The Truth About Van Halen and Those Brown M&Ms - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/02/14/146880432/the-truth-about-van-halen-and-those-brown-m-ms

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR they added a requirement for 'no brown m&ms' in the middle of their contract to have an indicator regarding whether someone read the contract.

=> The idea being that if someone was diligent enough to read the contract and make sure there will not be brown m&ms they will also have taken other things in the contract more serious (eg stage safety, electricity, …).</comment>


The Quiet Racism of Instagram Filters - <AUTHOR> http://www.racked.com/2015/7/7/8906343/instagram-racism

<comment><USER2> A filter designed to wash out and lower the contrast in a photo, by design, is going to wash out the colors and lower the contrast in the photo. Might I suggest not using a filter designed to wash out and lower contrast if your desire is to avoid washing out the color and lowering contrast?

Changing the filter to not wash out and lower contrast would change the filter to a different filter. Effectively removing the original filter and replacing it with a new one.

While I understand the issue here - I don't see the problem. Use a filter that isn't designed to wash out a photo and lower contrast if you desire a photo with higher contrasts.

It's similar to complaining a warming filter is making your skin too red and you'd prefer your skin to have more of a blue hue. Instead of complaining about the warming filter, why not use a cooling filter?

</comment><comment><USER3> >Kodak is now bankrupt.

Kodak came out of bankruptcy in 2013.</comment>


Open-source self service customer portal for Stripe - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/service-bot/servicebot <comment><AUTHOR> I developed this project with 4 other developers everyday for about 7 months. The idea came from an issue we had with our consulting agency after developing projects for our clients. The billing and the service lifecycle was completely disconnected. We found ourselves manually sending invoices to the customers and wasted a lot of time, and we couldn't track the future engagements on the same service. So we built ServiceBot. We created a service automation platform around Stripe, allowing companies to define their provided services, and let their customers request those services. It was a very complex and lengthy process, but this is the result of 4 years of our experience in the corporate automation world with VMware, ServiceNow, and AWS. I am so curious to hear some feedback about the platform. We appreciate any feedback.</comment>


Nominations for the 2010 Pwnie Awards - <AUTHOR> http://pwnies.com/nominations/

<comment><AUTHOR> This whole thing started as a joke a couple years ago, but now it's as good a cross-section of what's going on in software security as any. If you don't pay attention to vulnerability research (and most of you don't), skip to "Pwnie for Most Epic Fail" --- there's some pretty funny stuff there. McAfee is a mortal lock for that award this year.

Cringing with embarassment at the whole "best song award" thing? That's a nice synecdoche for all that's weird about this thing we "security researchers" do. Re-read the bit about Tavis Ormandy's #GP trap handler bug right after the songs and see if your head doesn't explode.

<comment><USER2> Where, during the year, can we find a running list of these exploits as they are revealed?

<comment><USER3> As Marcin said, twitter seems to be the security industry hangout. Watch the conference schedules/abstracts to get a good idea where the security industry is headed (some exploits will be revealed in those talks/papers.) Full- disclosure is OK, but I've never been able to follow it -- too noisy.

Really, I think the best way is to keep track of the major vendors security advisory schedule (MS, Apple, Adobe, etc.) Those advisories will say which researcher has submitted the which report. By following those researchers, you will be able to keep out on top of the public research.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on this nonprofit idea for YC? - <AUTHOR> The 50 character description is "A user-automatable crowdfunder for cooperatives."
In case it needs explaining, cooperatives are democratically owned/controlled businesses. The Cooperative Market would make it easy to collectively start, fund and direct cooperatives, securely, over the internet.
* For the nonprofit qualifying usage, it could route charity/aid/loans to users in developing nations who could then directly fund their own infrastructure, utility or consumer cooperatives. To make such things easier it could be usable through smartphones and reduce losses to corruption by virtue of its transparency. Donors could also potentially customize their development-aid or tax-deductible donations so they would proportionally reward recipients for doing things like learning, producing more media/technology or improving within development, education or literacy indexes; thus incentivizing competition among recipients or even nations.
* For non-nonprofit usage, users could fund regular cooperative businesses or otherwise impossibly expensive things they could be proud of; like R&D, scientific research, brain-computer interfaces, aerospace technology, etc.
* It could also offer a method of dealing with profits that could create systemic benefits for members and incentivize becoming more involved. The case is made for redistributing profits from individual cooperatives, to all members of the cooperative market, in proportion to their joining, working for and spending/banking within the cooperative market. The continuous reward for having joined could be especially useful for attracting new members and ensuring that even those who have nothing could benefit from and spend money in the cooperative market. Work-based rewards could potentially be adjusted proportionally to job performance and potentially give an innate edge against the competition when it comes to pay.
Is it understandable? Appealing? Does it seem too long? <comment><USER2> How big is the cooperatives funding market?

Who currently funds cooperatives?

Why would cooperative funders use your platform rather than existing methods?

Would the market take responsibility for vetting cooperatives?

What sort of entity could become a market maker for a cooperative funding market?

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant feedback for the "what will it do" section of the YC application. Sorry for the confusion.

<comment><USER2> What you're selling in a YC applicationo is not so much an idea but the ability to execute.

I would suggest that 'the what' should address those questions. Without doing so, 'the what' is probably less convincing.

In terms of language, I would remove all the "could" and be more concrete about plans.

In terms of structure, I would simplify the causal chains down to a few concrete steps.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A React Component to Compare Two Images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/OnurErtugral/react-image-comparison-slider <comment><USER2> Might be useful. But it could be just a single javascript file with 50 lines or so.

No need to tie it to react.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended Platform for Programming Interviews? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
There seem to be a whole lot of platforms out there to do collaborative coding interview online. Many seem to look essentially the same: left side an editor, right side a terminal, and a green 'run' button to build (if necessary) and execute. Supporting audio and video is a bug plus. But I haven't found any that allow you to include things like supporting code or datafiles. I want to give candidates a chance to show how they work in a more realistic environment rather than transferring classic whiteboard problems on a new platform. Part of that, for me, involves providing some support code that they may or may not have the source code for.
Any suggestions welcomed! <comment><USER2> FrontendArmory[1] allows you to make forks of your code so you can create the base and then give a fork of it as the starting point. The data can be passed as an API or in a json file. Really depends on what you are interviewing for. Maybe another solution could be give them a repository with the base project and ask to screen share how they work on it? This way they at least would work on a comfortable environment. Personally, I find all this online services not very flexible and I don't like actually using them.

[1][https://frontarm.com](https://frontarm.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> We have an interview laptop or the candidate can use their own. Share screen over zoom (or whatever else).</comment>


Open Floor Plan Could Help Spread Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-open-floor-collaborative-office-could-help-spread-coronavirus-11583784275 <comment><USER2> Love this angle on open offices.

This kind of reason is needed to counter bean counters saying, "But ... but ... but it's a nickel cheaper per headcount!!!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Related: Welcome back, cubicles? Longtime Silicon Valley CEO says coronavirus could kill the open office

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/welcome-back-cubicles- long...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/welcome-back-cubicles-longtime- silicon-valley-ceo-says-coronavirus-could-kill-the-open- office-2020-04-24?mod=home-page)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Many meatpacking plants are installing plexiglass dividers between workers.

I wonder if this is where tech workers are headed too. It would be interesting to see Google and Facebook offices with plexiglass dividers separating employees. It may happen in the near future!

<comment><USER4> Still doesn't remedy the ~30% average loss in productivity for knowledge workers.

<comment><USER5> Ooh, what study showed that?

<comment><USER4> Geez...

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=open+plan+study+productivity&t=can...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=open+plan+study+productivity&t=canonical&ia=web)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, the writers at the WSJ are geniuses, the quality of writing here... I don't even need to bypass the wall for this. I mean, and ingesting/injecting cleaners is a bad idea.

