Senator Baucus Speaks in Favor of 0% Capital Gains Tax Rate for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupcompanylawblog.com/2010/07/articles/tax/senator-baucus-dmont-speaks-in-favor-of-0-capital-gains-tax-rate-for-startups/

<comment><USER2> This is a terrible idea. Big companies would set up a shell corporation for every single thing.

I'm all for lower tax rates, but only in general and when they're paid for. I can't support a new loophole just because it's tailored to my particular special interest.

<comment><USER3> you could probably stop that by saying small businesses owned by corporations can't claim this deduction.

you could say over 3/4 of the corporation must be owned by individuals or it doesn't qualify.

<comment><USER4> Private tax arbitrageurs are faster than the regulation-writers. It doesn't have to be ownership for the effective benefit to flow to larger, more established organizations.

This might encourage lots of outsourcing to 'startups' that qualify for the tax advantage. But since a guaranteed flow of big-company business removes all risk, the big companies will negotiate a lower rate and/or exclusive deal to make the 'startup' a de facto division -- capturing much of the tax benefit for themselves. Then, acquire the 'startup' at year 5 to make a tax-free payment to the 'startup' management.

It doesn't even require conscious scheming to achieve this -- the nudge of the tax code will generally push certain kinds of business in these directions, for certain timeframes, regardless of whether that's the wealth-maximizing (or even jobs-maximizing) outcome.

One low tax rate for all economic activity lets the essential factors of production -- as changed over time by culture and technology -- influence organization choices, rather than the passing favor/disfavor of legislators.

There should be a strict complexity budget applied to the tax code: let's say about 10KB ASCII text. Adding new special treatment would require taking old special treatments out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not necessarily sure this is a good thing for startups. I see this as having the potential to create a dotcom bubble part II.

Once you grant this kind of tax break, you're encouraging a lot of people who aren't really interested in or know a lot about startups to pour money in.

</comment><comment><USER6> Before giving more benefits to one type of business, how about tax all companies at the same rate instead of giving loopholes to large companies while small companies and individual contractors end up paying all the taxes.

Everyone should just be taxed at a flat rate.

</comment><comment><USER7> The 0% capital gains tax for startups was actually part of Obama's platform. It was in the standard tax plan / business handouts. So if this makes it through Congress, I would expect the White House to welcome it.

At the time, I thought this was a rather nice idea, because a startup involves doing a decade plus worth of work in a few years, which tends to run up the marginal tax rate when you finally cash out.

</comment><comment><USER8> The article says the stock has to be acquired after March 15, 2010, and before January 1, 2012. How does this play with vesting schedules? Is stock considered "acquired" when granted or when vested?

<comment><USER9> And, if it's acquire, does "acquire subject to repurchase restrictions" count?

I ask because founders and early employees often buy at grant time subject to repurchase. From the company's point of view, it's just like vesting except it gets the money up front. From the employee's point of view, that purchase (and the 83(b) filing) lets them start the capital gains clock on their gain. The down side is that they're out the cost of the stock if the company fails. If you're early enough, that's not an issue because the price at that point is negligible.

<comment><USER10> > From the company's point of view, it's just like vesting except it gets the > money up front.

I'm not sure if this is standard, but that's not the case for the startup I work for. I was told that money paid for shares under the early exercise clause would go into escrow until my shares are vested, at which time the company gets the money.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the company point of view - I'd never thought about it.

An escrow account means that the company can do repurchases. I see the logic, but if the company doesn't have the amount of money that we're talking about, it is probably dead, so repurchase is moot. Since the only way I see that money is for a repurchase, not on company failure, I'd never worried about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> personally, I think this whole 'tax capital gains at a lower rate than income' pushes people to build businesses to dump, rather than building them to run. I think we'd all be a lot better off if the eliminated the double taxation on dividends (by making them pre-tax for the corporation) then just taxing all individual income as income.

Granted... that's just pandering to my own interests here, having built a company to run, not to sell. (I chose an industry where the standard price to sell is, well, silly low.) If you sell an ISP, I am told, the going rate is a year's revenue plus the value of your equipment. Considering that I'm doubling every six months or so, that just seems silly, and I suspect that lower price is in part because i'd pay half as much taxes if I sell the company all at once than if I keep it long enough to pay myself that much in salary.

still, I think capital gains being lower than salary taxes encourages short- term thinking, and gives publicly traded companies an unfair advantage over the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd be happy if they just fix the damn AMT, specifically on stock options.

</comment><comment><USER13> What we really need is more startups that actually have a capital gain (real profits in excess of original investment). That would be progress.

</comment><comment><USER14> Somewhat similar bill in Finland failed recently, because they couldn't reasonably define "a startup".

</comment><comment><USER15> s/homes/startups/

Rev your engines Wall St., here it comes!

Can this please become the foundation of the Internet Bubble 2.0? Just so I can hope to found a startup that is ridiculous, overhyped, and doomed to have no realistic business model, and then flip it for a nice multiple to some evil mega-corp playing shell games in lowering their taxes. Since so many computer geeks got rich doing this in the Dotcom era over a decade ago, it's only fair that a new crop of geeks get the same opportunities for advancement.

In reality, this is a terrible idea. It's also indicative of just how out of ideas our leaders are in fixing The Great Recession. Based on history, the interfering legislative fixes to the last recession always end up becoming the engine of the next financial bubble. Lather, rinse, repeat. I am more afraid of the unintended consequences arising from the executive decisions of a small number of idiot ideologues than I am of leaving things be and letting the economy restore it's own natural equilibrium. You might say "well just look at where so-called free markets got us back in 2008", and I would reply saying that entire crash was the result of political tampering in the economy, not the opposite.

Also, Baucus is a political buffoon—just go examine his track record of many, many years. He is exactly the caricature of the permanent, pandering politician we want out of Washington. He's the type of guy who only makes situations worse when he's involved, so something as big as this, I say whatever it is, if Baucus is involved, cancel it.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you ever close a 401K account? - <AUTHOR> After my employment was terminated with my company last July, I decided to fold my 401K account into another account that I use for consolidation purposes (as a full distribution - non taxable event).
A few months later I kept getting emails about that 401K account, and was able to log into the administrator's website to see that the account was alive, albeit with a $0 balance. I called the company and asked to close the account, and was told they couldn't do it. I asked if there was a way for me to remove all my PII from their system at some point (ie until there is no legal reason for them to keep it) and was told no.
So now this account lives somewhere, with no activity, but still open. The representative on the phone guaranteed me that there would be no maintenance fees or fees of any kind coming my way, but I know what verbal guarantees are worth.
Perhaps my C++ coding-OCD is being overzealous in pushing me to call the destructor on that account, but I think I'd be more comfortable if I didn't have to keep track of "inactive accounts" left and right, not to mention my PII is now needlessly at the mercy of their security.
Is this standard practice? <comment><USER2> Like any bank account you're never going to be able to completely purge that data. The financial institution needs to keep the records not just for compliance (potential audit situations) but because all of your transactions did occur and tie to something else in their systems.

I would imagine that after the plan year is over (typically a calendar year but not necessarily) you'll stop getting emails. If they ever change 401(k) providers then your data as a terminated employee would not be moved over to the new recordkeeper.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's not normal. Upon leaving previous employers, every single 401k account of mine was closed after rollout. Though sometimes this might be months after the rollout - because the account might have to stay open to receive various late account reconciliations. So sometimes amounts as low as a few bucks or even cents will show up later from sources like dividends earned during the past time periods. But they were all eventually closed.</comment>


Microsoft has developed a fork of Unreal Engine 4 with UWP support - <AUTHOR> https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?118375-Unreal-Engine-4-is-available-for-Win10-UWP-app-dev-now <comment><AUTHOR> For context: Tim Sweeny, the founder of Epic Games and head of UE4, is a vocal critic of UWP.</comment>


Novice pilot skills improved via expert-pilot brainwave patterns - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/now-you-can-learn-to-fly-a-plane-from-expert-pilot-brainwave-patterns <comment><USER2> I'd have liked to have seen two control groups. One group which received the "mock brain stimulation" and another which received no brain stimulation. It may be the case that playing noise into someone's brain has a detrimental effect on performance which is less prevalent when the stimulus roughly corresponds to the activity of a healthy brain.

If you drop a heavy weight onto someone's foot, they're likely to perform better on tests of mental acuity than if you were to drop a heavy weight onto their head. That doesn't necessarily mean that dropping the weight on their foot improved their performance, just that it was less harmful.

Unless I'm missing something, the poor experimental design coupled with the small sample size makes me very skeptical of the results. I'd love to see another experiment with more conclusive findings either way.

<comment><USER3> I read the "mock brain stimulation" as meaning the headset seemed to be doing something but was doing nothing. I guess the critique of the experiment would more or less stand, though it'd be slightly rearranged. Maybe dropping weights on any part of the body improves performance?

<comment><USER4> It's "sham stimulation" (that's the technical term used in research) and, in the case of direct current stimulation, it means what you described. The current used for tDCS is too low to be perceived, so no current is an acceptable placebo.

