Sentenced to 10 years, Marty Gottesfeld wrote about Bureau of Prisons corruption - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@barrettbrown/inmate-marty-gottesfeld-wrote-about-prison-corruption-then-the-prison-silenced-him-d7de0349dc02 <comment><AUTHOR> for anyone new to this story, here additional coverage:

" _Today is the beginning of Marty 's 4th week week on a hunger strike. His demands are so modest: non-toxic water and to appear over the phone for an emergency hearing._"[1][2]

 _" Whistleblower Marty Gottesfeld, serving 10 YEARS in prison for exposing medical abductions by Boston Children's Hospital, placed in solitary confinement"_[3]

[1] [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138.116.0.pdf)

[2] [https://twitter.com/FreeMartyG/status/1211823172493942785](https://twitter.com/FreeMartyG/status/1211823172493942785)

[3] [https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another- whist...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another- whistleblower-in-solitary-confinement/256331/)

<comment><USER2> In what sense did Gottesfeld "blow a whistle"? He's a _cause celebre '_ in the right-wing blogosphere (because Justina Pelletier is, as well), but I can't figure out why. From what I can say, all his information came from the right- wing blogosphere as well; all he did was react violently to it.

<comment><USER3> Everything I've read about this case has been in Mint Press. Are we really supposed to consider _that_ "the right-wing blogosphere"? I feel like we're losing something when words no longer have specific meanings... why would "right-wingers" care more about medical abuse and kidnapping than "left- wingers"?

In olden times, advocating for more merciful prison terms was also not considered "right-wing". Is it really different now? I guess at least Gottesfeld hasn't been called "antisemitic" yet... he's no Jeremy Corbyn.

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what "Mint Press" is and it is not what I'm referring to when I talk about the right-wing blogosphere ("blogosphere" is the wrong word; whatever the word that captures "online community" is what I'm looking for; Michelle Malkin, who was just booted from YAF(!) for vouching for white supremacist Nick Fuentes, took a picture with Justina Pelletier, and Mike Huckabee wrote an article about it.)

I'm neither making up nor projecting the fact that Justine Pelletier is a _cause celebré_ among right-wingers.

Incidentally: I'm not casting aspersions (in this instance). Like I said downthread, _nobody_ in this story (except Justina herself) comes out looking good. Justina's parents? Just awful. BCH? Not much better. Of course, nobody looks _worse_ than Martin Gottesfeld.

<comment><USER3> _Justina 's parents? Just awful._

OK, it's this sort of low-brow dismissal that causes me to actually dig through enough search engine BS to find the "reputable" take. [0] [1] So good job, I guess. I find in those two long articles nothing about the parents' behavior to be even suspect, let alone "awful", let alone worse than BCH. That is a totally unsupported garbage judgment, of the sort one might expect from a neurologist with 7 months of experience assigned to be the lead physician for a child diagnosed with chronic metabolic problems and acute intestinal distress. Oh, wait... that's what happened at BCH!

If the intention of the state of Massachusetts is to have fewer juvenile patients traveling from out of state for medical care, their policies are absolutely correct.

[0] [https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbN...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbNdiodSD7WDTh6xZI/story.html)

[1] [https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/16/month- medical-o...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/16/month-medical- ordeal-conclusion-still-uncertain/Y7qvYTGsq8QklkxUZvuUgP/story.html)

<comment><USER2> It's, of course, neither low-brow nor a dismissal, involving as it did me reading a bunch of other sources to get the context of what Brown was talking about --- literally the opposite of what 'pg meant when he coined the term. You don't _like_ what I have to say, but it is fine if we simply disagree.

In the Boston Globe story alone, you have the Pelletiers doctor- and hospital- shopping both in Boston and in Connecticut, reported for abuse by their own doctors in Connecticut, yelling at the BCH doctors, being so disruptive during family visits they had to have their visitations curtailed, and, most memorably, threatening to sue the Connecticut facility BCH found to move Justina to, resulting in that facility being unable to accept Justina; in other words, rather than getting Justina back home, her parents prioritized winning some weird argument they felt they were having.

Like I said, BCH also doesn't look great in this story.

<comment><USER3> "Doctor shopping" is a term invented in order to deprive patients in pain of the medication they need; it has nothing to do with this case. The idiom you may have intended to use is "getting a second opinion". Many good physicians encourage this practice; many poor physicians do not. The yelling about suing the Connecticut facility occurred only after the Connecticut facility was suggested, which was _six months_ into the kidnapping. I'm not surprised the patient and her family weren't so trusting at that time. There were probably financial considerations as well as legal ones to this suggested transfer. A good reporter might have investigated that.

I'll stipulate that the family got more emotional than I would in the same situation. However, they didn't get any more emotional than one might expect. Their kid was dying, _then_ they weren't allowed to see their dying kid. Emotional people can go to a mechanic and get their car fixed. They can go to the vet and get their dog fixed. They can go to an accountant and get their taxes done. What is so special about hospital physicians, that they should never have to deal with any emotion other than awestruck adoration? Answer: they're allowed to lock their customers in. The law might support it, but only in an _ad hoc_ , "possession is 9/10" sense. They can tell the state "hey we've already kidnapped this kid and our lawyers are on the case" instead of "you should convince a judge to send armed police to kidnap this kid". That's why big hospitals with lots of lawyers do this sort of thing and smaller facilities don't.

Calling these parents "awful" is just consequence-free internet big talking, joined in this case with left-hand/right-hand they-both-have-good-points-who- can-say pretend moderation. Less of that, please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel really bad for this dude and hope he's ok when they do finally hear from him. First off 10 years for a DOS attack is a little extensive in my book. I really feel that these prison sentences are extreme in the case of a non-violent crime.

That all being said I think there just HAD to be a better way of going about helping the girl in the hospital. I don't get what a DOS on the hospital was suppose to accomplish.

<comment><USER5> This is the US, the chances of him serving all 10 years is slim, probably parole out after a few. Also anytime he already served in jail will go towards his sentence.

However, this is a hospital, imagine if the DOS somehow would of contributed to a death.

<comment><USER6> what would be the sentence for organizing a physical DOS on the hospital? ie filling the emergency room up with protesters such that emergency care is impossible.

<comment><USER7> Five of the Chicago seven were sentenced to five years each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Barrett Brown, author of the linked article, is a journalist who spent 2010-2016 in Federal prisons and was fined $900,000 for digging into Austin intel operation Stratfor. (His mother got 6 months of probation for 'obstruction'.) Brown spent 6 months of his time in 'the hole'.

Makes sense that he's interested in a Federal prisoner who is being held incommunicado. Makes sense that we'd be interested in knowing about stuff like that. Mess with the wrong people, and ... justice is in the eyes of the beholders.

Another article on Gottesfeld, by a CIA whistleblower:

[https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another- whist...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another- whistleblower-in-solitary-confinement/256331/)

<comment><USER2> As I recall (I'm not looking at the documents right now), Brown didn't "dig in" to Stratfor so much as function as an accessory to the hack of Stratfor by Jeremy Hammond and his crew, after which he actively obstructed the investigation, both by Stratfor and by the DOJ (including a sad attempt to hide an incriminating laptop during a search).

It seems clear to me that Brown was certainly criminally culpable, but also that his sentence was outlandish and unjust.

It's less clear to me that what happened to Gottesfeld was wrong. For one thing: Gottesfeld doesn't appear to be any sort of "whistleblower". His information about the Justina Pelletier case came from the right-wing media, where the case had gone viral. Moreover, his response to that information was to organize DDOS attacks that shut down the electronic pharmacy at Boston Children's Hospital; they literally had to go back to paper prescriptions and faxes during the attack. He had originally targeted a fundraising website BCH was running, but quickly realized that he was attacking the infrastructure of the hospital itself, which he then bragged about taking down.

After being caught, he attempted to flee to Cuba, but stranded himself just off the Cuban coast and had to be rescued by a Disney Cruise ship, which took him back to the US.

The final thing I want to point out is that Barrett Brown is a person who appears to have believed that Stratfor was a powerful mercenary intelligence outfit, and not a grifting zine for aspirational Tom Clancy types with desk jobs. Stratfor was a figure of fun in the real intelligence community, and had none of the malign influence Barrett attributed to them; if anything, by helping arrange their hack, he helped the real IC. Certainly nothing Stratfor did justified dumping the credit cards of people who had subscribed. But, more importantly: take whatever Brown says with an appropriate tonnage of salt.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the added details. (Yes, there's more than enough to try to remember these days.)

Agreed on Brown's sentence. The DDOS attack was a dumb stunt. But that doesn't explain Gottesfeld's current (gagged) situation. Both remind me of Aaron Schwarz, another example of the punishment not fitting the crime. But he was not a journalist; that part is more concerning.

<comment><USER2> Aaron Swartz did nothing resembling what Gottesfeld did; the comparison is outrageously unfair to him.

<comment><USER8> No such comparison was made. In case you didn't deliberately miss the outrageous point: when it comes to the Feds, often the persecution does not fit the crime, but rather some "make an example of them" agenda. It's nothing new, you're probably old enough to remember Operation Sundevil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having never heard of Martin Gottesfeld or Justina Pelletier before, and just spending some time reading articles, I'm pretty disgusted. At face value this seems like a horrible miscarriage of justice on many, many levels. Now I'm not exactly a fan of the USA, but this all seems a bit over the top, but I can find nothing debunking any of it. Does anyone have articles with dissenting view points about either of them, bringing arguments in favor of Massachusetts, BOP, or the Boston Children's Hospital?