I.e. no brainer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pretty sure, I can attest to this theory. Just takes a sneeze and a few coughs and they fly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Offices with doors maybe?</comment>


Ask HN: It's 2017, why isn't there an easy option for surround sound? - <AUTHOR> Here's what I want:
A small router-sized device that has an HDMI input, supports ARC, and can power my surround sound speakers.
Why is that so hard?
It seems odd that I'm forced to buy a giant A/V receiver with 10 inputs, hundreds of settings, am/fm radio, a microphone jack, and a headset jack.
I mean, do they really think I'm going to listen to fm radio while dancing around in my living room wearing a headset with a ten foot cord?  The eighties were over 30 years ago!
All I want to do is hook up my TV to surround speakers and get the same functionality I get from the A/V system, minus the giant size and all the other features, displays, and dials I don't need. <comment><USER2> Amplifiers that can power loudspeakers without sounding terrible take up a certain amount of space. That said, many smaller/cheaper alternatives end up getting packaged in larger form factors than they need so as to avoid looking cheap.

A powerful receiver is the backbone of your audio system, though, and so if you want good sound, eventually you'll just have to give in and buy one. Get a nice shelving unit to put it in and make it part of your room, not something to hide.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can get the size of an amplifier down with class D technology, but I am seriously annoyed at the whole "let's make tiny expensive speakers that cost $1200 a pair that sound worse than the $40 a pair speakers I picked up at a yard sale that belonged to a teenager who played the guitar in the 1970s" thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Consumer audio has seemed to have lagged behind other technologies by seemingly 20 years. Why? It's a great question. I had once thought self powered speakers would take over audio, but never seems to happen. Look at all of the TV's being sold with terrible audio built in. We still seem to be dickering about with consumer love for the 3.5 mechanical audio jack. There are some really cool t-class amps on ebay with Bluetooth. Perhaps combined with an hdmi surround audio extractor, also on ebay, you could custom build something to your needs. You might have a hard time syncing all of the separate audio channels with Bluetooth though.

</comment><comment><USER5> I personally have a Sonos soundbar, which connects to the digital output of my TV. The soundbar then connects to my home router (either via wifi or ethernet).

Then I connect my subwoofer and 2 surrounds to the same router. And the soundbar distributes the relevant audio channels over wifi.

In this scenario, the soundbar is your 'small router-sized device', however it's the size of a sound bar..

I can't fault the sound of the system as a whole. I think it sounds great.</comment>


Capability Operating Systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.links.org/?p=905 <comment><USER2> Funny, he didn't mention Hydra/C.mmp, CMU's capability-based OS and hardware (built on PDP-11's).

I remember studying it while an undergrad (mid-70's), and even playing with it over the (then) ARPAnet.

Programmed in Bliss-11 (ah, sweet memories), and, yes, the whole capability-OS concept blows your mind. You have to think about programming in an entirely different mindset. (A great one, IMNSHO.)

Too bad the concept never really found commercial success (other than being hidden in various AS/x OS's from IBM).</comment>


Snowden: 'Wannabe PRISM partner' Dropbox is 'hostile to privacy' - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/snowden-wannabe-prism-partner-dropbox-is-hostile-to-privacy-7000031740/

<comment><USER2> I love that the post directly prior to this one on HN is "Creating the 'Dropbox of your Genome'".</comment>


Ask HN: Online banks where I can open account worldwide? - <AUTHOR> I travel to exotic countries to live and work remotely. If suddenly my credit card is blocked or stolen, are there any online banks where I can open an account and order a card by post to anywhere in the world, confirming my identity online?<p>For example, there are several banks which allows me to open a bank account without German registration and no non-residence, being in Germany. Unfortunately, they send cards only to a limited number of European countries. Even if they are ok with my passport I have to ask somebody to receive my card and send it directly to me. <comment><USER2> Revolut[1] seems perfect, I cannot recommend them enough. With their premium plan you get 1% cashback on all card purchases outside the EU as well. The support is great, if your card gets cloned or something.

You also can fluidly and transparently transfer between all different currencies at the interbank rate, which I find is great for travelling back home (Most of my cash is in Euros).

They are really, really good.

1\. [https://www.revolut.com/](https://www.revolut.com/)

<comment><USER3> Whilst I recommend Revolut, be wary of the support. My card was stolen and I noticed that there had been several transactions on it, meaning somebody had been using it. Fortunately I have the push notifications turned on so I was alerted almost instantly.

When I got in touch with Revolut support, they needed a paper copy of the police report, along with several other documents from places such as ActionFraud (an organisation set up here in the UK to exclusively tackle fraud).

The police report took 2 hours to file, followed by a 2 week delay by Revolut to actually verify the claim and process the refund. Now, any other "bank" I've been with here will always refund you the money first and then resolve later.

This isn't necessarily a criticism of Revolut, as I still use them very frequently but just a word of advice in case you're used to the process, as I was.

<comment><USER4> Wow, I can't even comprehend that much hassle to report a card stolen. American Express will deactivate my card and overnight me a new one in 5 minutes on the phone with customer service.

<comment><USER5> That's why you "pay" a premium for big US credit cards and banks. Trust, and when shit hits the fan, they will/should be there.

Somebody stole my Capital One card awhile back and racked up over $2,000 in charges. Capital One, instantly deactivated the card, sent me a new one, and reversed all the charges.

<comment><USER6> Capital one didn't eat those charges, the merchants did. They are the ones that get fucked

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Transferwise borderless accounts ([https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/](https://transferwise.com/gb/borderless/)) do exactly that. You can open up multiple international bank accounts that are all linked to one debit card. It's free as well.

<comment><USER8> This is somewhat tangential, but does anyone have a good way to accept money in different currencies with minimal fees? Specifically I'm making money from different international Amazon sites and they all either send a paper check or I need a bank account in the country of origin which is not often possible.

I've looked into Payoneer, but they are taking a cut too and only really support a couple currencies. Any good options? I haven't looked at Transferwise yet so they might work.

<comment><USER9> I use TransferWise Borderless to collect payments in USD/EUR/AUD/SGD. They give you routing details for a local bank account created in your name. You can hold cash in the original currency, centralized it to one currency, or send it all back home. I have moved significant sums over the last two years without a single issue. Recommended.

<comment><USER10> You got my hopes up, but the TW borderless bank doesn't give you local SG bank account details (yet?). SGD is a supported currency of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Try Neat ([https://www.neat.hk/](https://www.neat.hk/)) - they offer both personal and business accounts to people and businesses worldwide and are based in Hong Kong.

Businesses get a virtual account number at Standard Chartered.

Funds for personal accounts are held at Bank of China Hong Kong.

Both types of accounts get debit cards that ship globally.

I've signed up for a business account and been approved all online.

I think they exclude people from some countries.

Can try here: [https://www.neat.hk/signup/start](https://www.neat.hk/signup/start)

<comment><USER12> Any similar services that let you buy stocks worldwide?

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't call Interactive Brokers a "similar service" but it's one of the few brokers that offers accounts pretty much worldwide [0] and also one of the few that offers access to pretty much any market [1].

That said, they either cost $10/month (commission or inactivity fee) unless you have a $100k balance with them.

[0]: [https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=7021](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=7021)

[1]: [https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1562](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1562)

<comment><USER12> What if you want to buy and hold as a long term investment?

<comment><USER13> Depends on your definition of "worldwide". I think IB is pretty unique in that it offers accounts worldwide access to markets worldwide.

If you only want access to worldwide markets, you can probably do it with a local brokerage.

If you only want a worldwide account, the brokers in the market you want access to will often give you an account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> N26 works the best. I have tried many banks, from Revolut, Bunq to many traditional banks (I have 7+ accounts).

N26 offers very nice desktop experience too. It's not an argument that you need to use your mobile – with EU requirements and MFA thingy going on, there are very few services where you are NOT required to use your phone (none in my experience!).

Revolut couldn't accept my salary, bc it was too much money turnover for them (due to their non-bank regulatory). N26 has super convenient customer support (chat, very fast in my experience!), plus you can deposit money in common stores...Flawless experience so far (1yr now, using for salary and everything – thousands of euros in and out, not a single problem). Revolut wants to be everything, but to me lacks of some seriousness – e.g. customer support sucks big time (in my direct experience), all these ads for crypto and stuff...N26 is like the older brother to Revolut.

<comment><USER15> How much is your salary ? Am curious to why a bank can't accept it.,

<comment><USER14> Again, Revolut is not a bank. I was told that my top-up yearly is 15k EUR – after asking if I can use R account for my salary (all in all I would deposit around 50-80k EUR yearly).

