Bitcoin Traders Claim There's Method to Their Madness - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-22/bitcoin-traders-claim-there-s-method-to-their-madness <comment><USER2> A good look into trader psych is Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness". All of this predates Bitcoin, though I'd argue the open nature of cryptocurrency allows for people with "extraordinarily active imaginations" (let's say) to participate.

<comment><USER3> There was a story on the top of HN recently about an Asian student who came to live in the US and joined a hedge fund out of uni. He successfully predicted a huge windfall for his fund - but for entirely the wrong reasons.

He put a lot of effort and research into his analysis of the market and was sure he understood it well enough to bet big. He failed but luck saved him and made a killing. His boss told him not to tell anyone, ever, and then promoted him. His boss was also promoted for his 'talent' in managing a successful team.

The student was self-aware enough to realize he failed spectacularly and left the fund, but many aren't. Cognitive dissonance is rampant in the financial sector and with bitcoin everyone feels like a stock-broker, it's a dangerous game if you let your ego dictate your strategy.

<comment><USER4> Link?

<comment><USER5> [https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/western-elite- chi...](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/western-elite-chinese- perspective/)

<comment><USER6> Nice read, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bitcoin has gone up 1547% in the last year. Unless you are heavily shorting it, you are making money and it's not necessarily because of talent or great strategy.

<comment><USER8> Until you successfully cash out, you've made nothing.

<comment><USER9> People don't realize how long it would take to liquidate a large sum of $$.

<comment><USER10> I've sold and transferred over $800k of cryptocurrencies to a US bank over the course of 3 days. I could probably have done it faster if I tried. This was through Gemini.

<comment><USER11> How much did the price change from the first coin you sold to the last?

<comment><USER12> take a look at any bitcoin price chart and draw out 3 days? if you're thinking that 266k/day dump is going to move the market, it's not.

<comment><USER11> There's not a single market. The volume at a particular exchange matters. Note the disparity Coinbase had recently.

<comment><USER12> i just checked 3 relatively legitimate bitcoin exchanges (kraken, gdax, bitstamp). you could put a 300k sell order on any of them and have less than 0.5% of slippage, which is much less than regular trading volatility. plus if you really wanted to, you could spread your trades among multiple exchanges and execute them simultaneously for even lower slippage.

<comment><USER11> Not as disasterous as I thought, but still not great. Worse, when you most want to sell is when others do too, so the liquidity may change.

How'd you confirm that estimate, by making a trade?

<comment><USER12> you don't. how most exchanges work is that when selling, you can place a limit order (sell at that price or higher), or a market order (sell at whatever price). if you want certainty, you use limit. if you want to make a trade _now_ , you use market.

<comment><USER11> Ah, so that 0.5% was just a wild guess. Others have chimed in that they've sold a bunch in one day and been fine, but ... there's always folks that want to pump the price, so I'm not sure what to believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "If the wind is strong enough, even turkeys can fly."

</comment><comment><USER14> Judging by various crypto forums, the method is typically to build an echo chamber and keep telling each other they're all going to be billionaires, while burying the opinions of anyone who dares to disagree.

Another method is to get lucky in a bull market and pat themselves on the back for being so talented.

</comment><comment><USER15> So does nearly every habitual gambler.

> "Those are legitimate needs that people have, to figure out if there's a way > to gamble their way to another lifestyle."

I'm not sure who decides what "needs" are "legitimate" \-- but can't they just go to casinos, which have been legalized just about everywhere now?

Also I can't believe that quote, sounds like a parody.

<comment><USER16> I mean, the casino is more obviously bias towards an institution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Day trading crypto is a zero sum game. You can profit if you're able to somewhat predict the madness and stupidity of the market just before the market acts that way.

<comment><USER18> It's less than zero sum, right? Each transaction has a cost.

<comment><USER19> If you're referring to Bitcoin transaction fees, that's not a factor on the exchanges, since the exchange itself holds all coins in its own wallet until you decide to withdraw.

<comment><USER20> They were probably referring to the fees that exchanges charge.

<comment><USER21> There are no fees on GDAX unless you're a taker.

<comment><USER22> That's true, but irrelevant. GDAX takes a fee on every trade. Therefore it's a negative-sum game, not zero.

<comment><USER23> The casino always wins. True for poker and bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked. -Warren Buffett

</comment><comment><USER25> Guessing at what the market will do is super smart when it doubles every month.

<comment><USER26> The market will eventually stop doubling every month. It's hard to predicted when that will be, a month in advance. Getting the timing wrong can be disastrous.

The market will eventually become saturated with efficient traders. For an efficient trader, this is easy to predict because it is accompanied by a slow decline in margins. You just have to be able to stop when you can't beat the market any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm in a discord chat with about hundred cryptocurrency traders. Reading their insights is great but wow do they put themselves on a crazy ride. I traded for one day only and the mind f$&k is a strong one.

<comment><USER28> can you link to the discord community? I'm always interested to see community behaviours in action

<comment><USER29> Not sure if it's allowed here on HN but, this is the one i'm operating: [https://discord.gg/CNQf3p](https://discord.gg/CNQf3p)

<comment><USER30> expired link? (I am not very familiar with discord)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > _When he bought his stash, the price of a single litecoin was $67_

> _He sold his holdings on Dec. 12 when litecoin was worth $387, a 570 percent > gain_

$387 is a 470% gain from $67 not 570%.

<comment><USER3> While he may have been exaggerating, I doubt it. These numbers are crazy for stocks but entirely reasonable in the crypto game.

His math can be explained but a common misconception when buying coins: Whales move the market. It's impossible to place a six-figure order and get them all for the same price. Simply placing an order that larger disrupts supply and demand enough that multiple sellers are required to cover, sometimes hundreds if your order is filled my small fish.

What's most likely is he placed numerous 'smaller' orders over a period of a few days and only gave the price of $67 as the highest he/she paid. Probably loads of coins at much smaller levels and averaged out the returns to 570%.

<comment><USER6> No. The price never reached a 570% gain so your "most likely" is impossible. The error in the article confusing percentage and multiples is one of a common math errors and the most likely explanation. 382 is 5.7x the price paid or (382/67). That's not 570%. It's 470%.

The most likely explanation is the majority of bloomberg reports know almost nothing about finance or math. Unfortunately and sadly it's still some of the best finance journalism available as there's little competition.

<comment><USER32> When they lose 75% of the money they invested in Bitcoin, they can keep doing the same math and be happy about their "25% gain".

