Affordable Housing Draws Middle Class to Inland Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/business/affordable-housing-drives-middle-class-to-cities-inland.html <comment><USER3> Man, I feel like I'm going to be really negative, I hope not, but here goes: OKC is undergoing an oil boom, the secondary effects of which are being reported in this article (IMO). My advice: come live in Oklahoma or Kansas if you actually like it here and want to be here for a long time, because when the boom dies, you'll find it harder to leave. Opportunities abound on the coasts. Texas, well, Texas is always a great place to live and work... they are almost always the exception.

<comment><USER4> Even in Texas, you have to be careful when the boom ends. I was in Midland/Odessa about 10-12 years ago (before the current oil boom) and it was a tough place to live - lots of closed businesses. The drilling firms had stacks of pipe in their yards, instead of out in the oil fields being put to use.

The folks who lived there were really down on their city, something you don't see all that often in Texas (how do you know someone's a Texan? Don't worry, they'll tell you). That was hard to deal with in conversation with them - <USER2> still had lots of advantages, but they wouldn't see them.

<comment><USER5> > how do you know someone's a Texan? Don't worry, they'll tell you

I never noticed this before, but I'm a Texan, and I do this.

<comment><USER6> Same joke also works for new yorkers

<comment><USER7> As well as lawyers, crossfitters, and vegetarians.

<comment><USER8> I've always heard it with pilots

<comment><USER9> Yorkshire

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome news for me. I currently live in the Oklahoma City area, and have for the past 11 years after moving here from the Bay Area, and am heavily invested in the local tech community (I founded [http://okcjs.com](http://okcjs.com) and organize [http://thunderplainsconf.com](http://thunderplainsconf.com) among other things). The tech community here is better than it has EVER been and awesome things are happening here, but of course it's all relative - it's still a small community if you're coming from the coasts.

While I can say with absolute certainty that the weather is not nearly as nice (nor the scenery as beautiful) here in OKC as it was in the Bay Area, the people here are awesome, and the opportunities abound. It's hard to put into words the forward momentum that exists here, but everyone here in the local community feels it.

Regarding salary, you may make slightly less here - depending on the job you take - but your living costs are going to be so low, you will end up having a much better, less stressful life. To give you an idea, I work remotely (telecommute) on a very well paying full-time contract, and my mortgage on a 3bd/1.5ba. 1100 sq.ft. house is $640/mth with insurance and taxes included - far below even 10% of what I make. I could easily buy a much larger brand new house, but choose not to for now in order to maximize my savings. I have more freedom in this situation than I would making even 50% more on the coasts.

Also, while I am sure there are other low-cost places to live in the U.S., I don't feel like there are many other places positioned like OKC is right now. The people of Oklahoma City have made significant public investments in the area that have attracted significantly MORE private investment. The [MAPS Projects]([http://www.okc.gov/maps/](http://www.okc.gov/maps/)) - and the [MAPS3 Project]([http://www.okc.gov/maps3/](http://www.okc.gov/maps3/)) that is currently underway have completely transformed downtown OKC and are having ripple effects all throughout the greater metro area. These public projects have paid off for OKC in spades, and will continue to pay dividends for decades to come.

In the relatively short time I have lived in the OKC area, I have seen a complete turn-around and transformation of an entire metro area unlike any other I have ever seen or heard of in my life. It makes me excited for the future, and glad that I am playing a part in it, however small.

<comment><USER11> I'm actually impressed. Most of the news I hear out of the midwest is how the libertarian movement has stripped most municipalities of money to make any improvements.

<comment><USER12> Might be time to start looking into more diverse news sources.

<comment><USER11> I watched Fox News for an hour. Does that count? I probably won't do it again because after an hour I felt like hulk smashing the television.

So who do you recommend?

<comment><USER13> Just about anything other than TV news.

TV news is designed to inflame, not inform. In the limited time they have, they can't help but be biased in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting that there's no mention of the role of the Internet and telecommuting in this trend. The housing market's changes are certainly dramatic. But it's also worth noting that there's been a substantial cultural and technology change each year making working remotely more achievable for a growing % of people. And many of those are higher paying jobs. And remote work isn't just johnny developer in his home office. Constant improvements in technology make it more and more viable to start your financial services company in a smaller location vs the North East. Of your health care focused company. Or of course your high tech startup. All this needs to do is account for an incremental 1% of the working jobs in your city each year and you can see what happens after 5 or 10 years. That's the tipping point of disposable income for your kayaking instructor to make a business out of.

</comment><comment><USER15> I just did the SF --> DFW move this week. Housing is 10x cheaper so that tipped the pluses ahead of the minuses for me, and it's still a big city so you can find decent things to do outside of work. Have my own b2b company that I'm bootstrapping, so I realized I wasn't tied to SF anymore for any particular reason. Will be interesting to see how the next year goes!

<comment><USER16> Nice! I did the opposite about 2 years ago. Really wish I had bought some real estate in certain parts of Dallas but I was just starting out and didn't have the capital/guts. There are parts of Dallas that I love (lower greenville, deep ellum, oak cliff) that have really boomed these last two years.

The move to SF has been worth it, though, for my career/finances. Net was a little bit lower than what I could have been making in Dallas, but my bonus actually, fully paid out and I've gotten actually significant raises. Also, since housing costs were so high I decided to experiment with alternative living styles and I'm now actually spending less money in SF than I was in Dallas.

<comment><USER17> >alternative living styles

Do you want to expand on this? Are you just living in a van now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> After living in the Bay Area for a year, I find myself frequently opening my laptop for "real estate porn": going to Realtor.com and looking at listings in the cities mentioned in this article, just sitting there and oogling the home prices outside of California. For the price of a crappy 1BR condo in SF you can buy a 6BR Tudor mansion in Detroit: [http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes- detail/1002-Semino...](http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes- detail/1002-Seminole-St_Detroit_MI_48214_M39379-58802?ex=MI567065809)

<comment><USER19> I do the same but looking at homes in the Bay Area. Cannot believe that mansion in Detroit. That would be $6m or more in SF.

It's interesting seeing old films or pictures from San Francisco. The city has clearly had its ups and downs. If the 1906 earthquake had not happened I wonder how different it would be compared to today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any one have an interactive heatmap of the same data on a county or census block level? That visualization makes it hard to explore finer grained trends.

Googeling around for one I found this article which picks out the inland west as the fastest growing region in the nation: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/04/a-map- of-a...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/04/a-map-of-americas- future-where-growth-will-be-over-the-next-decade/)

But one of the job hubs they mention, Boise, didn't make the NY times vis.

My own experience is that, when considering cost of living and quality of life, it is hard to beat the northern rockies.

</comment><comment><USER21> San Francisco became my home in my heart almost immediately. I have fallen in love with this city. When I leave, I miss it and where-ever I go I can't stop talking about it. Yes it's not perfect, far from it, but it's perfect for me.

Anyway, my point is, where-ever you move to, make sure you find that place that is home. That place you can truly say you love too. Don't just live somewhere to save some bucks for the sake of saving some bucks. Life is too short and you can't take your cash with you anyway.

</comment><comment><USER22> I moved from the suburbs of OKC to California three years ago. I personally am extremely happy with this change, but I won't go into details here.

What I do wonder: OKC has lots of issues with sprawl. How will this influx change things? Is it possible that the city will become more compact and urban, or will it continue the current trend of expanding the city so that every house is on at least a half-acre of land? I have no point of reference for which is more likely.

<comment><USER23> If OKC follows the pattern of Houston, then some high-density housing will go in closer to downtown and other job centers, but for the most part, the sprawl will continue.

Developers in NW Houston are putting 3500 sq ft homes on 0.25 acre lots, and the sprawl shows no signs of stopping. (low interest rates, cheap land, willing commuters)

<comment><USER24> Sprawl seems to be the norm everywhere outside of the east coast. Portland OR, Sacramento, Dallas....

The peninsula can't sprawl much, but the east bay is puking the same hideous boxy track houses on tiny lots all over the hillsides of Fremont, Hayward, Dublin and far beyond.

<comment><USER25> The puking has, for the most part, already occurred. Bay Area cities are now constrained by urban growth boundaries and required to provide jobs and housing in proportion, not just one or the other.

Unfortunately if you take the entire Bay Area as a whole, proper urban structure with walkable mixed use takes up perhaps 1% or less of the developed area. Everything else is sprawl. Even in the city of SF itself less than 1/3rd of the built area (not counting parks and lakes and whatnot) is decent walk/bike territory with amenities nearby. And you only have to go as far as Concord or Antioch to find the real deal: all-out suburban sprawl with neighborhood streets wider than I-5 and nary a pedestrian in sight.