<comment><USER10> Do you really need an argument in favor of Boston Children's Hospital to realize that DoSing a hospital is nowhere near the scope of either a legally or morally acceptable course of action to deal with something like this even if his take on the case was 100% correct ?

<comment><USER9> If you want to engage in that, does that make him deserving of being in a secret (?) prison? Does that preclude the need of arguments in favor of them to excuse them of their treatment of Justina Pelletier?

I think you read something into my comment that isn't there.

edit: And I'm not even sure I could categorically state that DoSing a fundraiser of a hospital engaging in (at least from what I've read in the articles) medical kidnapping, using wards of state as guinea pigs, etc. is morally wrong. Another reason for my request for differing opinions.

<comment><USER11> You're far too credulous. This guy seems like an absolute loon to me. I find his claims of "secret prisons" and widespread corruption extremely dubious. You have an anti-US bias ("I'm not exactly a fan of the USA") that you should try to account for.

> Does that preclude the need of arguments in favor of them to excuse them of > their treatment of Justina Pelletier?

The two things aren't related. The parents challenged the hospital in court and won. I think there's clearly an issue here (the hospital seems to have gone too far), but we Americans -- barbaric though we may be -- have means of settling disagreements without DoSing hospitals.

<comment><USER9> > You have an anti-US bias ("I'm not exactly a fan of the USA") that you > should try to account for.

Yes. I agree. This is why I asked for arguments in favor of the other side. So far I've read nothing but articles supporting Justina (and her parents) and Marty and their versions of the story. Then I asked for other viewpoints. And instead you tell me I shouldn't believe everything when I literally said "At face value" and that it seems over the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This Barrett Brown piece doesn't really say anything, except that Barrett Brown is very angry at how Barrett Brown been treated by the Obama administration and, apparently, by journalists including and in the orbit of Glenn Greenwald.

As to Marty Gottesfeld, Brown has little to say, other than that he's been transferred to a different federal prison and that his wife has trouble staying in communication with him. Brown has much more to say about his own treatment than that of Gottesfeld.

Gottesfeld, if you're unfamiliar, is serving 10 years for launching a botnet DDOS attack against Boston Children's Hospital.

Sometime around 2013, (mostly) right-wing media took up the cause of Justina Pelletier, a teenager who had been referred by her physician to BCH and, after being admitted, had been taken into BCH's custody after a court determined that her parents had been harming her and impeding her care. Her parents didn't regain custody for over a year. The case is complicated, and nobody in it looks good.

Gottesfeld, a self-declared "anon", decided to declare "OpJustina", appealing for people to attack the facilities that had been involved in Pelletier's care. He recruited a 40,000 node router botnet which managed to take BCH off the Internet for several days. In the process, he shut down their central prescription service, their physician scheduling system, and all email between doctors, as well as the fundraising page that had been his declared target. He also managed to disrupt systems at several other facilities, including Dana Farber and Harvard Medical, which were hosted on a related network.

The FBI very quickly tracked Gottesfeld down because one of the accounts he had used to cheerlead the attack was registered under his name. They obtained a search warrant and found computers with incriminating evidence. Gottesfeld retained Tor Ekelund, the well known CFAA lawyer, and met with the DOJ to discuss a plea, during which he admitted to the attacks.

He then fled to Cuba in an unmarked 23 foot open-cabin motorboat, with his wife, passports, cash, and computers. His boat lost propulsion off the Cuban coast and, unfortunately for him, he was rescued not by the Cuban Coast Guard but by a Disney Cruise Ship, which returned him to Florida, where he was promptly arrested.

At his detention hearing, the US Attorney stated for the record that the guideline range they had been contemplating at the time of Gottesfeld's meeting was 3-4 years, and that there was some substantial possibility that, had he plead out before an indictment, he might avoid prison time altogether (at that stage of the investigation it may have been unclear how much damage Gottesfeld had actually caused). Instead, Gottesfeld fired and repudiated Tor Ekelund, and another lawyer, took his case to court, lost, refused to take responsibility after his conviction, offered a post-conviction memorandum stating that he was morally required to DDOS BCH and that he'd likely do it again, and managed to secure for himself a 10 year sentence.

I guess my point is just, don't be this clown.

<comment><USER12> > _had been taken into BCH 's custody after a court determined that her > parents had been harming her and impeding her care._

Do you have a link for the court decision? It's not clear how much proof did the hospital provide, and I guess the initial decision was a cautionary measure (because for the judge is safer to do something wrong than doing nothing and facing a tweetstorm in case there is a problem).

> _I guess my point is just, don 't be this clown._

I agree with that.

<comment><USER2> I don't, but the court documents are all available on PACER. The hospital did shut down the networks for its formulary, deliberately; Gottesfeld was, at the time, bragging that there were active network intrusions (SQLI, spear phishing, &c) underway, and my understanding is that between that and the DDOS attacks, the systems were taken down as a precaution.

It's undisputed, including by Gottesfeld, that these systems were taken down as a direct result of his attacks. The only point of contention I've found (this is in the sentencing memorandum back-and-forth) is that Gottesfeld believes damage from systems shut down (or kept down) after his intrusion shouldn't be imputed to him. He concedes some measure of culpability for the systems BCH shut down.

<comment><USER12> > _the court documents [about Justina] are all available on PACER_

Let's try to find and read them. My guess is that this story will be reposted in a few day, and perhaps we can discuss the backstory part of this with more data.

Note: Perhaps I was not clear, but I agree with most of your initial comment. I just specially agree with your last sentence.

<comment><USER2> My comment was based on the PACER documents; I have found and read them. But I can't link to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anonymously DOS:sing a hospital because a few families disagreed with their policies is not a heroic work of hactivism. Just because a party is a dick does not morally oblige you to endanger medical treatment of hundreds of individuals.

I would take everything Mr. Gottesfeld communicates with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER14> > it's one of many reasons why I also advocate revolution, preferably followed > by public executions

I feel this man doesn't understand what he's asking for. And should the revolution happen, he will be shocked to find himself in an interrogation room, screaming that they should be torturing and executing the _real_ bad guys, not upstanding revolutionaries like himself.

<comment><USER15> I don't follow your illustration.

<comment><USER16> If you throw away the rules, the rules stop applying to everyone, not just the revolutionaries.

The rule of law is not a tool of oppression; it's a check on the people with power and guns.

The revolutionaries do not have the power. So throwing away the legal system is far, far more likely to just lead to an unchecked re-entrenchment of whoever is in charge, not a new system.

If things are truly, truly catastrophic, maybe that's a risk you're willing to take. But since the average American is not, in fact, dying in the streets, most really want to continue living their lives in relative prosperity and relative freedom.

<comment><USER17> Right, which is why modern revolutionaries favor "direct action" against an unfair system -- in addition to protests, this includes things like intentionally turning a blind eye to shoplifters (aka "no snitching"), stealing from your employer, or actively sabotaging their plans. It's easy to disguise as incompetence or laziness because there's no explicit coordination.

We all have to work to eat, but nothing says people legally have to do a good job in most positions -- and it's easy to get away with if you can talk a good game. The idea is that because the rules aren't enforced against the people at the top, why should the people at the bottom help enforce them against their peers? If the police are a tool of the oppressive state, why would you help them in any way? If you're systemically oppressed, why would you not be dishonest and game the system in every way you could?

<comment><USER10> You are literally advocating for at-will employment here, which says noone cares if you're genuinely or politically incompetent and will be fired all the same.

<comment><USER17> You have the causality reversed -- at-will employment is the norm in the US because union-busting prevents collective bargaining. Political incompetence is the result of this situation, not the cause of it.

Corporate leaders are generally on negotiated contracts that protect them in the event of genuine incompetence (the "golden parachute"), which reduces the motivation for political incompetence. Regular workers and middle management rarely get that luxury.

<comment><USER10> For causality to be reversed unions and collective bargaining would have had to exist and be the norm prior to at-will employment. More like unions and collective bargaining were successfully discredited by engaging in excesses of their own - some along the lines you advocated

<comment><USER17> Collective bargaining works just fine in countries that protect it. I'm way more ok with the excesses being spread among multitudes of workers than having those "excesses" concentrated in the bonuses of executives -- which is the situation we have today.

Fixing this requires having an honest discussion about how we distribute wealth between workers and owners. But it's not surprising the people who currently take the lion's share are actively preventing that conversation from happening.

None of this is particularly radical, and it's basically what Bernie Sanders is running on. His positions are solidly center-right by European standards, so it's not like he's proposing some radical thought experiment.

<comment><USER10> Pretty sure Bernie Sanders is not running on the platform of encouraging shoplifting or sabotaging your workplace.

<comment><USER17> He's not; but the far left does. Bernie isn't remotely far left. He's advocating for solutions within the existing framework of capitalism, the far left wants anarcho-communism (the same way the far right wants anarcho- capitalism). That's not gonna happen, so extremists on both sides say fuck your employer and steal.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dutch police to train birds to take down unauthorised drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/01/dutch-netherlands-police-birds-unauthorized-drones <comment><USER2> Have you ever seen a video of Steven Seagal or similar Aikido masters performing seemingly effortless take-downs against waves of opponents? This bird program is very similar: impressive in a demonstration and totally useless in real life.