<comment><USER6> Very difficult to lose 75%. Takes skill. The psychology of traders in any market, especially amateur traders, is such that loss aversion kicks in much stronger and quicker than they realize and many traders will get scared and sell during short term lower % price drops before -75% could even happen to them. Some exit after -20% losses, some hold until -50%. When the moon door opens, losses on the way down are usually spread among many traders trying to catch a falling knife.

The burned traders phenomenon could become a problem for the bitcoin community though few will talk about it. As even if the price recovers after a drop the people who thought they could trade it and lost money when they sold during a short term drop often leave the market and don't return. The same phenomenon happens in the stock market, and stock trading is a ginormous industry compared to bitcoin...amateur traders lose money trading stocks, they leave the market and never return. It's a problem..cue up the next E-Trade baby commercial ASAP! [1]

The Bitcoin big money now knows they need to control the volatility and spend hard and fast on marketing their trading platforms to new people constantly. And that's exactly what these guys behind the scenes appear to be trying to do. Hence we end up with articles like this one: Bloomberg writing about "Bitcoin Traders Claim..." that's basically one interview (at a coffee shop) with one random dude in his early 20s who trades bitcoin in his spare time. Who is the target audience for this 5th grade book report journalism? The churn will be huge.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hashPaU7Dpk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hashPaU7Dpk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As they say, past performance is no indication of future potential. This is especially true the shorter the trader's history. Thus, reading one trader's secret of success may as well be like listening to a slot machine player's 3-week winning strategy story.

Meanwhile, identifying recurring inefficiencies and working out the details of how to take advantage of those inefficiencies can produce a more reliable income. Unfortunately, inefficiencies are really a polite euphemism for "other people's money that they didn't realize they were losing". Brokers and exchanges are quick to shut down a successful trader if that trader is costing them money, just as a casino will ban a player who consistently beats the house (for enough money to be noticed).

I have my own crypto strategy, and it's about as simple as surfing. Each new wave (no pun intended, if you know what I mean ;) ) may grow and give you something to ride. Not all waves do, and timing when to get on is important. We people on HN probably have a nice advantage over the fascinated (and gambling-minded) masses. This is perhaps what the guy in the article was describing was his basis for success.

<comment><USER34> > I have my own crypto strategy, and it's about as simple as surfing. Each new > wave (no pun intended, if you know what I mean ;) ) may grow and give you > something to ride.

All the way to the scene of the crash.

<comment><USER33> I guess the reason people keep surfing is that one out of every X waves is big and awesome, and worth the swim back out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> ""It's one of the most inefficient markets I've ever seen," said Arjun Balaji an engineer who trades cryptocurrencies and surveyed the dot-com bubble from his vantage point in kindergarten."

That's some vantage point!

</comment><comment><USER36> For some people who pump and dump. And others who basically ride the volatility there's definitely a method to the madness.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ahhh Bitcoin! I've seen literally dozens of HN articles related to BC lately and over that time the price of BC has fluctuated madly. There's been much discussion over what's driving the mad price rises, and in the last 48 hours the price drops. "What are the fundamentals?" people ask?

I'll admit that I had a chance to buy BC at $12. And didn't. (That's twelve. Not twelve hundred, or twelve thousand. Twelve.)

That doesn't make me unique on HN by any stretch. But I have kept a watching brief over the years. Here's my gedanken experiment take on all this.

Originally, appealing to IT nerds. Demand grew slowly and the community with it.

Mysterious founders and mining syndicates made a (theoretical-until-sold) motza by hoarding coin. Articles started appearing on the strange new tech.

However, at some point demand crossed over into darknet territory. Demand accelerated. At some point, major crime syndicates started looking at BC as a way to launder significant amounts. Demand really grew as very heavy money entered the market.

Let's pause for a moment and consider the possibility that in the last year, the majority of the market (by volume; excluding the founding hoarders) would have been the "criminal" element. What are their key requirements of this "investment"? Opaqueness, security, ability to trade in volume, low or no "laundering losses". With BC, it's pretty much all green lights. So they kept piling on.

Then a funny thing happened. The financial services establishment, the same folk that have historically made fortunes by fleecing the great unwashed, saw yet another opportunity to part the rubles from the rubes. And so, abetted by the media's voracious appetite for sensation, talked up this strange, "new", "this time it's different", investment opportunity. Highlighting the overnight millions to be made, with stories of people who bought low and sold high. Gushing about the net worth of the mythical Satoshi.

And so the proles started piling on. When your friends and relatives (the ones that call you for IT support), who have never heard about BC before last month, start telling you that they're thinking of buying BC (aided by the handy smartphone apps of the new "pick and shovel makers"), that they're borrowing to by BC, that their friends are buying BC. Then any reasonable person should be hearing "Danger, Will Robinson!".

Criminals aren't stupid. The kind of criminal enterprises that need to wash hundreds of millions of dollars a month or a week are not stupid. So what would they make of the increasing volatility? The prospect of not only washing your money, but growing it in the same transaction would be pretty alluring. However, as the sums increase, so does the risk. What if it goes down as hard as it goes up? What's a fiscally prudent criminal to do? Traditionally, if you get 75% of your money back from the laundry, you're doing well. What if the market turns and insane profits become insane losses?

When you then add the increased regulatory scrutiny on BC, issues with exchanges, questions about security and transaction rate limits - perhaps that makes BC seem increasingly risker than some of the cryptocoin newcomers? As a launderer, maybe something like Monero might be a safer alternative? Or maybe stripe your money across a bunch of coins types? So you start pulling out. In droves.

What happens to a market when some of the biggest players cash out? The rest crash out.

Which is not to say that BC won't bounce around, recover, fall again, recover some more etc. But I believe, in the long term, there are better options out there and historically we'll all look back at BC as a successful failure. Having single-handedly created a new market for crypto-coin, shocked the traditional financial players into a new awareness, and yet fizzled into history as better options come online.

What do y'all think? Possible?

</comment><comment><USER38> "He got interested in bitcoin in college because he liked the idea of a form of money that couldn't be manipulated by governments."

Of course he did. The idea of making money by manipulating governments takes money to begin with. He thought it through.

The real question is, what are we going to do with all these useless people who want to manipulate currency markets for individual gain?</comment>


Why Twitter's Dying (And What You Can Learn from It) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bad-words/why-twitter-s-dying-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it-9ed233e37974 <comment><USER2> I don't believe it.</comment>


Convicted by Code: Defendants should be able to inspect code used in forensics - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/10/06/defendants_should_be_able_to_inspect_software_code_used_in_forensics.html <comment><USER2> I once nearly lost a contest because of a faulty SQL query on their side. If I didn't get to see the query, I wouldn't have been able to defend my entry and would've lost. Losing this contest would've been trivial, but if I applied this to a trial, it would be horrible.