<comment><USER2> Ah, now I know! Serves me right for not reading the original paper before criticizing their experimental method. Thanks for the technical term. I see that the sham stimulation can still incorporate some ramp-up and ramp-down current, but I'll have to dig deeper to understand how those brief currents (or lack thereof) affect the quality of the control and the specifics of this experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The novices performed 33% better could be totally like a cognitive placebo effect OR MORE LIKELY the fact that they had to do it ONE MORE TIME LOL... I am either missing something really big or this is a draft of an April 1st joke released early

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember looking into tDCS quite recently with the thought of boosting intelligence as there are actually consumer devices available right now that claim to be efficacious at increasing attention, memory, etc. Part of that process involved looking at the studies on Google, checking out meta-analysis etc - and what I found was there didn't seem to be enough evidence to conclude anything substantial.

Anyway, picture me staring at a bunch of electrodes on a fancy, high tech startups website and seriously considering whether strapping them to my head was a good idea. I felt kind of ridiculous even entertaining the thought after the scant scientific evidence - especially if the end goal was to increase IQ. Needless to say the device did increase IQ but only through the direct act of not purchasing it.

(I don't mean to be so negative but intelligence doesn't seem that easy to hack.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it wrong to think Kurzweil has gone off the deepend? I know he was extremely productive in his early years, but everything about him just makes him seem like a crank who spends most of his energy marketing himself as some kind of thought leader. IMO anyone who calls themselves a "futurist" has very little to contribute to the technology they are preaching.

<comment><USER8> He's ALWAYS been a crank, this generations mad genius, doesn't mean he's wrong though. Just means our world is about to explode as AI starts infiltrating EVERYTHING. But he's contributed PLENTY to the future -- AI needs to be able to "see" and "hear" and understand what it sees and hears, and he created OCR technology AND voice to speech -- both of which had to come before Super AI's could ever be conceived. So he definitely knows what he's doing and is helping push us towards that means.

<comment><USER9> Must the future be owned by narcissists and hubris?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The headline is a little confusing. Basically, these researchers measured the brainwaves of expert pilots during a flight simulation, and then stimulated (using transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS) the brains of novice pilots during a flight simulation to match the brainwaves measured in the experts. They found that the real tDCS-applied group showed 33% "increase in skill consistency", as compared to the sham tDCS-applied group.

The interesting bit is the tDCS use, really. As many here may know, diy tDCS has become a popular trend among lifehackers. It is thus vital to note the possible negative side effects of tDCS, as pointed out by the editor of Kurzweil AI in the comments of the blog post: "Electric brain stimulation decreases IQ scores and racial prejudice" [http://www.kurzweilai.net/electric- brain-stimulation-decreas...](http://www.kurzweilai.net/electric-brain- stimulation-decreases-iq-scores-and-racial-prejudice)

</comment><comment><USER11> On a side note, I'm totally stealing the trick of making MATLAB colorbar axis white as in Fig. 2 [http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/175655/fnhum-10-00...](http://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/175655/fnhum-10-00034-HTML/image_m/fnhum-10-00034-g002.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER12> "I know kung fu."

"Show me."

<comment><USER13> Yup, that one crossed my mind as I was reading the article. Looks like we're still a ways off this though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That is without a doubt the freakiest thing I have read this week.

(Tl:dr - they recorded trans-cranial currents in motor and working memory areas of experts landing a plane and replayed that or a control into novice pilots heads. The novices perfeomed 33% better.)

<comment><USER15> Where does it say they performed 33% better? The only mention of 33% is:

"the reduced variance reached statistical significance in >33% of individual N-back trials comparing DLPFC stim with DLPFC sham"

which means something completely different. I think this study might be terribly overblown.

<comment><USER16> Aboslutely. I'll admit to not having read the actual study, but saying that 33% of pilots improved is fairly meaningless. You could also say that 67% of pilots _didn 't_ improve.

It might even be the case that those 67% that didn't improve had half of them get worse. In which case we'd have 1/3 improve, 1/3 no change and 1/3 get worse. Or in other words, a boring average distribution that means absolutely nothing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> sounds too good to be true.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. I'm sceptical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not a study with a sample size of 32, including the control group. I remain super skeptical that the statistically significant result actually implies a real result (and the smaller the study, the lower the chances.)

<comment><USER20> Small sample sizes don't mean low confidence, why do people constantly make that mistake?

What you should be asking about are confidence intervals and reproducibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what else they picked up...</comment>


U.S. Senate bill proposes sweeping curbs on NSA surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/29/us-usa-nsa-congress-idUSKBN0FY1EM20140729 <comment><USER2> Interesting internet habits you have there Senator.

I assume you'll be voting against this new bill Senator?

</comment><comment><USER3> EFF calls this bill "a real first step because it creates meaningful change to NSA surveillance right now, while paving the way for the public to get more information about what the NSA is doing." They've got a quick analysis of what it does and doesn't do is at [1]

Marcy Wheeler sees it as an improvement over the bill the House passed (which isn't hard) but isn't sure it's an improvement over the status quo. See [2] and [3] for her concerns

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/new-senate-usa- freedom...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/new-senate-usa-freedom-act- first-step-towards-reforming-mass-surveillance)

[2] [http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/07/29/leahy-freedom-act- permi...](http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/07/29/leahy-freedom-act-permits-fbis- continued-uncounted-use-of-back-door-searches/)

[3] [http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/07/29/leahy-usa-freedoms- bulk...](http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/07/29/leahy-usa-freedoms-bulky- corporate-persons/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Call me unconvinced. It follows entirely the flawed US gov interpretation of "collection", which means collect everything, and only call it "collect" when if you search through it.

How should this convince the global business that using US IT, telecom and cloud services is trustworthy and legally safe? There are still massive holes in a number of public laws and who knows in how many secret laws and interpretations, not talking about illegal practices. Without a 2nd Church Committee nothing will change.

<comment><USER5> Afaik the first Church Committee never ended. Sure Church got shut down[0], but the committee is still technically "active".

BTW, it would be a good idea to wear a radiation sensor.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church#Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Church#Death)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the one that got watered down a lot, right? Which would explain its "wide support", including from the White House.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/05/22...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2014/05/22/why-76-lawmakers-just-voted-against-their-own-bill-to- reform-the-nsa/)

<comment><USER7> Nope. This is a different bill; in the article it says: "The bill, which has White House backing, goes further than a version passed in May by the U.S. House of Representatives in reducing bulk collection and may be more acceptable to critics who have dismissed other versions as too weak."

The 'too weak' bill is the one that was watered down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now we just need legislation that limits the phone company retention of these records to (say) three years.

<comment><USER9> I think we really need to stick with 1 year, unless a court action is pending.

I think we should also require the NSA, etc. to reveal their NSL, etc. after 1 year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article doesn't mention it ... but can they still get around it by (what I believe is called) traffic shaping? Where you force the traffic to leave the US, then collect all the "foreign" data, and then send it on its merry way again?</comment>


Incorporation and stock sharing dilemma - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, This is my first post here. I have been just a silent reader all this time.
Finally I get to post something as well. Hope this helps others as well.
So, let's get started. (P.S. - I am avoiding mentioning names of stuff like university etc, since it will be very
embarrassing if this gets read by my future co-founder, as he doesn't know about this dilemma i am facing yet)
First, A little background. I graduated as a Master's in CS from a reputable university this
summer. I am planning to start this company that uses AI to solve some major NP complete
problems related to resource allocation problems. It's planned to be a software product company.
This has been a product of my master's thesis. So, obviously the IP(Intellectual Property) is in both mine and my adviser's name. This idea is
basically an evolution of his idea, which his earlier students had been trying their hands on,
but it didn't quite work as well as it was supposed to be.
And finally, I came along and with all my magic touch (If you can believe that), we did it. I
started implementing from scratch and finally after one and half years or so, we got it working. Now, this product has myriad applications and all that, but we want to focus on two, at most,
for now, and see where we go from there. and when i say we, i mean the company.
I guess we have enough information now.
I have two major questions for you guys.
1. I have to incorporate this company sometime this week, since we had a demo last Friday and it
went very well. Now, the users are asking for this product, so this is the right time to incorporate and start selling i guess.
Now, I am not sure what kind of company it has to be. According to Ycombinator FAQs, we need to be a C-Corp. I am wondering "Is that like the common
requirement to accept money from any of the other investors as well? or is it just YC? ". How about other types?  LLC? etc etc. I am not even sure what other types are out there, except these and S-corps. How about S-Corps? I have heard about S-Corp but i am not really sure if startups qualify.
2. And the more important one. So, I finally had the guts to ask him (my adviser) about our
stock distribution as co founders of this new company. His thoughts were the following:
"We make it 50-50, except since he will be continuing his full time job as a professor/head of department and I am doing all the coding full time (most of it is done already), I get a fixed salary(not yet decided) first from the revenue and then we evenly get 50-50."
Now, I was all happy with this for a few hours, thinking this is great. I start selling my
product, and apply to Ycombinator, which obviously is going to invest once they hear of me, my co founder, my company and my product. And I get to go live in bay area and share the startup experience with you guys.
And then i called people to talk about this and share this great news... I go : "Hey, listen, my adviser wants to open a company with me. How cool is that? This is totally awesome. He is a genius, and
now he wants to partner with me"
Too bad, I had mixed opinions from them and that got me all confused.
Here's the thing. I am pretty sure he is NOT going to leave his job. And I am the one who has coded everything in this product. But the initial idea was his. IP is shared between both of us.
But if you ask me, he taught me everything related to this idea, and he has been helping me
through the worst of my times(I was in a coma, horrible horrible stuff happened to me,and he
agreed to give me a chance and guide me , believed in me, when i was almost broke...so....u
know...he is like...i don;t know, if you divide god into half....one half....well whatever,
that's another long story...maybe later)
He is not bringing in any coding to the company, though we always talk through all features of
the product and decide it. He is not an MBA, he is more like a head of dept now. He has opened 2
startups, he has so much more experience, he is a brilliant guy and i feel so lucky for even
being able to work with him. He is like one of the gods of his field.
But we haven't decided roles specifically yet.
And someone said that his offer of the whole 50-50 is unfair and all.
Now, I am confused here. What do people do when one of the co founders is technical, but he is more like an abstract
adviser, still a top guy in his field in academics? and in this case,he is not even going to work  full time for the company. but he is like eric schmidt in some sense, that he actually manages a lot of stuff in his
current position (u knw, like eric was working for google and apple until recently, and like he
was a chairman for quite some time with google, before he switched over to google as CEO back
then).
I am not even sure at this point exactly what his role would be.
I just know what it won't be. Also, his name and reputation follows him. Having him on my side is really good.
Just that I don't know how to make sure I don't feel like a fool later on. Coz I have read everywhere, it's better to settle all co founders issues from the very beginning
and better put things on paper.
So, I see these as his plus points: 1. Co-inventor of the technology. 2. Great Mentor. 3. Great qualifications. 4. Experience. 5. Good contacts. 6. Highly Technical guy.
And the minus: 1. I am considerably younger, so getting a buddy like feeling is almost impossible. 2. I might feel like I am working alone until I get some developers as employees, which might
take time since we have the product ready to sell. 3. Not a coder.
4. Not full time employee, more like a partner who runs other stuff as well.
I am dying to hear from you guys on this. <comment><AUTHOR> P.S. - I might have said something that led people believe he is bringing investment too. Well, He is NOT. He is NOT investing or bringing in money of any sorts. So more I think about it, it's more like consulting.