The key is that in the demonstration, only willing opponents are used. Notice that the drone in the video is completely motionless? In real life, if the pilot sees the bird coming at the last moment, it will tilt the drone to try and accelerate away. This is highly, highly likely to result in the bird's outstretched feet getting lopped off.

<comment><USER2> On second thought, the one advantage which this does have over alternatives (like throwing a net to foul the props, or using a microwave canon to disable the electronics) is that the drone won't plummet into the crowd below.

If you can rely on the assumption that a drone which loses control signal will hover in place or slowly descend (or some similar "safe" maneuver), you could combine the bird technique with a jamming device. The jamming device keeps the drone still just long enough for the bird to snatch it out of the air safely.

Similarly, you could train the bird to expect the drone to start free-falling just moments before it arrives, such that the bird compensates and catches the drone in free-fall. You could then deploy the bird against a drone and use a focused microwave cannon to take out the drone's electronics just before the bird arrives.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DBHistory.com Simplified Monitoring for SQL Server - <AUTHOR> https://dbhistory.com/ <comment><USER2> This solves a tough problem. In a team with lots of sysadmins who need to do patches and tweaks, DBAs who need to do index tuning, and developers who need to do object deployments, it's hard to get everyone to log their changes the same way. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a nice tool for a DBA's arsenal. It would be more valuable if it also showed the impact of each change, where possible, in terms of performance, security, etc.

In other words, it would add more value if it could translate the actual events into human concepts of impact.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Entering more into performance monitoring dimension is something I hear often. Corroborate observed perf changes with logged configuration changes is something I do not see well covered in the traditional perf monitoring toolset in this space (SQL Server tools), so is definitely an opportunity I'm considering. It's just not a trivial change and will take some time to get it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks great, but I wonder if it being SAAS / off prem is going to be a problem for some folks. I know for example, we would not want the names of our domain accounts, table names, proc names, etc... being stored in an external service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback. I hear the same from some potential customers, and my response is that I'm not opposed to an on-premise deployment (technically the code is prepared for this, eg. how the configuration wizard finds the 'service' endpoint address and so on), but that would be a completely different ball game (deployment, maintenace, servicing, branding etc and ultimately a very different price point).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: review my startup, WatchdogDaemon - <AUTHOR>

http://watchdogdaemon.com <comment><USER2> <http://watchdogdaemon.com>

Looks like a good MVP/start. It wasn't immediately clear what the service does, but it was pretty close. (I'm saying this is a good thing, but could be made great.)

I may be picking nits, but I think the word "innovative" in the leading sentence could be replaced with a more descriptive adjective that better defines what the service actually monitors. "innovative monitoring service" vs "____ monitoring service". Sorry, no suggestions off the top of my head.

I think the two sentences in the "REST API" section are good, but are just begging for a graphic to illustrate it.

Anything in particular that you are looking for a review on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not specifically, just a review of the copy to see if it is explanatory enough. Also if it seems like something useful.

I like idea for a REST API graphic, I'm just not quite sure how it should look.

<comment><USER2> I think you could have one sort of flowchart at the top of the graphic, using arrows to indicate how my servers and devices can be pushing out calls to your service etc.

I don't know the ins/outs of what you're doing, but think:

my server -> your awesome service -> oooh charts

Then underneath this main simple illustration, perhaps in grayscale, you could have an example of the "old" way to do something like this (and point out why it sucks).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > We take your privacy seriously and will never allow anyone to access your > contact information. It will only be used to inform you of your invitation, > and our quarterly newsletter.

Why not make quarterly newsletter opt-in?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't had time to implement it, I wanted to get the signup working quickly.

Honestly I'm not sure I will send a quarterly newsletter, I just wanted to cover myself incase I did in the future for people that pre-registered but never signed up after an invite.

In your case how big of a barrier to signup is that?

<comment><USER3> I like to give feedback (eg dont mind signing for services), but do not like to get spam (no offense) emails.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding the receptive field of deep convolutional networks - <AUTHOR> https://theaisummer.com/receptive-field/ <comment><AUTHOR> In this article, we will discuss multiple perspectives that involve the receptive field of a deep convolutional architecture. We will address the influence of the receptive field starting for the human visual system. As you will see, a lot of terminology of deep learning comes from neuroscience. As a short motivation, convolutions are awesome but it is not enough just to understand how it works. The idea of the receptive field will help you dive into the architecture that you are using or developing. If you are looking for an in-depth analysis to understand how you can calculate the receptive field of your model as well as the most effective ways to increase it, this article was made for you. In the end, fundamentals are to be mastered!</comment>


BiggerPockets Increased Sign-UPS 81% with These Optimization Best Practices - <AUTHOR> https://blog.optimizely.com/2020/06/08/website-conversion-optimization/ <comment><USER2> Great insights!</comment>


Startup JuicyCanvas: Add A Personal Touch To Paintings Before You Buy Them - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/11/juicycanvas/

<comment><AUTHOR> One thing i love about this site is that it drives serious art collectors crazy. It's disruptive.</comment>


How the invention of the book changed how people read - <AUTHOR> https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/how-invention-book-changed-how-people-read <comment><USER2> Very interesting piece.

I also got caught in rabbit hole following the AAP report on ebooks sales declining. It was an interesting ride, showing a glimpse on how much things are changing and the industry is evolving.

The entry of the hole, a report on trade books sales, with numbers from mainstream publishers: [https://newsroom.publishers.org/trade-book-publisher- revenue...](https://newsroom.publishers.org/trade-book-publisher-revenues- up-44-for-first-three-quarters-of-2018/)

Then digging further it seems these publisher also had a series of actions to bring physical book prices down and promote them better to fight back the ebook trend, which would explain the number.

Digging much further, independant publishing has become a thing, partly due to the rise of ebook, and independant sales is said to have sharply rised. A take on this trend: [https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/ebook-sales-doubled- us-...](https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/ebook-sales-doubled- us-2018-according-data-guys-nonsensical-bookstat-numbers/)

Or more into the indie side: [https://www.geekwire.com/2018/traditional- publishers-ebook-s...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/traditional-publishers- ebook-sales-drop-indie-authors-amazon-take-off/)

<comment> squeaky-clean Anecdotally this is true for me. I used to buy kindle books frequently, now I rarely do because costs have gone up and paperbacks are often cheaper.

Going through my email order history also confirms this to be true (in my case) except for programming ebooks. Prices listed for my purchases are kindle prices in USD. I can't lookup the paperback price on my day of purchase but it would be higher otherwise I wouldn't buy the ebook.

May 2015 I bought The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (book 1) for 4.99. Today kindle is 7.99 and paperback is 7.99 (also the ultimate edition paperback with all 5 in the series is 13.31)

May 2015 I bought The Intelligent Investor Revised for 13.99. Today kindle is 16.99 and paperback is 12.39

Jun 2015 I bought Mistborn: the Final Empire for 4.99. Today kindle is 8.99 and paperback is 8.92.

Jun 2015 I bought Soul of a New Machine for 9.99. Today kindle is 9.99 and paperback is 9.79

Aug 2015 I bought Snow Crash for $7.68. Today kindle is 13.99 and paperback is 13.15

And I can keep going but I think you all get the point.

<comment><USER3> Strange, on Amazon from the 3rd world kindle books are a lot cheaper for me.

The ease of finding and buying them has upped my reading significantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thinking out loud, the utility of the book seems to come from it being composed of standardized, _discrete_ units (pages). It's easier to progress through it by turning pages, and it has addressability (ability to mark pages, such as to indicate the current place you're at).

And the downsides of the bookroll -- awkwardness to progress through it, having to 'rewind' them after finishing them, and lack of addressability -- comes from them being _continuous_.

It's interesting to note that modern reading on the web is usually continuous (scrolling). It doesn't have the awkwardness of moving through the text that bookrolls did, as the computer handles that. But it does have the problem of lack of addressability.

<comment><USER5> One major difference between reading on the web though is the mutability of the support. Content can change without notice, or simply disappear (though this has parallels with physical books).

I find the point of durability interesting, on how codices protected the paper better than scrolls, and had the side-effect of surviving longer and in harsher conditions. I believe the same cannot be said for digital supports: what are the chances that an EPUB file be readable (assuming file integrity and language liveliness) in the next couple of centuries ? Even if "digital monks" copy the contents of those books from one format to the next to ensure readability, at one point practicality of a paper printed version for long- term storage will prevail.

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting argument as we are in completely unknown territory.

As is it now we have some of the oldest scripts still readable because of pure luck (they were trapped in specific materials that preserved them, stayed in unopened cave etc.), extremely high effort (actively kept in pristine condition, backed up, repaired as needed) or wide appeal (e.g. religious books, reference books)

Basically we don't have much of the random papers circulating in markets and left lying around when their appeal was pretty small.

I think the same process will still happen with digital data, there will be a very low chance to find back the integrality of random users facebook posts, or the verge's amazon echo reviews in 4 centuries. But the work of the 'digital monks' will still be a lot easier, and I'd expect the bar to preserve any specific content to be a lot lower than what we had in the past.