The error was that a 'group by' was used to find the number of unique entries, even though they had leading spaces, that were part of their uniqueness. Group by doesn't take leading spaces into account, leading them to get a different result than me. I think that this could've happened to a lot of people, even forensic IT engineers.

<comment><USER3> Actually it isn't specific to GROUP BY, the problem comes from the fact that some DMBS (MySQL for example) which ignore leading and trailing whitespaces (and other stuff like capitalization) while comparing strings, leading them to count less unique strings that a stricter comparision would count.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay so this article is bumping up against the hysteria that I'd categorize as "semi-technology literate" yet makes some good points. Almost like talking about how dangerous it is to walk through a minefield and then stepping on one. There's a valid point in there somewhere.

Copyright reform is one of my favorite subjects, and for a multitude of reasons. Should the prosecution be able to dump a case straight up without recourse because the "Stingray" gathering tool is too lovely to submit to review? Nope. Should breathalyzer code be held from review just because it's a product made by somebody? Nope. Should FOIA be stonewalled or pay-walled and inhibit the Constitutional freedom of the press? Nope!

Innocent until proven guilty is a very, very important premise for the US legal system. It's backed up by both the Fourth and First amendments to the Constitution. Any justification to put them aside for "War on ____" might seem reasonable on the surface, until taking a closer look at multiple murder evidence that comes from within the borders more often than on a laptop of a Citizen who just so happens to be coming back from a foreign country and gets worked for passwords under duress or has to forfeit hardware without recourse.

I dunno, maybe I sound like some kind of off-the-rocker dude by thinking about such things, but I love my country, I'm willing to sit down and think about this kind of stuff. It doesn't have to be extreme. Taking the small steps of talking with one another about what we really value is important in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> So... if i build and sell a "breathalyzer" to your local pd that simply randomly selects a number between .08 and .16, you'd be ok with that? Pretty much every other element of the system is biased toward conviction. Police have quotas. Prosecutors need convictions. Private prisons get more money for more convicts. It would be easy to dodge questions for a long, long time. Why would police administer the test to a sober person? In this one weird example a sober person registered as drunk. oh well, its still good for 99.9% of other cases.

The right to confront your accuser is there for a reason. More and more, software is the accuser. We all, at HN, struggle to make our code correct. Step back, think a second, how do you QA a breathalyzer? How do you deal with variations in sensor packages? Yes, they probably do more good than harm, but are they "accurate"? how do you know that?

<comment><USER6> Breathalyzers are known to be wildly inaccurate, to such an extent that in some jurisdictions DUI is just defined in terms of a breathalyzer result because they know it doesn't bear a reliable relationship to the actual BAC.

<comment><USER7> But is it accurate enough to say "you're drunk driving"? IIRC at least on this side of the pond, if you're caught you either get fined, or you're taken to the station for a more accurate breath test or a blood test.

<comment><USER6> In the US, you have the right to request a blood test, but the blood test is not required and the breathalyzer is considered sufficient evidence (again, since the offense is defined in terms of the breathalyzer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are similar issues with this in Structural and Mechanical engineering. Engineers are expected to rely more and more on software to execute and document complex calculations to verify designs, but how can you be sure those underlying calculations/theorems/models are correctly implemented? Some packages are constantly patching particular edge cases that get sent to them from their users. Many issue announcements to warn of bugs that could cause an incorrect result.

If a result from software led to a critical failure in a design, the onus is most likely still on the Engineer.

I have seen cases where software is formally reviewed by independent verification bodies, much in the same way your ISO 9001 compliance is. I can't see why this wouldn't apply here. Have an independent party, who has signed an appropriate NDA, asses and certify that your product does what it says on the tin and audit it at regular periods.

<comment> irq-1 > Have an independent party, who has signed an appropriate NDA, asses and > certify that your product does what it says on the tin and audit it at > regular periods.

This may work for safety standards or financial liability, but it doesn't work for the legal system, because "independent" parties are influenced by who pays them.

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's always a factor. Larger IVBs will tend to err on the side of their reputation in the marketplace (which may also be a factor).

One could envisage a (horrible) situation where both parties engage an IVB (a practice common in some areas of engineering) and then they both jointly engage another body to effectively vet their processes and pass that joint 50/50 cost into their fees back to you.

Or the court appoints one and you agree to share the costs (probably wouldn't fly in the US).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> finance-geek I think things will become even worse now that criminal "scouting" and even vetting is being done via learning models. So you may not even find hard filters or conditionals...instead the errors (or stereotypes?) would be embedded deep inside some neural net. I'm not even sure how one would explain that one to a jury.

<comment><USER9> Via learning models? I wonder how long it takes before it just automatically selects any black poor person.

<comment><USER10> Machine learning doesn't make a difference between correlation and causation. No doubt such systems already help reproduce the inequalities present in the data they've been trained on.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. GIGO basically: the US records it would be using would suggest poor, black, mentally-ill etc. people are most likely to be criminals. The software will pick up on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This defense attorney was creative for asking to examine the source code, but that isn't the only way to cast doubt on the accuracy of the software that DNA matched his client to the crime scene. He could simply obtain a copy of it and have an expert run tests to determine a false positive rate and also what types of scenarios cause the software to deliver false positives, then call that expert as a witness.

<comment><USER12> ...which could be much more expensive and sill not find the error you'd need to defend the client. You'd essentially be black box testing without even knowing what kind of errors you want to find. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER11> It would be more expensive probably. However, under the current legal framework, this would be the only way to question the accuracy of the software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is what happens when you have companies profiting off the misery of others.

The biggest reason for companies wanting to protect their source code in this case is that they already know their software is broken, like pretty much every other software, and they don't want to fix it. The arguments against losing money and such are total bullshit as courts have plenty of procedures for disclosing materials only to the relevant parties present, not to the public as a whole. These companies simply don't want to spend the money auditing and making sure their code runs correctly because the only consequence of that is wrongfully convicting someone they don't give a fuck about.

I'd say, let them see the code and let the highest paid expert witness win. That is, after all, the American way.

</comment><comment><USER9> The essential problem is that in such environments the process of doing a task must be open to inspection, but software exists as a loophole that circumvents making process public.

</comment><comment><USER14> This use to be a problem in Florida with drunk driving arrests. The company that makes the code for the breathalyzers wouldn't allow their code to be reviewed by defendants. There was finally a precedent set that defendants couldn't mount a viable defense without reviewing the code.