Now, what are your thoughts, after I told you guys this explicitly (somehow I thought it was obvious...should have mentioned this in the minus points, now I don't seem to be able to edit the post...anyone willing to help me with doing that....that way whoever reads the post gets the whole scenario.)

</comment><comment><USER2> The past is a "sunk cost". Start from today. Who is doing what into the future.

Do not undervalue a founder who can bring in investment but equally do not over-value this attribute. Think about how you would go about compensating another developer joining the team - how would that change the stock split - do you need to reserve shares for future contributors.

If you must go 50:50 with a salary (when income flows) - negotiate how you can convert salary into stock.

<comment><USER3> The past is not a "sunk cost" given the IP issue. It sounds like the poster just continued research the prof was already doing in his lab.

At an extreme, suppose OP just abandoned the prof and started the company solo. Certainly the prof could later sue for his fair share. I would suspect the University (and/or agency the research funding came from) may have some IP rights here too.

Essentially, you can't just treat this as "the start of a business". You need to look at it as "we invented something in the lab, and now we want to sell it".

He can certainly negotiate, but 50/50 does not sound unreasonable. One key component in my mind would be "how much value was created already" versus "how much value will be added in the coming months/years".

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, let me put it this way. I am not going to abandon my prof in any case, both due to respect and sense of legality and righteousness. What I want is to figure out a way to make everyone happy, future investors, and both of us. But I agree with yalurker, in the sense that: yes, this is something invented in the lab, only by me and my prof, and we want to sell it since it's so matured now. The university is going to release the IP to both of us, and we will be paying the university an agreed upon share, it's 10% as we have been told. So, really it's more like an issue between our shares that's troubling me so much. In a perfect world, he could have joined me in the venture and i would have gladly made it 50-50 (hell, i would have even gone for 55-45), or maybe i wouldn't have told my peers this and never would have been asking this question anyways, both to myself and to all of you. If only it was a perfect world....

I hope somehow we get close enough to the magic number, which would make everyone happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> c-corps are fine, but I think you have to solve your other issue first.

50/50 means a 50/50 commitment.

In the situation you sketch it's more like 90/10, after all it's free money to your adviser.

I highly doubt a VC would invest in a company that has 50% deadwood on board from day one.

See the 50/50 as an opening offer, now the negotiations begin. You're young, he can't do it without you but you have plenty of time and energy to go and do something else, obviously you've got talent.

remeber: everything comes to those who wait, negotiating under pressure is the worst you can do, you have to get in to the mindset that it can take as long as you want, best to not do any deal than to do a bad one.</comment>


Retro Unix Operating System - <AUTHOR> https://www.singlix.com/runix <comment><USER2> Because it would be fun to have, I am fairly tempted to print off the source code [0] into a nice book to sit on my shelf. In a lot of ways, I miss the old giant manuals that actually explain why things work the way they do instead of everything being a black box... But I don't really miss distributing source code in book form to manually re-type by hand.

[0] [https://www.singlix.com/runix/runix8086/Retro%20UNIX%208086%...](https://www.singlix.com/runix/runix8086/Retro%20UNIX%208086%20v1%20-%20Kernel%20Source%20Code.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Memories. I used to wallpaper my teenage bedroom with listings of programs written in 8086 assembly printed with the Epson FX-80.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of Xv6: [https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2020/xv6.html](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2020/xv6.html)

And of course there's Fuzix: [http://www.fuzix.org](http://www.fuzix.org)

</comment><comment><USER4> That it runs in an emulator on Windows XP is a nice touch.

<comment><USER5> Looks like that Windows XP also runs on an emulator!

<comment><USER6> It's turtles all the way down, baby.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft is Dead (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's probably a good thing that Microsoft did not follow the advice:

> They can't hire smart people anymore, but they could buy as many as they > wanted.

> Buy all the good "Web 2.0" startups. They could get substantially all of > them for less than they'd have to pay for Facebook.

> Put them all in a building in Silicon Valley, surrounded by lead shielding > to protect them from any contact with Redmond.

Instead, Microsoft did the exact opposite. They picked Satya Nadella who had worked there since 1992. He has driven the innovation right out of Redmond, WA with no lead shielding required.

<comment><USER2> This is almost entirely not true.

Under Satya, Microsoft went on a shopping spree. They bought a ton of startups: Minecraft, Github, Skype, Sunrise, LinkedIn (tnx comments!), Yammer ... and along with those it bought a mapping company, a multitude of ad/marketing companies, educational startups, AI startups...etc, etc. Those are just the ones we know about.

Update: here's a list of all MS acquisitions. It's rather lengthly. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)

Did you know they almost bought Twitch.tv, but Amazon had more money?

And as far as locking them in the same building, that's not exactly operationally efficient in 2018. But they seemed to have done their best at either merging the products right away, or letting the team run on their own.

So, they did pretty well, according to the plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm...

1) Skype was purchased by Ballmer.

2) Most of the ad tech companies were also purchased by Ballmer.

3) Minecraft and Skype are not Bay Area companies

4) LinkedIn was a public company when Microsoft acquired them. So it seems like a stretch to call them a startup.

5) And finally it looks like Microsoft has done acquisitions throughout their existence. In fact, they acquired as many companies in 2007 as they did in 2018 and more in 2007 than 2017.

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

It doesn't seem like "buy lots of Bay Area Web 2.0 companies to infuse new talent" is the secret ingredient. Yahoo was the company that probably closest executed the strategy. That didn't go well as we all know.

<comment><USER3> Man, I worked at aQuantive when it got bought for $6B by Ballmer. They took a $6B write down within a few years. They should have kept their money in the services part of that business instead of the second-rate ad tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like Big Tech has switched over to amassing data and behavior manipulation ("engagement", etc.) as their main business model. I think that Microsoft didn't feel threatening because they still mostly just _sold a product_.

I feel like we as a society haven't really entirely got a handle on this yet. Things emerge, like trusts, and it takes a while for people to understand what has happened.

But, with things like Windows 10 telemetry you can't turn off, and Windows turning into a service, they've gotten back on board with how Big Tech runs these days.

This pattern seems to hold really well. The giants mostly amass data and manipulate people. If they don't do this sort of thing, they don't really seem that threatening, regardless of their size. HP, IBM, Dell. Apple seems interesting, as a hold-out on just selling a product, but in the meta game, just direct manipulation of people really looks like a step up, and I don't predict they'll continue as anything approaching a "scary tech giant" in coming decades unless they change like Microsoft did.

<comment><USER5> _But, with things like Windows 10 telemetry you can 't turn off, and Windows turning into a service, they've gotten back on board with how Big Tech runs these days._

Yes, I can confidently say that I _miss_ the old Microsoft. They were strongly closed-source and proprietary (not that it didn't stop people from understanding how things worked anyway...), but they did not do the sort of data collection, behavioural analysis and advert-driven manipulation that the others were doing, and still highly valued backward-compatibility and stability.

Now they're going the same route as the other tech giants, silently collecting information while also open-sourcing a lot of other things almost as a form of distraction/diversion. You could consider the fact that they're open-sourcing something to mean they're not interested in selling that as a product anymore, and that's because their profit is coming from somewhere else.

<comment><USER6> They tried to make the public care with the gmail man campaign.

[https://www.theverge.com/microsoft/2012/2/2/2766215/gmail- ma...](https://www.theverge.com/microsoft/2012/2/2/2766215/gmail-man-video- microsoft-google-privacy)

It was flagged dead on HN because the perception was "do no evil' Google good, M$ bad.