If I would provide documents it would maybe be possible to increase that limit – however, no one ever got back to me, after several requests from my side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure doing it online is particular useful in that case. As it takes at best a couple of days to receive the card you ordered, were you willing to be stuck at that place (or hotel) for days without the card?

As a Korean student who have studied in America and England, I found Citibank useful enough in my case. Citibank is particular good at international personal banking services and they have branches across pretty many countries. When I lost my wallet in Prague 7 years ago, I could visit a Prague branch to withdraw some money without a card immediately (called Emergency Cash or something) , confirming my identity with my passport and calling a Korean branch to make sure it's me. I'm not sure I could make a card in Prague though.

<comment><USER17> I can't comment on the worldwide aspect, but plenty of challenger banks allow you to add your card to your Apple Pay/Google Pay wallets immediately after account opening; without having to wait for the physical card.

<comment><USER16> Oh right. I might say it from the 7 years old point of view. But you should also consider that only a few countries support Apple Pay/Google Pay yet - Neither of them are available in Korea for example. And withdrawing cash is even harder with them.

<comment><USER18> In my experience (with a few exceptions), Apple Pay will work at nearly any merchant that accepts PayWave (obviously with a Visa card), even if Apple Pay hasn't landed in that country yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My standard swiss banks always offered me to ship the replacement cards to anywhere in the world as long as I notify them how long I am in which country. I see no reason except cost-saving that an online bank shouldn't offer it.

<comment><USER20> However you need to be a resident to open an account, and at the very least keep a permanent address in Switzerland if you travel for extended period of times unless you're ready to pay outrageous fees as a non-resident. So this doesn't really answer OP's question.

<comment><USER21> Incorrect. You can open accounts as a non-resident. However if you're afflicted with USA citizenship they'll generally tell you to get lost unless you have a lot of money.

You will have to pay fees, correct, that's just the cost of compliance in today's world though. The fees are comparable to fees at US based banks FWIW (except the US banks will charge those even to residents in certain cases).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good options have been mentioned this thread.

With EU-based neo-banks, I believe that because of the KYC guidelines, you'll always need a somewhat permanent address in Europe (like friends/family) that can forward you the card, when you open your account.

However if you just need a replacement card, many can send it internationally, at least for a fee.

<comment><USER22> I'm curious if the Estonian e-residency can help workaround the need for an European permanent address?

(wrote this prior to trying to google around for the info)

<comment><USER23> It cannot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have Charles Schwab, use it for all my banking and it's fantastic. No fees to take out money from any ATM in the world. Don't even know why I'd want something else, but now that I see people talking about Revolut, N26 and TransferWise I guess I should at least investigate whether they have anything to offer.

<comment><USER21> Schwab are great if you only want to keep USD. They're terrible otherwise, including the fact that they charge 1% currency conversion if you send them a non-USD wire.

And they're not a bank, meaning your cash isn't insured. (Unless you reside in the USA, in which case you can get a proper bank account with FDIC insurance).

<comment><USER24> Ah -- makes sense, thanks, I do live in the US, and generally what I need/want the account for is just to be able to take _out_ my USD in other currencies, not particularly to deposit other ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are _any_ of the options listed in this comment thread available to US citizens ?

My understanding has been that US "Know Your Customer" laws make it very difficult for these banks to work with US customers and so they just choose not to. For instance, unless you have $10M or more, you cannot walk into Zurich Kantonalbank (for instance) and open up a bank account. They don't want your money.

Is that not also true of Revolut and N26 and the other options in this thread - or are those all paypal clones that work differently than actual banks ?

<comment><USER26> I, solely a US person, have accounts with N26, Revolut and Transferwise. None are officially banks.

I recommend Transferwise because they support ACH transfers and US$ balances.

<comment><USER25> How are these more useful/interesting/performant than paypal, which I already use ?

Genuinely interested ...

<comment><USER26> If you need these, you know it. For example, if you keep balances in multiple currencies or want to transfer money between EU and US banks or have a low-fee multi-currency debit card. Paypal doesn't allow any of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love N26. I use it everyday. It is free, great conversion rate etc. it even works with Apple Pay. I know I sound like a paid advertiser, but I swear I just love their service

Some nice things: \- you can pay with it during a flight, not possible with most of the online bank \- depending on the country you can apply for overdraft \- you can get cards that include different types of insurance, free withdrawals in any currency etc \- you can have a savings account \- you can even open business accounts and many more

Affiliate link, we will both get €15: [https://n26.com/r/razvana9235](https://n26.com/r/razvana9235)

Non-affiliate link: [https://n26.com](https://n26.com)

//added more info

<comment><USER28> Please don't use N26! There've been major security vulnerabilities in the past [0]. I wouldn't trust them with my money.

[0] [https://theheureka.com/massive-security-vulnerabilities- dete...](https://theheureka.com/massive-security-vulnerabilities-detected-in- fintech-n26s-app-20161220)

<comment><USER27> Thanks for that, didn't know. I am curios if you are insured and even if someone steals your money, you get it back.

<comment><USER29> The problem isn't whether it's insured, the problem is whether anyone believes your claim that it was stolen.

<comment><USER27> haha you are right

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Revolut seems to make the most sense in this case. You could consider Curve Card as well. In terms of traditional banks, Charles Schwab welcomes international clients who are ready to invest $25K upfront.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's not something I've looked into, but being from Denmark, one of the most digitised public sectors of Europe, I do hear about our competitors.

I think you should look into Estonia, they offer digital citizenship and a range of other services. It's not a full citizenship, but it allows you to do banking and create companies and such.

Not sure how commonly accepted it is in other parts of Europe though. But I think it might be worth a look.

<comment><USER32> The problem with Estonia is that I think you still need to travel here in person to open a bank account. The KYC laws are pretty strict. Source – I'm Estonian.

<comment><USER33> Holvi (Finnish payment processor) allows you to open corporate account for Estonian E-Residency LLC without visiting Estonia. Works well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I try to avoid SPOF. I carry separately 2 cards from 2 bank accounts. I use 1 for guaranty (hotels never cancel them manually which can be a problem if you often change hotels), the other is for consumption. Also, maybe you should change your bank. Mine is sending a card replacement whereever I am on the planet in a few business days.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have you looked at classic investment banks like Schwab or TDAmeritrade? You can use them solely as checking accounts and they have had pretty good customer service when I've traveled abroad and may be able to send cards internationally.

<comment><USER35> Schwab is great especially if you're a US citizen working remote abroad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> TransferWise.com/borderless

\- Loads of account details available - US, AUS, USD, EUR \- Super cheap all of the time (think revolut is cheaper for some amounts and routes) \- Plastic card

</comment><comment><USER37> Not a bank per se but Revolut is any option perhaps.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm using it and it's great: [https://n26.com](https://n26.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not put the name in the description of my question. But I used them as well. When I came to Germany they opened me the account without the German apartments registration. I confirmed my identity with the web camera and my passport and they sent me the card by post to my hotel. Easy. But I think they can do it only within EU. If I travel with their card to another country and will lose it, they will not send it worldwide.

<comment><USER39> Not sure with n26 but when I lost my Monzo they sent a new one to Thailand without problems, fast too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Check out NomadCapitalist.com or specifically his YouTube channel where he has numerous videos about this exact topic. I know he recommends Georgia a lot for banking, but you might still need to open in person.

[https://youtube.com/user/nomadcapitalist](https://youtube.com/user/nomadcapitalist)

</comment><comment><USER12> Any similar services that let you buy stocks worldwide?

<comment><USER39> For larger investors Interactive Brokers is good.

<comment><USER12> What if you want to buy and hold as a long term investment?

<comment><USER39> It ok though if <$100k they charge as below:

>We do not charge any account maintenance fee for any account that meets the following criteria: Greater than 100,000 USD in average equity for a calendar month or 10 USD in commissions generated in a calendar month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> neat.hk

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, i will look</comment></comment>


Exit strategy required at YC? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guy's,<p>After reading a lot about the startups at YC, I was a bit baffled to see that most people only talk about the exit strategy.. Doesn't anyone care about building a sustaining business anymore, or is this just part of the YC agreement ? <comment><USER2> well..

IMHO, people start on businesses with the assumption that it is going to be a success. But that assumption turns out to be true only a very few times. When there is such a high chance of failure its just smart that you also make plans for such a negative possibility.

