it's not at home -- staying up all night just to get some free time for innovation doesn't scale well when you have a family and a day job. Home has its share of distractions. And I know it's not in the office, at least not the space we're in today.

Every time I let my thoughts wander on this subject, the same vision comes to mind. I'm sitting in a comfortable armchair, in a large room or atrium that's lit primarily by daylight coming through large windows. There are nice green plants everywhere, including a large fern-ish looking tree (apologies; botany has never been my strong subject) next to me. There are people coming and going nearby, but their noise is white noise, and it's not terribly distracting. I've been in this place a hundred times, in a hundred different locations.

It's a hotel lobby."

<http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/innovation-101>

<comment><USER4> Funny. The primary things that come to my mind when I think of hotel lobbies are: drafts, uncomfortable laptop wrangling, competition for power outlets, and a vague wish that the maid service would just hurry up already so I could get back into my room.

To me, hotels are a form of hell. The more expensive the room is, the more expensive everything else is, and in particular the less likely that wifi is free. A moment that sticks out: I recall a 400 GBP (800+ USD equivalent at the time) laundry bill - bank paid, not out of pocket, but it was still an eyebrow-raiser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This "I wind up catagorizing periods of my life by how rich my learning experiences were at the time." is the true definition of a hacker.

</comment><comment><USER6> I often lament the fact that the .plan format isn't credited more often as the original blogging format. Finger and .plan was very common before 2000, especially in the game industry and lots of hackers build their own aggregators for it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Man. One moment he is donating an old Unix box to a local hacker or rambling about obscure details of contemporary graphics cards, the next he is comparing his F50 to his custom built TVR.

Now I know where the term 'rock star programmer' came from.

<comment><USER7> Not TVR, TR = Testarossa

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I enjoyed the drag strip stories more than any of it...</comment>


Bebo strategically inept by cloning facebook platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2007/12/how-to-crash-and-burn-in-edgeconomy.cfm Bebo is to get Friendstered? <comment><AUTHOR> Is this a fair analysis? I agree that the marginal value of applications on social network sites is close to zero, but many seem to disagree.</comment>


London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/networking/3244936/london-stock-exchange-smashes-world-record-trade-speed-with-linux/?cmpid=sbycombinatorrplant <comment><USER2> Is this the same system that replaced the failed Microsoft platform? [http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_aban...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform)

Microsoft had run huge ads on how LSE was using .NET and Windows in critical financial applications. Within a year LSE had suffered crashes in the same critical areas.

<comment><USER3> I believe so, yes.

In fairness, though, it may not have been MS' fault - crappy programming is crappy, no matter the underlying OS. And Linux fanboys should wait to see if the new system has roll-out issues...

<comment><USER4> If I remember correctly, the LSE brought in Microsoft themselves to fix the problems. And Microsoft couldn't.

<comment><USER5> Source?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> World record? Not quite. Let's see full details on the numbers. NASDAQ publishes their latency numbers weekly, including average, 99th percentile, and 99.9th percentile: <http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=inet>. Their average latency on order entry is 98 microseconds and their average latency on market data is 92 microseconds. Perhaps by "world record" they mean "european record".

<comment><USER7> True but this is like the "World Series" for stock trading latency. Who really plays baseball other than the US and small group of other countries like Cuba ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Normally I'd thoroughly welcome any news of large Linux-based systems replacing slower MS-based ones, but in this case...

... these days I can't help thinking "is faster _really_ a good idea?"

<comment><USER9> My first thought after reading the title was: "Oh great, now they can trade faster than they can think". And then…

<comment><USER10> > now they can trade faster than they can think

They already do that. Now they are able to trade faster than their machines can think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I were a critical systems operator like say, a stock exchange, I would have to have my head examined by a team of head examiners for even considering Windows as an acceptable OS platform.

Honestly, is the reason Microsoft can even get consideration for these projects because there are so many tech executives at major corporations who used to be Microsofties?

<comment><USER12> Have you experience with Windows Server in a properly set up production environment? I know of at least one high-performance shop that has used Windows servers (we are not talking onesies or twosies here--more than hundreds) and has higher performance requirements than exchanges.

<comment><USER13> What industry has higher performance requirements than exchanges?

<comment><USER14> The only ones I can think of are space, military, and maybe medical robotics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's fascinating that these latencies are an order of magnitude faster than most 'web services'. Can anyone provide more insight into what is specifically involved in executing a single trade? Are they just enqueueing a trade message in this latency or actually executing the trade? Are they including network latency in these numbers? Also, does anyone have any insights into the hardware and customizations?

<comment><USER16> I'm a software developer at an exchange in the US. The LSE has not released details of how it is measuring "latency", but FWIW, we measure latency as the time it takes to submit an order and receive an order acknowledgment or fill, with both the sending and receiving outside our firewall. The two biggest SW components involved are the FIX handler (the component used to process orders; FIX is an industry standard protocol) and the matching engine (the component used to match buy and sell orders). I could of course spend hours talking about our hardware and software customizations, but it's a very competitive industry. Our software is C++ running on Linux, and that's about as much detail as I'm willing to go into.

<comment><USER17> "we measure latency as the time it takes to submit an order and receive an order acknowledgment or fill, with both the sending and receiving outside our firewall." This isn't normally the metric exchanges are referring to when they say 'latency'. They mean the internal processing time, within their network, to process, fill and generate a response to an incoming order. Anything else depends on the individual clients connection, some may be co-located, some may not etc etc... exactly as lrm242 describes.

<comment><USER16> I thought what lrm242 said and what I said were pretty much the same thing. But there is no standard definition of 'latency', so it's hard to say what "they mean" unless they publish a definition on their website. But I know of at least three major exchanges (one of which I work for) that consider the starting and endpoints for latency measurements to be outside the firewall. As for what Turquoise means, I'm not sure but would love to see their definition to know if their numbers are comparable. Also would like to know if these measurements were made under load because that can also make a significant difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This information is relatively useless to me. Was the old system slower because of the OS, .NET, or some other factor(s)?

<comment><USER19> I believe it was the OS from memory. This was around the time Accenture lead development wasn't working out a few years ago.

<comment><USER20> I would be really surprised if it was the fault of the OS. I mean, Windows can be really fast, in the right hands, especially since they've introduced HTTP.SYS (parts of the HTTP server now run in kernel level). However, .NET being a garbage-collected, managed and JITted environemnt, it is maybe not the best tool for achieving these kind of response times reliably. Any serious and competent .NET developer would admit that.

In general, I would blame the incompetence of Accenture for the failure: bad decisions, bad architecture, bad management, using the wrong tools, crappy code.

<comment><USER10> > especially since they've introduced HTTP.SYS (parts of the HTTP server now > run in kernel level).

Isn't it something Red Hat did a long time ago that was widely regarded as a Very Bad Idea?