They tried harder later on with the somewhat cringy Scroogled campaign and found out the public didnt care while Google laughed all the way to the bank while increasing data tracking, collection and usage. And here we are.

Edit: Found a thread discussing it, with one top 10 by karma HN user explaining why they flagged it. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3544309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3544309)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al I think this paragraph really sums up the whole article for me:

> The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, > Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in > technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I > come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y > Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup > school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for > grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no > longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.

If you live in a forest you'll think the world is made of trees.

Paul Graham is a very clever man, and I have a lot of respect for him, but he lives in a high tech bubble. People in high-tech start-ups use apple; people who work in creative industries (mostly) use apple; most of the rest of the world use Windows PCs. So to declare the desktop (does this include laptop?) "dead", especially back in 2005, is most definitely premature.

Question: has anyone out there come across a non-high-tech multinational corporation that uses apples instead of PCs?

<comment><USER7> Even within FAANG as a developer You the developer gets a choice of MBP vs PC. But PG was alluding to the specific fact that Macs outnumber PCs within the YC bubble which still holds true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does > the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses > Microsoft's anyway.

This sounds like a very ignorant thing to state. Wherever I worked, the best programmers used Windows and Linux desktops. Why? Because they too busy coding to get caught up in the Apple hype is my best guess. You know just like he talks about being ignorant to what was going on in Microsoft world, many coders I worked with did not know or care about what was going on in Apple world. There was one group of people who I did notice flock to Apple OS's, wannabe developers. The type that talk a lot about new tech but never wrote code that got deployed to production.

<comment><USER9> MacOS is, by _far_ the best generic developer OS.

The best developers I know don't really care what OS they're on, but MacOS is what they'll pick if they get a choice.

<comment><USER8> > MacOS is, by far the best generic developer OS.

How so?

<comment><USER8> BTW, please note that on Windows I can use various types of Linux variants right from the Windows App store. So the excuse of having a Nix shell on Mac OS is no longer a point for Mac OS. In fact, because we use Ubuntu in prod, and I run Ubuntu on Windows, that point might now be for Windows for many users.

<comment><USER10> I still prefer using a real nix instead of the windows subsystem for Linux. Mostly because the file system integration with WSL is still bad and Windows still doesn't come with a decent terminal emulator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, > Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in > technology.

The last sentence is ironically funny now that MS is back on top and Apple is slipping, and the article is about the "death" of MS.

> Microsoft closed Friday with a larger market cap than Apple's, making the > Redmond software giant the most valuable U.S. stock.

[http://fortune.com/2018/11/30/microsoft-bumping-apple-is- now...](http://fortune.com/2018/11/30/microsoft-bumping-apple-is-now-the-most- valuable-u-s-company/)

<comment><USER12> > The last sentence is ironically funny now that MS is back on top and Apple > is slipping, and the article is about the "death" of MS.

Well, yes, I'm assuming the irony is part of the reason this was posted here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The funny thing is Google is the new Microsoft for precisely most of the reasons he mentions. The worst part of Microsoft's culture (empire building by middle managers) has now infected Google as well. Amazon is the only one that has been able to stave it off which seems partly due to their insanely customer obsessed culture.

</comment><comment><USER14> The analysis fails because it looks only at technical and cultural determinants for what is primarily an economic process.

To counter this with my own dubious and oversimplified explanation, Microsoft did not fail because it has created a monopoly, a walled-off ecosystem they control, and they managed to protect it in most desktop segments. Google has it's own monopolies, as do all of the successful companies that are still around. Microsoft's failure to extend their monopolies into mobile and web costed them the crown of the tech industry, but they're far from dead.

Apple rebooted solley on it's iPhone walled garden - their desktop was moribund and the iPod, while an inovative product and short term cash cow, was not conducive to a monopoly, so it was quickly duplicated and made obsolete. Yahoo was not able to create and maintain its monopolies, so it's dead.

</comment><comment><USER15> How time changes. It seems Microsoft is back from the dead. And what Microsoft used to be, Google is trying their best to become.

</comment><comment><USER16> Microsoft was dead until 2014, when Satya Nadella becomes CEO and bring company back to life, almost how Steve Jobs revamped Apple in the late 90's

<comment><USER17> It was surprising, coming from a non-founder in the company. It is welcome, nonetheless.

<comment><USER18> Crisis is the time when people are most willing to accept changes, and Microsoft was indeed in crisis. Still is in some ways, but their turnaround has been impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When PG wrote this down, perhaps the vast majority of Microsoft board agreed with him. It was a giant company without a roadmap. A company that _always behind_.

Microsoft has changed a lot since, and still putting much of an effort and money to gain trust amongst the community. Just remind yourself the reaction when GitHub acquisition announced. For three weeks I read blog posts filled broadcasting fear and loathing as if the government of China has bought Facebook, Twitter and Slack altogether.

</comment><comment><USER20> I recall seeing a book in the cutout bin of a bookstore that made the case that IBM was an unstoppable juggernaut that would inevitably take over the world. It was written in the mid 80's. The irony was it was in the cutout bin because it wasn't long after that IBM was well on its way in its slide to irrelevancy.

I wish I'd bought the book, or at least remembered its title.

<comment><USER21> Well few decades later IBM is still generating billions in profits. So I'm not so sure what to conclude from that, other than that juggernauts, while maybe not unstoppable, do not die easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Satya Nadella once said, "Microsoft loves Linux", the three most improbable words that could be unfathomably put together.

Maybe that's when Microsoft started gaining traction.

<comment><USER23> To me that signalled that Microsoft was now flexible, to go with what would lead to success rather than doggedly holding onto the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's easy to laugh now, but in 2007 this was spot on.

It was 10 years before Microsoft managed to drag itself up and do something useful with itself.

It's really remarkable that Microsoft managed such a big turn around after such epic failures (like mobile); others (like IBM...) are still struggling to do it.

Just goes to show, competitive pressure is a good thing. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> In addition to other comments about Microsoft's current market cap and new CEO, this article was posted also posted before Windows 7 was released; arguably the best version of Windows ever made. In fact, that era of software including Office and their server products was very solid.

<comment><USER26> > very solid.

You and I have a very different definition[0] of 'solid'. Unless you mean 'relatively', in which case I agree.

0\. [https://www.cvedetails.com/product/17153/Microsoft- Windows-7...](https://www.cvedetails.com/product/17153/Microsoft- Windows-7.html?vendor_id=26)

<comment><USER25> Doesn't seem particularly different from the competition:

[https://www.cvedetails.com/product/156/Apple-Mac- Os-X.html?v...](https://www.cvedetails.com/product/156/Apple-Mac- Os-X.html?vendor_id=49)

<comment><USER26> You're comparing an OS that has one major release (windows 7) to one that has been essentially a rolling-ish release for ~10 years. (Mac)OSX (which you linked to) has been going/supported far longer than windows 7.

Meanwhile, microsoft's track record over the same period, with quite a few (major) OS releases, is.. [https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/26/Microsoft.html](https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/26/Microsoft.html)

<comment><USER25> Yes but I'm also looking at the individual years. OS X has many releases and Windows has many releases; they're both effectively one product. Windows bugs are counted twice if they exist in different versions but are still effectively the same bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would argue that MS WAS dead under Balmer, but not only for the reasons that PG mentions. However, it has been resurrected under Satya.

<comment><USER28> This is not entirely true. Yes, Ballmer made many mistakes, but he also architected one of the most sustainably profitable enterprise software businesses (on the heels of all MS software products we love to hate). These enterprise customers are more than knees deep with Microsoft, and deep account penetration bought at least 5 years for Satya to steer the ship in the right direction (giving up on B2C mobile, Windows obsession, etc.)

One of the most common biases I see in how we assess leaders is how we try to attribute success & failure to a single person at a discrete point in time (ex: Here in the US, the extreme Left claims Trump is taking credit for Obama's foundational effort for the economy while the extreme Right says it's all Trump). In reality, it is never that simple nor discrete but rather complex and continuous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really enjoyed re-reading that. It captures the very essence of "instant in time" incorrectness, it is why I stopped believing anything I thought was "definitely true" in the tech business actually was what I thought it was.

I felt the same way that Paul did, Microsoft had calcified into this Office/Enterprise crust, living off their contracts with big businesses, while the real world was cruising to a new, agile, and open source beat. I had also been at Sun when it was still small, and cringed when bad news from IBM put a big negative impact on Sun's nascent stock price, even though, at the time, IBM's pain was coming from Sun not that we'd share in it.

But the trap that I had fallen into, and this essay expresses, is that "Today is every day" or more precisely, now that the world is to my liking, it will cease changing in ways that I disapprove. :-) I felt like the puzzle is figured out, I "get it" now, I can see the strings going from the puppets to the puppeteers and now I can see how the world is working.

But the cruel trick is that in systems, the puppets are recursive, or in mathematical terms, the forces influencing the future direction of technology are nonlinear at best, and likely chaotic. Everyone is changing in response to the changes they perceive around them, and in response some of their changes change those around them. Like the traffic analyst who figured out you could stomp your brakes going West on Interstate 10, and have the 'wave' of your braking effect roll south on the Harbor, get picked up going north on the 405, only to have it come back and hit you from the front as its echo headed east back along the 10. Sun made _Workstations_ and Microsoft only cared about _PCs_ except the echo of what a workstation was suddenly came back and hit Sun in the face as a big PC. Or Sun's prophetic, if ill fated slogan that "The Network is the Computer", which turned out to be literally true as clusters of Linux machines took out big iron symmetric multiprocessing systems. And then again, as Paul points out, when the Web browser ran its "programs" on the "network." Where did the computer start and the network end? It was no longer possible to tell.