An exit strategy is to ensure that when you give your idea a try, you should still come out unscathed if it doesn't work out and if possible be still make some money to try out your next idea.

It is just like insurance, you don't buy it because you want somethig bad to happen (well.. in most cases :)), but in case it happens.

If you are a programmer, this may make more sense - there is a reason you have 'if... else..." and not just 'if'

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So basically all the comments I saw where from people who are serial entrepreneurs? I see. BTW, I am a programmer :)</comment>


Ask HN: Is one-man-devops a realistic project? - <AUTHOR> My firm (fintech based, medium-large enterprise) is stuck somewhere in the middle of a large scale tech transformation - two years in, and right now the end is no where in sight.
Our system/ops guys (~50 people) are generally smart and nice people - but they're the classic victim Ops dudes that got renamed to DevOps overnight. They went from scp'ing bash scripts to bare-metal to AWS and Kuberenetes and all that jazz and are basically "winging it". The rest of the frim (few hundred devs, business/marketing/support) are either blissfully unaware or getting increasingly frustrated as deployments remain a coinflip for success.
I am (or was) the dev tech lead here, and recently quit mostly due to some of the frustrations mentioned above. I've already secured an offer from "tech giant X", and intended to move in a few days. As a "counter" from the CEO - I've have the option of creating a new division, with the initial goal of redoing the entire stack.
I have a free hand in hiring/strategy, except from within the company. It's super hard to recruit here due to location and strict security requirements, meaning that for 6+ months I'd be "alone".
The goal is a production-grade Kub cluster on AWS with the accompanying ecosystem. That includes most of the SOA-enablers - full CI/CD, multiple segregated envs, monitoring/logging, service catalog, etc. When it's "ready", we handover the day-to-day "back" to ops.
My division goes on to bigger and better things - whatever I'm into.
I have a very solid grasp on things required on the dev side, but the overall AWS architecture (networking, security, etc) is not something I've dealt with. Some things can be handed over to managed solutions (e.g. KMS), but strict regulation means not all. EKS/Tectonic and such are probably not an option.
Those of you with this kind of transformation behind them - is this a realistic goal for 1-2 non-ops people to learn and an implement within ~1 year? <comment><USER3> I don't know how realistic that is, but if you're going to try this, I'd recommend the following: as a prerequisite for your doing this they have to permit you to straight off the bat recruit two people internally from the existing sysadmin team.

One should be someone with a deep understanding of the bare metal networking, security, etc. concerns, who's enthusiastic about learning how that translates to an AWS environment. S/he will advise you to make sure you get that part right, and hopefully pick up enough to pitch in to design and build your infrastructure.

The other should be someone with a strong understanding of the old bash scripting who's interested in learning modern devops scripting. They'll help you translate the old scripts to new paradigms and eventually help you build out the rest.

Both of these people will have to be fast learners willing to spend the first month or so learning the essentials. Make sure you have funding from management to support whatever video tutorials, online courses, etc. they need to get up to speed.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Our system/ops guys (~50 people) are generally smart and nice people - <USER2> > they're the classic victim Ops dudes that got renamed to DevOps overnight.

That's just a name change. "DevOps" is just the same system administration as it was for the previous 20 years, the difference is just that now we have more tooling, services, and deployment methods. Why "victim dudes"?

> They went from scp'ing bash scripts to bare-metal to AWS and Kuberenetes and > all that jazz and are basically "winging it".

OK, so they got virtual machines, somebody else's data storage and processing services, and tooling for containers suddenly dropped on their lap, so they need to modernize their craft. And from what you describe, they weren't that good in the craft to begin with (IaaC is an idea twenty years old, the same with packaging software, and just these two techniques can easily handle growth from a few machines to dozens or hundreds).

> [...] is this a realistic goal for 1-2 non-ops people to learn and an > implement within ~1 year?

Probably not. For building a robust infrastructure you need somebody who understands well how the OS and networks work and what mechanisms the OS provides, which usually means a good and experienced sysadmin, not a programmer. It's not impossible for a programmer to _learn_ that, but it requires a good mentor, and then you're still left with an _implementation_.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am an engineer who recently managed DevOps at a decent scale (traffic wise) startup. ~1 year is a long time so I think it's do-able. As somebody mentioned here do start with a small team right off the bat. You will be making lot of tooling decisions & without a team/discussion those will likely be based on quick surface reading.

If I were you, the question I would ask is do I want to go through this struggle? Would I enjoy it? DevOps has it's own frustration moments (little more than programming) & Aha moments. Not everyone enjoys it, so ask yourself that question first.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty funny, because I'm in an incredibly similar situation. From my experience, most of the development-oriented things you need is hard but not unrealistic.

However, "production-grade" is a term more easily thrown around than implemented, especially in the financial sector. I assume hiring consultants from that is not an option?

</comment><comment><USER7> Why not respond back with ~1 year once you have a team in place.</comment>


Posterous (YC S08) launches group blogs that are also email lists - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/05/05/posterous-email-lists/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure, but this, or some evolution of this feature, could turn out to be a real revolution when it comes to group collaboration and sharing.

Or it might just be another feature, or that I'm trying to see something that isn't there.

I've been searching for a merge between this, Chatterous and possibly etherpad for small-group collab. Alas, it eludes me still.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're definitely excited about the potential for this feature to grow into its own product!

You can expect improvements to this coming fast and furious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is ridiculously awesome and the exact feature we needed few months ago.

We started a blog for our larger extended family(50+ people) so there is a simple place for all our family communication. Yet a lot of the people in our family know only rudimentary use of the computer--and that means email. So the blog idea didn't quite work out and we're back to emailing--which is disorganized but works.

With this we can get the best of both worlds! Communicate via email, archive on a blog!

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love for you to use Posterous for this, and would love to chat with you offline about how it works out for your team and how we can get better. My contact info is in my profile. =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm more interested in how you got Mashable to cover this (so quickly). Anything you could share there? (yes, PR-related question).

Awesome feature, I'd imagine you will be using this mechanism to allow developers against your API to track API changes? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> For a brand that's gaining momentum, getting coverage is a bit easier. You might already follow the writers on twitter or vice versa, or if you're in SF/the valley you might even grab coffee with them.

For a company starting out, you need to either have a product so thoroughly badass that it trounces something else that is hot, or you need a connection / intro to someone who knows them well.

It doesn't have to be Michael Arrington himself -- in fact, he's obviously such a busy and important guy that it's almost impossible to get his attention. However, at each of these blogs there are staff writers. They're the ideal person to reach out to -- they're looking for great stories, and hey, you've got one.

Final tip: use bullet points. Include screenshots if you can. If you make it so compelling and so obvious that it's a story, and you practically write it for them, you make their life easier and that makes it a no-brainer for them to write about you.

As for API -- that sounds very cool. We're very psyched about becoming a more open platform to let people build apps on top of Posterous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in love. May I have permission to marry your daughter?

[I just realized we don't do humor here. Mod me down :(]

</comment><comment><USER6> Woah! I can see how this is different from an e-mail list that gets published on the web. ;-)

Interesting to see how a new layer of paint can bring old concepts to the masses.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. Great ideas never die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Posterous is great. I'm interested to know - was this something that you've had planned for a while, or did it come as a natural evolution of the product / feedback from users?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's something we talked about even back during last summer when we first launched Posterous. It's great to finally be able to put it out there.

Once we launched group blogs though -- we did start hearing a lot of requests for this feature too. There's absolutely a validation piece to it. When users ask for it, you know there's something there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've got a Google Group with old college friends which we've always wanted to be richer, but we don't want to lose the casual members by trying to migrate and change their habits. I think hooking it up to a group posterous account might be the right way to please everyone.

Very cool.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder-- are they stripping out the reply/quotations somehow, or are those going to be showing up on the blog, too? Long, long streams of >>>>>>>>>>>>>||||>>>> make for crummy blogging.

<comment><USER8> Good point. I did an experiment a few weeks ago to see how this was handled on posterous by sending an email to a friend and cc'ing email@example.com.

It was handled well on their end with a solid line on the left side of the reply. So it looks like something they are already prepared for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like it, but it fails to load 3 out of 5 times when I click on a Posterous link. First day traffic blues?</comment>


Sony Hacked Again: SQL injection attack against SonyMusic.gr exposes user data - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/05/22/sony-bmg-greece-the-latest-hacked-sony-site/

<comment><USER2> > when this is over, Sony may end up being one of the most secure web assets > on the net.