Now when you compare to Oklahoma City, the Antioch brand of sprawl looks like it might be Hong Kong compared to some of the developments that are within the OKC's limits. For example here is a typical scene where someone took a quarter section of some field or farm and said fuck it, let's put a subdivision here.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-97.7234619,1486m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x87ad8a547ef8d281:0x33a21274d14f3a9d)

Now that's just a shame. This article isn't talking about the far-flung farms that happen to be inside OKC's city limits, though. They're talking about areas like Heritage Hills where the original housing stock wasn't bulldozed to build freeways (yet). I remember before I bought my house in Oakland I looked at what I could get for the same price in that neighborhood. As I recall there was a huge-ass mansion with a separate building constituting servants' quarters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> doesn't this article fly in the face of an hn-posted article last week that asserted the suburbs are a Ponzi scheme? One could reason that that these inland cities are growing because they are still in the early stages of the Ponzi scheme.

I live in Europe and I feel pretty confident that American cities will become more like Paris, Rome, London and not less. That means the poor live on the periphery and the middle and upper class live close to the center.

</comment><comment><USER27> A little reminder that we sometimes forget in the San Francisco Bay Area -- there are plenty of other, really wonderful places to live.

People here will rattle off weather, jobs, activities (outdoors) -- but the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of incredible places to live in the US, where you can make within 10%-20% of your Bay Area wage with 30%-40% or more less housing costs.

Even a place like LA or San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Chicago, etc -- you won't believe the homes, apartments, lofts, flats, condos you can get. Absolutely stunning places, with great activities and schooling.

I don't see myself in the Bay Area in 15 years or so, unless there's a drastic change in the cost of housing.

That goes without saying that I find people in the bay area generally rather unfriendly/unapproachable vs. other major metros.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many of the best jobs in areas such as technology, design and finance are on the coasts. No doubt that costs are lower in the middle of the country, but pay is also substantially lower. I wonder why more top companies don't try to take advantage of the cost savings of setting up in middle America vs. outsourcing jobs abroad?

<comment><USER28> Eventually you will run out of available, qualified local talent and you will need to hire someone from a coastal tech hub. Only most Californians/New Yorkers don't want to move to Salt Lake City, or Oklahoma, or Houston, or anywhere else in the middle. The flag is the same but the culture is drastically different.

<comment><USER29> Regarding Houston, it's among the fastest growing cities in the US. People are moving there in droves from the coasts. It's also not even remotely as cheap as a lot of people think.

<comment><USER30> When you get south of Houston into the Clear Lake region Houston living gets much cheaper - but you run the risk of everything being obliterated by a hurricane.

You have to remember that lot of inner Houston is funded by oil money, so people are willing and capable of spending quite a bit of money on housing/meals.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Law Firm Rankings Are Useless - <AUTHOR> http://blog.litimetrics.com/2016/09/15/quantifying-the-value-of-better-legal-representation/ <comment><USER2> >> "the job of a lawyer is to persuade, which is part legal reasoning and part hard work. Since the ability to persuade directly affects litigation outcomes, participants are willing to pay highly regarded barristers upwards of $28,000 a day, and some law firm partners an hourly rate of over $1,000. In this post, we analyse data from 22,000 cases to measure the differential impact law firms and barristers have on litigation outcomes."

No. That's what TV lawyers are paid for. That's the equivalent of learning about doctors from watching MASH. Most doctors are not surgeons. Most lawyers are not litigators. Many great and valuable lawyers will never win any case. Imho the best lawyer is the one who's client never faces the uncertainty and protracted negativity that is modern litigation, just as a great and valuable doctor is one who's patients avoid the knife. (Apples and oranges but the point stands.)

Lawyering is, in my world, mostly about listening to clients and understanding how their realities fit into external standards such as laws and industry norms. It's about hedging, documentation and interpretations. And sometimes it's about holding the client's feet to a fire. Litigators only appear once all of that has failed. Litigators may have the highest hourly rates, but do not have the highest salaries overall. Those are reserved for corporate counsels and board members.

<comment><USER3> Depends on the subject matter and the willingness of a plaintiff and defendant to negotiate a fair settlement.

In some areas, big money comes with big litigation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As they acknowledge, it is essential to account for case difficulty in comparing success rates. Having been on both sides of the "v." I can say it is easier on the defense side (at least on the civil side). Defense counsel representing Big Cos. will have a better record not only because those companies are often the target of weaker lawsuits, but because various rules intended to filter out those weaker lawsuits stack the deck against plaintiffs. Thus, there are fantastic lawyers working at Sierra Club or NRDC, but they're not going to have the same record of wins as similarly-good lawyers at a big New York firm.

According to the article, their analysis does account for that. They allegedly "calculate the probability of a successful outcome for the applicant" using machine learning. But there is no description of how they do that. If I had an algorithm that produced halfway decent results in an automated fashion, I wouldn't use it to get into the legal technology market. I'd set myself up as a litigation funder and make boatloads of money with accurate valuations of potential investments.

<comment><USER5> If I were interested in litigation funding, I wouldn't evaluate the ability of law firms to litigate but rather the ability of lawyers to accurate predict the outcome of cases (regardless of whether they're actually representing the client) -- e.g. associates at law firms frequently write memos to assess the probability of success before a case makes it way to trial. Seems like there's value in actually correlating memos with actual outcomes.

<comment><USER4> The article says they have a machine-learning algorithm that can "calculate the probability of a successful outcome" of a case. Then they calculate firms' ability to improve (or not) that outcome. But if I had such an algorithm I'd just use it directly to decide what cases to fund.

My understanding from talking to litigation funders is that lawyers are terrible at valuing cases. There is money to be made for anyone that can use technology to improve those predictions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "To sidestep the randomness of observed outcomes, we focus on modeling the probability of a successful outcome for a given case. Secondly, to account for the context or difficulty of the case, we measure the change in the probability of a successful litigation outcome, from substituting a legal service provider in. The difficulty of the case is not important, but rather the impact a legal service provider has on that original probability of success. From now on, we will refer to this measure as the impact on expected performance. This substitution exercise is known as a counterfactual, as we apply the substitutions to historical data."

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

how exactly did they model the probability of successful outcomes for given cases?

because those depend on highly detailed fact patterns, many of which are largely qualitative in nature

if they were actually able to put all those in a data base that you could then model

that'd be a more interesting accomplishment to read about

<comment><USER7> Right. The post links to slideshow "model" for counterfactuals given at Hulu. And I won't pretend to analyze it scientifically, but it's hard to shake the feeling that it's circular in this application.

We want to rank lawyers based on effect on outcome, not win-loss record. But it looks like the model is one that derives "counterfactual" outcomes by making comparisons based on win-loss records.

Can someone give a better lay-level discussion of the expected outcome model?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not use a modified Elo rating? That way you can not only easily figure out if you're going to win, but simulate the outcome of different scenarios?

<comment><USER9> What is a modified elo rating?

<comment><USER10> Elo rating is a system used to gauge chess players. You win/lose point depending on your points difference before a match. If the favourite loses, more points are lost to the underdog than if the underdog loses.

You can apply this to a wide variety of sports where most teams don't get to play most other teams, eg you can guess that Germany are better than India at soccer despite the rarity of the tie.

And of course you can modify the system to take account of various issues such as the retirement of better players, which tends to remove points from the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who works with a tax law firm that is ranked pretty high on the legal500 (and obviously, I know a rank can be gamed relatively easily), I must say the experiences I've had with them have been excellent. For all intents and purposes, they are exactly what I would expect from a good law firm.

I worked with several "independent" lawyers before, and honestly, they are nowhere near close to the level of skill of my current law firm. In addition, they're quite responsive, much more than the average independent lawyer. And yes, they're more expensive, but not outrageously so. They seem to reach a favourable outcome faster, and seem to be more effective.

Tl;dr: Love the lawyer I work with in this firm, he gets the job done when I need him to + has a great team with broad experience to back him up. He's managed to resolve any tax issue before we even went to court.

</comment><comment><USER12> I worked on applying machine learning algorithms to data mined from court judgments during my PhD. You want to know what we learned? That it's better to be white and rich than black and poor. Point. Everything else was bullshit.

<comment><USER13> What about black and rich vs white and poor?

<comment><USER14> Sample size too small I'd guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also, being a Lawyer, if someone comes to me, it's because of me, not because of the firm I am working in. And trying to rank lawyers? Why not. But what's the point. I wouldn't accept being ranked anyway.

<comment><USER15> > being a Lawyer, if someone comes to me, it's because of me, not because of > the firm I am working in

Are you speaking hypothetically, i.e., 'if I was a lawyer'? I'm not an attorney but for a variety of reasons I have relatively deep insight into the legal industry, and I think this statement is generally not true.

As in any field, most business comes from referrals and networking, and much of that happens within a firm. If your career is at a top firm then you are going to build a much different network than a similar attorney who opens their own office in a strip mall. When Goldman Sachs needs an outside attorney, where do they go and who do they ask? Even ignoring referrals, just imagine who is there when you are invited to dinner by your colleague: Is it the mayor and local Fortune 500 CEO, one of whom takes a liking to you and asks you to join the board of a local charity, or is it the lovely neighbors who drive Uber or run a small medical practice, and ask for some legal tips?