So for a while people accused of a DUI could wind up getting off, under the right circumstances, by requesting the source code then getting refused by the company.

The company finally allowed pieces of the code to be reviewed by the courts.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure I agree with that view. Independant testing by another lab should remove any doubt on the validity of a forensic, rather than forcing companies to open source their technology. And of course some form of certification/random tests that ensures that the company providing the forensic isn't a bunch of conmen.

<comment><USER16> But how can you verify that the two independent companies aren't both using the same faulty code? You could ask someone under oath, but how would _they_ know whether an employee bought or stole code from the competitor, or they both made similar errors in implementing a published algorithm, etc? As mentioned regarding Volkswagen, black box testing doesn't necessarily cut it (especially if the flaws are statistical in nature or triggered in unusual circumstances, and more so if they are deliberate).

<comment><USER17> How can you currently verify that 2 labs aren't using the same faulty forensic process when it comes to other types of evidence? Most forensic evidence isn't 100% conclusive things like DNA and fingerprint identification aren't a 1 to 1 unique match they are usually in the range of 1 out of 100-400,000 match.

This is sufficient for most cases because the likelihood of that evidence being "wrong" when you combine it with other factors like motive, eye-witness accounts and other non-physical evidence is very slim.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure but would hope that traditional forensic labs and processes are also open to scrutiny. E.g. if the defense suggests that some important mark on the body could have been introduced while it was being handled, it should be possible to show why that couldn't happen with the procedures that were followed, and that the procedures were followed.

<comment><USER17> They need to meet the specific regulatory requirements in their jurisdictions but it doesn't necessarily means that they are easy to inspect.

On the body part it's a bit more complicated it's more a CSI effect people think that all cases have tons of physical evidence and that everything is cool and flashy and high-techy in reality most cases have very little physical evidence and labs might not be used at all most bodies are inspected at by the county coroner's office which might be quite inadequate of collecting that sort of evidence we come to expect by watching crime procedurals.

<comment><USER18> > On the body part it's a bit more complicated it's more a CSI effect people > think that all cases have tons of physical evidence and that everything is > cool and flashy and high-techy

I sat on a jury a couple years back and the prosecutor's opening statement addressed this issue in the first seconds of the case. He worked hard to make a distinction between reality and television. This was a smart move, as some of the people on that jury turned out to be dumb as rocks when we went into deliberation. I'm sure this is true of most juries.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Chartulo.us - Chart anything from the command line - <AUTHOR> http://chartulo.us

<comment><USER2> You know, if you're already on the command line, gnuplot and github already provide ~similar functionality. I can do the same in ~the same number of keystrokes if things are aliased properly. Also, keeping things local is nice.

<comment><USER3> I use gnuplot to work with large datasets I extract from telco carrier logs (for client usage analysis). It's one of the few tools you can throw a 100,000 point dataset at and it graphs it in seconds. Try that with most scripting language graphing libraries, and you'll be there for a few minutes.

The problem I have with gnuplot -- and maybe I'm the limitation, not the software -- is that I find it difficult to use, and the result of some input is inconsistent. Not to appear self-deprecating, but I really do think I might be the limitation here. Regardless of that, I often waste time trying to figure out why gnuplot is behaving as it is.

I have no idea if chartulo.us is going to choke on my datasets, but I hope I'll be able to use it. I really could use a tool that is a little easier to use than gnuplot.

<comment><USER4> Tableau does nearly instant plotting of millions of data points with a nice user interface; it may be worth checking out if your job depends on visualizing massive amounts of data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ahh cool, i see the attraction. I went through a phase of using the google chart API instead of GNUplot (you just wget a URL piping your data). Coupled with a big bash history it works fairly well.

I've learned enough R to be dangerous. Ggplot2 looks gorgeous without trying. It's my current favourite torch for shining on perf and capacity issues (I dream of one day identifying a perf issues root cause with nothing more than the correlation function!)

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks nice.

If you're looking for an open alternative there is <https://github.com/mikedewar/d3py> which plays very well numpy/pandas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that's a cool project! We will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use ggplot2 all day baby. <http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/>

It has a bit of learning curve but its an extremely flexible way to quickly visualize data in a lot of different ways to get a feel for what's going on in your dataset (you should probably already have some R familiarity, the language has its idiosyncrasies).

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks cool, I've been wanting something like this for a while.

Also, your animated quickstart is annoying. Leave it as text please.

<comment><USER9> That's great. Can you give us some idea of what kinds of data you're looking to chart and what sort of ability you'd like out of a tool like this?

Noted on the animation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not that it really matters, but

      chartulous < data.csv

<http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, we already won an award! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least from my perspective, a major problem is maintaining control of your information. How does Chartulo.us store the data? Where? Can it be removed immediately post retrieval?

</comment><comment><USER12> I would much prefer generating the graph locally and then uploading to the service - it's very rare that graphs I generate need to be shared rather than embedded in a paper.

<comment><USER9> OK. Are current tools (like gnuplot and the others mentioned in this thread) good enough for you or is there some room for improvement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> another option/alternative is to use matplotlib, which is ideally integrated with ipython notebooks <http://ipython.org/>, well worth a look if anyone's interested.. their integration with numpy/pandas etc is superb.. and on top of all the benefits of plotting with matplotlib, you get ipython and all its features for free... for example <http://imgur.com/Le8px>

</comment><comment><USER14> The animation of the command line is a little annoying because it has all this cruft of the package installer messages. I got bored half way through and missed and had to replay. Just put the two command lines there and be done with it. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> This may be a dumb question but is this a startup or a project?

<comment><USER16> When (as in the current case) I don't see a way to download source code, I assume it is a startup or a project that will become a startup if it becomes sufficiently popular.

<comment><USER9> That's right. Right now we're trying to get a handle on the interest in a tool like this.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: If HN added an AMA feature, who would you want as the first guest? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Paul Graham, Alan Kay, Rich Hickey, SICP guys (Abelson, Steele?), Larry Wall, Guido...etc.

<comment><USER3> Alan Kay did an AMA here in 2016[0]

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> John Carmack.

</comment><comment><USER5> Probably either Elon Musk or MBS.

<comment><USER2> Who is mbs?

<comment><USER5> Mohammed bin Salman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hopefully if demand is strong enough, they will add an AMA feature. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Paul Graham

</comment><comment><USER7> pg, esr, rms, rtm, gvr, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: How can you know when you've handled all edge cases? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You don't.