And why would you use HTTP in this scenario anyway?

<comment><USER20> I don't know why it didn't work out for Red Hat but it works quite well on Windows. And honestly I don't know whether they use(d) HTTP or not, but given that HTTP is dead simple and as lightweight as a protocol could get, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to use it for exchanging messages in this scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm sure they will notice much more benefits than just improved trading times.

For example: improved infraestructure management, overall performance increase, fast patches for security bugs, and a long etcetera.

Of course, as JoachimSchipper says, if the applications on top of the OS ar crap, a different OS won't solve the problem, but to have a good underlying OS is a good start.

<comment><USER17> And, due the the lower latency, they become a more attractive source of liquidity generating more incoming orders and more revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This makes me wonder how, in mission critical and real time systems like LSE, they maintain a balance between being ACID and fast. Does any of these transactions ever touch the disk ? If not, how do they handle machine failures ?

<comment><USER23> No, the core of a stock exchange resides entirely in RAM. Everything is reset once a day (overnight for stocks, immediately after regular hours for futures), and brokerages are responsible for resubmitting long-lived "good 'til cancelled" orders each day before the session begins.

Despite being RAM bound it's easy to parallelize because each stock is its own isolated exchange, so they can be distributed across hardware in proportion to the average volume in each stock. In other words, it's localized but embarrassingly parallel.

The only traditional databases are for reporting purposes e.g. who traded with whom and are append-only as far as the core exchange code is concerned. The reporting database is coupled through the same firehose feed that you can get as an exchange member, albeit with more redundancy. There are also access control systems that only come into play when you first open a session, and lots of other moving parts each with their own task. For example, if you lose your connection to the exchange you can ask a certain (non-core) server to replay all the events that happened from a given point in time in order to catch up. These, too, would be listening to the main event stream and spooling to disk, but the central exchange processes are RAM-only.

How do they handle machine failures? That's harder to speculate on from the outside, but if I were them I'd be running the same exchange in parallel on 2-3 machines. I don't know how it could be done without serializing the incoming order flow to make sure that each machine sees the same order of events, but it's not impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Encouraging ever faster trading times might be unwise, leading to instability and "hunting". There needs to be some damping in the system to guard against large uncontrolled fluctuations.

<comment><USER25> If damping is profitable, someone will do it.

<comment><USER24> Well it's a complicated system. Whilst individual traders might benefit from faster trading if you consider the health of the system as a whole, which favours steady predictable controlled growth, faster trading may introduce instabilities which result in reduced profitability.

<comment><USER25> For a different perspective, there was a huge opportunity to make a killing with damping during the recent flash-crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They meant GNU/Linux of course.

</comment><comment><USER27> They replaced one software package (a custom solution by Accenture) with another (a company they bought, as an aside, for a solution that they now sell: Ergo, take their claims with a grain of salt).

Drawing assumptions about underlying systems is speculative and somewhat ignorant.

<comment><USER28> Of note is that it cost less to acquire MilleniumIT then it did to run their Accenture provided solution for 1 year.</comment></comment>


You might be seeing this on a 15-second delay: study - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/you-might-be-seeing-this-on-a-15second-delay-study-20140406-zqrfp.html

<comment><USER2> Pertinent to eye-witness testimony. It entirely depends upon the sequence of impressions.</comment>


Pokémon Go proves investors were clueless about augmented reality - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/12/pokemon-go-proves-investors-were-clueless-about-augmented-reality/ <comment><USER2> I remember a friend of mine talking about a horror game working on the same principle as Pokémon Go, three or four years ago. Unfortunately, he's not technical and lacks resources, so it never went anywhere. But the idea is perfectly sound.

Focusing on VR displays completely missed the point in the industry. It can be done with just GPS and a camera phone. VR displays actually get in the way, by making it hard to perceive your non-VR surroundings.</comment>


FBI claims infosec bloke made plane FLY SIDEWAYS - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/17/fbi_claims_infosec_bod_took_control_of_united_airlines_plane_midflight/ <comment><AUTHOR> Tweet from the researcher [https://twitter.com/sidragon1/status/599956499675287552](https://twitter.com/sidragon1/status/599956499675287552)

</comment><comment><USER2> There are other sources of the same story - here are some.

This one has significant discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558615)

        Hacker told F.B.I. he made plane fly sideways
        (aptn.ca)

This one also has some discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554841)

        Feds Say That Banned Researcher Commandeered a Plane
        (wired.com)

Other submissions, there may be more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9560579](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9560579)

        Computer expert hacked into plane and made it fly sideways, according to FBI
        (independent.co.uk)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9556690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9556690)

        Researcher may have adjusted airplane controls from in-flight entertainment-FBI
        (theverge.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558222)

        Security researcher claimed to hack, control plane in flight
        (engadget.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9560248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9560248)

        Hacker 'made plane climb' after taking control through in-flight system
        (telegraph.co.uk)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557418)

        Security researcher hacks plane mid-flight
        (arstechnica.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557796)

        FBI: researcher hacked plane in-flight, causing it to "climb"
        (securityaffairs.co)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555669)

        Hacker told FBI he made plane fly sideways after cracking entertainment system
        (aptn.ca)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9558411)

        Researcher hacks flight system of plane, making it climb
        (dailymail.co.uk)</comment>


Steve Wozniak sues Google over YouTube Bitcoin scam - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/steve-wozniak-sues-google-over-youtube-bitcoin-scam/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty much Youtube's modus operandi at this point...

Ignore the problem that's making us money through ad revenue by not having support staff to address these issues and instead rely on algorithms and empty platitudes to calm anybody who's got a genuine issue with the platform.

"Oh, hold on, we're finally getting sued for our (in)actions? Well we're sorry! It must be the algorithm that's not detecting these scam videos! _Sorry!_" (until the next time)

</comment><comment><USER3> their 'automation' of support, from my experience, is actually basic idiocy -not a plot. it's actual people thinking they just need to make their 'ai' better. not understanding that a huge switch statement is not an ai. it's hipster trash writing code.

i ordered a pixel2xl for over $1k. week later, days after promised arrival, status unknown on fedex tracking#. called fedex -they have no idea where the package is. no way to reach google on their webpage where i bought the phone. after a couple of days, i started a chat with play store support, asked them about the phone. they had no idea, i said refund, now. also, order is cancelled -i refuse delivery if you find the lost shipment. 'ok.'

a week later the phone shows up. i have my refund. i said come to my door, pick up the package. amazon can do it with returns, and mail services offer this. they said 'no -you must bring it to a fedex office and mail it back, or we'll charge you again'

blocked google from my amex, flashed a custom rom, typing this on my free phone now, years later. super fast, only needs charging once a week.

and in my work, i sell solutions that often do failover to cloud. but i don't even offer google cloud to customers. because i care about customers, and google will randomly cause them issues. google has lost literally tens of millions in business. by causing me to dig and find out how shitty and dangerous dealing with them is, which was caused by me getting a free phone, and them threatening to close all my google accounts, and fraudulently charge my card.

google is a bully. an incompetent one. while they make money, they are also missing out on a lot of money, by sheer stupidity. myspace was big too. and yahoo was big too. big because of dumb masses -and dumb masses are driven by emotion and lack of logic. super volatile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would not have blocked the charges; I would say that the FTC has ruled that items you did not order are yours to keep. As you should never have received the item, it is perhaps negligent in the part of the delivery company not to halt or recall the delivery, but that may not be available on all shipping options, and exercising this option may incur a fee to the shipper. As you were in possession of the device, I think that Google would be within rights to attempt to charge you in this instance, all the same. And yet I also understand your stance. I just don't understand your justification for keeping the phone.