Personally, I don't enjoy the hunt for status and I think it impedes socio- economic mobility, but I'm afraid that's the way it works.

<comment><USER11> I have a tax lawyer I work with, and I couldn't care less which firm he works at. However, he does work at a good firm, and a good name helps in negotiations (in this case, with the tax authority). A while back, I had a tax audit, and surprisingly the person doing the audit told me my firm can turn "black" into "white". That says quite a bit about the name and reputation of the firm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > By applying machine learning algorithms to data mined from court > judgments...

And, with that sentence, this post becomes bullshit.

The overwhelming majority of disputes do not reach litigation. The overwhelming majority of litigation does not reach judgment. And then a gigantic proportion of those judgments are appealed, and a non-trivial percentage are overturned.

Even at that, only on the order of a single digit-percentage of disputes ever reaches a verdict.

This is like judging a hospital-system based on its success-rate for transplant surgery. It's just deeply ignorant of what constitutes the vast, vast majority of the practice of law - _even_ in disputes.

This article has no value, whatsoever, aside from a witty aside at a cocktail party about how deeply misunderstood the legal profession is. This is particularly shocking given that litimetrics is a legal service provider.

> Although A has not faced B, if both have faced C, then we have some > information about the hypothetical A and B matchup. This is the same > reasoning that allows one to compare tennis players across different eras.

The implication is that the lawyer efficacy, based on _judgments_ , is subject to the transitive property? Sweet mercy that is ridiculous.

This post is a catastrophe.

<comment><AUTHOR> A large part of statistics is devoted to making valid inference from noisy samples, largely by making sensible assumptions. Even in your example, it is common practice to assess a surgeon on outcomes of surgery, even though a lot of a surgeon's work does not lead to surgery.

We aren't claiming to assess the wide practice of law, just litigation. We do Litigation Analytics.

<comment><USER17> do you understand the difference between "noisy" and "biased"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand sarcasm, that's for sure.

As a matter develops, parties tend to drop out if they think that their chances have declined beyond some threshold. But if they continue, or more likely, their legal representation suggests they continue, it implies that they think they have a good chance of success.

Of course, you can get irrational litigants but most of the time, if it goes to judgement, both parties think they have a high chance of success. Otherwise they would have bailed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Seattle Startup Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.zaccohn.com/2011/09/seattle-startup-map/

<comment><USER2> Very cool, but some of the data is incorrect. You list TeachStreet as being in Madrona, but their website says that their address is actually 2101 9th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121.

Also, Seomoz has moved off the Hill and down to somewhere around Pike's Place Market, I believe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I guess Switchboard takes a while to update their data. Do you have any suggestions for better ways to grab addresses?

The other idea I had (maybe version 2?) is to find the websites for all the companies, and then scrape their front page for "Seattle, WA (five numbers)" and then try to grab the address out of that.

I might start playing with something like that later tonight.

<comment><USER2> Not especially. Maybe you could try the Google Maps APIs instead. Querying Google Maps produces what I think is the right address for SEOmoz: [http://www.google.com/maps?q=seomoz+seattle+wa&hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/maps?q=seomoz+seattle+wa&hl=en&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=80.692593,191.162109&vpsrc=0&t=m&z=14&iwloc=A)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Crunchbase API is a good starting point for those wishing to create maps of other cities:

[http://groups.google.com/group/crunchbase- api/web/api-v1-doc...](http://groups.google.com/group/crunchbase- api/web/api-v1-documentation)

</comment><comment><USER4> Being from Seattle, it always puts a smile on my face knowing that ICanHazCheeseburger is a Seattle company.

This visualisation needs a list view as well. Map view is a bit cumbersome to view.

<comment><USER5> Our servers are in the same data center as theirs, and it's always weird to see their stuff in the rack. I just imagine all the LOLCats surging through their servers and giggle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Jackson Fish Market" doesn't sound like a startup. Otherwise, AWESOME. I walk by a ton of these everyday.

<comment><USER7> And yet see for yourself:

<http://www.jacksonfish.com/>

They're the developers of A Story Before Bed, which was the subject of a previous Show HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=917235>

Reminds me of a company here in LA, the Kowloon Wholesale Seafood Company. Despite the name, it's actually a Santa Monica ad agency run by Dick Sittig, the mind and voice behind Jack In The Box's ads. Maybe there's just something about fishmongers.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if it's a fish thing, but it's a semi-popular bit of randomness in Seattle - we've also got an ad agency named the "Wexley School for Girls".</comment></comment></comment>


The 'Anti-Java' Professor and the Jobless Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/11067_3761921_1/The-Anti-Java-Professor-and-the-Jobless-Programmers.htm

<comment><USER2> CS grads who want jobs, or self-taught programmers would be better off learning Java than Ada or C.

Java is the new COBOL. Large companies write their back-office applications in Java. The largest amount of third party free libraries exist for Java - e.g. numerous Apache projects. The most popular free development environment tools are oriented towards Java - e.g. Eclipse and NetBeans. The most popular free unit test environment is oriented towards Java - JUnit. The most popular continuous integration environment is oriented towards Java - Hudson. The most popular complex, free build tools are oriented towards Java - Ant and Maven. The most popular mobile phone platform is programmed in Java - Android. The second most popular phone platform is programmed in Objective-C which is closer to Java than to C in syntax and programming style.

Back in the late 1960's, CS departments eschewed COBOL and instead taught FORTRAN. I never was paid for programming in FORTRAN but I made a very good living for twenty years programming in COBOL - which I self-taught.

Mr. Dewar is right to emphasize theory but he is too close to the US military's ADA language - and I think is disconnected from the business world where most of the programmer employment takes place. ADA went nowhere commercially and Mr. Dewar is living in the past.

Teach students skills that will get them a job - how else to pay off those massive student loans?</comment>


Show HN: MyToDoList - Persistent todos built with localStorage - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexpapworth/mytodolist <comment><USER2> Bug report: drag and drop does not work in Firefox. Nothing works in Safari.

Looks very nice in Chrome though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice job on sticking to vanilla JS!

Would be cool if you wrapped this in a Chrome extension as a new-tab page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh, not a bad idea! Then I can save the data to the users Google account, and have it persist between machines as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Using Brave browser: I can't remove items or check them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this support offline mode?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! It doesn't at the moment, but it would be too hard to add at all. I'll look into adding the manifest file.

Unless you'd like to make a PR ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> had to look around for a bit to find the plus button

<comment><AUTHOR> Any suggestions for making it more noticable? Also, is your screen really big?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth buying misspellings around your domain name? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone know much about owning domain misspellings around your domain? Is it worth doing? How do you determine which are worthwhile? <comment><USER2> Here's a datapoint for you:

There is a movie that starts with "the", let's call it "The Prince of Darkness". I noticed that www.theprinceofdarkness.com was the official movie site, but www.princeofdarkness.com was unregistered. So I registered www.princeofdarkness.com solely for the purpose of measuring how much traffic it would get. I slapped on some Google Analytics and here is the result:

<http://i.imgur.com/Q803d.png>

So www.princeofdarkness.com has gotten 68 visits. Using <http://www.trafficestimate.com>, I determined that the original site, www.theprinceofdarkness.com, got 67,600 visits in the past month. Assuming that the estimate is correct, then that means my nearby website attracted 0.1% of the traffic.

I would gladly tell you the real name of the movie, but then you guys would visit my web site and throw the experiment off. :)

EDIT: www.domaintools.com reports the original site's traffic at around 17,000 visitors a month.

<comment><USER3> Do you redirect to the "the" domain?

<comment><USER2> No, it just consists of a silly phrase that only makes sense if you've seen the movie. Am I a bad neighbor? I'm assuming that since the site gets such a low number of visits I'm not doing any harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have bought a misspelling exactly once, because I couldn't stop myself from doing it when writing an apache config file, and I figured if I couldn't get the domain "right" then I shouldn't expect anyone else to.

Customers largely don't type in domains anymore. They use Google. You're going to win on google versus any typosquatter, and most probably versus a competitor who actually makes a bit of an effort. (To use an example taken totally at random, <http://www.bingocardscreator.com> , for example.)

However, I do have one bit of domain buying advice: own the big three (com/net/org) for _anything_ you register. Aaron Wall has waxed eloquently on this topic before, so you can read it on his blog, but exact match domains have an _insane_ boost associated with them currently on Google and if you exactly match the search query you can get to the top of the rankings by sneezing.

<comment><USER5> > _Customers largely don't type in domains anymore._

In the browser, perhaps, but not in emails or other types of messaging. Business cards and other printed materials are another example where people will have to retype domains.

I agree that having the big three is important. If you ever sell a business or domain, it's worth considerably less if you don't control the other TLDs for the name.