Say, people's cooking recipes might survive a few centuries more, and possibly at a massive scale if a few dozens of people take the time to make that happen, where in the past this would just be unrealistic.

<comment><USER5> > I'd expect the bar to preserve any specific content to be a lot lower than > what we had in the past.

At the moment, I agree.

However, as older civilizations rose and fell, their knowledge lived on in physical support, directly accessible by anyone who was taught how to read the language, therefore the assumption was that "as long as the language lives on, books are a good archiving support".

When our modern digital civilization falls [1], I'm not sure most of it would be transmittable through long-term electronic archiving supports that may be easily readable (as easily as a written book at least) by future civilizations, because not only the language has to live on, but the technology needed to access the content also has to function.

I also agree that some contents will always be more relevant to "backup". As for everything that happened on Facebook (same can be said for most social platforms), it is likely to entirely disappear with the company. One could even see it as a parallel civilization, that has no means of self-preservation other than that of their ruling entity's business interest.

[1] Jonathan Blow - Preventing the collapse of civilization - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW- SOdj4Kkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article discusses the pros and cons of bookrolls and codexes (books), which is interesting, but it doesn't really discuss how books changed how people read.

<comment><USER6> Joshua Foer goes into this in 'Moonwalking with Einstein', approaching from the view of a would-be mnemonist and how scrolls were far less efficient than books. OA touches on headings, indexes and tables of content, but Foer goes into more detail and discusses how these innovations made books a far more powerful way to store, index and retrieve knowledge. It's not exactly a deep dive but it might provide some roads into the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI: I've put together a free book format called Manuscripts. See [http://manuscripts.github.io](http://manuscripts.github.io) and find an example bookshelf @ [http://yukimotopress.github.io](http://yukimotopress.github.io) Happy book writing. Happy book reading.

<comment><USER8> This looks rather like an ebook written with pandoc[1]; if you don't mind, what prompted you to write your own rather than using an existing format?

[1]: [https://pandoc.org/epub.html](https://pandoc.org/epub.html)

<comment><USER7> The new format is (way) easier / simpler and yes, you can use pandoc for markdown processing. If you create an online book than you can just use HTML & CSS e.g. a "standard" website or a webpage is a book. You should ask why the book industry created a new format, that is, EPUB :-).

PS: That's also the direction the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) tries to go (but failed). See the upcoming [https://www.w3.org/TR/wpub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/wpub/) recommendation / standard / spec trying to replace EPUB. Compare the book manifest of manuscripts with the book manifest of wpub to see what format keeps it simple.

PPS: And to keep apple and oranges apart - FYI: pandoc is NOT a book format (it's a text processor), thus, you should compare Manuscripts to EPUB or the new WPUB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the author could have drawn more attention to how reading has changed recently, outside of just ebooks. Blogs, word processors, and articles are also massively changing how we consume information. Certainly still an interesting article, even if the title is a bit innacurate.</comment>


Ask HN: Review/Test My Latest App (test on Chrome if possible) - <AUTHOR> http://redo.heroku.com/ <comment><USER2> Here is my idea for a different direction to go in, but I think it digs at what you are trying to do:

You should change the description from "reusable todo lists WTF?" to "Sharable workflows for your everyday life", that would be a succinct description that markets it better.

You could argue that checklists are helpful: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lloyd-i-sederer-md/is-your- doc...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lloyd-i-sederer-md/is-your-doctor-using- a-ch_b_473068.html) and that you help enable the creation and sharing of the knowledge required for processes.

You could then enable people to tag their checklists with uses "budget planning checklists", "software design checklist" etc.

But even still, there's not a lot of meat on your "app", it's basically a ReST cookbook application right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's mostly a proof of concept, but you have given me some very good ideas. A big brother may be born in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Using 'Getting Drunk' as your example isn't putting your best foot forward.

Edit: Not only because its immature, but because most people would never consult a checklist on the internet when they want to get drunk. How about an example that is practical for most people?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably. I was trying to emphasize how the app could be used in a fun way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your screenshot was kind of confusing because it gets cut off. I thought it was part of the page and that the text on the right was cutting of the text on the left.

I'd remove the target="_blank" on the "try a demo" link just because I, personally, think it's annoying.

Also, the demo is just redirecting back to the homepage.

I'd add some extra text to your <title> pages to help with SEO and to make it clearer. "to re-do | Reusable todo lists" or something similar.

Add some labels to your "new list" form just to make it clearer. The center align on the title of the list is kinda weird. Make it clearer that each new line in the textarea means a new item on the todolist.

I don't see any way to add/edit items on my lists. Planned feature?

All of your links are highlighting when I hover over any one of them. I mean the "save restore clear" links when you're looking at a list.

I don't really like the background changing when I finish an item. It's unexpected and kind of jarring. For a second I was like "my monitor is messing up, wtf?"

I'd add a bookmarking button just to make it easier to get back to your lists. I'd also change the url from using the autoincrement ID to using some sort of random alphanumeric key. I don't really like that people can just change that number and peruse through all of the lists.

The "restore" and the "clear" buttons don't seem to be doing anything.

Consider adding a link to the todolist page that goes back to the homepage. Maybe also a "Create new List" page.

<comment><AUTHOR> The screenshot also links to the demo; I fixed the text link, but heroku won't accept my commit. I'll try later.

If you test on chrome, you'll see I'm using the html5 placeholder attribute on the new list form, which provides instructions.

A planned feature is to have a secret edit link. For the mean time, you could create a new list, though I know it could be bothersome.

Those links save a cookie that remembers the items you already checked off. Save makes the cookie, restore restores it, and clear deletes the cookie.

I'll definitely do the bookmarking thing.

Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "restore" link behaves oddly... I can't seem to figure out any rhyme or reason to why it checks or unchecks certain boxes. Sometimes it unchecks items in the "done" list, sometimes it checks items in the "to-do" list (though it never moves an item from one list to the other). It doesn't seem to do either of these things consistently though...

<comment><AUTHOR> when you want to save your progress, hit 'save' to store a cookie that remembers your checks. Or, every 10 seconds, it will save by itself.

Later, when you come back to the list, hit restore and the checkboxes will be checked according to the last recorded cookie.

Clear simply deletes the cookie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very pretty, but I don't really get why I should use this vs any other to do list.

All the lists are public, and easy to find: <http://redo.heroku.com/[0-9]+>

<comment><AUTHOR> hit "wtf" below "reusable to-do lists" to learn why ;). Let me copy that for you:

It's useful for stuff like workout routines, recipes, checklists (launching a website, software testing, travel checklist, requirements list, achieving drunkenness...). the more you think about it, the more uses you find. Anyways, this beats having to create a new to-do list at x website every single time you'll start something you do repetitively.

I know they're rather easy to find atm, but that's just while I find the best possible routes. One of the uses of the lists are to be shareable, so I don't know whether or not I will ever change it. If you need some privacy, though, check out <http://done.io> ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here ya go

[http://www.opinbot.com/reviews/show/agdvcGluYm90chwLEhVyZXZp...](http://www.opinbot.com/reviews/show/agdvcGluYm90chwLEhVyZXZpZXdzX3Jldmlld3JlcXVlc3QYwj4M)

</comment><comment><USER8> _"developed and tested in webkit (chrome4+), screw any other engine."_

That kind of attitude won't get you very far in web development.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's not a serious webapp, I made it for a little short-running contest. As such, I didn't want to spend my time dealing with cross browser issues.

I know that there's no way that I can do that in a serious app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clicking 'try a live demo' just opens the same page in a new tab for me.

Windows XP, FF 3.5.8

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. Try clicking the image instead. I fixed this locally but heroku won't accept my push. I'll try again later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> use case arguments aside, I have discovered a XSS vulnerability for you <http://redo.heroku.com/72>

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> love it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love it! works great on chrome :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!</comment></comment>


Bizarre Earthquake Lights Finally Explained - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140106-earthquake-lights-earthquake-prediction-geology-science/ <comment><USER2> If these can be triggered so far in advance of a quake, couldn't we bury instruments of some kind that also trigger under those conditions? That would be useful regardless what types of rocks are in the area.

It might not be perfect, but anything is better than the no warning we have now.

<comment><USER3> I remember various ways of aurora detection but all of them depend more or less of precise wavelengths being observed and doing some noise filtering and amplification. It sounds here that various manifestations are possible so hopefully a method could be found, but it could be complex.

<comment> semi-extrinsic We do have pretty good aurora forecasting though, through satellites upstream in the solar wind. There are even smartphone apps for that, I'll plug this one that a friend of mine was involved in: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.unis.Aurora...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.unis.Auroral_Forecast)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > For example, cameras caught clear images of earthquake lights in Pisco, > Peru, in August 2007, during a magnitude 8 earthquake there.

Oh, yeah? Too bad we don't have the technology to share such images.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj2PQ3onAL0#t=40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj2PQ3onAL0#t=40) Most of the cameras in this video were aimed towards the sea

<comment><USER6> Color me skeptical. Power lines and transformers which arc as they are pulled apart by vibration make a hell of a lot more sense to me.