Keeping it, I get that. Who doesn't want a free phone? I knew someone who had a box show up at their desk at work with a refurb phone inside. It was seemingly new and yet had a SIM card inside. So I showed them how to replace the SIM, and reflashed it. It's theirs, and the responsible thing to do for _any, every_ phone that's new to you, is to replace media and/or wipe media, reflash firmwares, and reinstall the OS. Just good data hygiene for the previous owner and for the new one. As a worker bound by HIPAA etc for certain sites and jobs, it's just a habit, and hopefully soon an automated process, and then a startup maybe? I probably do it 10+ times a _day_. But I digress.

 _Free phones are real?_ I've seen it.

If you get another free phone let me have your old one lol

<comment><USER3> i kept the phone because they refused to pay $8 to the mailing service to pick it up at my door. when shit shows up randomly at your door, you do not have the obligation to spend an hour of you time taking a trip to the ups location, standing in line, mailing it, then going back home. now if like with amazon they come to my house to pick it up -it's theirs. but they thought they could force people to mail it. they lost.

my justification is: a random person cannot mail me crap and expect me to spend free time and effort to mail it back. they're free to pay ups to do that, or get it themselves. at my door. my justification is, entitled people in a high horse can do whatever they want, but they have zero power over me to get me to do something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This must be in the runnings for this years "headlines that wouldn't make sense _x_ years ago" prize. I feel like my head is spinning with all the different actors just on the internet, let alone IRL, who are able to make headlines. What will seem strange and new to us in the future, after the shine wears off cryptocurrencies? Will that day ever come? I feel that interest in crypto is part journalistic fad, part world-changing event. Which is which depends on who you are, what you need it for, where you are in the world, if you can mine it yourself or must acquire it via the market or other means, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google, rise to the challenge and defend this court case using your chat bots please. Start with your YouTube spokesdroid to test the water.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can I subscribe to your newsletter? How about Twitter?</comment></comment>


Why YouTube search results are so low-quality? isnt Goolge anymore good at that? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the%20simpsons%20crime%20scene

<comment><USER2> These are not low-quality results. The trial of O.J. Simpson was the most publicized murder trial of the 20th century. When you search for "the simpsons crime scene," you should not be surprised to get videos related to the scene of the crime for which O.J. Simpson stood trial.

I'd go even further and say that "The Simpsons" has been on the air for over 25 years, and that if the O.J. Simpson trial had never happened, "the simpsons crime scene" would still have been simply not a good enough query to find what you wanted.</comment>


Hypothesis testing is pointless - <AUTHOR> You have a procedure. It has a state space of inputs and corresponding side effects of a state space of outputs. Wouldn't it be great to test a wider state space of inputs using an automated method? Pick your tool, Haskell has Quickcheck, Python has Hypothesis and Rust has Proptest.
These tools are good at generating a state space of inputs. Okay, but a test is being able to assert the output or side effects. Can they do that? No.
Can we use some function to take the input they do generate and produce an expected output that can be asserted? Yes, copy and paste the procedure you are testing and make sure the output matc... oh wait. Yeah, completely pointless.
Is the only point with these tools is to test if some code crashes if you give it some bad input? <comment><USER2> With these tools you don't test that the output matches you test that the output has certain properties and it is called property-based testing. This should help [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/property-based- testi...](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/property-based-testing-2/)</comment>


Shit My Reviewers Say - <AUTHOR> http://shitmyreviewerssay.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> There is also, of course, the classic resubmission letter:

[http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Sample.shtml](http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Sample.shtml)

> Enclosed is our latest version of Ms #85-02-22-RRRRR, that is, the re-re-re- > revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the > entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the goddamn running > head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even you and your > bloodthirsty reviewers

...

> We hope that you will be pleased with this revision and will finally > recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then > you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. > You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt > of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to > thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process and to > express our appreciation of your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would > be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next > manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to your journal.

<comment><USER3> That is pure gold!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who like to read these, be sure to read the hilarious "We are sorry to inform you" by Simone Santini [0]. It's quite hilarious, and illustrates most common tropes of bad reviewers.

[0] [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/misc/reject.pdf](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/misc/reject.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Which are sadly fictional.

I suspect the tumblr blog may be as well, though I don't know the language in biology reviews.

<comment><USER4> >Which are sadly fictional.

For context, these are reviews lampooning the style of modern horrible reviews, applied to some landmark TCS papers.

So I'd say these reviews being authentic would be very sad.

>I suspect the tumblr blog may be as well, though I don't know the language in biology reviews.

I hope sending some of the most hateful ones would get the reviewer a good scolding, not a good laugh.

<comment><USER6> They are sadly NOT fictional. We created the blog so people could share their stories and to encourage people to be more thoughtful in their reviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't see any mentions of the most common insidious review: "Cite my unrelated paper or you're not getting published"

<comment><USER8> "The authors seem to have missed the seminal work by Yourstruly et al. (2015)..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "It reads like papers often do when they are written in LaTeX. Reject."

Would be hilarious if it weren't so true.

I had a student once who was 'encouraged to resubmit after having the manuscript checked for language by a native speaker'. Except that he was British and just happened to be working at a Spanish university for a local project. LOL. He's a very clear writer too, certainly top 10% in clarity of scientific writing. It just shows that it's a crap shoot to get your papers accepted.

<comment><USER10> I'm confused. What's wrong with LaTeX?

<comment><USER11> The group of people who use LaTeX and the group of people who are eloquent writers rarely overlap.

<comment><USER9> I held off commenting further because I couldn't capture the nuance I was trying for, but your comment nails it beautifully :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've never seen reviews this ugly in my engineering field, nor written one. Although I've certainly felt tempted to tell people that their work "fills a valuable hole in the literature," I try to keep it constructive. For all that, I've certainly seen reviews that were needlessly pedantic or refused to accept some entirely reasonable premises. Not to mention the timeless classic, "Your review of the literature has overlooked Jones and Smith, 2008, Smith, 2010, and Jones, Smith, Ramakrishnan and Zhang, 2014. Please incorporate citations to these relevant studies in your revision." Gee. Thanks, Professor Smith.