<comment><USER4> My feeling is that most customers copy/paste links rather than typing them, but I can't substantiate them with data.

I suggest people use the Japanese idiom for giving out web addresses which have to be recopied: a text box with your search phrase and a button labeled search with a cursor over it. (I have a set of bilingual business cards which use my name in a search form as their only content. 50% edgy marketing, 50% "a design so simple even I couldn't screw it up.")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to TechCrunch the most common mistake made when typing in domain names is to miss out the period between www and domain name. Hence you should own www.domainname.com and www.wwwdomainname.com

[http://gregarius.dropcode.net/demo/TechCrunch/2009/10/07/WWW...](http://gregarius.dropcode.net/demo/TechCrunch/2009/10/07/WWWTWITTER.com:_Best_Website_Ever)

I don't think I've ever made that mistake so I hadn't even considered it but I suppose it makes sense.

<comment><USER7> If we could just drop the whole 'www' convention then this wouldn't be a problem anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When you have the popularity for this question to matter, and the staff to answer it, you'll have enough money to buy whatever domain your research tells you that you need. This was the approach Dropbox took (getdropbox.com -> dropbox.com). Delicious did it as well (switching from del.icio.us to delicious.com). I know misspellings are a little different, but for now I say just build your business.

</comment><comment><USER9> No, even facebok.com isn't worth much according to a recent HN post.

Also, you should have more important questions to deal with, like how to get people to your actual domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply!

I'm actually asking this for a friend of mine.

The domain is already attracting a good amount of traffic for a fairly popular application. He's already registered a bunch of domains to keep the squatters at bay - the question is really whether he should renew any of them or none at all.

<comment><USER10> Can't he just check his weblogs then? Have a look at how many people actually come in on those already registered domains and keep them if it's anything significant.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the kicker - when he registered them all he didn't think to install any analytics software. He has done it now just in case but it's not much help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It really depends on what you're using your primary domain for. If you want people to give you money, for example, I believe it's critical that you get the misspelled versions of the domain. If it costs you $10-15 a year for a domain and you get $10-15 per download, subscription, online listing, etc. from a customer that was redirected from one of the misspelled domains, then the domain is pays for itself and reduces the friction for future sales.

The problem is having too many domains. After a while, the price adds up and the overhead isn't worth it, either. I recently transferred a few hundred domains from GoDaddy to another registrar and it literally took half a day to do it. Lock-in sucks.

</comment><comment><USER11> It depends on what your site is worth and how much traffic you are driving. If you are Google, it's a no brainer. If you're getting 1k uniques/mo, it's a needless expense. The tipping point lies somewhere in between. My guess is on the high end, but I have little evidence to back that up.

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't worry about trying to snap up typos. I usually only buy ones that users could make through misunderstanding my name (i.e. parselets.com vs. parslets.com). The best solution is to make sure that your name doesn't lend itself to ambiguous spelling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, good advice. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would imagine a customer or potential customer who misspells your domain will realise they've gone to the wrong site. Buying misspellings might be worth it in either of two situations

1) Those clients are unlikely to try again after the misspellings. 2) Squatters / other sites on those domains will negatively affect your brand.

<comment><USER14> I think the point is to redirect to the correct spelling.

<comment><USER13> Yes - if you buy the misspelled domain, you would most likely 301 Redirect to your main site.

My point was whether that was worth doing. In those two instances (where loss of customer or loss of brand strength was likely), I would suggest yes.

If you're Facebook, Facebok.com won't be worth much - people will note the spelling error or hit Google and be properly directed. If you're Xobni, then Zobni.com might be worth it (so you don't lose potential clients who've kinda heard about you), and if you're Disney and you know Walt Dinsey is a massive South American porn star, then grabbing Dinsey.com would be wise.

<comment><USER14> Oh I gotcha. What about fake sites, though? I'm sure PayPal.com has purchased pay-pal, payal, etc. to protect their customers from being defrauded. That's what I was thinking of when I heard buy misspellings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not worth the time to think about it. Go with your gut on this one and then move on to more important decisions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Unless you are in the business of trying to hijack traffic then no.

People reach you through google or through links, the name doesn't really matter anymore. Flickr is a great success yet it could be considered a misspelling. Actually "mispellings" are company names these days.

</comment><comment><USER17> I got one for mine, since I always misspelled it myself.

</comment><comment><USER2> newsycombinator.com is available... ;)

<comment><USER18> HN readers are smart guys :)

<comment><USER19> Smart guys make typos too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> no. just let google fix the spelling mistakes for you.

</comment><comment><USER19> Buying typo domains is good if:

1\. You have a lot of money.

2\. You might be a phishing target.

3\. There's an affiliate program on the non-typo domain.

It's a good idea to try to buy the most popular typos, you can get an idea if you check the search query frequency for each typo (try the Adwords Keywords tool) or you can "kite" a bunch of typo domains and delete non-performing ones before you have to pay for them.</comment>


Logic is Metaphysics (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://philpapers.org/archive/ALVLIM-3.pdf <comment><USER2> >Does the number seven exist? Does the red color exist? What evidence do we have to answer these questions? What are the truth conditions for ∃x P(x) when P(x) stands for a number or a property? To respond to these questions is to set an ontology, and setting an ontology is to do metaphysics. This is exactly what Quine does when he states some reasons to include numbers and to exclude properties from the domain of our variables.

Good paper.

<comment><USER3> >Does the number seven exist? Does the red color exist?

those ones seem to be easy. There is no number seven. I mean there seven trees, seven stones, yet there is no number seven. It is only our mental construct (note: the construct itself, ie. neuron circuits and firing sequences do exist. It is like a map of non-existent land - the map exists while the land doesn't). The same is red color. There are EM waves of different frequencies. Color is mental construct triggered by perception of EM frequencies in specific range. Slightly different for different people. Completely missing for cats if i remember correctly. Like the number seven which is probably missing for cats too, and is known to be missing by various indigenous tribes separated from our civilization - people in this tribes know seven arrows, seven boats, ... yet completely don't understand just seven.

<comment><USER4> > There is no number seven. I mean there seven trees, seven stones, yet there > is no number seven.

There aren't trees or stones any more than there is the number seven: objects (other than elementary particles, maybe) are as much mental constructs as numbers.

<comment><USER5> Why stop at elementary particles? All objects are mental constructs of consistencies our brains detect in data that our senses pick up.

Humans have a great advantage in picking up on what I'd call meta- consistencies (which is basically what abstraction is) - creating a new mental construct by detecting consistencies not only in what the senses pick up, but detecting consistencies in those consistencies, or "thoughts about thoughts" if you will. This gives you numbers and other abstract concepts that enable far more powerful manipulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Logic is metaphysics, only when one smuggles in one's intuitions as definitionally true; otherwise, it is not so: "If we look more closely how it comes about that these existential statements are logical truths in these logical systems we see that it is only so because, by definition, a model for (standard) first order logic has to have a non-empty domain. It is possible to allow for models with an empty domain as well (where nothing exists), but models with an empty domain are excluded, again, by definition from the (standard) semantics in first order logic. Thus (standard) first order logic is sometimes called the logic of first order models with a non-empty domain. If we allow an empty domain as well we will need different axioms or rules of inference to have a sound proof system, but this can be done." (From Hofweber, Thomas, "Logic and Ontology" [https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/logic- on...](https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/logic-ontology/))

</comment><comment><USER7> I am not sure whether I really understand what the author argues for, probably because I read the paper in a rush. Does he argue that [the choice of] a logic is in some sense equivalent to [a choice of] what kind of entities exist?

If that is indeed the case, I would tend to disagree. While we often think of logic as a provider of undisputable truth, I am not sure that this is justified. There is more than one type of logic and they lead to different conclusions or contradict each other in the general case. Therefore it seems to me that the obvious thing to say is that logic is a human construct we use to reason about the world, it does not reflect universal truths but was invented and constructed in a way to be useful to deal with our world.

In consequence it is obviously very likely that logic and metaphysics are strongly correlated, but that would hardly be any deep insight but just a consequence of the way we constructed or choose the logic we use. If the logic I use to deal with the world makes a prediction about the world, for example the existence of a certain entity, then that entity might actually exist if may logic is a good match for the world, but I see no reason why the entity would have to exists, my logic could just be a bad choice.

<comment><USER8> What I took away:

If you want to say 'Santa Claus doesn't exist', you can't write a formula ~E x. x=Santa Claus. Because then you are conceding in your logic that some object Santa Claus exists.

So there is some connection between the structure of sentences we can construct in our logic and metaphysical claims. We should then try to understand differences in metaphysical claims by finding differences in logics.

The author then tries to show this for the metaphysical claim, 'Statements are true or false independent of whether they can be verified.' Instead of arguing about what is truth, what does it mean for a proposition to be verified. We can instead as about the differences in the logic. Because to even talk about truth and existence we need a logic first.