Take away from this the certain knowledge that Google, Facebook, and Apple will all "die" (Apple for the second time :-)) at some point in the next 5 to 20 years. What we care about today will seem silly in the future, and the there will be technologies that enable completely different things to consume our time and resources than the things that do so today.

People create startups and dream new dreams for the same reason a surfer starts paddling their board toward shore, waves come up, and you have to be in position to get a good ride.

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe death is good for a company.

Maybe Apple, MS, Google, etc already die several times.

Is just that enough of it survive and learn from the past, even a little.

Maybe is easier to present the new king as the same old king, long live the king.

<comment><USER20> The computer landscape is littered with the carcasses of once great companies, going back all the way back to RCA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Iirc (it's been a while since I read the article) I thought 'dead' was used to mean "they are not the dominant power in the world of software (in terms of tools, languages, leadership, driving change) etc, like they used to be in the nineties" not in the sense of "they are a declining company in terms of revenue or market value"

The present news just says Microsoft's market valuation is higher than apple's (today). Not sure if it really affects the central thesis of the article.

EDIT: literally the first paragraph of the article

"I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?

Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite believe anyone would be frightened of them."

People fear Facebook and Google and Amazon, if only for the immense amounts of damage they do to societies and polities. Who is afraid of MS (or IBM)? Do startup founders even think of MS as a factor in their plans (which seems to be what the article is about)

</comment><comment><USER32> Ironically, Azure is doing better than Google cloud services.

</comment><comment><USER33> I assume this was posted in response to Microsoft passing Apple as the most valuable tech company.

Ironically, In 2007 Microsoft's market cap was more than twice that of Apple's ($270B vs $100B). That company's staying power is truly amazing.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not dead. Just irrelevant and/or non-essential.

Microsoft is to computing as Ford is to automobiles. Both are still there if you want them to be your choice, but by the same token, if you don't need them in your life, they aren't forced upon you.

Me? I haven't owned a Ford since 1985. I switched to Unix/Linux in 1991.

</comment><comment><USER35> _Narrator: Microsoft was not dead._

</comment><comment><USER36> It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future...

</comment><comment><USER37> Satya Nadela was the primary agent, for transforming Microsoft into the profitable and successful business that it is now.

</comment><comment><USER38> > _Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the > same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or > Linux now. Windows is for grandmas._

> _They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the > standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago._

And now, I bet a vast majority of people funded by YC use VS Code. Maybe even Azure.

<comment><USER39> They use VSCode, but they use it on Linux or OSX.

<comment><USER40> I've switched back to Windows 10 with WSL running Ubuntu 18.04 in it. Works well and gives me pretty great integrations.

<comment><USER41> I also switched to Win 10 from Mac (and Linux before that).

My Surface Book has a faulty battery and I am using an MBP when I'm not at the office. I not sure I will stick with Win 10 on my next computer, but I am sure I'm not going back to OSX.

WSL isn't perfect, but it feel more open and more linux-like to me than OSX. Maybe a Pixel Book,maybe straight Linux.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to avoid a self-inflicted DDoS Attack – CRE life lessons - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/11/how-to-avoid-a-self-inflicted-DDoS-Attack-CRE-life-lessons.html <comment><USER2> Interestingly there's nothing new in the article. I've implemented all the mentioned tricks in my integrations and software implementations for a long time. Because all of those are totally obvious. (Backing off, Jitter, Priority)</comment>


Deep Crack - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker <comment><USER2> The closest thing there is to a debate in the industry about DES is whether it's OK to keep using Triple DES --- which is irrelevant to you, because you're just going to use AES in all your non-legacy non-Java non-mainframe- integrated startup code.

DES has pretty much been eliminated from the mainstream, which is a rare win for security.

<comment><USER3> i thought 3des was still used in ATMs? my (limited) understanding was that its weakness was balanced by its otherwise maturity...and that a potential hacker had very little time in which to make the crack and make use of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was ten years ago. I wonder how little a machine like that would cost today. By Moore's Law, it would be on order of $8,000(a gross simplification, and doing the math in my head but interesting nonetheless).

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that's correct. Are you scaling down the cost to build it or to design it? Does the cost to design per transitor count decrease with Moore's law?

With better software for verification that can scale in complexity as chips get cheaper & more powerful, I wouldn't be surprised if design costs did decrease with Moore's Law. But it might not be so straight forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Secrets-Encryption- Research-P...](http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Secrets-Encryption-Research- Politics/dp/1565925203)

Deep Crack was big news some ten years ago, but this is just a random link to wikipedia, with no other commentary about why it might be relevant now.

On a related (but just as irrelevant) note, a friend of mine had one of the production-defective CPUs from that machine that she wore on a pendant for several years.

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be more interesting to link to COPACOBANA [<http://www.copacobana.org/> , <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custom_hardware_attack>], which can do roughly the same thing at 1/25th the cost ($10,000 vs $250,000) and is reprogrammable.</comment>


Shanghai will start compensating VCs for their financial losses - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/shanghai-will-start-compensating-vcs-for-their-losses <comment><USER2> Nice, this isn't a bubble waiting to happen or anything...</comment>


Google Cancels Netflix Deal for Chromecast - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/07/25/chromecast-netflix <comment><USER2> Is he serious? Ending a promotion which was stated as limited early due to overwhelming demand equates to getting your shit together?

gruber needs to get his shit together and stop being a total biased ass.

<comment><USER3> He's not biased at all.

Didn't you see his coverage about how apple needs to get its shit together after the security breach?

"Sounds like it's bad, but not super bad. <link to apple talking points>"

oh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google runs out of a limited offer quickly than they expected to?

 _" Get your shit together, Google"_

Apple's dev center gets hacked, and the names, addresses and e-mails of developers might have been stolen?

 _" Sounds like it's bad, but not super bad."_[1]

Does anyone read Gruber's blog seriously these days?

[1] [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/07/21/apple-dev- center](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/07/21/apple-dev-center)

</comment><comment><USER5> That link is something like blogspam, with a single sentence and a link that appears to be to an article on CNet but ends up dumping out on the front page. I think the correct link is [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57595585-93/google- disconne...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57595585-93/google-disconnects- chromecasts-netflix-deal/)

<comment><USER3> hey, maybe gruber should get his shit together

(to quote his useless headline)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone (like me) who thought the headline meant that Netflix is no longer available on Chromecast, that is not the case.

Google and Netflix had partnered on a promotion to include 3 months of Netflix for free with the Chromecast device, but they've ended that promotion due to overwhelming demand.

</comment><comment><USER7> I ordered mine on the play store on 7/24, but haven't received a promo code yet -- anyone know if I'm still owed one? I know Amazon is giving out codes to people who ordered before 5:31 pm PST on 7/25\. Honestly I'm going to be a bit upset if folks who ordered after I did are getting codes and I'm not...</comment>


A quick cardboard tool to fold T-shirts - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZKKrUXjzDY&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> Yah, that's the Sheldon Cooper method.

I prefer this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An0mFZ3enhM>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5AWQ5aBjgE></comment>


Introduction to Statistical Thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.umass.edu/~lavine/Book/book.html

<comment><USER2> Bill Meeks' "Fundamental Concepts of Math" course, also at UMass, was what got me excited about math as an undergrad. I'd suggest reading his book if anyone is looking for a good introduction to topics such as set theory, logic, group theory, topology and metric spaces, etc:

<http://www.math.umass.edu/~bill/m300/nm300.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> Just thought I'd drop in a quick prop for this. As somewhat of a new entrant into the open-source analytics arena, this is immensely helpful. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> If open source and stats is your thing, make sure you have a look at R.

<http://www.r-project.org/>

Google use it, Techcrunch use it (no really they do) and many, if not most, academic statisticians.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, had just started wetting my feet in R a couple of weeks back, and while there are some pretty decent introductions out there, this has been the first one I've come across that approaches both the subject matter and R from a relative beginner's standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Always enjoyed statistics (especially liked econometrics)...trying to figure out how to get this book on my Kindle now. Anyone have ideas?</comment>


Army open-sources cyber defense code in new GitHub project - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblog.com/76752/army-open-sources-cyber-defense-code-new-github-project/

<comment><AUTHOR> The article didn't have a link to the GitHub project page, so here it is: [https://github.com/USArmyResearchLab/Dshell](https://github.com/USArmyResearchLab/Dshell)

<comment><USER2> This is exactly what I was trying to point out. If you put an article about something, be sure to link it.

<comment><USER3> It drives me crazy when this doesn't happen– especially in news articles talking about some study here or there- why not link to the actual study?! I end up having to Google for it, click around a bunch of bad navigation... very painful.

<comment><USER2> I've recently (and when I say recently, I mean less than 24 hours ago) found out that one nationally known tabloid actually copied my work on their site without _any_ indications on where they found out about it. Of course, they haven't even put a link to the original work (which I published on my blog), but they were kind enough to let their readers know that "researchers" found out about it.

I can't even explain how frustrated I currently am by their action.

<comment><USER4> Could you use a DMCA-like thing to get them to stop doing that?