It is sufficient to handle every one you can imagine, and every one a reasonable amount of testing can encounter.</comment>


Show HN: Repo Health Check – how are the maintainers doing? - <AUTHOR> http://repocheck.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice idea, but I'm not sure about the weighting in favour of PRs. A project that gets lots of issues but proportionally few PRs gets a pass. See material- ui for example.

Also, badge for the README.md might help spread awareness of your site.

</comment><comment><USER3> A command-line version would be nice.</comment>


I reject your rejection - <AUTHOR> http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2009/02/i-reject-your-rejection.html

<comment><USER2> Randy Pausch put it best:

"The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

If you haven't heard this phrase, you really should watch his "Last Lecture": <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo>

<comment><USER3> Many years prior to his "Last Lecture", Randy was Pausch was first famous for his Time Management lecture. I posted the video here 8 days ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=459095>

<comment><USER4> Watching it now. It seems like a breakage that the video didn't get voted higher!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can tell you for a fact that line doesn't work on women.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't work giving them what they want? Because that's what he did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two years ago on News.YC, I posted a well-received* four page article by the author here. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20032> It summarizes the essence of founding Tripod and his "I'm not smart, just hard working" attitude more than Gabrielle's blog post does.

(*Of course, back then, 40 upvotes was incredible.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I was at the College of William and Mary for three years as a graduate student. One of those years, a girl was graduating who did something similar to get in. Her application was wait-listed, so she showed up on campus with a sandwhich board saying so, and that she desperately wanted to come to WM. She did, and she did well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hmm... I wonder if pg is going to start getting emails/calls after the next YC cycle asking how to remedy the the Bs in unsuccessful applications.

Or maybe he already does...

<comment><USER9> Here's some unsolicited advice for anybody: a) build the product b) charge money for it c) get to ramen profitable. Then you can try asking for investment again. If they say yes this time, great. If not, you are in a pretty good situation for continuing development and proceeding down the boring path of taking money from people.

Go far enough down that path and you'll have to beat off investors with a stick.

[Edit to add: It is really scandalously cheap to get something on the Internet these days if you have a programmer on board. People used to cite "thousands" of dollars a lot, and thousands is a darn low number compared with "real" businesses. If someone was asking me for advice I'd say its much easier to do if you have "hundreds" but I have empirical experience that it is possible with "tens".]

<comment><USER10> I started this last week. Good domain, 5 years: $50

Reasonably powerful VPS, per month: $20

The rest is pretty much brain-sweat at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This anecdote fills me with hope for what a determined person is capable of. Lately I've been stuck thinking credentials are supremely important. I'm happy that people can challenge this and become successful!

<comment><USER12> I think the key here was that the kid called up and said he wanted to play ball. he didn't call to strong arm the admission office, he called and essentially said "what do I need to do to be a stronger applicant next year?"

That's just a winning attitude in general. It shows the guy's got a goal and is willing to do what it takes to make it happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well done. Make your own luck.</comment>


How An Engineering Toy For Girls Went From Kickstarter To Bestseller - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/07/12/how-an-engineering-toy-for-girls-went-from-kickstarter-to-bestseller?new=1

<comment><USER2> While I understand macros are frowned upon on HN, I feel somehow obliged to post this classic: [http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me7rj8c01t1qz4jt5o1_500.jp...](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me7rj8c01t1qz4jt5o1_500.jpg)</comment>


lazymake: make for the rest of us - GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/anemitz/lazymake

<comment><USER2> Jason stole my HN love here, but basically lazymake is a top-down recursive build mechanism that's (hopefully) simpler to use than writing lengthy makefiles for all the sub-components in the project.

At the heart of the system is a common makefile that defines rules for building the targets. The sub-components can then define simpler makefiles, which include just a list of directives (targets, sources, dependencies, etc.). The common makefile interprets those directives, compiles them into make targets and executes the make.

Would love to hear how everyone else deals with Makefiles for their random side-projects. Don't be shy, C++ is still cool:)

<comment><USER3> What do you do for including a subproject that already has its own Makefiles? For example, my huge build system includes a bunch of components, including the Linux kernel and a bunch of libraries, as well as my app.

<comment><USER2> I don't know if there's a 'correct' answer to this, but if you wanted to try the path of least resistance you could make your existing sub-components build with a RUNNABLE option in lazymake. You'd end up just using the existing make files that way.

Not sure if that answers your question...

I generally stay away from building external dependancies at the same time as my project. Whenever I start a new project that needs 3rd party libs I build them all statically and version them off in my repo.</comment></comment></comment>


Rel="logo", a standard for providing up-to-date logos. - <AUTHOR> http://relogo.org/

<comment><USER2> Author here. In response to why not favicon: I wanted to propose a standard for a vector format. Even 256x256 or 512x512 is too small for many applications. Also apple touch icons tend to have a specific look. I want to be able to provide a standard for original logo artwork.

In response to press page: I think that can be helpful, but if there is a standard in place, it allows for easy automation, even if it's on a press page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The author's post about it[1] sells it as a way to provide the media with a verified logo that you want them to use, however I think an easy-to-find 'press' page would have more of an impact. How automated are the authoring tools for news agencies?

[1]: <http://blog.matt.cc/post/13016415544>

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, but why not just use the favicon/touch-icon? They are getting bigger and bigger, 256x256 is soon going to be common place.

Someone should create a standard to replace `apple-touch-icon`.</comment>


The More Choices You Have, the Less Happy You Are - <AUTHOR> https://curiosity.com/topics/the-more-choices-you-have-the-less-happy-you-are-curiosity/ <comment><USER2> It's funny. I said this same thing in a different thread about the US having lower happiness levels and was down votes.</comment>


British scientists claimed to have found first evidence of alien life  - <AUTHOR> http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/british-scientists-claim-to-find-first-evidence-of-alien-life-1.1533442

<comment><USER2> "In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere, we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space" so, just because we don't KNOW of any mechanism by which large particles could be transported to the stratosphere, we conclude that the particles originated from space - even if we obviously don't KNOW of any mechanism by which life could originate from space and fall on Earth? This looks like very very weak reasoning.

<comment><USER3> The mechanism to get these particles there would both have to be very powerful and very not obvious.

The scientists don't say that these particles must be from space, it's just possible, or even very likely.

<comment><USER2> Possible, yes. Very likely... from your handle, you should know about Bayesan reasoning. Considering that we know for sure that there is life on Earth (p=1), while having free-floating life in outer space is a very remote hypothesis (0<p<<1), what of the following three are more likely using Bayesian inference?

a) the sample was contaminated, or there was some other error in the experiement

b) those life forms originated from Earth

c) those life forms originated from outer space

<comment><USER3> Setting p=1 is sort of frowned upon in the bayesian methodology. Bayesian inference has nothing to do with this discussion, because the results can only be explained by speculation, and have not been externally verified etc.