</comment><comment><USER13> The saddest part is that this kind of 'feedback' isn't out of the ordinary, but is actually pretty common. I've found in my own reviewer feedback a striking tendency towards pedanticism that would put Internet grammar nazis to shame, not to mention completely asinine comments that give no clue as to any objections the reviewer had ("You aimed for the bare minimum, and missed!").

This is, to me, just one example of the perverse incentives in academia. You are constantly pushed to publish, yet the gatekeepers who ultimately decide whether your research sees the light of day rarely give it more than a cursory glance, and many have no interest in giving helpful feedback to actually, you know, make the work better.

<comment><USER14> Bikeshedding isn't just for programmers. We just have a jargon term for it.

(And remember, "bikeshedding" isn't just "arguing forever": [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding) It's about arguing about the things that are easy to understand, to the exclusion of the probably-more-important, but more difficult, issues.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have reviewed more CS papers than I want to remember, and 80% of them are abysmal in quality. Most of them are papers that undergrads wrote for a class, that they then hope to publish on the off chance that it will be accepted. "Off chance" is the important part of that phrase.

Obviously some of the reviewer comments are out of line or show incompetence, but others are simply reflecting the effort that the authors put into the paper. It really is that bad at times!

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it is rather unfair to point your finger against a reviewer's comment without having a look at the paper too. I've come across papers for which some of these comments would be even too kind.

This blog is funnier if you're able to mentally classify the posts in four bins:

\- Clearly clueless reviewer (e.g. "The reported mean of 7.7 is misleading because it appears that close to half of your participants are scoring below that mean")

\- Reviewer just trying to keep the tone light in a funny way (e.g. "Unless the authors performed some clever pagan ritual before euthanizing the animals I would use 'killed' (or 'euthanized') instead of 'sacrificed").

\- Merciless and sarcastic destruction of what was very likely just garbage anyway (e.g. "This looks like a very early draft").

\- Just a butthurt author's reaction (e.g. " I have read this paper several times through, and I have nothing to say in its defense.").

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The most shocking one:

 _There is a lot of terminology flung around here that is insufficiently explained. What exactly is meant, for example, by "false negative" and "false positive" rates? "median, first quartile, and third quartile"?_

<comment><USER18> I really hope that the reviewer was referring to the context that the terms were being used in. There are some times when exactly what events constitute a false negative or false positive may be somewhat unclear.

I hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there any reason to believe any of those entries appeared in an actual review?

<comment><USER20> Yes, [http://shitmyreviewerssay.tumblr.com/post/138673489984/no- ne...](http://shitmyreviewerssay.tumblr.com/post/138673489984/no-new-insights- no-important-question-addressed#notes) provides a source. It's non-public- access, like entirely too much of science, but I can confirm that my alma mater's subscription gives me access to an article that has the quote in question, and starts like this:

 _Our referees, the Editorial Board Members and ad hoc reviewers, are busy, serious individuals who give selflessly of their precious time to improve manuscripts submitted to Environmental Microbiology. But, once in a while, their humour (or admiration) gets the better of them. Here are some quotes from reviews made over the past year, just in time for the Season of Goodwill and Merriment._

 _• And here we go with the first 2009 comment: happy new environmental year dear editor! Regarding the manuscript: it is OK, I hope the flu is not infecting my review brain._

 _• WOW! You did 'read it with interest' in SEVEN MINUTES??!! [Ed.: this is an author contribution in response to an editorial decision (rejection) made within 7 min of submission]_

[...]

 _• The writing style is flowery and has an air of Oscar Wilde about it._

and so forth.

<comment><USER21> [https://sci-hub.io/10.1111/j.1462-2920.2009.02120.x](https://sci- hub.io/10.1111/j.1462-2920.2009.02120.x)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My favorite one was:

"You aimed for the bare minimum, and missed!"

<comment><USER23> Mine was:

"Why do you have so many tables? Did you go to Ikea?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My thesis advisor (when speaking of a fellow department member):

 _I use people in our lab to proofread and polish our manuscripts. He uses the peer-review process._

</comment><comment><USER25> Is this more common in the social sciences? I've never had a reviewer quote nearly as bad as these (computational biology).

There are plenty of bad / lazy reviewers, but I would think the editor should be filtering stuff like this if they want to keep the journal reputable. Or maybe they've written off these article at the outset?

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe I shouldn't admit it but I read quite a few of them thinking these were reviews of _one_ of his papers. I couldn't believe he was showing these. I really wanted to read that paper. The thing that threw me off was the "My Reviewers Said".

</comment><comment><USER27> I somehow had assumed this was about Apple App store reviewers. At least ours always had hilarious comments and requirements, so maybe it's not too late to hope for some place to share these stories :)

</comment><comment><USER28> "I found the use of the evolutionary theory problematic. This is a highly contested theory and the authors did not strongly justify their decision to use it, nor attend to some of the major flaws of the theory."

Oh FFS

But nothing outside what's "common" in academia (and I mean the other reviews as well)

<comment><USER29> I sometimes can't tell if people are joking or stupid. The following quote, for example, _has_ to be a joke:

 _" The reported mean of 7.7 is misleading because it appears that close to half of your participants are scoring below that mean"_

<comment><USER30> I dont get why this is a joke. My guess is the paper probably reported the mean as having some significance in the context of how participants scored, and the professor is pointing out that this is misleading. In other words, they should have not reported the mean but the median.

<comment><USER31> If "close to half" scored below the mean, then the mean and median are probably very close together.

I think the charitable interpretation would be that some conclusion in the paper hinges on the value of the mean, but that conclusion is not valid when you consider that values are more widely distributed, and the reviewer just stated it poorly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Science's dirty laundry. Aired.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's effort to disrupt philanthropy has a race problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/16/chan-zuckerberg-initiative-black-employees/ <comment><USER2> They in-fact do not. But apparently the problem they do have is employees and beggars who feel that they are entitled to dictate how Chan/Zuckerberg's spend their money.

I dislike Mark Zuckerberg and frankly hate Facebook, but even more than that I dislike people who can't resist looking a gift horse in the mouth and then bitching about not being given their rightful due.

I am not sure where people got the notion that they were entitled to place some sort of demands on how Chan/Zuckerberg gave away their money. This is basically the same thing as inappropriately scrutinizing and then critiquing the purchases of poor people and going on to complain they are doing it wrong when they buy a flat screen TV.</comment>


Show HN: Wd, CLI tool for WebDriver - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mbrock/wd <comment><AUTHOR> This is my Sunday hack for this weekend.

I wanted to be able to script some web stuff from the comfort of my shell, and I realized the WebDriver API is actually really simple and convenient.

I'm happy about not having any dependencies except bash, perl, and curl.