<comment><USER2> Although they clearly broke my CY-BY-SA license by not sharing their work under the same license and not giving me any attribution, I'm not exactly sure what can I do to take it down, Hiring a lawyer for this is not an option for me considering that I'm just a student on a low budget.

<comment><USER5> Send to their ISP. Usually that's very efficient.

<comment><USER6> That could work, but I think that in the case of a "nationally known tabloid" chances are low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty cool. I didn't know the Army Research Lab used Python in any of their projects.

Thanks for sharing this.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.amazon.com/Violent-Python-Cookbook-Penetration- En...](http://www.amazon.com/Violent-Python-Cookbook-Penetration- Engineers/dp/1597499579)

<comment><USER9> What is the relevance?

<comment><USER10> "An information security specialist with the US Army, O'Connor introduces the hacker's programming language Python to new users, and describes some advanced features to those who already know it."

<comment><USER9> Oops, thanks. I skimmed and ctrl+f'd for "army", but I guess I still missed it somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is this better than tshark?

<comment><USER12> More fine-grained filtering and more options in general. For example, you can filter by country, or analyze NetFlow rather than pcaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if contribution to that repo (or alike, i.e. affiliated with some gov's defense orgs) would be considered a treason in some countries...

</comment><comment><USER14> Where do they get the "2,000 unique visitors" bit from? And 100 downloads... are they referring to the 92 forks?

I think Public Affairs does not get Github.

<comment><USER15> For a given repo Github gives you the daily number of visits and unique visitors, as well as the number of times the repo was cloned (they don't give you the number of downloads of the zipped sources).

<comment><USER16> Huh, where do I find those?

edit: Ah! They hide behind the bar chart diagram icon, /graphs/traffic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dshell was released on December 17th; last month. Press release from the US Army on Jan 28th (3 days ago...) would be a better, more official source than this blog.

[http://www.army.mil/article/141734/Army_cyber_defenders_open...](http://www.army.mil/article/141734/Army_cyber_defenders_open_source_code_in_new_GitHub_project/)

The guy looks, imho, a bit like Tony Stark. That's pretty cool, the money quote is this one: "If soldiers eat it, wear it, touch it, fly it, ride it or ship it, we make it." Makers. Gotta love 'em. Funny timing, December 17th is 4 days after my patent pending in cryptography. Then, the press release was same day I offered a small amount for my company, publicly.

Media's taken a few days to catch up, or a few weeks, depending on your POV.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is leet.

</comment><comment><USER19> (Released >1 month ago)

</comment><comment><USER20> if i were in the intelligence community i would introduce cyber defense code with some very obscure flaws. Not flaws in the code itself but flaws in the algorithm.

If the code happens to gain traction. I would would then use that flaw to my advantage.

</comment><comment><USER21> Considering the secret obsessed world of the military, this seems like the ultimate proof that "cyber warfare" is worthless to them.</comment>


Deep Spelling – spell correction using Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@majortal/deep-spelling-9ffef96a24f6#.gy942bl8g <comment><AUTHOR> I've studied and implemented various spelling correction algorithms and they are looked wrong to me - they were all trying to brute-force their way and I felt there must be a better method. So I implemented a speller based on Deep Learning which works by "intuition". Would love to hear your thoughts.</comment>


Basic Intro to Python Metaprogramming - <AUTHOR> http://bitshaq.com/2011/07/14/basic-intro-to-python-meta-programming/

<comment><USER2> For me this article was written in reverse. For an intro I'd love to have had the 'code smell' example first to establish why I might care and when I might need this, and then dive into an example.

<comment><USER3> May be this helps [http://blip.tv/pycon-us- videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2010-pyt...](http://blip.tv/pycon-us- videos-2009-2010-2011/pycon-2010-python-metaprogramming-64-3280779)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can everyone please stop shoehorning in random xkcd comics where they don't belong?

<comment><USER5> At the risk of introducing another level, I will mention that these comments are very Meta :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Forbidden_

 _You don't have permission to access /2011/07/14/basic-intro-to-python-meta- programming/ on this server._

</comment><comment><USER3> >>> Foo = type("Foo", (FooBase,), {'bar' : 42})

is not equivalent to what the blog post says it is to. FooBase should be defined before running this, and the blog post's equivalent make it look like this statement defines FooBase as well.

<comment><USER7> I think you neglected the line in front of it, which does define FooBase.

       1. >>> FooBase = type("FooBase", (object,), {})
       2. >>> Foo = type("Foo", (FooBase,), {'bar' : 42})

Although I am not a python expert, so you may be right... in which case, how does line one not work?

<comment><USER3> I stand corrected - I was skimming and didn't notice. The example is correct - I was wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Important Things That You Should Take Care When Integrate of Stripe Connect - <AUTHOR> https://blog.maddevs.io/integration-of-stripe-connect-926daa2978d5 <comment><USER2> One thing I would definitely add is never use Stripe Connect and Stripe Billing within the same Stripe account. Make sure you create a separate one. Stripe does not have any tools to separate the data once mingled and it makes accounting a total nightmare. Wish I'd known this before.</comment>


Backup theory for startups - <AUTHOR> http://akkartik.name/blog/2011-03-04-22-16-07-soc <comment><USER2> Don't see the relevance why it only accounts for startups. It's for everyone using a computer and doesn't want to lose data.

From individuals to corporations.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's for anybody who runs automated tasks. Not lay users who can only suffer catastrophic data loss.</comment></comment>


Live revolution from Kiev – EuroMaydan Square - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/channel/euromaydan-falcon

<comment><USER2> As somebody half way around the world in the US, is there anything I can do to support the protesters in Ukraine? Would calling my Congress-people be worth anything? The State Department?

<comment><USER3> You can donate: [http://helpeuromaidan.info/donate](http://helpeuromaidan.info/donate) This page has multiple links. Depending on your opinions on Maidan, you can support logistical needs, paramedics, or media.

<comment><USER2> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Toxic Experts - <AUTHOR> https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201711/toxic_experts.html <comment><AUTHOR> this is the post in question: [https://nedbatchelder.com/text/slowsgrows.html](https://nedbatchelder.com/text/slowsgrows.html) and the relevant lines:

''' pyon 1:13 PM on 26 Oct 2017

You should be ashamed of this post. How dare you mislead your readers? In amortized analysis, earlier cheap operations pay the cost of later expensive ones. By the time you need to perform an expensive operation, you will have performed enough cheap ones, so that the cost of the entire sequence of operations is bounded above by the sum of their amortized costs. To fix your list example: a sequence of cheap list inserts pays the cost of the expensive one that comes next.

'''</comment>


Let's make the web faster - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/speed/downloads.html

<comment><USER2> Take some of this site with a grain of salt; the bogus PHP speed recommendations still live:

<http://code.google.com/speed/articles/optimizing-php.html>

[http://groups.google.com/group/make-the-web- faster/browse_th...](http://groups.google.com/group/make-the-web- faster/browse_thread/thread/ddfbe82dd80408cc?pli=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Centralized info for web page optimization. I wonder at the efforts spent on page speed improvements, versus letting tech improve and publishing tools handle much of the implementation details.

I think web masters, sites and developers should focus all their efforts on content quality,and check a box that the page loads fast enough now.

To the contrary of this, I consciously admire optimized page loads, that flicker into existence. But this is secondary to the "knowledge payload" of the site.

<comment><USER4> The most critical components of page load optimization are simple tick-the-box items when setting up your application that need to be automatic for every web engineer, but aren't. They are mostly not a matter of having the tech improve. They are mostly not involved with "publishing tools" at all, insofar as by the time your CMS is in the picture it is way too late.

Partial checklist:

It takes something like four lines in your web server config to turn on gzip. Did you turn on gzip?

It takes perhaps ten lines of code to splat all your Javascript and CSS files into one file at deployment. If you were running Rails, this would be about fifteen keystrokes or so. Did you do it?

You should be loading your static assets from 2-3 hosts to maximize how many can be loaded in parallel. This is, again, two minutes of work and doesn't even require you to actually possess multiple hosts since you can just create multiple DNS entries pointing to the same one. Did you do it?

<comment><USER5> Don't forget CSS spriting; static assets from multiple hosts is great, but when you minimize your dependencies AND their size the loading time appears even faster.

<comment><USER4> Ix-nay on the sprites-ay! Save the optimizations which require conscious thought until after we've got them hooked! We don't want to scare them away!

<comment><USER6> You can make CSS sprites automatically. I'm not sure thats the best idea in the world, but its certainly doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The linked download section features nothing new for a web developer.

But its nice to see a centralized approach to do a "best practice" in web speed. Though in its infant stages (e.g. the image optimization articles are very old news and lack most of the modern techniques described in [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/15/clever-png- optimi...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/15/clever-png-optimization- techniques/) and [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/25/png- optimization-...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/25/png-optimization- guide-more-clever-techniques/)) this could be a good checklist for web developers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Make the web faster? EASY!

Step 1) Remove all external advertisement, that shit slows everyone down.

Step 2) Remove all large images (when they're resized to small sizes). I thought that this was a 90's thing, but it still happens too often.

Step 3) Remove all domain names, all too often DNS is slooow.

Step 3) Remove large useless flash banners and other such _stuff thats supposed to be pretty but adds nothing functional to a site_.

Step 4) Things others mentioned here + whatever I missed here...