Constructing priors from the knowledge of what has not been seen before seems to me like an abuse of the methodology. You might as well say "It's impossible because it's impossible."

I do tend towards a terrestrial origin, but it's certainly a good thing to investigate further how these organisms got there, what are they doing and what sequences do they have...

<comment><USER2> Actually, to me, this seems like a perfect situation to apply Bayesian inference: we need to update the probability estimate of a hypothesis (there is life in outer space) based on new evidence (they found those particles through their experiment).

Anyway, I completely agree with your last sentence: It's certainly a good thing to investigate, I'm not saying they're charlatans. It's the "very likely" that I didn't agree with :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Paper: [http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf](http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/milton_diatom.pdf)

The journal of Cosmology is regarded as a low-quality publication by many scientists. I can't judge the assertions in the paper but the methodology seems good.

<comment><USER5> That is a well known crackpot article, already debunked by biologists and astronomers alike: [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/16/diatomsiiiiin-...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/16/diatomsiiiiin- spaaaaaaaaaaace/)

<comment><USER4> Please read your link. That addresses deficiencies in a paper about a meteorite. This paper is about samples collected from a weather balloon. And while the criticisms in your link are well-founded, I feel sure you can find equally well-founded criticisms without all the distracting ad-hominem insults.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > On its return they found organisms that were too large to have originated > from Earth.

Too large? They had two choices -- too large and too small.

To be "too large", the organism would have had to be larger than an ostrich egg yolk, the single-cell record-holder for size.

To be "too small", the cells would have to be very small indeed -- the smallest earthly cells are extremely small.

In any case, if the cell has DNA, it's from here, so first run the test, find the DNA, then don't publish this ridiculous claim.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." \-- Carl Sagan

</comment><comment><USER7> If they have protein in their samples and find amino acids of both chirality, then get exited. If they only find the chirality naturally occurring in earth based life: forgetaboutit

My bet is on the latter.

<comment><USER3> If our aminoacids came from space, you would sort of expect them to be in "incoming" organisms also.

Bioinformatics might be able to bring further light into this problem. If they do find DNA/RNA then they can tell when terrestrial life and whatever this is parted ways. If this root can be pinpointed after known mutations from fossil records, then this must be terrestrial life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Until they do more rigorous analysis of this it is not convincing.

</comment><comment><USER9> One possible mechanism would be a weather balloon.

</comment><comment><USER10> Published on the Journal of Cosmology: [http://journalofcosmology.com/](http://journalofcosmology.com/)

Wikipedia lists no less than 6 references questioning the credibility of this journal ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology#Reliabili...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Cosmology#Reliability)).

I think this discovery should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER11> Meanwhile, a more reputable report against life on Mars:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/science/space/mars- rover-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/science/space/mars-rover-comes- up-empty-in-search-for-methane.html?hp)

</comment><comment><USER3> They should do sequencing and metagenomics on this alleged alien life.

Strands, sequences, twisting, separating, joining. Abathur would be pleased...

Honk if you played Heart of The Swarm...

</comment><comment><USER12> Life is constantly surprising us, it's well known that there is bacteria on the outside of the ISS, it could well be that life is falling down rather than up.

I'd like to see a DNA sample that doesn't point to existing earth life, for me just seeing diatoms seems a little too early to reach this conclusion.

<comment><USER13> I was thinking the same thing. Of course if life is falling down to earth, it may be hard to tell apart, but there should be some hints of life optimized for earth versus optimized for elsewhere.

I find the bacteria on the ISS fascinating. Can you point me to a good article?

<comment><USER14> I don't know specifically about the ISS, but I found [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade) fascinating. Multicellular, and _" can withstand temperatures from just above absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, pressures about 6 times stronger than pressures found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than would kill a person, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 10 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce."_

It's "some of them will survive in outer space", though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what it smells like. Does it get happy or sad?

<comment><USER16> Will it think our brains taste better with mustard or ketchup?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's life, but it doesn't have DNA to test?

<comment><USER6> If the cell has DNA, that's evidence that it came from the surface, not space. There may be life out there, but it won't have DNA (an ad hoc solution to a problem unlikely to be repeated).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but still, this is good to see.

I imagine this discussion in the scientific community will go on for many years, perhaps decades. I'm still not convinced that Viking didn't find some evidence of life on Mars back in the 70s.</comment>


Wheels for the Sieve of Eratosthenes - <AUTHOR> http://vicarie.in/posts/sieve-of-eratos.html <comment><USER2> Excellent! Next up [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Atkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Atkin)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Sundaram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Sundaram)

Very easy to implement and much faster than even sieve of Atkin with a complexity of O((n log n)/12)</comment>


Purpose in Email Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://rodriguezcommaj.com/blog/Purpose-In-Email-Marketing

<comment><USER2> While I hate email marketing, I have to say that some of the specifics you mention are valid. If you give me something for looking through your email, I won't hate you. Personalization beyond just throwing in my name (ANYONE can do that...) is great, though I don't know where you're getting that info from, unless this is some product I've already given all my personal info to.</comment>


Startups that have bootstrapped their way to profitability - <AUTHOR> http://beatrixapp.com/blog/12-amazing-bootstrapped-companies.html <comment><USER3> What classifies as "bootstrapped" these days?

Because many of the companies on the list have taken VC/Angel money.

The following have taken VC/Angel money:

\- Github [1]

\- 37signals [2]

\- BigCommerce [3]

\- BrainTree [4]

[1] [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/github](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/github) [2] [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/37signals](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/37signals) [3] [https://angel.co/bigcommerce](https://angel.co/bigcommerce) [4] [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/braintree-payment- solution...](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/braintree-payment-solutions)

<comment><USER4> Bootstrapping is a self-funded startup that makes money from real paying customers, often from Day 1, or close to it.

Bootstrapping hasn't changed.. one test to being bootstrapped is: If they didn't get funding, would they run out of money and have to shut down?

It's not uncommon for a bootstrapped startup, which has baked 'making money' into the bread from the beginning, to accept funding to grow faster once they have a business model that's already making money. They already have a repeatable and scalable _business model_. Without funding, bootstrapped startups would continue to exist, and would most probably keep growing, though.

<comment><USER5> One thing I've always been curious about is how investing in a company like 37signals makes sense for an investor. I obviously don't know everything about their future plans, but it doesn't seem to me to be a company that's focused on generating an exit for an investor - they seem committed to staying at least relatively small, and a buyout doesn't seem very realistic. How would an investor expect to get a return on their investment?