Sorry to be harsh, but this is a wishful thinking.

When you've been very careless about security for years (PS3 random seed not random, music rootkit that was hackable, OMA master key leaked, PSN servers not up-to-date, PSN trusting the PS3s, etc...), you don't simply turn into a "secure" company, unless you spend years of corporate policies and formation, trying to change the habits of your employees...

Changing (or creating new) employees reflexes and habitudes isn't something easy at all, especially when you are an international company, with different cultures on board. This can be a herculean task.

I wish they will succeed, though...

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's going to take 3-5 years, look how long it took Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> Or it may never happen. Security is a culture and a way-of-life. It's not a couple of technologies, a new CTO, and a couple policy emails and training sessions.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but culture isn't immutable. And a top-down, company wide focus on security and proper training is a damn good place to start.

The problem is getting middle management on board. It's no good if mid-level managers tell their direct reports to go to the training and then go back to business as normal with the same old priorities and no extra time/focus on the new security aspects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lesson learned: go fix your security issues _before_ pissing off tons of hackers by lawsuits.

<comment><USER7> We'll see about 'lesson learned'. At the moment, Sony does not look like they learned anything. But I sure hope they will.

<comment><USER8> "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others." -- <http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html>

<comment><USER9> D.H. Banes: I believe, umm, that certain people in life are meant to fall by the wayside; to serve as warnings to the rest of us; signs posts along the way.

Igby: To where?

D.H. Banes: Success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not having any inside knowledge, I don't _know_ this, but it's always seemed to me that Sony has never been able to write software to save its life. Whether it's PSN, or the pathetic web store for the Sony eReader, or the equally pathetic Mac and PC software for the Sony eReader, Sony software has consistently disappointed me.

Given how brilliant Sony's hardware designers have historically been, I wonder if there is something fundamental going on. Could it be that Sony is simply not good at hiring and retaining good software engineers, perhaps because the hardware engineers get all of the kudos and awards and perks? If so, Sony wouldn't be the only company that has had that problem. Before I gave up on Nokia smartphones (my last Nokia phone was the E70) I've had similar suspicions about Nokia products. I loved their hardware design, but the software didn't seem to live up to the promise of the hardware...

<comment><USER11> I'm a consultant who is wrapping up a gig w/ a division of Sony, and I will say that Sony as a company is very _very_ silo'ed. The various divisions of Sony almost never communicate amongst each other, and there's a shit-ton of duplicate efforts within groups. I'm very surprised they were able to develop a PSP Phone.

I guess I'm thinking that trying to diagnose the problems with their software as a corporate culture thing might be a bit misguided as Sony literally behaves like several completely separate companies running in parallel, unaware of each other. Although _perhaps_ the quality of their software would improve if they worked together and leveraged each other's work. Seems like a stretch, though.

<comment><USER12> _I'm very surprised they were able to develop a PSP Phone._

I'm very surprised that they did it at all. In my opinion it creates a confusing story for PSP owners looking to upgrade. NGP or PSP Phone?

Sometimes I wonder if the two teams were even aware of each other's existence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem here is that they have created a beacon for all hackers that want to create a name for themselves. Of course they are going to have security loopholes, most web assets do, but their standards now have to magnified by a magnitude to keep intruders out.

<comment><USER14> Sony's incoherence just as a matter of how much surface area they have exposed to the public only multiplies this problem.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, this is it. It only takes one SQL injection for Sony to make the news these days. Just think about the number of web properties Sony has. I wouldn't like to have to job of securing those in the first place, let alone with a bunch crackers with a reason to target you and the associated press coverage.

Not to say that this is good; it's awful for your users data to be exposed.

<comment><USER16> If a company or group is so big that it can not operate securely, then it is either too big or in need of major rearrangement.

Right now Sony are in the unenviable position of needing to fire-fight their many security issues while the high power spotlight is on them lighting other stray bits of touch paper. Hopefully (yeah, these hope is naive in the extreme I know) Sony will take away from this the need to get security right on all levels _before_ the first attack and subsequent media attention, and hopefully other companies are taking the situation as a wake-up call and instigating a meaningful review of their own security mind-set (or at least double checking their policies and their adherence to them if sufficient security mind-set is already in place).

<comment><USER14> >can not operate securely

Nobody can, size just makes it worse. Welcome to the reality of security.

<comment><USER16> Perfect security is not possible, this is true.

But it would seem that Sony's general culture in that arena is significantly below what could be reasonably expected, and hopefully everyone else is now actively checking to make sure theirs isn't...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sony Music != Sony Pictures != Sony Computer (PlayStation) != Sony Electronics (TVs, etc.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> More details: [http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/05/sony-bgm-greece-hack- co...](http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/05/sony-bgm-greece-hack-complete- details.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> And PSN still under maintenance in greece.</comment>


Python vs. Go - <AUTHOR> http://nothingbutsnark.svbtle.com/how-to-argue-for-pythons-use

<comment><USER2> Great article. I use Python and Java a lot today, and C/C++ quite a bit over the years. Recently, I have been dabbling a bit in Go. Sure, Go builds static binaries, and it's generally performant, but I simply cannot get away from Python's economy of language and breadth of 3rd party support. Like you noted, if you want performance, use PyPy.. if you want a better concurrent model, use concurrent. A little like the C ecosystem, but I generally don't have to worry about the quality of whatever library I choose to use as an add-on.</comment>


Why Rails will Reign Supreme - <AUTHOR> http://pivots.pivotallabs.com/users/chris/blog/articles/417-why-rails-will-reign-supreme <comment><USER2> Ironically, one of the best places for Rails right now, lies in a place you rarely see innovation -- the big-company-internal-portal market.

Most of these sites are built on old J2EE, STRUTS, or worse ASP stacks. They've got complex configurations, and excessively convoluted deployments, both of which contribute long lead times to updates. Rails allows for a new paradigm that quite closely fits the demands of these customers. Sacrifice a bit on the scalability / reliability end, and take advantage of Rails' agility and simple deployment structure.

Because of their light traffic demands and simplistic feature sets (integrations with other internal corporate services are likely just HTTP based) corporate portals are a fantastic target for early Rails adoption. A single decent developer (the sort you can still _hire) should be able to construct and maintain a fairly complex corporate portal -- reducing development investments (whether in-house or outsourced).

It will be interesting to see which "software as a service" / "software consulting" company first adopts Rails as it's status-quo for this sort of consulting...

</comment><comment><USER3> Rails is great, but this is just a lot of pointless, poorly written, blah blah blah. I wish I could down vote it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Actually, reading the tea leaves, I think Merb will become a solid competitor to Rails this year and perhaps even overtake it in 18-24 months. This is all speculative, of course, but there are definitely a lot of smart people taking a very serious look at Merb because it amounts to a clean-room rewrite of Rails that preserves most of its elegance and none of the bloat. Indeed, I consider Merb's relationship with Rails to be similar to that of Rubinius's relationship to MRI.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, a _here's why my favorite environment will dominate_ piece. I think the proliferation of this type of opinion piece points to something even bigger on the horizon.

 _There is no clear successor_. There doesn't need to be. The computing ecosystem in general has grown big enough now the we don't need to, as he said, elect a new market leader. The rise of server side programming and web apps means we can choose whatever tools get us to market fastest in the domain space we've chosen. It might be rails, it might be lisp, and we might just hack it together in perl. It might be a mashup of all 3 running on different servers at different companies in different parts of the world!

</comment><comment><USER6> "For the moment, I will address this with the following observation: at Pivotal we have many developers who know Ruby and Java and the same developers are several times more productive in Ruby. In this comparison, my money is more on Ruby compared to Python than Rails compared to Django; I can't see how we can be as productive with Python as we are with Ruby."

So they know Java and Ruby, and thus Ruby is more productive than Python?

It makes no sense.</comment>


Research suggests software piracy hurts adoption of Linux as a desktop OS - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/software-piracy-hurts-linux-adoption-research-finds-160221/ <comment><USER2> I think this begs the question of _why_ people pirate Windows instead of using Linux.

Because they don't know about Linux?

Because it's easier to get a working Windows installation, e.g. from a friend who also pirated Windows instead of using Linux?