<comment><USER7> Having experienced the 6th largest earthquake ever recorded by a seismograph [1] I can assure you the lights I saw during that night were a lot brighter and higher in the sky, so power lines and transformers are ruled out. I was living fairly close to the epicenter (about 18 miles from the picture you can see in the wikipedia) and the lights were up for several minutes after the electricity went out.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake)

<comment><USER6> Clouds reflect light. Arcing can be extremely bright to night-adjusted eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article says that it's not caused by Piezo effects, then goes on to describe exactly that.

<comment><USER9> Actually, it sounds a lot more like triboluminescence to me.

<comment><USER10> I would suspect that those are actually the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This pilot has a first-person account and eerie photos of what may be earthquake lights:

[http://www.pbase.com/flying_dutchman/pacific_eruption](http://www.pbase.com/flying_dutchman/pacific_eruption)

</comment><comment><USER12> An electrical discharge does not explain the color. To be a complete explanation it needs to explain the color of the lights.

<comment><USER13> Gas emission from the ground prior to earthquakes?

There has been some work to attempt to link the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _> Freund says common forms of earthquake lights include bluish flames that appear to come out of the ground at ankle height; orbs of light called ball lightning that float in the air for tens of seconds or even minutes_

Perhaps coincidental and unrelated, but similar orbs have been reported in conjunction with crop circle events.

<comment><USER15> I though crop circles were made by people who had to much time on their hands.

<comment><USER16> I'm also inclined to believe that. Only one problem: in addition to crop circles that can easily be attributed to humans there are some that has been really hard to pin down it seems. (Because of the product of precision and timing etc.)

I think it could be interesting if someone would watch those places with drones and IR etc but until it is thoroughly explained I'd admit that we expect to be able to explain it but at the moment we don't know.

Edit:remove hyperbole (be more than happy -> think it could be interesting )</comment></comment></comment>


BigDL: Distributed Deep Learning on Apache Spark - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/intel-analytics/BigDL <comment><USER2> Deeplearning4j does this already. It has a huge community, a Scala API and does model import from Keras. It's important to note that Spark is not an efficient computation later -- it's best if used for fast ETL. If you get that wrong, your going to be training slow.

[https://deeplearning4j.org](https://deeplearning4j.org) [https://github.com/deeplearning4j/ScalNet](https://github.com/deeplearning4j/ScalNet) [https://deeplearning4j.org/model-import- keras](https://deeplearning4j.org/model-import-keras) [https://gitter.im/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j](https://gitter.im/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j)

<comment><USER3> Chris my cofounder forgot to disclose he works on the project :).

I"ll do it for him.

I'd just like to say that as far as this niche is concerned. This is basically an attempt at "non gpus on spark".

We are heavily biased towards cuda and distributed gpu applications: [https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/06/how-skymind- nvidia-...](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/10/06/how-skymind-nvidia-deep- learning/)

I respect what intel is trying to do here, but it's going to take a lot more than "we built stuff" to get anyone to switch let alone build a community around.

To be fair to intel, I can't wait to see what they do with accelerators and phi, but I need to see more results first.

Competition in the space is definitely needed :D.

We have yet to see fpgas and nervana acquisition really play out as well.

It will take them a while to catch up either way.

<comment><USER4> that sounds interesting.

so dl4j works with spark ? [https://deeplearning4j.org/spark#how](https://deeplearning4j.org/spark#how)

is it because spark does "distributed computing" very efficiently ? In that case, would the apples-to-apples comparison be versus spark+tensorflow ? [https://databricks.com/blog/2016/12/21/deep-learning-on- data...](https://databricks.com/blog/2016/12/21/deep-learning-on- databricks.html)

<comment><USER2> Benchmarks we ran ourselves show that we're faster than TensorFlow using multi-GPUs for a non-trivial image processing task: [https://github.com/deeplearning4j/dl4j-benchmark](https://github.com/deeplearning4j/dl4j-benchmark). That's the best apples to apples we have for the moment.

When you're aiming to put deep learning into production, a bunch of other things are important too, notably integrations. DL4J comes with integrations for Hadoop, Kafka and ElasticSearch as well as Spark. In the inference stage, we autoscale elastically as a micro-service using Lagom and a REST API. Most frameworks are just libs that don't solve problems deeper in the workflow. Our tools include data pipelines with DataVec (reusable data preprocessing), to model evaluation with Arbiter and a GUI for heuristics during training.

[https://github.com/deeplearning4j/DataVec](https://github.com/deeplearning4j/DataVec) [https://github.com/deeplearning4j/Arbiter](https://github.com/deeplearning4j/Arbiter) [https://deeplearning4j.org/visualization](https://deeplearning4j.org/visualization)

<comment><USER3> I have to correct chris here. He is talking about a lot of features that are in our enterprise version SKIL.

We will offer a limited developer version of SKIL for free.

Think of SKIL as similar to gitlab or github enterprise.

In SKIL we also have auto provisioning of a cluster and a higher level interface for running deep learning workloads. It auto configures most of the parameters like the spark worker native library path and setting up things like a training UI as well as installation of the mkl and cudnn libraries.

Optionally, you can also run a version of this with DC/OS and co where there is a packaged spark.

What we _do_ have in dl4j is the raw components you can use to create these things such as datavec and dl4j-streaming which covers our integration with kafka.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some projects like SparkNet or DeepLearning4j+spark or even Sparkling Water are kinda doing the same thing. So, how this is compared to them?

<comment><USER6> This is a classic vanity deep-learning framework that Intel built due to NIH syndrome. It's like DSSTNE. Doomed to be abandoned. I can't a worse way to position a deep learning library than to say: this only works on CPUs. When you look at Intel's track record with software, especially their Trusted Analytics Platform this year, BigDL's prospects are poor. I'm just waiting for IBM to copy this move and come out with yet another deep learning lib: YADLL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't spark more versatile than tensorflow at this point? It does graph processing and deep learning.

Plus it's built for distributed processing.

Pyspark makes it easy to use.

<comment><USER7> (Heavy Spark user here)

Comparing Spark and TensorFlow is sort of like comparing Numpy and Pandas. There is some overlap, but they are pretty different things.

Spark is a big data manipulation tool, which comes with a somewhat-adequate machine learning library. TensorFlow is an optimised math library with machine learning operations built on it.

Spark doesn't support GPU operations (although as you note Databricks has proprietary extensions on their own cluster). DeepLearning4J and various other libraries do similar things.

However, if you are building your own Neural Network architectures then TF (which has highly optimised distributed training mode) is more useful.

<comment><USER4> for someone just getting started on Spark - what do you mean "somewhat adequate" ? Because I see MLLib ([https://spark.apache.org/docs/2.0.2/mllib- guide.html](https://spark.apache.org/docs/2.0.2/mllib-guide.html)) and a quick glance shows me a lot of overlap with tensorflow.

At google, their graph processing system (Expander) and deep learning framework (tensorflow) are separate systems. Spark looks to be built from the graph side (RDD) first and is now getting ML components.

how do you see spark evolving ?

<comment><USER7> So..

MLLib seems awesome, but the devil is in the detail. Example that have burnt me include things like using LogisticRegression for classification only supports binary classification, the LibSVM support only support import, the GBT implantation is weak compared to eg XGBoost etc.

A lot of the time it is fine though.

Graph support.. hmm. GraphX is ok, but there are lots of things that eg NetworkX has the GraphX doesn't. In my experience, we've started a lot of projects with GraphX and abandoned them because GraphX's implementations didn't have the features we needed.

BTW, RDDs aren't graphs. I think you might be confusing the Spark directed- acyclic-graph (DAG) execution model with graph processing.

TensorFlow doesn't have as many general purpose ML algorithms. For example, I don't think there is a Random Forest in TF, and for 90% of ML problems RF is what you need.

But if you are doing Neural Network stuff then TF is exactly what you need.

<comment><USER8> Tensorflow has a GPU-accelerated Random Forest implementation: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/v0.10.0rc0/ten...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/v0.10.0rc0/tensorflow/contrib/learn/python/learn/estimators/random_forest.py)

<comment><USER7> Nice. I'm glad to be wrong.

I'll point out that this is TF Contrib Learn, not TF Learn[1], or one of many other places where things might be implemented. Makes things a bit confusing.

[1] [http://tflearn.org/](http://tflearn.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> zero-x Hmm, seems interesting but wondering how it compares to H2O's Sparkling Water. Been using that for clients and i love it.

<comment><USER9> We don't seem to hear much about 0xdata on hn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A rather transparent attempt to pull people away from GPUs and instead use massive farms of (intel powered) machines.

</comment><comment><USER11> It does not appear that this uses a GPU at all. Which is okay of course but may not win any speed contests.

<comment><USER4> gpu acceleration in spark in generally production ready - [https://databricks.com/blog/2016/10/27/gpu-acceleration- in-d...](https://databricks.com/blog/2016/10/27/gpu-acceleration-in- databricks.html)

in fact looks like you can use tensorflow models in spark with GPU - [https://databricks.com/blog/2016/12/21/deep-learning-on- data...](https://databricks.com/blog/2016/12/21/deep-learning-on- databricks.html)

<comment><USER3> Tensorframes despite the marketing is already defunct. It hasn't seen a commit since august.