Some features are still missing, and the error output can be pretty ugly.</comment>


Rollup.js: A next-generation JavaScript module bundler - <AUTHOR> http://rollupjs.org <comment><USER2> They keep a lot of things in query params:

        http://rollupjs.org/#{"options":
        {"format":"es6","moduleName":"myBundle","globals":{}},"modules":
        [{"name":"main.js","code":"import { cube } from './maths.js';\nconsole.log(
        cube( 5 ) ); // 125"},{"name":"maths.js","code":"// This function isn't used
        anywhere, so\n// Rollup excludes it from the bundle...\nexport function square (
        x ) {\n\treturn x * x;\n}\n\n// This function gets included\nexport function
        cube ( x ) {\n\t// rewrite this as `square( x ) * x`\n\t// and see what
        happens!\n\treturn x * x * x;\n}"}]}

</comment><comment><USER3> Javascript seems to be its own wild west these days.

There's multiple runtimes available so people use it everywhere.

The language is reasonably flexible and there's no enforced conventions, so every library-writer creates their own.

There's no real standard library, so everyone and their grandmother is implementing their own.

There's no real module-system, so everyone is inventing their own.

There's no standard build-system so everyone is creating their own.

The result is a wonderful mess of lots things not really going too well together. Does this remind us of something we have disregarded earlier for exactly the same reasons?

Oh _yes_ it does! Hey, LISP. It seems we're still secretly in love with you :)

<comment><USER4> I've been dealing with this mess for the last little while and it reminds me of c++: you need to create your own workflow more than with other languages like python.

<comment><USER5> Being a JS dev myself, I really hate how they just pile tool after tool just because they can. Kinda defeats the original design of JS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love it. It works great. Use it with [https://github.com/rollup/rollup- babel](https://github.com/rollup/rollup-babel) for a complete es6 build.

<comment><USER7> In all honesty, the fact that babel isn't just a "rollup plugin" of sorts, and requires all kinds of custom code and a custom command line tool, makes me a bit wary of rollup.

This is JavaScript land, things move too fast to not have modularity. Babel is going to be horribly outdated and replaced by some other next big thing tomorrow. Or maybe I want to write part of my codebase in PureScript instead. Will I need a "rollupbabelpurescript" concoction?

Or am I completely missing the point here?

<comment><USER6> Well they are actually separate modules, and if you look at rollup-babel you'll see the main reason it exists is to speed up builds.

> Using Rollup then using Babel slows down development, because Babel is much > quicker dealing with small files than large bundles. But using Babel then > Rollup often means you include helpers (e.g. classCallCheck) multiple times.

They are two separate modules that you can plug into whatever build tool you want separately.

But even if they weren't modular, is it that big of a deal? In my opinion what build tools I use means a lot less than where I'm investing my time in what I learn, and all of these JS tools are building to the ES6 standard.

The idea being, that hopefully someday in the http2 + es6 future we won't need all these build tools, but that shouldn't stop us from building experience on them now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not add a only Tree-Shaking Plugin to Webpack?

Or is there any other breaking feature why a complete new builder is necessary?

<comment><USER9> Probably for similar reasons webpack didn't add plugins to browserify.

<comment><USER10> but what were those reasons??

Actually you can go down this rabbithole endlessly, asking each library in turn when they were invented rather than improving the one before...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the meaning of the interactive demo on that page? The project description says Rollup bundles modules together into a single file but the demo rather seems to show conversion between the ES2015 module format and other module formats.

<comment><USER5> The point of the tool is to statically analyze your code and only include what the code actually needs. It doesn't mindlessly concatenate and minify everything like what everything else does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Webpack's commons plugin is still a killer feature. Tree-shaking is nice though.</comment>


Ask HN: Who needs support from a stranger with a project? - <AUTHOR> Are you working on a project and need support with coding, design, documentation, etc.
Please describe what you want the stranger will bring to the project, their role, skills required, and possible a brief description of task (if you don't want to give much away).
A stranger could be a programmer, designer, student looking for hands-on experience, etc. <comment><USER2> I'm one of the maintainers for the ZynAddSubFX open source musical synthesizer. It's a mixed codebase with a C++ core, some low level C routines, and a mostly Ruby based interface. I'm trying to broaden the contributor base at the moment.

There's plenty of roles which could use an extra hand ranging from community management, testing, documentation, development, and advanced DSP improvements. Each role would use a different set of skills, but it's an open source collaboration, so don't be afraid to try something you're unfamiliar with and want to learn about (it was a great learning experience back when I was a student).

If any of this sounds interesting then please see [http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net/contribute.html](http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net/contribute.html) for more information regarding specific roles.

For anyone casually looking through this thread, any feedback on the general contributing page? I'm trying to find the right balance between presenting something that can be skimmed, but still has the deeper information to inform someone interested in each role and I'm unsure if it's settled with the right tradeoff.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been working on a simple Activity Reporting tool for a few months now and I could use... all sorts of help.

Firstly, I've only been a "professional" developer for a few years. I've been a hacker most of my life, but bad habits of being self taught and never having my code reviewed means that I'm not confident enough to open source. Just having someone look at what I'm doing and give pointers would be HUGE. Finding someone who is willing to help write the code would be amazing... but this is a free service which means there's no money. It's purely a passion project.

I'm not a marketing guy, so writing good copy for the site has been a struggle... which makes finding early adopters difficult. I have a hard time staying motivated without immediate need... so having users is vital to the success of the project.

Honestly, there is just so much I need, having someone to chat with regularly about the project would be super appreciated.

[https://pepahana.com](https://pepahana.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, I have been working on a programming language. if you are interested in it you can help me out. I am using rust. the main point of the project is to learn rust and learn language design. as of now, it's like burning candle from 2 ends. rust is not an easy pick even if you know 5+ languages and have 7years of exp.

Your role will be mostly doing research. how other languages do certain things. at some point, we/you can implement it into fiber (project name).

</comment><comment><USER5> Somebody posted the UN online volunteering here other day [https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en](https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en)</comment>


Historiated Initials from Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica - <AUTHOR> http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbein-alf-vesalius.htm <comment><USER2> What a wonderful collection of illustrations! It's always a treasure to see a site that has a niche, focused subject matter. There's an obvious sort of whimsy and passion in how the site itself is implemented.

From the custom skeletal hand mouse cursor, to the crossbones used as borders for some images [0], to the mouseovers on some of the initials where the letter is photoshopped out to show the background [1], to the fact that the site still has a guestbook [2]... there's a great character to the site that makes it enjoyable to interact with. Much more engaging than the overpolished style of so much online nowadays.

I also thought it was interesting to note the practice of almost-copies of certain woodcut illustrations over the centuries [0]. In our era of trivial lossless copying of digital data, it's easy to forget how much had to be done by hand in the past.