Because Windows is (supposedly or really) better?

Because people want to use software (e.g. games) which is not (again, supposedly or really) available for Linux?

<comment><USER3> Network effects.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Beekeeper: a codeless object-oriented REST API client library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/haikuginger/beekeeper <comment><AUTHOR> I'm Jesse - the creator of beekeeper.

The idea is that actually writing code to work with REST APIs kinda sucks a little bit. And doesn't usually give you a very good native structure to work with.

beekeeper aims to change that by moving API configuration outside your code, and by creating an object structure that looks like the remote system you want to use. Once you initialize, you don't need to be able to understand the "beekeeper API"; you just need to understand the structure of the objects in the remote system.

I'd love your questions and comments.</comment>


U.S. military carried out secret cyberstrike on Iran - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-military-carried-out-secret-cyber-strike-on-iran-to-prevent-it-from-interfering-with-shipping/2019/08/28/36202a4e-c9db-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html <comment><USER2> They're barely even hiding the fact anymore they want to provoke Iran so they can invade and change regimes.</comment>


What's the best online payment processing solution? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for an online credit card payment processing solution that can handle recurring monthly payments. I'm open to linking off of my site to a hosted provider, so long as I can sufficiently customize the look-and-feel. I'm also open to a lower-level code-it-yourself type of solution. Of course I don't want to spend too much time on this, and I want it to be cheap. :) Thanks in advance for sharing your experiences. <comment><USER2> See:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33322>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33505>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5303>

<comment><AUTHOR> Great info, thanks.

Paysimple looks pretty good: <http://www.paysimple.com/competitors.html> . Anyone have any first-hand experience with it?

<comment><USER2> As I noted in one of those links, I've had success with Cybersource in the past. Their small business division is pretty competitive. For recurring payments, I just stored the cards encrypted and re-billed when necessary. It really wasn't too difficult or time consuming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> i have some experience with this.

i researched a lot of payment gateways such as authorize.net but decided against it because they have a lot of fixed costs which you can only recuperate with high volume.

Also online processors have a lot of procedures, credit checks etc. which is a lot of pain.

I went with paypal but had a lot of trouble with theiragent when dealing with fraud.

I would probably try amazon if I was doing it today.

Once you have an established volume you can switch to a dedicated service like authorize.net. Until then it is better to pay per transaction.

Regards.

-Augustus

</comment><comment><USER4> People seem to like PayPal, and are used to the checkout process. I'd also like to hear about how customizable it is, as I'll be working on it in a few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER5> amazon's new flexible payments system

<comment><USER6> Fwiw, FPS, while progressive in comparison to PayPal in that its % cut increases as Amazon's costs do, is, unfortunately, limited to US customers at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used authorize.net in the past. They were recently acquired by cybersource.</comment>


Process One is hiring new Erlang developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.process-one.net/en/blogs/article/we_are_hiring_erlang_developers/

<comment><USER2> No news. Unless this is the first job posting ever for Erlang devs. But I doubt it. It's time to turn on that editor filter.</comment>


Startup Camp NYC (Oct. 22-23) - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupcamp.org/register.html

<comment><USER2> Is anyone from YC gonna be there?

I found the schedule here if you are attending: <http://wiki.startupcamp.org/wiki/StartupCampNYCGrid>

<comment><AUTHOR> The schedule is less compelling than the opportunity to meet like-minded people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> is it really still open to register? it starts in 3 days

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.

It's a free, "un-conference" type event, like a BarCamp.</comment></comment>


An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://blog.modulus.io/absolute-beginners-guide-to-nodejs

<comment><USER2> Thank you for writing this. Keeping the target audience in mind, one thing you may want to consider is telling people how to stop the node server once its started (CTRL-C).

<comment><USER3> After teaching university, and now having spent the past few years teaching teens it's best not to take for granted what a student might know. Though I discovered that on all levels (not just by teaching the teenagers). When you say "absolute beginner", you've got to be careful not to make too many leaps.

The advice above regarding CTRL-C is good. An absolute beginner might not know this.

Also I noticed a leap in the "static file server" lesson. A beginner may not realize they have to create a public directory and will just get a very unfriendly "Cannot GET" error. This might be especially true as following the `npm install express` command, directories were generated automatically. This sets up an expectation that isn't fulfilled.

A little more handholding might keep you from answering as many questions and allow the beginner a really smooth entry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great post. Looks like you guys have a cool platform too. Any specifics about how it's better than what's out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to chat about the platform. I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for pimping it. I just don's to turn this comment area into a discussion of the platform. Hit us up on twitter @OnModulus or send an email to email@example.com.

<comment><USER5> Ach, go on, a quick elevator pitch won't hurt! I had the same question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well Modulus, [http://modulus.io](http://modulus.io), has a number of things that set us apart. One is that we're not really into to tiers. Custom SSL, domains, etc... are part of the normal package. We support WebSockets, there are a couple others that do but most don't. The really interesting piece is that we provide our customers with a great set of statistics about your running application (number of requests, response times, cpu, memory and more). We also have MongoDB hosting in house which lets you spin up a database for your application quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _I use Node.js a lot for scripting like this. It 's much easier and a more powerful alternative to bash scripts._

I'll use node for Unix scripting when you pry every other alternative from my cold dead hands:

      awk '{a[$2] += $3};END{for(x in a){print x, a[x]}}' sample.txt
      A 2
      B 14
      C 6

</comment><comment><USER7> I like this article. I've been learning Node on the side (I'm a Java developer so Node is pretty foreign to me) and really enjoying it, but as it's very different from what I'm used to these kinds of guides are a big help.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting article. You guys should maybe split this "cookbook" into multiple articles where you will briefly cover socket.io, Mongoose, and unit testing.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Basically you're telling it to do something and when it's done it will call > your function (callback). This is because Node is _single-threaded_.

Do you mean multi-threaded?

<comment><USER10> No, Javascript has no notion of threads. Rather than true concurrency and a synchronization mechanism, it has callbacks (upon callbacks upon callbacks).

<comment><USER11> Technically speaking, HTML 5 introduced web-workers which allows javascript to have multiple threads (see 1). However, it's still useful to think about them as being single threaded since workers are sandboxed, meaning they don't have access to the global namespace. This avoids issues commonly found in concurrent programming. E.g., separate threads cannot read and write to the same variable since they don't have access to each other's namespaces.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/Performan...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Guide/Performance/Using_web_workers)

<comment><USER12> While that's true, I don't believe it's applicable to node.js, so it's a bit out of scope for this article.

<comment><USER11> People coming from multi-threaded server environments should be aware that multi-threading does in fact exist in Node (scope of parent comment), but it's rather different from other more common concurrent event handling schemes. I.e., you cannot have shared mutable variables across threads (scope of article and ongoing async discussion). For examples, see [https://npmjs.org/package/webworker- threads](https://npmjs.org/package/webworker-threads) and [https://github.com/cramforce/node-worker](https://github.com/cramforce/node- worker).

<comment><USER12> Fascinating. I didn't know that webworkers were available in node.js. I stand corrected, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found this screencast about Node.js yesterday. It seems to be in the same vein: [http://nodecasts.net/](http://nodecasts.net/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish there was a rails-android(or ios) authentication guide, there seems to be almost no information on the matter

<comment><USER15> This is an article about node.js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not trying to be flamy, but, once again... why people insist on pushing on projects based on a... renownedly flawed programming language?

..Yea JS.

Today it's clear that the "only" reason for it being used is its widespread availability in browser, but that started in a time when you needed a way to change the mouse pointer from default to a rainbow colored one.

But still js it's the programming language we build frameworks for today, and the kind of industry standard we are proud of.. today.

We are we still stuck at this point? [rhetorical question]

I am not even close to being capable of fixing this by myself so obviously the reason for this comment is just to create my own little tiny wave of resonance, hoping that it could hurt the next bigger wave, hoping this could go on forever.. till the point that js is replaced by something better and wiped forever from planet earth..

<comment><USER17> In what way is it flawed?

<comment><USER18> [edit spelling] I think that the reason you find so much negativity regarding javascript is that many people come to javascript from some other language which offers features which javascript doesn't yet offer.