<comment><USER9> Step 5) Remove any text; slows the download

<comment><USER8> Thats true. Nobody reads it anyway, we're all here just for the porn, everyone knows that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sweet! An open source project that I have (kind of) contributed to before made the list! I wrote some code for Pylot to support dynamic fields (in my case it was my ASP.NET "__VIEWSTATE" field, but it could be adjusted to support any dynamic field). I don't think my contribution has been committed to the trunk, but Corey added me to the list of contributors anyway, so that was nice :)

</comment><comment><USER11> I love how google constantly contributes to the entire internet community in spite of the lack of immediate returns. I mean it takes some serious cojones to bet on the long term with stuff like this. I really hope companies start following this lead in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> just for the record since nobody else mentioned it: if you find this kind of material interesting/relevant, you may very well check with "velocity" conferences and their presentations (which are available online--or were for last years conference)

</comment><comment><USER13> Great collection in one place! I use about half of them, going to explore the other half...</comment>


Show HN: Unbabel Integration with Zendesk. Multilingual Customer Support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.unbabel.com/post/89045242638/unbabel-integration-for-zendesk-is-almost-here

<comment><USER2> Can I start using the integration if I join the Beta program?</comment>


Apple should buy Tesla - <AUTHOR> http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Apple+(AAPL)+Should+Skip+the+Watches+and+TVs+and+Go+for+This+Huge+Market...+an+Open+Letter/8811084.html

<comment><USER2> Great post for those with integration view of business, as Steve! I think apple represent with perfection, an totaly architected technological enviroment. What with the most care with the user experience, the usability, the clean design, is bringing to all of us the perfect experience! And the apple environment could be simply explained by just one sentence : "careful with the maximization of the user experience" And i agree with Adnaan, in his thoughts, that - "The auto industry is going through a technological discontinuity in its shift to hybrid and electric vehicles. This is still in its very early innings" ... And with the apple´s power of design and product integration, i realy belive that the auto industry could be the next re- invented industry by apple!

<comment><USER2> Besides, a partnership with Elon musks, for me, this seems as a very good disruptive ingredient in this equation!</comment></comment>


Shooot – Dribbble Shots Generator - <AUTHOR> https://shooot.bourhaouta.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> It lets you upload your website screenshot to adjust it for a Dribbble shot with background color variants and other features. Your feedback is needed to get to 1.0.0 version. [https://github.com/bourhaouta/shooot](https://github.com/bourhaouta/shooot)</comment>


The only question your startup needs to answer: What's your one thing? - <AUTHOR> http://betashop.com/post/4066229168/the-only-question-your-startup-needs-to-answer-whats

<comment><USER2> Obligatory City Slickers reference: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k1uOqRb0HU>

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?

[holds up one finger]

Curly: This.

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shit.

Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"

Curly: [smiles] That's what _you_ have to find out.

<comment><USER3> This is the meaning of life: that everyone has a purpose

<comment><USER4> I'm personally opposed to this worldview, along with all the praise to "talent". I don't see it as natural, but requiring practice and dedication. From my point of view, "everyone has a purpose" is actually harmful because people will hop on from one thing to another, looking for their "purpose", when they should be making it all along.

But I don't think "everyone can make their own purposes" is as catchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A point here that I think gets lost sometimes in the "ship it" mentality is that you can't iterate your way to figuring out your one thing. You need to start with the one thing and then iterate, not vice versa.

<comment><USER6> Isn't pivoting basically a decision you reach after realizing you need to iterate your "one thing"? I would argue that realizing you _can_ iterate your one thing is as important as the idea of having one thing.

<comment><USER5> I somewhat misread your question, sorry.

"Pivoting" imo means choosing a new one thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> thankuz: Browsing your profile and submissions I noticed that you are submitting 20 to 30 stories per day. Don't you think that is a bit much, and that this frequency makes it much harder for other interesting stories to get noticed? I would have written you an email, but you haven't got one in your profile.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=thankuz>

<comment><AUTHOR> I've answered this a couple of other times publicly, but feel free to send an email to admin [at] thankuz [dot] com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Too bad you can only vote once, i would put a +20 on this !

That's for me the critical feature #1 in a service : your users use your product for one very clear reason. They come to your app to do specifically this. There might be other features on your app, but there's a main one, clearly defined.

And by using this feature, they get value. It is simple, it is straightforward. Value can be content (Quora answers). Value can be an action or reaction (check-in, "count me in" on a plancast). Value can mean earning or saving dollars.

Love the subject, blogged about it here: [http://laurentk.posterous.com/in- search-of-the-perfect-viral...](http://laurentk.posterous.com/in-search-of- the-perfect-viral-social-app)

<comment><USER5> +1!

The best apps do just one thing very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the repost on this!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Happy to say, "I know my startup's one thing". Now, just have to stay laser focused on it.

<comment><USER9> Sorry for noise - but the phrase 'laser focus' always bugs me. AIUI, lasers aren't focussed (which I would define as: having non-parallel rays converging on a point), they are collimated: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collimated_light> (i.e. parallel).

Of course I understand the sentiment, and I similarly understand that when people say "exponential" they commonly mean "big" rather then "has rate of growth proportional to current value".

To try and rescue some signal from my noise - sometimes it's possible to "turn off" people with choices of phrase. Particularly technical people of a certain bent. That can be a useful observation for a technical startup founder.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your points and they are well received. I am not THAT scientific, it's really just an expression, but to argue your point a bit I pose this:

Rather than thinking of it as a laser being focused on an object or location (cause to converge on or toward a central point) try thinking of it as physical time and effort (focus) in a direct beam like a laser (concentration of attention or physical energy on something).

Really, it all depends on your perspective, and how you define "focus". And, whether or not you take it as an analogy or for face value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Variation on a theme: You can't have three priorities.

<comment><USER11> corollary: ONE entity cannot have three priorities.

If you have to answer to three departments equally you CAN have three priorities. That's what managers are for, to turn those into 1. Lots of companies still don't seem to get this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should I deploy my small-scale PHP web applications? - <AUTHOR> I run several small, PHP based websites, they mostly reside on Digital Ocean until I feel a need to switch to AWS.
What is a simple workflow for managing code and deployments of code? Do you have private GitHub repos and your web servers continuously check and integrate the master branch? Do you prefer to take the site down manually and move code around by hand?
I imagine everyone has their own flow, it'd be interesting to hear some so I can improve on my lacking methods. <comment><USER2> Try Heroku! It is the simplest and easiest way to deploy your code with just a Git push. I've been using it for my 20+ projects without any problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did try Heroku a year or so ago, but as my full-time job is as a SysAdmin of up to 1000 Linux servers I tend to like options that give me full control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> my company used to use beanstalkapp.com to store code in svn and do the pushing to production and development. Its a monthly expense though.

I'm at a university now and we use our own git repo with triggers to deploy the code to development. (pushed code is deployed).

We're starting to look into it but I think using web hooks and github you can script a deployment tool.</comment>


Posterous Makes a Play for Business Blogs - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/12/10/posterous-group-profile/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> _The link you are accessing has been blocked by the Barracuda Web Filter because it contains content belonging to the category of: Social Networking_

Kind of ironic, huh?

I can't access anything from mashable or posterous from the office. Sounds like the first hurdle.

<comment><USER3> Then, posterous may need to get a different domain for the business blogs.

<comment><USER4> With sites like LinkedIn and Highrise blocked by Barracuda, I think Posterous would have to also bang on some doors to make sure business blogs don't get blocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm puzzled by this (and their recent blog post about Chevy's use of Posterous) . I almost used Posterous for my company blog, but didn't in the end because their terms of service very clearly say "It is available for non commercial use only, with the exception of being used to Autopost to blogs on Shopify.com."

</comment><comment><USER6> well, that is one thing that will definitely set it apart from tumblr. hopefully they can use it to carve out a good niche.

<comment><USER7> No it doesn't. Tumblr already supports posting to Twitter and to Facebook. What else was there? Putting group names on a blog? Tumblr's had that for years.

Posterous had a lightning start, then fell on its ass; Tumblr adopted its best features and did them better. I mean, Posterous is here bragging about allowing minor thematic changes. I've had complete HTML control of my tumblelogs for three years. Not to mention, Tumblr's default theme is not only more cutting-edge than Posterous's, it's also vastly more attractive.

<comment><USER8> At the risk of feeding the trolls, I don't think you really understand what this release is about. It's not about theming (which by the way we support the same theme blocks and parameters that Tumblr does and its trivial to use all existing tumblr themes with Posterous).

The bigger idea here is being able to autopost as a group, which has not been done before as far as I know -- it's great for team twitter accounts, for instance.

Falling on its ass is rather insulting, and also totally untrue.

Rory, please chill out.

<comment><USER7> I'm confused, then; what do you mean autopost as a group? Does that mean letting multiple people submit content, which is then posted to a single Twitter feed?

<comment><USER9> From the graphic:

        "When each of us posts to the group, we can choose to have it post to our own autopost destinations."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CockroachDB: A Scalable, Geo-Replicated, Transactional Datastore - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach?hn=true <comment><USER2> That's a funny name for a database. At least you'll know that whoever uses it does not use it for its buzzword value.

How will this handle partitioning of the network? The readme has a lot of info about bits of the far-flung cluster failing but nothing about how it would deal with the whole cluster being chopped up into roughly equal halves. That's one of the harder problems to deal with for solutions aimed at this space.

<comment><USER3> Cockroaches are resilient and hard to kill.