[https://github.com/databricks/tensorframes](https://github.com/databricks/tensorframes)

Spark is just a data access layer here. It's not even remotely gpu friendly. Most people also still relies on mesos or yarn for running distributed. The library you're using matters alot. Mesos just added gpu support: [http://mesos.apache.org/documentation/latest/gpu- support/](http://mesos.apache.org/documentation/latest/gpu-support/)

Yarn can sorta support it with node labeling for job completion but it's still kinda hacky.

The real work in this space (without the marketing) is done by IBM: [http://www.slideshare.net/ishizaki/exploiting-gpus-in- spark](http://www.slideshare.net/ishizaki/exploiting-gpus-in-spark)

When spark can (without "production ready" buzzwords) run gpus like this out of the box then we're talking. For now spark needs a companion library to work with gpus though.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Other success micro-SaaS stories like StoreMapper? - <AUTHOR> I've been reading the Tyler's blog posts about how he created and grow his micro SaaS project - StoreMapper and I am looking to find out other similar stories like this one.<p>Any resource (blog post, quora answers etc) would be much appreciated. <comment><USER2> There are a number of similar micro-SaaS's (including StoreMapper) listed here:

[https://baremetrics.com/open](https://baremetrics.com/open)

GrooveHQ has some good interviews:

Olark: [https://www.groovehq.com/blog/ben-congleton-olark- interview](https://www.groovehq.com/blog/ben-congleton-olark-interview)

BestOf: [https://www.groovehq.com/blog/best- of](https://www.groovehq.com/blog/best-of)

iDoneThis - How to Start a Startup - [http://inside.idonethis.com/startup- guide/](http://inside.idonethis.com/startup-guide/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great resources. Like the iDoneThis guide - such an awesome resource. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You'll find some more stories in these recent threads --

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724759)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9872969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9872969)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for these links!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting read, thanks: [http://tylertringas.com/storemapper-store- locator-bootstrapp...](http://tylertringas.com/storemapper-store-locator- bootstrapped-to-50k/)

Microsaas were just on the frontpage the other day, maybe you can find the thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like I missed it. I'll try to take a look and see if I can find it. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Might want to check out some of the side projects posted on sideproectors (disclaimer - I run this site)

[https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com)

I suppose, it could be the opposite of what you're asking. These are side projects that people want to sell. But many of them have recurring revenue.</comment>


Amazon Worker Jumps Off Company Building After E-Mail to Staff - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-worker-jumps-off-company-building-after-e-mail-to-staff <comment><USER2> Tyler Cowen has written a lot about this:

"Individuals don't in fact enjoy being evaluated all the time, especially when the results are not always stellar: for most people, one piece of negative feedback outweighs five pieces of positive feedback. To the extent that measurement raises income inequality, perhaps it makes relations among the workers tenser and less friendly. Life under a meritocracy can be a little tough, unfriendly, and discouraging, especially for those whose morale is easily damaged. Privacy in this world will be harder to come by, and perhaps "second chances" will be more difficult to find, given the permanence of electronic data. We may end up favoring "goody two-shoes" personality types who were on the straight and narrow from their earliest years and disfavor those who rebelled at young ages, even if those people might end up being more creative later on."

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/the...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/the- measured-working-man.html)

Pervasive employee monitoring and feedback isn't costless. Some people will improve, others will get fired/quit find a new job, but there will be some who cannot take it at all. If losing a job wasn't so punishing economically and status-wise, it would take a lot of, but certainly not all, of the sting away.

<comment><USER3> > We may end up favoring "goody two-shoes" personality types who were on the > straight and narrow from their earliest years and disfavor those who > rebelled at young ages, even if those people might end up being more > creative later on."

We'll keep on doing what we've been doing since the dawn of time: reward Machiavellian behavior.

The guy that creates a controlled fire and puts it out will be praised.

The guy that cleans the dead foliage to prevent future fires will be punished for being unproductive and a dead weight.

Nothing will change.

Edit: punctuation

<comment><USER4> Exactly. But you forget one:

Any attempt at anything short of wildly positive feedback will be met with extremely aggressive reactions, because of the reaction from the organisation that will follow.

Plenty of managers do that today of course.

<comment><USER3> > But you forget one

Apart from that I forgot many more.

Yes. The cult of optimism and positive thinking[1], because like someone else on this post implied, the way you think about things changes physical reality.

At best it changes your perception which can be in your best interest or not.

[1] [http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/02/happiness- conspi...](http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/02/happiness-conspiracy- against-optimism-and-cult-positive-thinking)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was interviewing for AWS, and it was a circus. Completely disorganized. However, I have to say, I enjoyed the parroting back of "the leadership principles" part. It was like being in the Soviet Union again and singing praises to the great party leaders. Very much worth wasting a day over it.

However my nephew didn't have such a fun time. He was working for one of their warehouses in Kentucky and they were ruthless to the workers like him. They had a snow storm, he got stuck in the snow and instead of being understanding they reprimanded him for it. He liked the pay but couldn't take the humiliating treatment, so he quit.

<comment><USER6> Sorry to hear that. I work for AWS, and I like to think we're pretty organized. I'm not sure what part of your experience was "unorganized". You probably caught the team on a busy day or something.

LPs are just guidelines for what the company "wants" out of its employees. They're used heavily in hiring to weed out small thinkers and bad culture fits, and a bit in performance reviews. Outside of that, nobody really cares about them. You get upper management worship anywhere. It's the same thing as obsessing over celebrities.

Judging corporate based on fulfillment center working conditions isn't fair. One is a $15k job, and the other is a $115k job.

<comment><USER7> When I was in high school my father made me work as a janitor in our family's office building. At that point I had been an independent IT consultant a few years, so the position frankly felt like an embarrassment and a waste of time. There was also a condition; I couldn't tell anyone my last name, or that I was related to the building owner.

At first I thought it was to teach me a lesson about hard work, which seemed foolish, as hard work was already my life, or humility, of which I probably did need a dose.

A few years later, he told me his true reason. He said,

"If you want to know who a person truly is, don't watch how he treats his friends or his boss.

Watch how he treats his janitors, his handymen, his surveyors, his receptionists, or his waitresses.

The measure of a man is not how he treats his supposed equals. It is how he treats the least fortunate among us."

Morality is not contingent upon income.

<comment><USER8> So your dad wanted you to report anyone at his building that treated you poorly?

<comment><USER7> Hey, that's very insulting!

I charge _at least_ $20 an hour for snitching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> amzn-336495 Amazon tries to trap people through control by visas, and they will go so far as to relocate people overseas to Seattle. They have a fucked up system where rank and file get the darwin treatment but management gets the rewards. They will pay bonuses around $250k, $500k, $1 million to senior managers, directors, and VPs respectively to abuse the shit out of employees. The "PIP someone who is trying to get away from their abusive manager" is their oldest trick in their book.

Something needs to be done to help people financially who are looking for a way out from the abuse.

<comment><USER9> What really angered me about that article was Amazon trying to say that this was a "colleague" \-- he was on a PIP. Which is pretty much Amazon speak for a dead man walking (no pun intended).

<comment><USER10> At a Big Corp where I worked, I think it was three 'satisfactory' ratings in a row which resulted in a PIP.

Satisfactory: fulfilling expectations or needs. But not in Corporate Nu-Speak.

<comment><USER11> I recall British telecom it was "needs some improvement" that triggered a pip that but everyone has some thing that needs improvement.

Given the will you can find an excuse to put anyone on a PIP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The man had recently put in a request to transfer to a different department, but was placed on an employee improvement plan, a step that can lead to termination if performance isn't improved, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing company personnel matters._

PIPs are bullshit, and fundamentally degrading. Just tell people "Maybe it's your fault, maybe it's our fault - but either way, it's not working out", offer a (truly decent) severance, and move on.

(I know, I know, I know: "because laywers.")

<comment><USER13> Can anyone think of a single instance where an employee survived the PIP in any organization? I've never heard of one.

<comment><USER14> I did. I truly wasn't performing as my peers, and my manager was pretty awesome about the whole situation.

He asked me for my honest opinion on whether I was performing at the level I could (I thought I could do better), and what things I thought were causing it. I named things about me, things about the team, and things about the company in general. He explained the PIP was a deal: for three months he would take care of the external factors, and I would take care of the personal ones. We came up with a project for that quarter, which would be the metric with which I'd be evaluated.

If nothing had been done (no PIP, no anything), I might have been fired during that year. But we all wanted me to perform better; me, my boss, and the company that designed the process. And so all sides were willing to change reasonable things to make it so. Because of that honest conversation, and that feeling of all of us being on the same side, I recovered and have been going strongly for years.

<comment><USER15> Was it a formal PIP, though? In my experience there are many managers who'll do that for employees that they wish to retain, but who, for various reasons, aren't performing up to snuff. However, I've never heard of a manager bringing HR in, doing the PIP paperwork, and the employee surviving the PIP. In general, the moment HR gets involved (either in person or via formal paperwork) between you or your manager, you know you're done. As others have stated, treat the time of your PIP as a form of severance pay, do the minimum amount of work necessary to not get fired that day, and look for a job elsewhere.

<comment><USER14> Yes, formal with the paperwork and everything.

It wasn't my manager who "brought HR in", though. Performance evaluation at my company isn't just the manager's discretion, and low performance will eventually get you a PIP.