[0] [http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbein26.htm](http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbein26.htm) [1] [http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbeina.htm](http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbeina.htm) [2] [http://www.dodedans.com/Ebook01.php](http://www.dodedans.com/Ebook01.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I really miss the personalized style of a lot of the niche sites of the early internet. I find that history-related websites often maintain that style, for instance the Alchemy Website. [1]

By the way, I looked for awhile to try to figure out what year the page is from, because I very much doubt it's from 2018 or even from the 2010s necessarily. First guestbook entries are from 2001. (I miss guestbooks!)

[1] [http://www.alchemywebsite.com](http://www.alchemywebsite.com)</comment></comment>


Paying Your Taxes in Bitcoin? Bill Would Make It Easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2015/03/06/paying-your-taxes-in-bitcoin-bill-would-make-it-easy/

<comment><USER2> Seems like the states/country should accept gold bars or bullion much more readily than bitcoin.

Of course, the ability to pay via credit card is only because tax processors add that ability, I see no reason why TurboTax couldn't partner with BitPay if they really wanted to.</comment>


Formatting Dates with Vanilla JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://gomakethings.com/formatting-dates-with-vanilla-js/ <comment><USER2> Vanilla JS dates are surprisingly feature packed. I wrote a post a while back [https://superjavascript.com/t/javascript- dates/](https://superjavascript.com/t/javascript-dates/) about this. You don't need to pull out moment.js or similar for a lot of use cases. Maybe have a simple helper function or two in your JS to left pad (ha!) to produce the yyyy-mm-dd format for example.</comment>


Qaddafi's Reign Collapsing: Rebels Pour Into Central Tripoli Square - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/africa/22libya.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><USER2> I am sorry but how is this related to ycombinator?

</comment><comment><USER3> it's always a new way to write the name of ghadafi</comment>


Show HN: Gallery of iOS controls - <AUTHOR> https://cocoa.rocks <comment><USER2> I was hoping/expecting a gallery of examples of people using terrible/inexplicable non-standard ui for completely normal actions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've built this webapp and ask you for feedback, questions, suggestions, etc

<comment><USER3> I like it. It looks like a good place to browse through different UI elements.

There are a few places where your UI needs a little polish (The bar at the bottom isn't very responsive and can be janky, there's some issues with box overlap, there's a few places where alignment looks off). All in all I think it's a great start and I'm excited to see where you'll take it. If you get around to it could we have something like this for React-Native ;)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the feedback! I'm a developer and love great designs but miss, unfortunately, the design skill :( so decided to practice that skill with this side project.

A lot of optimizations are on my roadmap (especially mobile support).

Regarding React-Native: will think about that!

thanks again</comment></comment></comment>


Are smart people ugly? The Explainer's 2011 Question of the Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2012/01/are_smart_people_ugly_the_explainer_s_2011_question_of_the_year_.single.html <comment><USER2> There are a couple of things at work here.

1) Some people choose to spend their time on learning and improving their brains, instead of their outward appearances. Over time, this makes them smarter than those who don't.

2) In most societies, good-looking people often have it easier; as a result, if you're not good-looking, you have to work harder. Which, in turn, makes you smarter over time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think smart people are ugly. Many just don't concentrate on making themselves look better. Clothes, hairstyle, grooming, etc makes a big difference.

<comment><USER4> Moreover, if you are not attractive, people won't value you on the basis of your appearance, hence you are less likely to care about it.</comment></comment>


Robot construction crew, inspired by termite colonies - <AUTHOR> http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/02/robots-to-the-rescue-2/

<comment><USER2> Having read Suarez' "Kill Decision" last night, which talks about using computer models of weaver ants for control of autonomous killer drones... wow, coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting, but designing the distributed planner is really hard. I think that'll likely be an offline machine learning task - fitting an algorithm that will handle the variances in the construction in a no communication, totally distributed fashion.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really awesome. Actually, is the missing piece of my startup, Engarte. When we have these robots, you will be able to hire engineering project and instantly have it built by our army! :)</comment>


Notch is no longer lead developer on Minecraft - <AUTHOR> http://notch.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER2> The title of the blog post "Och med dom orden så passar jag micken" is Swedish for "With those words, I hand over the microphone". Just in case anyone is wondering.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it's "Swenglish". Passar != pass, it really means "watch over" or "keep track of".

<comment><USER4> Unless of course he meant in the same way that you "passar" a hockey puck, in which case it is only an unusual choice of words.

<comment><USER5> It's a line from the Fattaru song Mina hundar.

<comment><USER6> Swedish rap. That sure was a new experience... <http://grooveshark.com/s/Mina+Hundar/2pL3f4?src=5>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Upvoted, but really should permalink:

[http://notch.tumblr.com/post/13633493969/och-med-dom- orden-s...](http://notch.tumblr.com/post/13633493969/och-med-dom-orden-sa- passar-jag-micken)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad this is the case. A common trap for indie developers is to make one game, have it be at least partially successful, and then to continue to make that game - making DLC, expansions, porting it to other platforms, making a multiplayer version etc. It makes me sad as a player, because it's done instead of developing something new. It's far better to pass on these porting efforts to other developers and to get to work creating new IP, as Notch is doing.

I'm more familiar with games than with startup culture - does the same thing apply there?

<comment><USER9> _It makes me sad as a player, because it's done instead of developing something new._

I think this is a problem of attitude. If you are so desperate for something new, why not create it yourself? The indie has every right to do what they feel like with their content, time, energy & money. They're not your monkey to dance & sing whenever you please. If you disagree with how they're spending their time, then spend your time making something you'd rather see.

<comment><USER8> I am an indie dev, and I do make things myself. But that in no way diminishes the pleasure I get at seeing other people's works, being delighted and surprised by a novel or well-executed bit of game. It's difficult to be delighted and surprised by your own works.

And yeah, they of course have the right to make what they want and I can in no way take that away from them. Remaking the same game might even be worth it, financially. But it doesn't build value like getting going making new IP can, and it doesn't give me something exciting and new to play. I'm allowed to ask, they don't have to give it to me.

<comment><USER9> Everyone likes new shiny things true, but the effort required to create new & shiny things consistently is extremely high, especially for a one man band. You probably know the effort required.

I get the idea that you like to see new concepts, but I don't get why you'd complain about people polishing old ideas. You suggest that it's keeping them from working on new ideas but just because something is new, doesn't mean it's good. Not every new thing someone puts out is gold. If they have a proven winner, then they should push & see how far they can take it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good for him. Notch has earned a well-deserved break.

Some people are better at starting new things, and some people are better at maintaining and expanding on existing things. I'm happy to hear that Notch has some new ideas that he's itching to get started on.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here is an interview with Notch and Jeb about the change: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38917/Persson_Hands_Minec...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38917/Persson_Hands_Minecraft_Lead_To_Jens_Bergensten_Confident_About_Move.php)

<comment><USER12> I'm very glad to see that the mod API is now top priority. They've made similar claims in the past, but this sounds more serious.