<comment><USER2> I'm aware of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Riak, when you use LevelDB behind it, certainly has indexes. As many as you want (within reason), through secondary indexes[0]. While it doesn't have joins specifically, you can link data blobs and walk the links[1]. For when that isn't quite enough, you can always perform a compiled erlang map reduce across a given dataset[2].

I don't quite see how CockroachDB offers anything Riak doesn't.

Riak, while not offering true locking transactions (it doesn't look like CockroachDB does either - imagine how long it would take to perform a locked transaction across sixteen data centers in as many countries, two of which have gone dark due to power outages and giant robots), offers you the option of resolving data version conflicts when you read the record[3]. (ed. Many times if doing a partial update of a record, you need to read before writing anyway. This resolves a conflict before you write to a potentially conflicted record chain. Typically this is done with a pre-commit hook. [4])

(ed.: The major differences seem to stem from the snapshotting system CDB uses to provide external consistency across data centers. This comes at a (potentially huge, especially if two clusters lose connection with each other but not with clients) delay in write verification.

Riak, on the other hand, would still allow writes - and would resolve any conflicts when the datacenters connect again. It's a hairy problem to fix, especially in a general manner.

It all depends on what kind of data you're storing.)

0\. [http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/2i/](http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/2i/)

1\. [http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/link- walking/](http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/link-walking/)

2\. [http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/mapreduce/](http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/mapreduce/)

3\. [http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/theory/concepts/Vector- Clo...](http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/theory/concepts/Vector-Clocks/)

4\. [http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/commit- hooks/](http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/using/commit-hooks/)

<comment><USER5> Fully ACID transactions is a big deal.

<comment><USER6> They're based on Raft--that's not a consensus protocol that's designed for multi-datacenter operations. I suspect you'll have reliability and throughput issues fairly quickly, just as you see with multi-datacenter zookeeper.

The solution Google uses for this kind of problem: multidatacenter transactions are rare, so they're not optimized for latency (instead for reliability), and they tend to use 2PC, as it's easier to get right with unpredictable WAN latencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I assume it's called this because a cockroach can supposedly survive a nuclear attack. But it's a bad name. It does not invoke good feelings.

<comment><USER8> I have to agree - maybe 'RoachDB' would be better

<comment><USER9> I prefer "CockDB".

<comment><USER10> It reminds me of a female programmer that I once worked with. By mistake she had originally named one of our busiest databases "ClickCuntDB"

It was a database for counting the clicks on our website :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Change the name. I get the joke, but it has an emotionally negative connotation that bosses will hate.

<comment><USER12> That's the first thing I thought. If anybody from the team is looking, how about something like BlattoDB[0]?

[0] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blattaria](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blattaria)

<comment><USER13> Sounds a lot like "blotto", which is the last state I want my DB in.

<comment><USER12> True, true. But the point still stands that there are options which hint at the durability of cockroaches without invoking disgust!

Actually this all does remind me of research on the tangible effect of disgust on products -- see [0]. That work studied physical contact, but it's easy to extrapolate from there.

[0] [https://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~gavan/bio/GJF_articles/conta...](https://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~gavan/bio/GJF_articles/contagion_jmr_07.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Given that most of the comments are merely about the name, and that the author has implied that the software doesn't work [1], it seems there's little to discuss here. We're going to demote this submission [2].

1\. [https://twitter.com/andybons/status/472458545154494465](https://twitter.com/andybons/status/472458545154494465). The answer to that question, btw, is yes. Reposts of stories that have had significant attention are treated as dupes for about a year.

2\. That's not a criticism of the submitter. We want to see original work on HN. But there ought to be some substance to it, as well as to the resulting discussion.

</comment><comment><USER15> How would one communicate with this DB?

I'd love to see some API examples.

<comment><USER16> Also benchmarks comparing it to RethinkDb, Mongodb, and sql examples (supposedly this is NewSQL, how much SQL does it even support?) These questions are important

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As for the name, which I agree is problematic as is, how about EntomoDB for entomos (insect)?

Edit: It's not problematic if success is not an objective. But if it is, choosing a name with such strong established negative connotations is not wise.

<comment><USER5> How is the name problematic? I knew exactly what they were saying and why when I saw it. If it were me I would have shortened it to RoachDB, but that's just marketing.

<comment><USER18> >>How is the name problematic?

Most people are disgusted by cockroaches. I think that's a good enough reason to change the name, at least if you want the product to be taken seriously.

<comment><USER19> Friendly reminder that "Mongo" is a very offensive word in German. A "Mongo" is a person suffering from Down syndrome. CockroachDB is a walk in the park compared to MongoDB.

<comment><USER20> and french

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does it handle replication and the resulting conflicts?

<comment><USER22> It uses strongly consistent replication, so there are no conflicts.

<comment><USER21> So it doesn't support "proper" replication, e.g. the kind where the databases are not connected 100% the time perfectly? And I wonder how they can prevent conflicts due to latency.. Even if there's a 50ms latency, is the other database going to wait for 50ms between every write or something?

<comment><USER22> Well, that's a matter of terminology. It uses quorum replication, so it can make progress as long as a majority of replicas are online and communicating. I would consider that "proper" replication in the sense of a replicated state machine.

You're right that it's different from, say, master/slave replication in an SQL database. There's no distinction between an authoritative master and a slave that provides stale data. Each machine either gives you consistent reads and writes, or is unavailable.

As far as latency goes, the gory details are in the design document. You need to talk to at least N/2 other replicas; there's no way around that without giving up consistency. But that doesn't mean you can only do one transaction every 50ms; they can be pipelined, and non-conflicting transactions can proceed simultaneously.

<comment><USER21> Okay, so there will be conflicts, which brings us back to the original question.

>I would consider that "proper" replication in the sense of a replicated state machine.

When I think about proper replication, I'm thinking about master-master replication which doesn't fail if the connection between peers is sometimes down, even for very long periods (e.g. what CouchDB can handle). I'm of course not saying that other kinds of replications are somehow inherently bad, but multi-master replication without active connections is what I'm after and what a lot of modern applications can benefit from.

Once you have two databases that are not connected all the time you need to handle conflicts. You can move the conflict handling totally to the client side, but the conflict handling must be implemented somewhere. I think that's such a common use-case that the database should provide basic interfaces and implementation for it. If nothing else, it reduces boilerplate code by large amounts. Of course no database can handle conflict handling fully, as some of it always depends on the business domain.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Where to find good free fonts? - <AUTHOR>

The site Mark Pilgrim linked to in his Fuck the Foundries article had just about fuck-all on it, and you have to click through from the main listings to see the fonts, which seems like an idiotic design choice for a fonts aggregation site.<p>So where can one find these alleged just-as-good or even nearly-as-good free fonts?  Googling "free fonts" is like visiting Internet Archive pages. <comment><USER2> I tend to use Dafont.com. It's free, fast and works really well.

<comment><USER3> agreed dafont is a great resource. it's one of the few free font sites which is actually well thought out (including things like letting you filter whether or not a font set includes just English language characters, accent characters for EFIGS (english/french/italian/german/spanish), or a full character set, and is generally more above board than most free font sites.

Also -- I like that the "Fuck the Foundaries" article is intended to be viewed in Gill Sans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check my delicious bookmarks, I have a few stored for precisely this: [http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=fonts...](http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=fonts&lc=1&u=iveheardpeoplesayit)

IMHO the best in that list is probably: [http://sixrevisions.com/graphics- design/45-beautiful-free-fo...](http://sixrevisions.com/graphics- design/45-beautiful-free-fonts-for-modern-design-trends/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Be careful; there's been some confusion about which fonts are actually free in the past. For instance, people were salivating over Olsen's "Union", which was indeed published "for free" on a Danish government website --- but was only licensed for use by the Danish government. (I think you can buy it from FontFont).

A lot of "high quality" free fonts are also student projects, and can actually be pretty raw setting lots of type.

</comment><comment><USER6> Beware! Most "free" fonts are not licensed for use within a web page via @font-face.

This is a new technology which most font designers probably haven't heard of and taken account of in their licencing. Crucially it involves putting the actual font on a public web server for users to download.

I followed a random link posted here and on checking the licence on a "free" font found this:

"the consumer may use Harold's Fonts in any way EXCEPT redistribution of the digital font itself in any form."

As with software, if they're not using a recognised licence (SIL OFL, CC, GPL) then triple check that you and the copyright owner agree on definitions before using it in a commercial setting.

The link from the article is sparse because they're not just "free", they're open source. Which as software guys you know is a big difference.

Also, to the original poster: what's with the attitude? You're asking for fonts and yet you haven't even specified what kind your looking for, or for what purpose. It's almost like you're trying to prove a point about the lack of quality free fonts rather than ask a genuine question or meet a real need.

</comment><comment><USER7> Exljbris: <http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/>

Make sure you read the licenses; most just require an attribution link if embedded.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/24/30-sites-for- fanta...](http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/24/30-sites-for-fantastic- free-fonts/)

</comment><comment><USER9> check smashingmagazine.com for entries

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been my go-to first look in the past, and I've found some good ones that I've used there. But it's a bit limited and some of the links are now outdated (from their Free Fonts of the Week/Month series)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.urbanfonts.com/free-fonts.htm>

</comment><comment><USER11> Whatever you do, be careful. You can catch some nasty viruses looking for free fonts if you're not careful.</comment>