So don't think there is a claim that choice of logic forces claims about real world existence. I think is the more subtle connection, that choice of logic forces a choice about rules of inference.

Real world claims would need to be based on introducing propositions (which are independent of the logic?) and then using rules of inference (which are dependent on the logic).

<comment><USER9> So this is a bit of a tangent, but your Santa Claus example really clarified something I've been reading about recently. I'm reading Lloyd's "Foundations of Logic Programming", which essentially explains the fundamentals behind logic languages like Prolog. We write programs using uninterpreted functions[0] to represent our data, and define predicates to drive the program. The idea of using the Herbrand universe is that it gives a convenient universal starting point: if the program has a model in some universe, it will have a model in the Herbrand universe, and if the program does not have a model, it cannot have a model in the Herbrand universe.

Your Santa Claus example helped me understand why the Herbrand universe is only useful if you restrict yourself to clauses (disjunctions under universal quantification). The Herbrand universe consists of all objects one has named (and objects one can form with function symbols, but we have none of those here), so it must necessarily falsify "~E x. x = Santa Claus". It's easy to find a model where this statement is true (take the empty universe, or the universe which contains only the Tooth Fairy), but there is no model of this statement in the Herbrand universe.

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

<comment><USER9> I guess I can't really edit this comment anymore, but it looks like I was wrong. That example is actually a perfectly valid clause, since it's equivalent to "forall x. ~(x = Santa Claus)". The only reason no model satisfies this clause is because we conventionally require equality to be reflexive, but for an arbitrary predicate the empty model would be a perfectly good model in the Herbrand universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A philosophical discussion of logic in this decade should at least be aware of the Curry-Howard isomorphism and Linear Logic. This paper makes a passing mention of this by treating the law of excluded middle. I would say that denying that law has led to the most fruitful developments of logic in the last century.

Philosophy without technical input is sophistry, technical developments without philosophy end up answering questions of no interest. Girard is an entertaining source of both philosophical and technical insight: _On the meaning of logical rules I : syntax vs. semantics_ [http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/meaning1.pdf](http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/meaning1.pdf)

Per-Martin Lof's ideas are also important: _ON THE MEANINGS OF THE LOGICAL CONSTANTS AND THE JUSTIFICATIONS OF THE LOGICAL LAWS_ [https://uberty.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/Martin-Lof83.p...](https://uberty.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/Martin-Lof83.pdf)

This only scratches the surface.

<comment><USER11> Wholly irrelevant, the paper is specifically concerned with recovering a dialectic between W. O. Quine and M. Dummett. Even if the question was the more general, "Is Logic Metaphysics?", knowledge of formal logics isn't even of concern. It's trivial that we can construct a plethora of axioms with their own definitions, the problem remains: to even adhere to those definitions one is exercising another intuitive logic—even in the case of computation which is an engineered construction to proxy this very intuition, otherwise we would have never been concerned with the linear properties necessary for computation to begin with.

<comment><USER12> "Intuitive" being another word for "subjective."

The experience of truth and logical consistency is entirely subjective. We can build networks of concepts that trigger the experience in ourselves and in others, but that doesn't make them objectively true - it makes them subjectively persistent and shared.

We acquired a cat recently, and it's interesting that her experience of basic spatial relationships is very different to ours.

She doesn't have the same experience of physics that we do. She sometimes gets confused by inside vs outside, and her experience of moving objects seems to be different to ours. She also gives the impression of experiencing hands and feet as disconnected objects, and not part of a gestalt "human".

We have no guarantees that from an alien point of view, our own experience of physics and of relationships doesn't have equivalent limitations. If the limitations exist, we're not aware of them. But to the extent that our cat's view of the world is probably recognisable by other cats, she's not aware of her limitations either.

It's more of a stretch, but not impossible, that our experience of logical abstraction and consistency may also have limitations. There may be non-human viewpoints where the basic subjective qualia of truth and consistency are more coherent, reliable, and inclusive than our own.

None of this can be proved, but it seems optimistic to me to believe that our version of logic is as good as logic can possibly be.

<comment><USER11> Yet we're able to discuss topics with each other, this is the basis of Poincare's Inter-subjective reality. There must be some commonalities of experience which allows us to map our whole experiences between each other. We are definitively limited to our experience, it is impossible to discuss or probe anything outside of it when the entire world and its phenomena is only dictated through experience to us.

Experience is a language which makes meaning from the not-experience.

As Bohr put it, "We're all suspended in language."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Logic, to be of any use in the real world, must in some important ways match the reality of the world. So any system of logic assumes a metaphysics. And going the other way, reality must be such as to be able to have creatures who can think logically.

This is one instance of a larger principle, namely the inherent mutual interconnectedness of the various areas of philosophy. So for instance, epistemology depends on reality being such that it can be known, and we can know about that reality only the sorts of things that a valid epistemology can determine. Similar mutual relations exist between every two main areas of philosophy.

This mutual interconnectedness is a key reason for Neurath's insight that in philosophy you can't tear it all down and change it radically, but only modify it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't logic simply the understanding of cause and effect and choosing to deny or approve of a cause depending on the level of accuracy of the effect on the context. eg. Santa doesn't exist inside conventional norms. Santa could have existed, however we don't know. We have no cause to say he does exist.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into logic, physics and ethics. Metaphysics was categorized as logic.

</comment><comment><USER16> The first step in any logic is to make a distinction. This act is within the mind. The world itself is unknown except as sensory experience. Leaving aside the so-called "Hard Problem of Consciousness" for the sake of discussion, the fact that distinction happens in our heads means that all of our logic is contingent (as opposed to inherent) if our thinking is wholly internal to our brains.

However... none other than Kurt Gödel believed that thinking about e.g. infinities involved a kind of perception of a "higher" world.

"Science does not remove the Terror of the Gods."

</comment><comment><USER17> Logic is based on the principle of non-contradiction (identified by Aristotle). The principle, in all its various forms, is used to guide valid thinking (i.e. truth) because contradictions cannot exist which is its tie to metaphysics.

<comment><USER18> _" Logic is based on the principle of non-contradiction"_

That's merely one type of logic. There are others which can deal with contradictions. See the Wikipedia entries on _Paraconsistent logic_ [1] and _Dialetheism_ [2].

Logicians enjoy coming up with new logics that have any desired or interesting properties. They are not limited to staying within the bounds of classical logic.

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

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetheism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialetheism)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The key to understanding logic constructively goes through type theory, not philosophy.

I'll just leave this here [https://78.media.tumblr.com/bfc158b432199a3e4f5de2ddc1bd7381...](https://78.media.tumblr.com/bfc158b432199a3e4f5de2ddc1bd7381/tumblr_nuj7qbMUa71qc38e9o1_1280.png)

<comment><USER20> Source, pretty please?

<comment><USER19> It's from [https://hott.github.io/book/nightly/hott- online-1174-g29279f...](https://hott.github.io/book/nightly/hott- online-1174-g29279f5.pdf#page=23)

<comment><USER20> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks Undisclosed $13B - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

<comment><USER2> This was thoroughly refuted last week on Reddit. See [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/mdh33/audit_of_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/mdh33/audit_of_the_federal_reserve_reveals_16_trillion/c3025jl)

TL;DR: basically it is mostly short term paper, and each "loan" is being counted multiple times to get the high number. For instance, suppose I loan you $1, to be repaid tomorrow. Tomorrow you say "OK, I'm ready to pay you back!", and I say "Go ahead and keep it another day!". We do this 200 times. By the logic of the article, I've loaned you $200, even though I only had $1 in play at any given time.

<comment><USER3> Surprising and a little bit dispiriting. Adding econ to crypto in my list of topics Reddit now demonstrably handles better than HN.

Sometimes there's a benefit to being a smaller community, but here's an instance where there's a benefit to Reddit being bigger; it's less likely to get held captive by agreeable narratives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More like $16 trillion: [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed- gave-16-tril...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed- gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans/)

So this story isn't exactly news.

Here is a good timelime of the economic crisis, all the way back to WWII:

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/11/pearl-harbor-caused- the...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/11/pearl-harbor-caused-the- financial-crisis-of-2008/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The banking cartel* gave itself more than half of the annual output of the world's largest economy. Bankers got and continue to get huge bonuses. Everyone else? Not so much. Heckuva job, guys.

As the article asks, "Banks don't give lines of credit to corporations for free. Why should all these government guarantees and liquidity facilities be for free?"

The banks are simply too big as well. "Too big to fail" should mean "too big to exist". The process should be: get a bailout, get broken up.

*"A cartel is a formal (explicit) agreement among competing firms. It is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production."

<comment><USER6> The process should be, you fail - you fail, no bailouts.

<comment><USER5> That would be even better. And if the units are small enough, it'll work. "Bailout then breakup" is a proposed mechanism for making those units small enough.