<comment><USER15> Okay, fair enough. In that case, it may have been the case that your manager disagreed with HR's assessment and was willing to give you a second chance. In all of the cases I've heard of, however, HR has been brought in at the manager's request, when other, more informal mechanisms have failed.

<comment><USER14> I'm not even sure a manager here can fire you by his own choice, for what it's worth. The company invests a ton in its engineers; a failed investment is a big waste. Also, it's the manager's job to make his reports more productive, so that kind of failure reflects on him too.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, but if it's truly a bad fit, there comes a time when you have to stop throwing more money into a failed investment, to use your own terminology. It's up to the manager to decide if/when an engineer isn't a good fit for his or her team. Obviously, some managers are better about it than others, but hopefully senior management is looking at team turnover, and noticing that certain managers' teams tend to have higher turnover than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Following some of the discussion on this thread, I am constantly reminded of a priceless advice I got from a senior friend years ago.

When thinking about an employer, above a certain size threshold, never judge a company. Always judge a department. You don't work for a company. You work for a department. Above a certain (fairly small) size, the only thing you'll share with the employees in the other departments will be the domain name in your email. Everything else will be coincidental.

<comment><USER17> You can still judge company-wide policies like vacations, 401k match, or health care.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't be surprised if the person working in an Amazon warehouse doesn't have the same vacation options as the person coding the internals of Simple Queue Service.

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't be surprised if the person working in the warehouse doesn't actually work for Amazon. Contracting jobs that are easy to fill is a great way to insulate a company from moral responsibility, and you get to imply "success at any cost" to the contracting company.

<comment><USER19> It's a mix, same as any other warehouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Amazon screws employees in ways unseen in other companies. From the perspective of an engineer, this is a terrible place for people to work and grow. To list a few things:

\- Equity vesting schedule is 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% over 4 years

\- Relocation package is prorated for TWO years. If you leave after staying for a full year, you still need to return 50% of it.

\- 401K matching only vests after working for 3 years. If you leave within 3 years, no matching for you whatsoever.

\- No tuition reimbursement. Want to get a part-time masters in CS? Pay it yourself! \- No catered food. No free soda. No free snacks. If you are hungry, you can eat at one of the shltty cafes.

\- Obnoxious oncall routines. You are woken up 3:30am waiting for the event to be over. Why not automate things? Because replacing people is cheaper than building great software!

This is Amazon's mindset TOPDOWN. The root of the problem is that the leadership does NOT care about employees or technology. This is a retailer and a powdered Walmart, what do you expect?!

SDE 1 and SDE 2 are simply the slaves working at a sweatshop. Some of my co- workers are hired without onsite interviews. They do some video chat and they are hired at Amazon. They don't even know how to write bash scripts. Our team used to have technical program managers who can't even write a Python script. With simple things like running a command line tool, he cuts a ticket and let the engineers do it.

The managers at Amazon pocket bonuses and don't give a damn. They don't carry pagers and when they do, they just page lower level employees. The only reason people take offers at Amazon is that they can't get better packages from Facebook/Google.

* I worked at AWS for 2 years.

<comment><USER21> I don't understand this. Amazon seems to have seriously cutting edge infrastructure; they sell it as a service and operate more servers than google. Also, according to the article 20k people work for them, although I am not sure if that was total or engineers.

I am curious how they can retain people to manage all of their operations. Those terms sound terrible and not competitive. I would take those terms, but I am desperate. Why would others.

Interested to know if you(others) took terms out of naivete, need, broken promises/misrepresentation, career or skill boost, ect.

Tl;dr seems like a lot of good engineers work there, but many recount horrific exp.

<comment><USER22> Remember that the most vocal are the most dissatisfied. Also remember that at a company that large there are going to be more dissatisfied than smaller companies. Lastly, don't forget that no one wants to read a story about an upset engineer from a small no name company. People like seeing big brand names fail and we as a society are a sucker for a negative drama.

They retain people because not every team is like what you read in the news. There are teams with completely normal on-calls who love their life and job and are far from upset with anything that has to do with work. Free food isn't a deal breaker when you make what companies like Amazon pay.

<comment><USER23> Your post sounds strangely onesided. Amazon turnover rate for engineers is the highest across the usual names. 50% of engineers leave before 2y.

<comment><USER22> Its not one sided, its a general statement that the people who love their job don't go jumping off buildings or having suicidal thoughts. They wake up, goto work and come home.

Also, where do you get a 50% of engineers leave before 2y?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > The man had recently put in a request to transfer to a different department, > but was placed on an employee improvement plan

Having escaped from an abusive manager myself, I can imagine what this person went though. Managers that are skilled in the art are able to inflict pain without leaving much of a paper trail.

I did ask for (and got) professional help, including medication. There's only so much stress 24/7 that you are able to handle before you start to crack. Who knows what would have happened if I just tried to ride it out.

I'd have gone bananas if I had been placed in a PIP instead. This was one of the possibilities identified by my branch predictor, so I was collecting a mountain of evidence against said manager. Thankfully, it wasn't needed.

(I realize that nowhere in the article it says a manager was the issue, but corporate pattern-matching gets pretty good after a while)

</comment><comment><USER25> >The man survived the fall from Amazon's 12-story Apollo building at about 8:45 a.m. local time Monday and was taken to a Seattle hospital, police said.

Aside: That is a testament to the resilience of a body. The physics behind that fall would be astounding to analyze! I come from a long line of suicidal people we're not jumpers, but swingers.

<comment><USER26> Try 47 stories... [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/nyregion/08collapse.htm...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/nyregion/08collapse.html)

<comment><USER27> [http://nypost.com/2014/01/05/window-washer- survived-47-story...](http://nypost.com/2014/01/05/window-washer- survived-47-story-plunge-now-walks-for-charity/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As has happened before on these threads, every opinion on Amazon is super negative. To balance things out I'll chime in to say that I had a highly positive experience working there as an SDE for 3 years, and would estimate that most of my coworkers felt the same way.

</comment><comment><USER29> 268,900. That is the number of employees amazon has. According to this article, we should expect 25.2 suicides out of these employees.

<comment><USER30> I don't think it is correct to get the expected value of suicides using the national average. College-educated people employed at a high paying job living in Seattle may be much less likely to kill themselves. (Making some assumptions about the person who attempted suicide).

(Disclaimer: I completed an Internship at Amazon and I am returning for a second one)

<comment><USER29> Ok, this isn't a presentation it's a comment. Albeit, I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Do they still have the backloaded RSU vesting schedule? Something like 5%, 15%, 40%, 40% (each year)?

Does anyone else do this?

<comment><USER32> Amazon aims for total compensation, cash + stock.

So, the package for a typical SDE I will look like the following:

Salary: x Starting bonus year 1: 0.2x Starting bonus year 2: 0.15x

RSU grant is 0.6x, vesting 5/15/40/40 (4 years).

So when you add it up, assuming a constant stock price, you get:

Y1:1.23x Y2:1.24x Y3:1.24x Y4:1.24x

So at a basic level the back loading of stock is just making up for the starting bonuses ending. Thinking more broadly, many employees get promoted within 2-3 years and the stock has generally gone up over time so the predictions after the 2 year mark aren't exactly set in stone.

<comment><USER33> Wait there are no refresh equity grants at Amazon? I'm at Google and making over double what I was when I started, almost all from additional equity grants every year. It worked out to more like 1.3x, 1.5x, 1.8x, 2.4x, ...

<comment><USER34> I only stayed at Amazon for one year, but I was told that if I'd stayed for two years they would have offered me more equity.

So yes, there are refresh equity grants. I've heard from a good source that they do that at Apple as well.

<comment><USER35> I've heard Apple's equity grants are stupid though. Instead of the standard grant-value / share-price-at-hire = number of shares, and then then vesting the number of shares over 4 years, Apple vests the grant-value over 4 years and then converts to stock using the share price at the time of vesting. This of course results in lower compensation over the vesting schedule assuming an appreciating stock price.

<comment><USER36> They don't convert like you say, what they do it cut refreshes. Example:

You get $100K and $50K of stock (grant value): "target compensation" = $150K

Next year, when stock vests, your target compensation is $160K, so you get $110K cash plus a stock refresh grant: * Stock went down to $0 -> $100K refresh to make up. * Stock stayed flat: -> $50K refresh * Stock went up to $100K: -> 0K refresh to cancel out. * Stock went up to $150K: -> 0K refresh to cancel out, but you still come out ahead.

So, you get upside if the stock shoots up enough, and you are protected from downside, but you lose upside if stock grows insufficiently.

It works well if you like guaranteed income, but you have to ignore a lot of the "expect" upside potential. And it makes you wonder why they bother giving so much equity, doesn't it? 1. They don't give a lot of equity. 2. It's a shell game and most new hires don't value the offer accurately.

<comment><USER35> So you're saying your initial grant remains untouched? So assuming $50k per year in stock for 4 years, after 4 years you'd get $200k plus the delta on 4 years of stock growth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Press code: Don't widely report details of suicides, it creates a measurable uptick in simulative acts.

Internet: Let's get this thing to the Hackernews frontpage!

</comment><comment><USER38> Very clever way to write the title and the article itself. You get the impression that 1) he is dead and after reading a bit more that 2) he survived a jump from a 12-story building.