The future of this game is definitely all about mods, custom maps, and new game formats. There is tremendous potential, some of which has already been realized, but only through elaborate unofficial hacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm really conflicted on Notch, Minecraft in general, and therefore this announcement.

Let's get the good out of the way first, Minecraft is an awesome game, and Notch (and his team) deserves every bit of kudos they've gotten for it. I bought the game back in alpha, and I've gotten more than my money's worth.

The bad? Lingering (big) problems that aren't being dealt with. SMP is still a mess when it comes to performance. There are a _ton_ of bugs in what is supposed to be a final 1.0 release (Source: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXO6tYkjYMc>)

I don't have to be a full time developer or a company owner to make a judgement call on whether that is a bad thing or not. Minecraft seems to be suffering from the same kind of featuritis that plagued Second Life for so long.

Mojang. Please. Fix old, no new.

</comment><comment><USER14> Given all that has happened in the last year I think Notch is very much deserving of a break. His work ethic is something to admire and his success well earned. I look forward to seeing what projects he creates with his time in the future.

</comment><comment><USER15> Much respect for making it to the 1.0, that shows great dedication on his part. He earned the break, and I look forward to seeing what's next!

</comment><comment><USER16> I expect to see the code base quality increase and number of obscene bugs that make it to production decrease significantly.

</comment><comment><USER17> Gave this an upvote, since it's from the official Notch blog instead of what could have been possible conjecture from reddit.

<comment><USER18> Please don't let this bit of reddit-stupidity transfer here. "LOl upvotd" posts don't add anything and just clutter the discussion.

<comment><USER19> Too late. HN has basically become reddit.com/r/programming in the last year or so. The glory days are over. You have to admire how long the quality remained high, though.

<comment><USER20> Even though I had to highlight the text of your comment to read it, you do echo a point that has kind of irritated me somewhat. On a website called "hacker news", 90% (hyperbole) of the links are related to designing flashy GUIs and selling social web startups and whatever the flavor-of-the-week web design trend is. There's very little "do it yourself, do it quickly, do what no one has done before" spirit, it's mostly "do what everyone has done before, but flashier and in a newer language".

Not that it's a bad thing in any way, but the title of "hacker news" is a bit disingenuous when "developer news" might be a little more accurate. I wish I could filter out the programming and startup stuff.

<comment><USER21> What's disingenuous about programming on a site called "Hacker News," and what would be left other than political posts if you took out the startup and programming stuff?

<comment><USER20> It's not just the programming stuff I wish I could filter, it's the worship of Ruby, node.js, CSS, etc. Web languages that really aren't useful in the hacker sense of the word, but rather in the business sense of the word.

My opinion wasn't so much about what would replace those posts, but what not having those posts would attract.

<comment><USER22> Hacker means people who hack on code. Why aren't languages like Ruby relevant.

<comment><USER20> At least in my view of the term, creating intelligent code isn't "hacking". It's just being a good programmer. Hacking would be doing something that hasn't been done before on a wide scale with the intention of creating a result that varies from what an average user would expect. The jailbreakers hacked sideloaded applications onto their iPhone. The average user followed their directions and achieved expected, predictable results.

Ruby _can_ be used hacking. "How to recreate Path in Ruby" does not a "hack" make.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


France Took One Look at Facebook's Cryptocurrency and Said, 'Hell, Non' - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59ndgd/france-took-one-took-at-facebooks-cryptocurrency-and-said-hell-non <comment><USER2> The concerns about Libra mentioned in this article don't seem like big ones to me.

 _during times of economic crisis, citizens may abandon national currencies in favor of Libra_

But Libra's value is defined by a peg to a basket of national currencies. It's half dollars. Realistically, any country having trouble with their citizens abandoning their currency for Libra is going to have more trouble with their citizens abandoning their currency for dollars.

 _Watchdogs are particularly concerned about Libra's possible use by criminals to launder money and finance terrorism._

Isn't Bitcoin going to be a lot better for this? Libra is going to be a lot more controllable by the government than Bitcoin.

I am not planning on acquiring any Libra, but it seems like it could be useful to some people. Basically if you want "Venmo but on Facebook", it could be possible that Libra would offer you a lower-fee way to do it.</comment>


Masquerade: A Postgres Proxy to Mask Data in Realtime - <AUTHOR> https://www.tonic.ai/post/masquerade-a-postgres-proxy/ <comment><USER2> I'm one of the creators of Masquerade. It's open sourced and you can check it out here:

[https://github.com/TonicAI/masquerade](https://github.com/TonicAI/masquerade)</comment>


Ask HN: Should take a year off to learn to code? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering what HN thinks about my situation. Graduated with an accounting degree but ended up working in a startup doing customer service and their digital marketing. I've always wanted to learn how to code, and have the financial means to take 6-12 months off to really dedicate myself to learning to code.
Unfortunately with after work obligations i really don't have sufficient time to do it after hours whilst working full time.
What do you think? I'm 24 and have always dreamed of doing my own startup. Working where I am now has given me a really good grounding in the bus dev/marketing side of a startup but want to be able to code my own apps.
Would it be worth taking time off, enrolling in one of the coding bootcamps to learn something like rails? The other option is to do some sort of postgraduate degree in CS, but that's not too appealing to me. <comment><USER2> In my opinion, taking some time off is a great idea. After dabbling in coding a long time, I am considering doing something similar. There's no reason to weekend warrior everything. As long as you have the focus and discipline to work every day without someone standing over you (always an "if" but the bootcamps and stuff can help keep you on track) taking time off is great.

And now, at age 24, is one of the best times to take time off. It is good to be frugal, save money, and be able to take time away from working full time, if you want to do interesting stuff with your life.

So I say, really, go for it. Don't defer your dreams.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you make time early in the morning like waking up a few hours earlier everyday to dedicate to learning how to code? This way you will get the satisfaction of learning while fulfilling all your other responsibilities plus it will be quiet enough for you to be able to focus.

</comment><comment><USER4> Knowing how to code is _less than half_ of the skills you would need to create a startup, even after the biz dev/marketing stuff is accounted for.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would try taking classes on Udacity and Coursera first. If you really want to do something, you'll make the time.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any good use for old Bitcoin miners? - <AUTHOR> I have a few old miners sitting around, they're 100% not profitable at this point.  Is there any use for this gear beyond BTC?  FWIW I have BFL gear, cointerra, knc, and some really old blade erupters. <comment><USER2> They're probably ASICs, and therefore not reprogrammable or reusable for another purpose. See if there are any on ebay, if not, they're probably not worth much to anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're all ASICs. Most were $10k+ we made our money back but I'm not about to part with them for $50.

<comment><USER3> You can keep them for $0 ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fork BTC and use them to get that network going.