<comment><USER6> There was no reason to bailout AIG, it merely was a way to pump cash into these banks. They should have been forced into bankruptcy and their assets sold of to more responsible banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title is inaccurate. They gave them _$7.7 trillion_ dollars. It's the profit that was $13 billion on that loan, from what I can tell.

<comment><USER3> They loaned that much money; they didn't "give" it. They've since been repaid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> $16T according to the Federal Reserve audit [http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4b...](http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3)

</comment><comment><USER9> How is this remotely legal?

<comment><USER10> There are so many illegal things the US gov't has done in the past 10 years, one more doen't really matter. At least this time it didn't involve killing people.</comment></comment>


Newly-Discovered Planet Has 3 Suns - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/newly-discovered-planet-has-3-suns/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you like SciFi, a relevant trilogy that I would highly recommend is The Three Body Problem/The Dark Forest/Death's End by Cixin Liu:

[https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Remembrance- Earths...](https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Remembrance-Earths- Past/dp/0765377063)</comment>


Chinese spy defects to Australia, alleging election interference and cybercrimes - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/22/chinese-spy-defects-to-australia-alleging-election-interference-and-cybercrimes/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully the Australian government is not yet too subverted by the Chinese to fail to shield the ex-spy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Invasion_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Invasion_\(book\))

</comment><comment><USER3> All lies. The only country that interferes with elections and democracies is USA and everybody knows that.

<comment><USER4> Who is everyone that you refer to ? One thing I can certainly say is that US isn't the only one that interferes. China is a growing power with intention to dominate. We're already aware of the cyber attacks that have originated from China. It makes sense that their intervention goes beyond hacking for weapon blueprints.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you know if an idea is worth running with? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently developing a SaaS product in my spare time. It's a tool that I want/I will use that doesn't seem to exist in the market already in any decent fashion. In my own bubble it seems like a great, potentially profitable idea, but I have no idea if that means it's worth trying to make into a real thing? Also, I don't even know how I'd make it a full blown SaaS product by myself.<p>If the right answer is to just read Hackers and Painters, I'll totally do that. I just can't tell if I'm clouded by my own bias. <comment><USER2> I am in the same phase, i have 1 idea which "I" think is good one but not sure if there is really need for that. So i am basically putting my efforts without keeping much expectations from it but giving my 100%. You have to try it to find out if its successful, idea may be great but implementation of it will decide the success. Keep on looking for inspirations, i came across site where they are selling tickets to marriages, i mean really? i visited the site and there were listing available.

So try it and find out yourself, worst case it wont be hit/successful but by that time you would have learned so many things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do your sales before building it. Who would buy it? Make a powerpoint or pen&paper mockup, get feedback from potential customers. Build a landing page, track conversion to a 'Buy Now' button.

For more info, check out 4H work week, Lean Startup, or [http://firstround.com/review/90-of-feedback-is-crap-how- to-f...](http://firstround.com/review/90-of-feedback-is-crap-how-to-find-the- next-big-startup-idea/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Road test your new business idea > [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1194905.The_new_business...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1194905.The_new_business_road_test)</comment>


Introduction to Amplitude Modulation, Demodulation  - <AUTHOR> http://mazeofamazement.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/amplitude-modulation-am-demodulation-and-their-circuit-implementations/ Amplitude Modulation, Demodulation and corresponding circuit implementations <comment><USER2> just 80 years too old..

<comment><USER3> Eh, it's still used today for shortwave and it's nearly trivial to make the basic circuits.

WRT to shortwave, there's a certain coolness to a technology that allows you to make world wide 2 way communications _without out the aid of any intermediate node_ with equipment that can fit into the palm of your hand (a small CW (Morse code) transceiver and wire for your antenna).</comment></comment>


Google getting in on the mortgage game... - <AUTHOR> http://google.com/comparisonads/mortgages

<comment><USER2> This a pretty serious deal for all the mortgage leadgen guys. These ads are directly in competition with them and the top-of-page placement means that they pretty much have to participate in this or they'll simply lose traffic as users are siphoned off through this product.

Google's most certainly pissing off some of their very large advertisers here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or is that old news? Certainly a lot of money in that industry. From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage-backed_security>: "There is about $14.6 trillion in total U.S. mortgage debt outstanding."

<comment><USER3> If I could just get 1% of that market, I'd be set for life! ;-)

<comment><USER4> If I could just get 0.001% of that market, I'd be set for life! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody know why so few states are available? Are there restrictions on mortgage companies as to what states they operate in, like there are for health insurance companies?

I've always been an advocate for states rights (a republic of states), but these sorts of things seem like they violate Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution in that they impede interstate commerce, and for little reason other than to favor one company over another, at the expense of the citizens.

</comment><comment><USER6> Comparison ads is new - they are starting with mortgage, they will get into everything where you pick one out of many based on some criteria. With this google gets closer to the online PoS to say.

They tried a shot earlier with Google Products and now they are back with a more promising channel.

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks pretty good. There are some other mortgage comparison sites, but somehow they always look like they're trying to sell you a product from one of their affiliates, rather than getting the best deal out there for the site visitor.

Waiting for a UK version though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Didn't see this one coming and I'm not sure why. Brilliant move on Google's part. Did this get press anywhere and I just obliviously missed it?

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks pretty similar to Google Squared.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, they both have tables.

<comment><USER11> They both use HTTP.

<comment><USER12> the both use the cloud.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: How good is your logic? Tricky puzzle for smart people - <AUTHOR> http://treksit.com/index.html <comment><USER2> This was fun to play. It could be a good game for Android/IOS

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A browser game</comment>


Mastering Programming (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/mastering-programming/1184427814923414 <comment> d--b Distillating years of experience in such tiny concepts is a bit harsh on the reader. Without any concrete example, the advice could easily be very misunderstood, or not understood at all.

Being a fairly seasoned developer myself, I kind of intuit what they mean, but I could very well be projecting what I think I am doing right into each of these, and conclude that I'm a master programmer... yay!

<comment><USER3> This is the crux of the problem with a lot of software engineering culture as it stands today - blog posts and talks frequently deliver abstract concepts that only really make sense to people who have already grasped/discovered those concepts.

The enlightened sit nodding along, while the unenlightened go away confused or misled. Positioned this way, half-understood ideas frequently do more harm than good.

TDD is a great example of this.

In this case, though, I think the article does a fairly good job - <USER2> highlights productive ways of thinking that will incite useful self-reflection ("Do I do this? Could I do it better?") rather than half-communicating ways of doing.

<comment><USER4> > _The enlightened sit nodding along, while the unenlightened go away confused > or misled. Positioned this way, half-understood ideas frequently do more > harm than good._

I think this puts a lot of things into perspective for me. There will be a blog post about some topic on HN, and it seems that everyone in the comments just gets it. Yet I'm over here like, "Yes. I know some of those words. Maybe I'll get the concept a bit more next year." Time passes. I'm still none the wiser.

Functional programming was one of those weird topics for me when I first started programming. It's pretty straight forward on the surface. Some X has to go in. Some Y has to comes out. If it didn't originate inside the function, then it does not get touched. Yeah but why? Who cares if I have a variable outside of the function scope that gets modified? Didn't I declare it globally specifically to have access to it anywhere? What's the point of all these stupid rules when languages give me the ability to do so much more? But all these people can't be wrong, can they?

So I shoehorned it in. I tried to make everything I wrote as functional as possible. I started creating convoluted, over-engineered garbage that was needlessly complex. Nothing felt right about it.

Then I _actually_ tried it. I sat down with a somewhat pure language to learn functional concepts, and it clicked. I see why people extol the virtues of functional programming. Like you've noted, not understanding the reasons behind using functional programming can lead to a convoluted mish-mash of cleverness that doesn't belong.

<comment><USER5> Another problem that I've noticed with FP especially (although I get the impression that OOP had this problem too when it was the new hotness, and I've seen hints of it happening with Rust) is that there seem to be a lot of novices who fall in love with the concept and start evangelizing it, convinced that This Changes Everything. But they can't back it up with a lot of practical experience, can't describe any caveats or limits to its scope, don't have useful knowledge of the practical pitfalls, and so on. So when you bring up something in your domain that seems like it would be difficult, they don't have the foundation to say "this is how you solve that kind of problem" or "yeah, that's still difficult". Instead they deflect or try to subsume it under some vague principle that doesn't actually address your concern.

<comment><USER6> This is a problem with people, and not at all specific to FP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Multiple scales. Move between scales freely. Maybe this is a design problem, > not a testing problem. Maybe it is a people problem, not a technology > problem [cheating, this is always true].

The key to this is realizing that once you decide a problem is at a certain scale, the fix needs to be at that scale too. So you might have a data problem, a code problem, a workflow problem, a design problem, an architectural problem, a team problem, a project problem, an organizational problem, a leadership problem, or an existential problem. (on the level of the company)

Each type of problem has to be resolved by the resources on tap at that level. You fix data problems by editing the data. You fix code problems by changing code. You fix leadership problems by changing leaders. You fix existential problems by changing jobs.