From reading other articles, it seems he is alive and jumped from the 4th floor.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not too long ago an Apple employee shot himself in the office.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/04/27/body- appl...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/04/27/body-apple- campus/83598174/)

</comment><comment><USER40> When I was young I quit MS rather than get fired. Looking back, I wonder if I should have just walked away without an exit interview. Perhaps get several more weeks pay. I too suffered under a PIP that proved to be pointless.

</comment><comment><USER41> I live nearby and was walking by when the EMT and fire department were called.

Hats off to those folks. It seemed like no time at all before they showed up and moved very quickly to help the injured man. I was really impressed.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's great how this no content article has been turned into a huge Amazon bashing thread that confirms everybody's biases against Amazon employment practices.

The facts are: a guy put in for a transfer, got put on a performance improvement plan, threatened self-harm, and then jumped off a building.

There are no details why he requested a transfer, the reasons he got put on a PIP, and if he was mentally unstable or not, where these fairly common life events would cause him to contemplate self harm.

Nope, the pitchforks and the torches come out.

</comment><comment><USER43> My thoughts are with this man. I was also put on an employee improvement plan at a company previously.

</comment><comment><USER44> You know what the worst part of my job at Amazon is? That I continually have to read about how terrible I am both on the internet and in real life (your average Seattlite seems to hate Amazon).

Just in this thread alone I've been accused of:

* Screwing employees over * Being a slave in a sweatshop * Insulted for not being able to use Bash (I can) * Disorganized * Not be trusted to talk about working at Amazon (lol) * Fostering a toxic workplace * A communist (my favorite insult)

</comment><comment><USER45> wow. i wonder if bezos is going to address this.

<comment><USER46> Hardly. According to Jeff, nothing is wrong and everything is for the best in his best of all possible worlds.

Read enough [https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/) and it's a consistent picture though. Speaking as a Seattle local, I hear these sort of anecdotes all the time.

<comment><USER31> I recently got an email from an Amazon recruiter, who, for whatever reason, told me that their team is "largely working < 50 hours/week, in most cases".

The fact that they felt it important to mention this (and qualify it) definitely started me thinking...

<comment><USER47> The fact that he views less than 50 hours a week (ie less than ten hours a day... ten!) as somehow worth bragging about says even more.

<comment><USER34> I considered working at Pixar at one point, and spoke to their hiring department.

Curiously, they considered the salary they were offering you to be for 50 hours per week. This wasn't an upper limit; no, you were expected to do occasional overtime past 50. But 50 was the _baseline_.

I didn't follow through with the interview process. Screw that.

<comment><USER48> 50 hours seems to be normal in some effects houses, which are increasingly operating like sweat shops. Weta Digital is also the same. And they strictly expect minimum 50 hours there.

<comment><USER49> Yup. Movies (and games) often have very hard deadlines and missing the release window can mean losing a fuck-ton of money. I remember working on a TV Christmas special once, and let's just say that letting the release slip to early January was Not An Option.

<comment><USER50> Companies have deadlines, sure, but that doesn't mean they need to _routinely require_ overtime.

I mean, if all my recent projects required 10% overtime, I've got a bunch of options for my next project:

a. Hire 10% more staff

b. Increase my existing staff's efficiency by 10%

c. Reduce scheduling and rework inefficiencies by 10%

d. Quote 10% longer delivery times to customers

e. Promise customers 10% less

f. Start work 10% earlier.

g. Plan to make my employees work 10% overtime.

If my company was choosing option g every time, I'd expect my employees to quit for better jobs because planned overtime is a pretty big 'fuck you' from your employer.

Why employees in the games industry put up with this sort of thing is frankly beyond me.

<comment><USER34> > Why employees in the games industry put up with this sort of thing is > frankly beyond me.

They typically don't, forever.

But there's an unending stream of fresh meat entering the game industry who will put up with anything to achieve their dreams of working on video games.

I've been lucky, in that I've done a lot of games, but haven't worked anywhere that routinely required overtime of me. The occasional project here or there would go south, or there would be a bad manager, but other than the last week or two of crunch to get a project finished, I've not done too badly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> where can I find the text of the email?

</comment><comment><USER52> Toxic workplace? I think so.

</comment><comment><USER53> Is there a reason the text of the email is unavailable?

</comment><comment><USER54> The Apollo building looks like an office. Guessing this person was a product person, I don't think warehouse workers get the luxury of PIPs and changing teams. They were probably one of us.

Pour one out.

</comment><comment><USER55> So, based on this thread, communism is the answer.

</comment><comment><USER56> Amazon-bashing aside, this is an example of why 'safe spaces' and 'trigger- free zones' may be a bad idea. Colleges should train students in responding to triggers; exercise their self-control regularly in the face of adversity not stunt it. Somebody jumps instead of walking away, they have priorities drastically miswired.

<comment><USER57> How does suicide have anything to do with safe spaces and trigger warnings? Did suicide not exist before college started incorporating safe spaces and trigger warnings? If there is a causation relationship between safe spaces/trigger warnings and suicide does this also mean that countries with high suicide rates have a lot of safe spaces/trigger warnings? What about the high suicide rate of teenagers? Trans people? Homeless? Did they all experience the woes of the safe space/trigger warning?

<comment><USER56> With you (no data available yet) until that last statement. Are 'safe spaces' etc related to relieving trauma (no data available yet)?

And yes colleges are responsible for making students resilient. That's the 'job training' part. Many have courses in professional ethics, in responsible management, in meeting deadlines with quality work. These are not incidental to the education mandate, they are central.

<comment><USER57> Specifically, I am asking about how safe spaces or trigger warnings in college are at all relevant to the occurrence of suicide outside of a college setting.

I do apologize for my final note, as I realize it is off topic and I would rather not enter tangential discussion. I've edited it out. If you would like to continue talking, let me know if there is another way to talk (email, etc.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Phishing site on Google search sponsored links - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine was robbed recently and yesterday he discovered this: http://imgur.com/f9FpJXy<p>Unreal. <comment><USER2> unreal is right, this is crazy.

subdomain seems down, actual domain is "up" but a template (warning do not open - I opened mine inside a VM)

[http://skrillsio.com/](http://skrillsio.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> To complicate the situation imagine people searching via mobile: Https and URLs are much more difficult to control there. People trust Google and will click without fear.</comment></comment>


Xkcd: Robot Future - <AUTHOR> https://xkcd.com/1968/ <comment><USER2> Very good point, for more info on the campaign to ban swarms of killer drones see [http://autonomousweapons.org/](http://autonomousweapons.org/)</comment>


Ask HN: What are good ways to come up with a domain name? - <AUTHOR>

I've some ideas for Web apps.  I'd love a pithy domain that immediately evokes the perfect image of what the app is for.  However, picking  a domain name composed of common descriptive words almost always gives me something that's already taken or a little too clunky.
How do you conjure up a good domain name?  What are some good heuristics?  I've a yak-shaving idea of writing a script to generate names from words, phonemes, and synonyms, but I bet there's a more methodical way to do this.
Likewise if you go the nonsense syllable route; are there any guidelines for inventing something striking yet not too puzzling? <comment><USER2> Think of words you want, check every combination you think of, grab any that aren't registered, select from that list.

It took me _months_ to come up with Playtomic after I decided to ditch the old name "SWFStats" because it was such a married-to-Flash name.

The other thing to keep in mind, it really doesn't matter what you do decide to call it, people are going to like or not what you're doing and in either case the name isn't going to be the reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> _The other thing to keep in mind, it really doesn't matter what you do decide to call it, people are going to like or not what you're doing and in either case the name isn't going to be the reason._

No and yes. Long term it will be the value of a site that keeps people coming back. Short term, if a name is confusing or, maybe worse, strongly suggests something that the site isn't, you'll attract the wrong people.

This is why if I can't get clear, descriptive name I'd prefer a completely made-up word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find this site useful: <http://www.nxdom.com>

I think it was done by a fellow HN'er, if I'm not mistaken. Helped me find my latest: <http://pixlshare.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link.

Glad you fund a name you like, but I'm looking to avoid anything I have to explain or spell. When you talk to people about your site, how often do you have to point out that there's no 'e' in 'pixl'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I almost always wait until I get a working prototype. Otherwise I end up with a domain name that has no connection with the purpose of the app. An alternative would be to reverse regular words to see if something interesting comes up.

Regards

<comment><AUTHOR> _I almost always wait until I get a working prototype._

I'm looking to avoid writing much, if any, code until I know if there's even a viable market. I'm thinking of an MVP site that initially would help me measure interest. So, in a way, the name would signal prospective features.

OTOH there's value in first figuring out what paying customer would actually want and then crafting a name around that. Which sort of argues for an abstract name (e.g. "Loptrz") , at least to start with, since the feature set isn't defined.</comment></comment>


Apple is developing an antivirus - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5244

<comment><USER2> The linked KB article says that Apple is "developing software that will detect and remove the Flashback malware."

A tool designed to remove one malicious program after it has been installed is not the same as a general-purpose antivirus application.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood the sentence :-/</comment></comment>


Show HN: Outsource initial technical interviews - <AUTHOR> http://techscreen.io

<comment><USER2> If an interviewer forced me to install skype so that I could just proceed with the interview I would know that I did not want to work for that company.</comment>