<comment><USER6> More to the point, why would 37signals ever _want_ to take investor money, much less _need_ it? Surely, the founders are wealthy enough now that getting more would just be bouncing the rubble (see Jason Cohen's "Rich vs King"), so money is unlikely to motivate them. And from reading Jason Fried's extensive writings, it's very clear that they're more interested in making a company that's a truly excellent place/way to work than they are with making a company big.

The _only_ reason to take investor money is to grow the business faster than you can with cash flow alone - or to sell it in order to become wealthy and/or go on to the next big idea. The 37signals apparently don't want either of those things.

I can imagine a line of venture capitalists basically begging for them to take some investment, and them just refusing.

<comment><USER7> DHH discusse that here: [http://youtu.be/fPrvnlvnu-k?t=1h12m11s](http://youtu.be/fPrvnlvnu-k?t=1h12m11s)

He says it was just to take some money off the table, and should _encourage_ the founders to stay in the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What strikes me is the geographic diversity of this list. If you look at the classic startup with young founders and big VC investments, they're almost all in Silicon Valley or San Francisco. But this list shows that you can start a business in anywhere with a reasonable tech scene.

1 Carbonmade: Chicago

2 Github: San Francisco

3 Clicky: Portland, OR

4 WooThemes: Cape Town, SA

5 AppSumo: Austin

6 Mailchimp: Atlanta

7 37Signals: Chicago

8 Envato: Melbourne, Australia

9 Litmus: Boston

10 Bigcommerce: Austin

11 Braintree: Silicon Valley

12 Freshbooks: Toronto

<comment><USER9> Braintree is a Chicago company.

Adrian Holovaty (of Django fame) recently caused a stir here when he argued in front of a group of investors that Chicago is an ideal place for bootstrappers:

[http://www.holovaty.com/writing/chicago- bootstrapping/](http://www.holovaty.com/writing/chicago-bootstrapping/)

<comment><USER8> It's a little hard to judge some of the locations. Their careers page says "Why we love Chicago, the Bay Area and New York".

[https://www.braintreepayments.com/careers](https://www.braintreepayments.com/careers)

But they've also got this on many of their pages: "Braintree is a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek, CA". I'm not sure if this location refers to Braintree or to Wells Fargo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For anyone looking for some inspiration across the pond in the UK, we're a bootstrapped company that started with just the two of us (OpenRent - <USER2> in 2012 [1]).

We're currently letting in the thousands of properties each month, saving tenants and landlords huge amounts of money - and we're certainly still growing (both in raw properties let each month, and revenue)!

Clearly there are avenues to success for VC backed companies, as well as those going it alone, so not sure what can be drawn from this article other than a bit of inspiration...

[1] [https://www.openrent.co.uk](https://www.openrent.co.uk)

<comment><USER11> Hey, this looks amazing! Will definitely be using it in future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's missing 2 really big ones...

\- Craigslist: [http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/4/craigslist- valuation-8...](http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/4/craigslist- valuation-80-million-in-2008-revenue-worth-5-billion)

\- Plenty of Fish: [http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/digital-100-mos...](http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/digital-100-most- valuable-boot-strapped-company)

</comment><comment><USER13> Most seem to be B2B with a focus on independent workers and small companies. Is that a bias of the author, or a lesson for anyone trying to bootstrap their own company? My hunch is that its the latter: if you target small companies and independents, you're hitting a sweet spot of buyers who don't expect a sales/support team but also have dollars to fork over for good products.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's likely also far-less bureaucracy involved with subscribing for a service. Larger companies sometimes require competitive bidding before integrating a service, whereas a smaller organization may be willing to adopt a service after a much shorter review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not a very good or well researched article. They left out many popular bootstrapped companies such as Imgur, one of the most popular image sharing services on the net or the fact that Github has VC money now.

<comment><USER15> imgur is a great service, but theirs is not really the kind of example an aspiring bootstrapper can follow.

"become the defacto image platform for reddit" makes you an outlier in the bootstrapping world I think. I think it's just much more useful to look at examples where the model is reusable - make B2B software for a specific market, and charge money for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Companies aren't even bothering trying to make their blog articles relevant anymore. 'Here's 10 Ways To Drive Pageviews To Your App' might have been the better article.

</comment><comment><USER17> Adding to this list is EventMobi[1]. We help over 4000+ events & conferences in 25+ countries create cross-platform apps for their attendees.

We've grown our team to about 35 people across our Toronto (HQ), Berlin and Virginia offices and are planning to grow to about 60 people by years end.

We just hit our 4th birthday a week ago, and are now expanding to providing the complete toolset for event planners to help make planning, running, and gather data about events easier.

[1][http://www.eventmobi.com](http://www.eventmobi.com)

</comment><comment><USER18> "Pretty impressive for an application that was built in a dorm room by founder Paul Farnell, with just a used computer and a few hundred bucks (and over a single weekend at that)"

Not to take anything away from Litmus, but I highly doubt the entire Litmus app was written in 1 weekend. This is something I'd expect Techcrunch to write.

</comment><comment><USER19> Grindr was as well and I think still is bootstrapped to 5M+ users. Pretty impressive as a solomo app.

</comment><comment><USER20> Braintree was acquired by eBay, after several rounds of VC including a $35M Series A.......

</comment><comment><USER21> Not particularly noteworthy compared to the listed companies, but my brother's company Appstem has taken $0 of funding now grosses in the range of $1-3 million annually (I don't know what their books say, I only have a general idea of how much they take in per contract and pay out). They don't make a single given product like most software startups (though they do have at least one in the pipeline that I know of) - I guess they are sort of like the early version of 37 Signals in that respect.

</comment><comment><USER22> SmugMug was bootstrapped, never took any VC. Family owned and operated! [http://www.smugmug.com/](http://www.smugmug.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Gliffy is bootstrapped [http://www.zdnet.com/gliffy-bootstrapped-in-san- francisco-70...](http://www.zdnet.com/gliffy-bootstrapped-in-san- francisco-7000007976/) We're funded entirely by our customers and we're also hiring! :) [http://www.gliffy.com/index-h.php](http://www.gliffy.com/index-h.php)

</comment><comment><USER24> It's all a matter of degree: virtually all successful companies take convertible debt, venture debt and other options along the way. We call ourselves bootstrapped but the founders took no salaries, put in $100+K and took $200+K from angels to hit profitability with a team of 30 and signing up 12,000 companies.