Having cut their teeth on a language tends to leave the programmer with a worldview where any language which doesn't have the same features which are present in their beloved language is an inferior language.

I believe Paul Graham refers to this as 'The Blub Paradox'[0].

Most of the complaints surrounding javascript stem from the fact that it was initially designed to be a lightweight scripting language.

At the time that javascript was created I think that very few people envisioned the web growing into what it has become. Javascript wasn't created with 100,000 line programs in mind.

Therefore it is currently missing some abstractions which people creating and maintaining programs in the large have come to rely on such as classes, interfaces and modules.

Also javascript has a very simple standard library which leads to people feeling that they need to reinvent the wheel in most cases.

Finally Javascript has prototypal inheritance as opposed to the more traditional class based inheritance which so many programmers are used to.

Of course many of the things mentioned above have already been solved or are currently being solved.

The ECMAScript standards body is in the process of adding classes and modules. Libraries such as underscore.js are fleshing out the standard library. And tools such as Coffeescript are providing a more class based inheritance model (if that is your thing).

[0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)

<comment><USER19> Yes, I am so trapped in my Haskell blub that I cannot possibly understand why JavaScript is so amazing.

<comment><USER20> Have you tried livescript([http://livescript.net/](http://livescript.net/)) or clojurescript([https://github.com/emezeske/clojurescript](https://github.com/emezeske/clojurescript))? I know that they don't have all of Haskell's features but they do bring Javascript a little bit closer to languages like Haskell.

<comment><USER19> I do not particularly care about having a pretty syntax, what I want is the high assurance that the program will not be wrong.

<comment><USER21> Have you tried using haste or fay? (I haven't, just curious)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Acre Designs (YC W16) - Zero-Energy Smarthomes as a Consumer Product - <AUTHOR> http://www.acredesigns.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, co-founder of Acre here sharing our wares. We make Zero-Energy Smarthomes as a consumer product.

We are challenging the typical model, which produces uninspired homes that consume far too many resources: time, energy and money. Our idea is to treat the home-buying and home-building process more like a product. We offer NetZero homes that are simple and quick to build, for a fixed, competitive price nationwide.

Our first offering is upmarket a la Tesla, but will offer our own Model 3 (i.e. lower price-point) sometime next year. Vision is to replace standard homes with high quality, beautiful smart homes that are powered by the sun.

We'd love to get your feedback, especially about driving sales online—how can we get better at getting people to place deposits online? and about the longer term vision of housing: zero-energy, but also sharing economy, mobile lifestyles, density. We'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts and suggestions of this community!

p.s. If any of you hackers are interested, we want to experiment with making homes that go all-out on automation and logging. We'll do that at no extra cost for anyone who found out about us through this thread.

<comment><USER2> The hard problem of real-estate is that it's by definition local...in Theil's terms, each parcel is a monopoly. This means that the first order aspirational feature is location. Not design [that's why people will live in a small Manhattan studio for the same money they could by a ranch in Wyoming].

The homebuilding business is about controlling land. The big boys option hundreds or thousands of buildable lots a pop. In a metro area, that's still a drop in the bucket. Controlling that many lots justifies a sales center, in house financing, and creates one stop shopping.

Land converters, those who subdivide land into residential lots, usually prefer to sell to home builders. It lets them deal with professionals and let the homebuilders who buy lots do all the high touch consumer sales or take the risk of building on spec.

The consumer oriented home design business is likewise bimodal. The big spike is price sensitive: it's $500 online blueprints. Everything else is high touch. Money is no object clients are both rare and tend to be high maintenance. They must be cultivated socially...church, civic club, university homecoming, whatever. They have options...those with buildable lots have even more, including just sitting on it.

Regarding taking deposits, there's almost certainly going to be contractor licensing laws in play. In the best case both a state homebuilder license and a local business license. In the worst case, a local homebuilder license and a local business license. Local homebuilders' associations are fairly active. They will report unlicensed competition.

Legally, laws regarding construction are far more entrenched than those surrounding other disrupted industries...they go back to Hamurabi. Unlike a taxi or a rented room, construction is visible and can't be moved. The local fire marshal has seen people die. The local council woman wants to protect property values by preventing shoddy construction. Local home owners, want to keep construction out of their backyard, unlike an Uber they're not likely to become late adopters...it comes back to location.

Technically, the amount of variation nationwide is massive. There is a combinatorial explosion of wind, seismic, snow, ASHRE, moisture, and aesthetic requirements and preferences. That's before touching soils...every site is potentially different. At best there are local and regional requirements regarding radon and frost depth. At worst, there's rock to muck on adjacent lots.

Anyway, it's an interesting problem.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Herein lies the business model magic that hopefully give us an edge.

We work with local builders, providing the fully designed/engineered packages, with ALL materials needed to build that specific high performance home.

You are right, trying to do this in a fully centralized and detached from community is not workable. We think our take leverages the strengths of both parties and allows us to do this much more broadly.

Regarding technical challenges, we engineer our SIPS shells for seismic by default and can accommodate most snow loads (Tahoe project in the works). HOA's are a PITA no doubt, but urban infill is possible and green field is always going on regardless.

From floor down is all local and must be adapted, so not so turn key there But hey, can't have everything.

Gotta run, but like your approach. Maybe more later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested in such a thing but these homes are far from affordable. In fact they're priced a bit more heavily than homes in nearby Elmhurst, IL, no bastion of cheap home prices.

I'd be up for trying this if I could get it for around 250-300k for the 4br and then that allows me to pick up the land for 150k and come out about 150k cheaper than a standard house, but you're expecting me to pony up 500k + whatever it costs for the land plot, when I can just buy a house for 550k in the same neighborhood prebuilt.

My point is, your value prop isn't real. It's a great home, and a great idea, but it's actually more expensive square foot for square foot.

My wife and I are going to be house hunting in the next two years, and we would have considered this option but it's actually more expensive.

You can give the standard Tesla "but you'll have lower (gas/electric) bills" argument but I like air conditioning, so I doubt that's true for me, and even if it was, it doesn't really sell me either. "Because you'll save so much in the long run(and we can't really prove you will), you need to pay an extra 150k up front!" doesn't ring well.

EDIT: To clarify, I basically feel like in order for this business to work at all, it has to be a much cheaper option than a normal home, because there is an accompanying huge risk in investing in one of these. It's resale value may be next to zero, and all it's fancy gadgets will be out of date by the end of next year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fully agree. Our overall mission is replace the average American home with a ZE home, no additional cost and no energy bill to boot.

This first series is the first DVD player. High end, priced at a premium and for early adopters. It'll help us push the edge of our product and fund development of tech/engineering that pushes future price down.

We should be able to launch homes in the $225K range next year that can be built spec and start helping that average family. That is no easy task and nothing else is commonly available anywhere. The early adopters will pave the way for everyone else, just like the Roadster and Model S is doing for the Model 3 and spurring on the rest of the industry to pay attention.

Currently Net-Zero homes start around $250/sqft, with many that push well above that. We aren't really targeting the mid west, where this does tip the scales (we are originally from Kansas City, so appropriate the gap). In major metros in CA, OR, CO, WA, etc, this is actually a good deal for a normal home and a steal for a turn key zero energy home. Our current home in Redwood City, CA is zillowed at $1.6M and would be $220K in KC. It's all relative.

I'll disagree on the resale. The principal of the home is based on passive heating/cooling, good design and great materials, so performs well regardless. Solar will last 30, quality is significantly better than par and even the software can be updated.

Keep posted, we will have a model home available via AirBnB late summer and you can see how truly different (better) these homes are. By the time you are ready to buy, we should also have our next series available.

<comment><USER4> How many sales have you had so far? I can see the "DVD player" logic working for DVD player, cars and other possessions that are expected to lose value over time but I don't see this working for real estate and other assets that are commonly seen as investments (Whether they are income-producing or not).

Regardless of which area you're building in, the bottom line seems to be that I'd pay $400k this year for something I could get for $225k next year. Whether I'm in KC and it's worth $220k or Bay Area and it's worth $1.6mil I'm still immediately losing $200k at the time of purchase for no benefit other than having the property a year earlier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clarification: The current version (Origin series) is the Tesla Model S of homes; high end, luxury, max performance, premium tech, blowing most Mercedes and BMW's out of the water in every way.