Becoming a more effective programmer involves understanding at a deep level how everything interlocks and moves together. If you can't solve it at one level, escalate to the next level and try to solve it there.

So you might have a code problem that you get pushback on fixing, this makes it a design problem. So you get the stakeholders in a room to come to a decision about what the code should be doing. If they can't come to a decision then it's an organizational problem, so you go to the leader for a decision. If he can't make a decision then you've got clues to a hidden leadership problem at the company.

Problems should be instantly solvable once you get to the level they're really at. You don't escalate though until you know enough about it to make a short presentation to the next person in the chain.

Once you get above the workflow level, you're in the realm of politics. Political problems are defined by the fact that multiple people in the organization care about it and you need to get sign-off before you go and unilaterally change something.

<comment><USER8> I would call this as The hierarchy of 'Troubleshooting Software Problems' ( as a parallel to Maslow's hierarchy of NEEDS).

In order to fix a problem at certain Level, you have to go to 'Bottom Most' layer which is ROOT cause of the problem.

>So you might have

a data problem,

a code problem,

a workflow problem,

a design problem,

an architectural problem,

a team problem,

a project problem,

an organizational problem,

a leadership problem, or

an existential problem.

<comment><USER7> I think the best way of thinking about it is to split problems up across levels. So if you have a code problem that you've worked out to be a design problem, you now have two problems. The higher level one needs to be fixed before you can fix the lower level one.

So the client complains about software behavior. You now have a client problem. You isolate the issue down to a problem in the data. You fix the data but the problem recurs. You now have two problems, a client problem and a code problem, that's generating the bad data. You go to change the code but find a design problem. You now have three problems. You have to solve the design problem so that you know how to fix the code, so that you can then go tell the client that his problem's fixed and here's a free month's service for your trouble.

<comment><USER8> Well analyzed, this is how real-world 'software problems' are interlocked one level to another and YES splitting problem across levels is way to go.

Here is one thing I gained from this Analysis. At times we encounter 'a Code problem' partly caused by ' a workflow problem' and partly caused by 'a Design problem' .

We may do a CODE patch fix for time being (ex. production bug), but having it documented as '40% Workflow problem, 60% Design problem' will help to consolidate all these 'contributing percentages' to come up with permanent fixes at a Later time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having spent entire days years ago poring through the JUnit 3 source code and having been completely dejected by the quality of the code there, I don't really trust Kent Beck to give advice on anything related to programming.

<comment><USER10> > completely dejected by the quality of the code there

Please list a project of _equal complexity_ that has been written beautifully from start to finish in your opinion. This myth of beautiful coding needs to stop! Code is not a masterpiece from Van Gogh, it needs to ship. This determines quality, not the usage of some obscure/mainstream/unreadable/oh- look-how-cool-I-am idiosyncracy of the language. If you ain't shipping, it's completely useless.

<comment><USER11> How about Google's Closure Library: [https://github.com/google/closure- library](https://github.com/google/closure-library)

The code, imo, is some of the highest quality js I've seen. It is also incredibly comprehensive and easily as complex.

High quality != shipping fast. They are separate quantities, it is easy to have one without the other but very rare to have both.

<comment><USER10> I'll take your assessment at face value (although a quick look at github repos, it seems that junit is way larger).

My point wasn't to ship crap, it was about obsessing on quality over actually shipping (and cutting some corners). This is something I learned at my first job, we obsessed over quality and never shipped. Guess what happened? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of the comments criticize the article for being inaccessible to beginners, and I think they're justified—without examples it's hard to know what the author is talking about without having first passed through the fire.

Having said that, I think he's talking about a crucial part of programming that beginners simply don't appreciate: how to break big problems into small problems. In other words, how to unstick challenges (and even find joy in programming) before writing a single line of code.

For example, make a list. Prioritize the items. Strike some. Put the simplest at the top. Figure out which item causes you the most anxiety. Chop away at the branches before attacking the trunk. Even intermediate developers often fail to see that the best programming takes place in the form of a plan.

<comment><USER13> I would say don't work on the branches first. If something is simple and predictable, it can be done later. (This also allows you to slowly converge on a completion date since all the stuff you've put off is simpler and easier to understand and predict in terms of schedule.)

Best to work on the challenging, unknown items first, especially if they form the core that everything will rely on. It gives you time to work out the kinks in the overall architecture. It's much harder to change those things later and harder to predict how long it will take. It's also easier to mock out and fake the branches.

<comment><USER12> I think we're talking about the same thing from two angles—when a task appears uncertain, it's important to isolate it. Sometimes, as you suggest, it's an exploration (build the engine before the body to see it turn over), but other times you can chip away at a problem, piece by piece, until there's no problem anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks like an outline for a potentially interesting article. But the language is too vague to even know how to react to the ideas. What is meant by "extracting a subelement"? "Make the problem easy" sounds great but could mean lots of different contradictory things. So please write the articles being hinted at in this outline, but as is, it's a bit tough to get anything from it.

<comment><USER15> I agree with you even though I disagree with most of the criticism of the article here.

I feel like I know what Kent is talking about behind most of these points, even though his words only hint at the deeper principle. He's trying to be too brief, but I can tell there's depth there.

For many of the points, I had to think a bit, and then it clicked, "Oh, he's talking about xyz. Yep, he's right. But his words don't really say that."

Kent Beck is not some AbstractFactoryStrategySingleton fool. I've learned a ton of insights from him, and I've seen him articulate insights that I had stumbled across and incorporated, but had not been able to articulate.

I'll grant you that some other talking heads often lumped in with Beck have been overhyped and their rhetoric has run ahead of their insight. And no one is perfect. But Beck usually has real insight behind what he is saying, and this IMO is no exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting discussion from 2016, when this was originally written: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858667)

</comment><comment><USER17> Extremely disappointed in this post to the point where I believe that the only reason people upvote this is because it's written by Kent. A lot of it reads just like motivational instagram posts. For example:

> Call your shot. Before you run code, predict out loud exactly what will > happen.

M, okay, but what exactly do you mean by that? Or even poetic, kind of:

> Rhythm. Waiting until the right moment preserves energy and avoids clutter. > Act with intensity when the time comes to act.

I have no doubt that each point has some very specific examples behind them and knowing them could actually be useful. But right now, you can only guess what was intended behind these #deep thoughts.

<comment><USER18> > > Call your shot. Before you run code, predict out loud exactly what will > happen.

> M, okay, but what exactly do you mean by that?

I frequently do a variant of this, although not always out loud. One way to debug a problem is to randomly vary various bits of the program until the problem no longer appears. Another way to debug a problem is to use the scientific method: develop hypotheses, then test those hypotheses with an experiment. I think he's saying to develop hypotheses, and then run code to test them.

edit: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859090)

<comment><USER19> I routinely use the "scientific method" to debug. But usually by then it's too late: the code is too hard to reason about so I have to treat it like a blackbox and "observe" its "responses" to the "stimuli" I'm changing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good post with loads of valuable points.

This document clearly shows that "master" programmers focus on very different things than a beginner might expect. A beginner can get really excited and proud making something complex work without noticing the flaws. After years of debugging your own code you'll find out that getting complex things done is not really the issue, it is HOW it's being done that makes the difference.

Beginners tend to focus on new language features, premature optimisations, having unnecessary strong opinions about wether using a for loop or map or reduce etc.., using too many and buggy libraries, literally copy and use code from others without noticing it's flaws, getting pride from writing complex code that almost no one can understand, trying to beat the calculator, trying to beat Google with your own memory, over estimating the value of linters, CI, TDD, agile, what editor to use, etc.., etc...

All these things take up so much space and energy at the cost of what really matters if you want to do what a master does: write bug free code that is easy to maintain and a joy to read.

</comment><comment><USER21> 'Ideas are like frightened little birds. If you scare them away they will stop coming around. When you have an idea, feed it a little. Invalidate it as quickly as you can, but from data not from a lack of self-esteem.'

This.

</comment><comment><USER22> Random thoughts from an alright programmer:

Slicing: No. Cut the project into appropriate-sized slices. Cut big slices into sub-slices. Hierarchy is your friend.

One thing at a time: Yes.

Make it run, make it right, make it fast: Yes.

Easy changes: No good changes are hard once you own the result. If a change feels hard it's probably not good yet.

Concentration: That's one of two approaches. IMO either rearrange the code so you only need to change in one place, or rearrange your change so that the code only has to change trivially in any place.

Isolation: Depends.

Baseline: Yes.

Call your shot: Yes, but only because it means "know what you think will happen" which means "understand the codebase". If you're working on someone else's codebase, discard this and replace it with "try things and learn from them."

Multiple scales: Yes.

Symmetry: You mean 'factoring'. But yes.

Aesthetics: We define beauty as solving problems efficiency. If it's ugly but it's the best answer, we'll learn to think it's beautiful.