</comment><comment><USER5> You may be able to repurpose them to crack passwords if you have any interest in that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there any F/OSS for this? I imagine you'd have to run the gross equivalent of a mining pool server.</comment></comment>


Facebook tracks you even after logging out  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-tracks-you-even-after-logging-out-20110926-1ksfk.html

<comment><USER2> It is so frightening to know that facebook still keeps the cookies even after we logout. I think installing "web developer" addon in firefox will be helpful since it comes with the tool to view edit and delete the cookies stored on your computer</comment>


Millennial super fund Spaceship (backed by Mike Cannon-Brookes) fined by ASIC - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-10/millennial-super-fund-fined-for-misleading-claims/9639036 <comment><AUTHOR> Probably just a bad oversight. But this serves as another reminder, especially for the millennial target market who are new to the industry, to DYOR.

The CEO, Paul Bennetts, sent an email to investors today and here's a snippet:

"ASIC raised some concerns around a portion of content on our website. After hearing their concerns, we quickly saw that we should have been clearer about our investment decision process and we amended our website. We are proud that we acted immediately to address their concerns.

There has been some press yesterday and today in relation to this and we are a little disappointed that the coverage seems to be throwing rocks at the new kid on the block rather than holding a discussion about portfolio transparency and investment decision making across the entire superannuation industry."</comment>


Netflix flexes - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2019/netflix-flexes/ <comment><USER2> I find this to be off-base in a number of ways, starting with the premise that Netflix is a two-sided platform like Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Netflix used to be a distributor. It paid content owners to license its back catalog which no longer had any value in primary channels, namely cinemas. It then charged users for access. In contrast, two-sided Facebook's user do not pay anything, but the advertisers pay for access to them. The relationship is roughly the reverse.

Netflix also do not have suppliers that build up the attractiveness of the platform to end users. Netflix paid for back catalogs. Amazon doesn't pay its merchants.

Today, Netflix is both a distributor and a producer. This doesn't make Netflix twice as strong but introduces a number of dilemmas into the organization. In the same way that Disney would look to external distribution channels to maximize the return on its investment in content, Netflix now has the same incentives. Netflix has no suppliers in the sense of Amazon - it pays for all the productions on its platform. It supplies itself.

In fact, they could theoretically make more by having staggered releases where premium channels like cinema receives new titles first. Why? First, because a single ticket to the cinema costs more than a month's subscription to Netflix. Second, because the direct income from Bird Box is $0.

Certainly Bird Box has a positive effect on subscriptions but it can only be inferred. This is an enormous problem. How can you justify spending say $100 on a production which could directly generate $700M at the box office, and then just release it to a limited audience? There are going to be numerous internal battles over this. I bet we'll see Netflix go for wide cinematic release of some titles.

Another issue is capital. Not only does Netflix has to produce content from which there is no direct return. They also have to market it. A $100M production may receive half or the same amount of spend on marketing. They have to build IP that is as relevant as Marvel.

In summary, the challenges Netflix has is contradictory incentives between distribution and production, mastering the art of production and building of IP, and spending on marketing new productions.</comment>


Sourcing as a Service - <AUTHOR> I am a technical recruiter working on a startup idea which centers around making sourcing easier for both founders and later stage companies. Right now if you want to hire you either go through your referral network (good method for first couple employees), hire a recruiter (very expensive), or founder/HR does recruiting.
I always believe that companies should exhaust their personal network before hiring a third-party recruiter or internal recruiter. The founder can also personally recruit, but he doesn't have a lot of time especially to go through and add people on LinkedIn or Github. Recruiters typically cost 20% of first year salary and internal recruiters should be focused on building relationships with potential employees. They aren't dedicated sourcers.
That is where we come in. A company will tell us they are looking for a python developer with 3-5 years experience in Austin, Texas. They will pay $250 for a 100 name Excel Spreadsheet that comes with names, email address, current company, title, social profiles and (cost extra) rating.
This will save companies a lot of time by doing something they really aren't experts in and is much cheaper than hiring a full-service recruiter. Many large companies don't even have dedicated sourcing teams so I see this as something that can be used at a two person startup to a Fortune 500 company.
What are your thoughts? I have founded one or two other companies in space, but not super crowded. I'm sure I missed some details so feel free to ask questions and I'll answer. <comment><USER2> If you can crack this, it will be a very lucrative opportunity but I am afraid that the space is too crowded and there is not enough of a value proposition for quality candidates to give you their updated info.

Also doesn't Linkedin already do this. They have a search engine you can use to filter out applicants based on school, past experience and location. I also believe they released a lite version to make it more affordable.

Some startups you should look at if you're interested in this space: Hired.com, Whitetruffle and Wayup.com (they introduced a way for companies to post requirements and get paid per qualifed applicant)

<comment><AUTHOR> We are way different in the sense that Hired & Whitetruffle still charge 20%, but the company is doing the work the recruiter typically does. It's just a marketplace. WayUP is targeted towards student.

We only do sourcing. [https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and- samples/hr-...](https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr- qa/pages/whatissourcing.aspx)

You need to connect with someone to get their contact info and you'd be surprised how hard it is to get emails of engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So you are offering to gather names from linkedin for a price? As a tech recruiter in Chicago I could give you a list of 100 engineers in any various tech stack in 45 minutes or so by pulling directly from large name companies online. Why would someone pay me to do this instead of doing it themselves?

Edit: I like the idea i just dont think anyone would pay for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> As you know, you still need to be connected with someone on LinkedIn to get their email addresses. I don't think many companies can come up with a list of 100 engineers in 4 or 5 hours with contact information. That is why tons of companies spend money buying databases. A comparable idea in a different space is: [https://www.leadgenius.com/](https://www.leadgenius.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With the personal network there is some assumption that the potential hire has some introduction and will consider (at least a little) the offer.

With the 100 emails in an Excel file approach, I guess most people will just send it to the spam folder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most people send recruiter emails to spam. If a founder or a corporate recruiter reaches out it has much more value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I generally like the idea of automating recruitment. It "feels" like there ought to be low hanging fruit here.

I'm not sure if you'd have legal issues with selling on names unless they've specifically opted in. If not a simpler route to market would be just to bundle the names and sell them as data.

Would you be making sure that the listed names are actually available for work? Or are you simply exporting your LinkedIn contacts?

<comment><AUTHOR> The low hanging fruit would be just to source in the beginning. As we expand and develop a "platform" we will start doing more recruiting as a service and try to replace the agency recruiter/assist the corporate internal recruiter

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One option is to specifically target folks who are looking to move to an given area. I'm not sure how to do this aside from content marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like this is already being done: [https://www.producthunt.com/tech/recruitloop-sourcing-as- a-s...](https://www.producthunt.com/tech/recruitloop-sourcing-as-a-service)</comment>