Next year we will offer the Tesla Model 3 version in addition to our premium version. Average price, above average performance, cool tech and blows away Acura's, Fords and Chevy's, but lacking the flash and bells and whistles of the higher end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These are some seriously expensive houses. If net zero is about reducing total cost of ownership, these don't cut the mustard. I personally would be more interested in factory-built modular housing with the minimum of fancy gizmos - just the basics of high R-value insulation, good seals, appropriate placement of windows, and energy efficient HVAC. If net-zero is about reducing our carbon footprint, then I'd be buying a used house and doing some light renovations to make it more energy efficient.

You can get 80% of the way there by blowing foam into the walls, sealing leaks, investing in good windows, and making sure your HVAC system is appropriately sized and used only when needed.

Disclaimer: I used to work on this: [http://ecomod.unm.edu/](http://ecomod.unm.edu/) so I might be somewhat cynical.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll get there next year, but to take the price leap, we have some new tech to get ready for market.

CA has Title 24, which mandates net zero for new homes, so that is the long term focus.

Check out the home we just completed for $145K, looks great, great performance and very comfortable. It's just hard to do at scale with out a bit of a war chest.

As you know, blowing foam, sealing leaks, upgrading HVAC, and good windows will run most folks close to $60-$100k to upgrade. That will still leave it fairly leaky, have an un-insulated foundation and be an older structure. Wish there was an easier solution to upgrading existing homes, but that is a tough business.

<comment><USER5> Sure, renovated old stock isn't airtight, but nobody needs that. I've been in some passive houses - net zero by virtue of the fact that they ventilate the bare minimum of air. Soon as you get some nasty furniture outgassing tons of VOC, ugh! Living quality goes waaaay down. Headache central. Same thing if you put a lot of people in one room - the bare minimum ventilation will cause CO2 concentrations to go up and again, headaches, dizziness, etc.

I don't believe in local stick build kits for your business. Every customer is going to consider the total cost of labor for your houses. I don't know if it's possible, but I hope you consider partnering with a modular home builder with an existing sales network. Clayton Homes or whatever. Then you only need to build to one standard (Fed DOT... I could be wrong though, never looked into the regulations too deeply) and you can leverage their sales and financing force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very neat. I've been thinking about applying the concept of tiny houses to something that is a bit larger, enough for a family of six, while reducing wasted space: Maybe 1200 to 1500 square feet with 4-5 bedrooms. I'll be following your progress!

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do, we've got some options right in your lane. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What kind of things do you have to hack on? I'm interested!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're really interested in a home, we should talk! Would love to have an advanced user to help showcase the tech features. Email me: email@example.com

<comment><USER7> I would _think_ you'd want one central hub to effectively control the whole home. That makes sense to me. Like a thin UI wrapper to control EVERYTHING displayed on an LCD panel... in the living room(?). This makes sense because your selling point is a turn-key home. It would stand to reason that if the hardware is turn-key, the software should be too.

Bringing this all under one central control hub would probably take an equal stakeholder in your business. It's just as important as the material aspect of the home. If you don't have the wherewithal for this, you should probably avoid doing ANY kind of fancy electronic stuff. I know the PV panels are a non-negotiable... but I would suggest not going beyond that until you can create an SDK. This manages expectations, and paves a sane "upgrade" path for the hardware. Simple is always better than fancy.</comment></comment></comment>


Consistency - <AUTHOR> http://www.funkykaraoke.com/2012/06/consistency.html

<comment><USER2> I have to agree and it happens in all areas but actually in a slightly different form usually. To take the analogy from the post, you start walking 20 miles a day and then someone says that it seems easy to do that so why not up it to 30 miles a day. Before you know it, the 40 mile day is the expectation, off days are not allowed and you fall further and further behind, eventually succumbing to burnout and the whole thing ends badly.

Software projects are the same. Nearly every company I've worked at, a senior manager says "Well if we can get these guys doing all this and they seem to be working well within their boundaries, lets push them harder". Pushing people harder can be good if they are really just slacking, but for the most part, people can't sustain more than is comfortable for long periods of time without their work or their mental state suffering. The end result is crappy code, people who leave companies or those that become non-functioning because they're burned.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a lovely thought, certainly, and I wish I could structure my life that way.

However, money doesn't behave like that. Fun doesn't behave like that. Life doesn't behave like that. Love doesn't behave like that.

You can try to set as rigid a pace as you can, but some thing will always find a way to mess your plans up.

Recovering gracefully is the real challenge.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is a state that I call "waiting in motion". You have a goal. It is some ways away. It will take a lot of work to get there. But you just make sure you stay in motion in the right direction, then wait...surprisingly soon you will arrive.

But it is frustrating to _want_ to be there, and just be plugging away.

</comment><comment><USER5> Excellent story. I think people in general overestimate the time they have available to do things and underestimate the time it takes to actually do it; which inevitibly leads to situations where you think you can make up for "lost" time by sprinting forward, tomorrow. The most valuable lesson I learned about productivity is that small actions, done now, can lead to huge productivity gains tomorrow. The hard part of course is to subconsciously justify to yourself that those small actions are actually making significant progress towards your end goal. It's important not to get discouraged and keep charging ahead.

What's more insidious are those "busy working" tasks that can consume your day where you actually feel productive, but haven't made any real progress towards where you want to be.

There's an excellent TED talk by Daniel Goldstein about the present and future self; highly recommended: [http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goldstein_the_battle_between...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goldstein_the_battle_between_your_present_and_future_self.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> As an aside, every other blog I have seen that is part of this svbtle network (unless this one isn't and is just styled the same) has a nice mobile theme. This one works poorly with mobile because of the fixed left bar.

<comment><USER7> I thought it resembles Svbtle too. Looking at the HTML source, it is running WordPress and isn't listed on <https://svbtle.com/>. So I suppose not.

<comment><USER8> It's running a "svbtle-inspired" theme:

<https://github.com/gravityonmars/wp-svbtle>

Also seems to have inspired the name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For some things, this makes a lot of sense: read something technical (preferably while taking notes) for twenty minutes a day; work on a small problem (brain teaser, programming koan, etc) every day; get some exercise everyday; etc, etc. And certainly, this applies to hiking as well (just ask anyone who's hiked the PCT).

To me, creativity doesn't seem consistent, though. I might come up with a great idea and pound out code to implement it one day, then get stuck the next. I don't see how someone could force themselves to "hike twenty miles every day" in terms of creativity. Also, sometimes you have to push yourself to grow or improve. Not saying that "twenty miles a day" isn't pushing oneself, but if you get comfortable with that, you might want to try pushing to "twenty-one miles a day".

The part about planning and paranoia is spot on though: even if your plan has to change (which it will), if you're paranoid enough, you will have backup plans.

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe that Google is very successful also because they use the same "methodology".

But still at some point, you have to work fast sometimes to keep in touch with the competition around you!

<comment><USER11> You do have to work faster sometimes, but maybe not in the way you think. Recall the tortoise and the hare. It really is a similar story. Except the moral shifted from "never underestimate an opponent" to "even if you're slow, consistent effort will bring you far".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about the guy who does a minimum of 20 per day, and does extra on the good days? He's going to clean your clock. Or the guy who uses a bicycle. Or a car. Or flies. Or takes a different route. What exactly is the point of this story? It's advocating consistency through a completely fictional, contrived story.

<comment><USER9> Okay, change it a bit: you're hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (2,663 miles). You can't take a bike, a car, a plane or a different route. And most people agree, 20 miles a day is a good upper limit. Much more than that and you will make yourself too sick to continue. Bonus points for the fact that it's such a long distance that you can't carry all your food with you, so you must be extra paranoid and have a plan (like the article mentions) for food caches.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder why he didn't use hiking the PCT as his scenario, other than many people haven't heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where did the 5 extra "miles" come from? He picks a quote where "20 miles/day" is a good pace to have set for yourself, but then adds this about his team: "We've been constantly marching at a good pace (~25 miles per day)".

<comment><AUTHOR> The extra 5 miles are derived from the strength of the team (and each individual member).

If everyone else is marching at 20 miles/day, we still need to march a bit faster to win, but not too fast to burn out and crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cannot read the article as the navigation is floating above the text on my Android phone. At least this is somewhat consistent as it happens quite often.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reporting. Will fix.</comment></comment>