Rhythm: Yep. A time for all things.

Tradeoffs: Yes. You can't make a call til you understand the context.

Fun list: I guess that works.

Feed ideas: Never be afraid to ask what-if.

80/15/5 rule: Situational. If current low risk work is gravy spend 100% on that. If not, dig into R&D.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Poor workers blame their tools. Good workers build better tools. The best workers get their tools to do the work for them." Right now, i am finishing a system that took me 2 weeks do develop. With the standard way, i should have finished it around January of the 2018.

<comment><USER19> I wish your comment alluded a bit more to the details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Programming is like anything else... it's a learned skill. Some people will have unusual high aptitude for it, while others will have unusually low aptitude for it. While it's fun to read existential abstracts of programming(like this article), it's better(for me, and all my coworkers, from every job I've ever had) to just _practice_. Learned skills are refined through repetition. Learn from your peers, and practice, practice, practice. No amount of reading blog posts, or "transcending logic" as the blog post suggest, will make you one iota better at programming.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Facebook notes

Stopped reading right there. My experiences have led me to believe that 9/10 Facebook posts of this nature are purely for publicity's sake and not being taken seriously by the author.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems too abstract to be of value to people who are looking to improve themselves.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find Beck to be mostly spot on, enjoyed his books on smalltalk and unit testing back in the days. I get the feeling that he couldn't care less who is a master according to what measure, he's just trying to make the best use of his experience by doing and sharing, which is the the only thing that makes sense once you go deep enough down the software rabbit hole.

</comment><comment><USER28> Holy crap, his post was full of self-indulgent, non-actionable advice that is totally unrelated to programming.

Anyone who says 'they get it' is likely just afraid they will be viewed as stupid if they say they're confused.

Anyone remember the story of the "emperor's new clothes?"

</comment><comment><USER29> He talks about common patterns of master programmers, but does not define what master programmers are, and why he thinks they are masters in the first place. I really don't get the point of this article.

</comment><comment><USER30> "30\. In programming, everything we do is a special case of something more general -- and often we know it too quickly."

</comment><comment><USER31> If you know you will be stuck working on something for a while, spend a little extra time on each progression, like solving edge cases, performance issues, compatibility, and writing automatic tests for regression. That way you can spend more time on actually adding value, rather then catching fires and debugging.

<comment><USER32> And if you're new to a team or a company, do not underestimate the value of confirming documentation and test cases(if they exist!) and improving upon them if it's possible. This helps in multiple ways: you gain a reasonable understanding of the codebase through reading and testing; you are immediately contributing value to the team by improving upon the process and making it easier for you to onboard new people when the time comes; you gain the confidence of your team by showing interest in details that may have been overlooked for significant periods of time, allowing cruft to build up and plenty more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For the open-web supporter:

From years of watching master programmers, I have observed certain common patterns in their workflows. From years of coaching skilled journeyman programmers, I have observed the absence of those patterns. I have seen what a difference introducing the patterns can make.

Here are ways effective programmers get the most out of their precious 3e9 seconds on the planet.

The theme here is scaling your brain. The journeyman learns to solve bigger problems by solving more problems at once. The master learns to solve even bigger problems than that by solving fewer problems at once. Part of the wisdom is subdividing so that integrating the separate solutions will be a smaller problem than just solving them together.

Time

       - Slicing. Take a big project, cut it into thin slices, and rearrange the slices to suit your context. I can always slice projects finer and I can always find new permutations of the slices that meet different needs.

       - One thing at a time. We're so focused on efficiency that we reduce the number of feedback cycles in an attempt to reduce overhead. This leads to difficult debugging situations whose expected cost is greater than the cycle overhead we avoided.

       - Make it run, make it right, make it fast. (Example of One Thing at a Time, Slicing, and Easy Changes)

       - Easy changes. When faced with a hard change, first make it easy (warning, this may be hard), then make the easy change. (e.g. slicing, one thing at a time, concentration, isolation). Example of slicing.

       - Concentration. If you need to change several elements, first rearrange the code so the change only needs to happen in one element.

       - Isolation. If you only need to change a part of an element, extract that part so the whole subelement changes.

       - Baseline Measurement. Start projects by measuring the current state of the world. This goes against our engineering instincts to start fixing things, but when you measure the baseline you will actually know whether you are fixing things.

Learning

       - Call your shot. Before you run code, predict out loud exactly what will happen.
        Concrete hypotheses. When the program is misbehaving, articulate exactly what you think is wrong before making a change. If you have two or more hypotheses, find a differential diagnosis.

       - Remove extraneous detail. When reporting a bug, find the shortest repro steps. When isolating a bug, find the shortest test case. When using a new API, start from the most basic example. "All that stuff can't possibly matter," is an expensive assumption when it's wrong.
          >  E.g. see a bug on mobile, reproduce it with curl

       - Multiple scales. Move between scales freely. Maybe this is a design problem, not a testing problem. Maybe it is a people problem, not a technology problem [cheating, this is always true].

Transcend Logic

       - Symmetry. Things that are almost the same can be divided into parts that are identical and parts that are clearly different.

       - Aesthetics. Beauty is a powerful gradient to climb. It is also a liberating gradient to flout (e.g. inlining a bunch of functions into one giant mess).

       - Rhythm. Waiting until the right moment preserves energy and avoids clutter. Act with intensity when the time comes to act.

       - Tradeoffs. All decisions are subject to tradeoffs. It's more important to know what the decision depends on than it is to know which answer to pick today (or which answer you picked yesterday).

Risk

       - Fun list. When tangential ideas come, note them and get back to work quickly. Revisit this list when you've reached a stopping spot.

       - Feed Ideas. Ideas are like frightened little birds. If you scare them away they will stop coming around. When you have an idea, feed it a little. Invalidate it as quickly as you can, but from data not from a lack of self-esteem.

       - 80/15/5. Spend 80% of your time on low-risk/reasonable-payoff work. Spend 15% of your time on related high-risk/high-payoff work. Spend 5% of your time on things that tickle you, regardless of payoff. Teach the next generation to do your 80% job. By the time someone is ready to take over, one of your 15% experiments (or, less frequently, one of your 5% experiments) will have paid off and will become your new 80%. Repeat.

Conclusion

The flow in this outline seems to be from reducing risks by managing time and increasing learning to mindfully taking risks by using your whole brain and quickly triaging ideas.

</comment><comment><USER34> Engineering is basically how to be solving problems given constraints and how to properly solve it. I think breaking down the problem in small steps is the method to use to get you 80% of the work done in 20% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER35> I believe this is a duplicate - and in any case should be labeled with (2016).

</comment><comment><USER36> Make it run -> make it right -> make it fast

<comment><USER37> This is good advice in general, and so it amuses me when i come across problems which invert this order. Now and then, you can say "if we could do this thing that currently takes time T in T/100, it would be a game-changer" \- it would enable whole new approaches, businesses, etc. In that case, your primary goal is to make it fast, and if often doesn't matter if it crashes, fails, or gets a slightly wrong answer 10% of the time, so you start by making it fast, then improve the code, then work on the improved code to make it reliable.

<comment><USER38> If it currently takes time T, then it already runs and probably runs right, otherwise you likely wouldn't care about cutting time. Rule still stands.

<comment><USER37> No. It might take someone else time T to do it, and we don't do it at all. It might take another program, whose codebase we are not going to touch, and which does it in a different way, time T to do it. In the cases i am thinking about, this was a new program, written from scratch, which did not go through a "make it right" phase before being made fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The tl;rd: Use common sense.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm sure I'd love to read this article, unfortunately I don't browse the closed web.

<comment><USER41> What do you consider the closed web to be? I'm assuming you don't consider Hacker News part of the closed web, correct?

<comment><USER42> The article in question is on Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> How much is 3e9?

</comment><comment><USER44> For heaven's sake you could not choose better hosting website but the bloody Facebook.

<comment><USER45> Side discussion : Discoverability of Facebook articles is non-existent. Kent Beck other posts are quite interesting but to find them you have to go to his profile, click on a mysterious "more" menu item and then you can select his articles...

<comment><USER46> And that's only if you have an account on Facebook and is logged in. Everybody else get nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> facebook.com?

</comment><comment><USER48> How does IQ and staying power factor in? I would think that this plays a significant role as well.

</comment><comment><USER49> What exactly is that picture? At first open, I immediately closed it thinking it was nsfw. Or is that some ad?

<comment><USER50> A more illustrative example: [http://api.ning.com/files/XnTJa0dlfiK12NtEAkCqjcJ*yhP1-6ZXx6...](http://api.ning.com/files/XnTJa0dlfiK12NtEAkCqjcJ*yhP1-6ZXx6ov513PuN36X9CK7jQupVgvlr9f9rSd1nSK- DACIGGRxnY3fbGpT3-WsV3vVs03/tortus3.gif)</comment></comment>