</comment><comment><USER25> 37Signals has been interviewing profitable bootstrapped companies for years now. There are indepth articles about each one available here: [http://37signals.com/bootstrapped](http://37signals.com/bootstrapped)

</comment><comment><USER26> I currently work at bootstrapped, distributed and profitable startup.

This year we did appx $15mm in rev.

[http://www.inc.com/profile/buysellads](http://www.inc.com/profile/buysellads) (member of the Inc. 500)

</comment><comment><USER27> > Github is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that > use the Git revision control system. Say what? Think of it as the Wikipedia > for programmers.

Wow, what a tremendously poor description of Github.

<comment><USER28> What's the better description?

<comment><USER29> "Google Docs for code" is something that most people would understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> And CallTrackingMetrics :D

shameless plug obviously but in this day and age - there are a lot of self funded companies on the internet right?

you just need to start writing code and answering the phone.

</comment><comment><USER31> Squarespace is a great example: they raised a round only after many years of building a solid customer base (started by a lone designer/dev in his dorm room).

</comment><comment><USER32> Also missed Wayfair - ecommerce website bootstrapped to around $700m in revenue before they took a first round of funding.

</comment><comment><USER33> [http://www.squarespace.com](http://www.squarespace.com) was bootstrapped.

</comment><comment><USER34> We (Wingify / Visual Website Optimizer) are completely bootstrapped.

</comment><comment><USER35> Most companies are first heard, but looks great.

</comment><comment><USER36> Freshbooks is not bootstrapped.

<comment><USER37> > _FreshBooks, which now has 110 employees, is part of a rare breed of > technology companies that has achieved success without the help of venture > capitalists_

[http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-deals/2012-11-26-no-vc- freshboo...](http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-deals/2012-11-26-no-vc-freshbooks- ceo-sees-risk-capital-as-too-risky/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Its not properly researched. Github is VC backed now [1][2].

[1] - [http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises- funding-1...](http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises- funding-100m-from-andreessen-horowitz/) [2] - [http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/github-pours-energies- into-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/github-pours-energies-into- enterprise-raises-100-million-from-power-vc-andreesen-horowitz/)

<comment><USER39> True, but GitHub was bootstrapped for a long time and only raised VC after they had been wildly successful for quite some time.</comment></comment>


In lawsuit over hacking, Uber probes IP address assigned to Lyft exec - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/08/us-uber-tech-lyft-hacking-exclusive-idUSKCN0S20D420151008 <comment><USER2> So you make a mistake: You accidentally publish something that will give anyone access to all your data. Then you use your own incompetence to target one of your competitors.

It astounds me that companies that are worth billions, full of smart people and are changing the world are enabled to act so incredibly stupid.

<comment><USER3> I suppose it depends on your definition of "you" here. They likely have thousands of employees around the world. It sounds like a single employee was careless here. I guess where you see company, I see a collection of individuals and the potential errors/issues that come from being human.

<comment><USER2> Making the mistake wasn't the stupid part, we all make mistakes. Trying to use it as an opportunity against your competitor is. That's not a choice made by individuals; it's a company acting stupid officially, with intent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One interesting piece of this: it looks like Github turned over IP traffic logs for who accessed that page of Uber's Github repo to Uber.

<comment><USER5> this is the only reason here for this "news" "article".

besides this, that is pure libel, with no source or fact checking from the " journalist". and that is just mentioned in passing. the "journalist" doesn't even notice that is the only real interesting bit, and obviously does not expand or investigate on it. I'd love to hear what github has to say on this.

just flag this garbage.

<comment><USER6> There's nothing libelous in that article. The author is reporting on the matter and doesn't claim that Lyft or any specific individual is guilty of anything.

<comment><USER5> except on the title. and the lide. and the eye.

the fact that they have no fact is burried, while the sensationalist accusation is highlighted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the sequel to Uber's subpoenaing of Github for all the IP addresses that accessed the gist in question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9131921)

</comment><comment><USER8> If I post my password on the Internet and someone uses it to get into my account, is that still considered hacking? And illegal? [serious question]

I guess if I lost my wallet and someone finds it and uses my debit card, I'd consider that stealing.

<comment><USER9> The CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) prohibits unauthorized access. If you find a piece of paper with an account name and password written on it and use it for access, it is illegal.</comment></comment>


EdX: Unlocking Information Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.edx.org/professional-certificate/israelx-unlocking-information-security <comment><AUTHOR> This course can be audited for free (after you pass the 200$ certificate track bait) and I think it's a one of a kind opportunity.

I am familiar with the course's syllabus and can attest to the high quality of the lectures and practical assignments. You can of course acquire this knowledge yourself from numerous sources in the web but for those who wish a little more guidance and a more structured curriculum, Avishai and Dan are world class security experts (BlackHat publications, AlgoSec, ex-IDF).

I am not affiliated with the course or the instructors and honestly think this is a terrific resource offered here for free.</comment>


China's "human flesh search engine" vigilantes bring down bent officials - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/4026624/Chinese-internet-vigilantes-bring-down-another-official.html

<comment><USER2> For the first time in history the answer to the age old question _who watches the watchers?_ might actually turn out to be _everyone_.

Cool.

<comment><USER3> And the watchers watch the watch on the watchers...

<comment><USER4> Yes, Xuzhou (a Chinese prefecture-level city) has moved to prohibit the "human flesh search" ( [http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/xuzhou-government- outlaws-...](http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/xuzhou-government-outlaws- human-flesh-search/) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always find the word 'flesh' a bit strange. In Chinese 'Human Flesh' actually means 'manual'

<comment><USER6> sometimes direct translations from Chinese are just weird, makes me think of how my Chinese friends use 'forced labor', which sounds scary, but they just mean 'manual labor'</comment></comment>


Gruesome Jihadi Content Still Flourishes on Facebook and Google+ - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/jihadi-content-still-on-facebook-google <comment><USER2> Check out r/combatfootage.

They do have strict rules on what gets posted, but gore is not forbidden. (Some videos may be ISIS sourced, but beheadings are not included, as that is not a combat situation)

What do you think happens to a body when gernade-sized explosions from each round of an Apache gunship volley land all around it?

The public needs to see what war looks like, but not from the perspective of a BBC documentary.</comment>


Manhattan's Secret Payphone Graveyard - at-fates-hands http://gothamist.com/2013/06/17/photos_did_you_know_that_theres_a_p.php#photo-1 <comment> at-fates-hands I remember when I was just getting into Phreaking and owning a real payphone from Ma-Bell was like the holy grail for me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I immediately thought of how gross these things must be, but I have no idea.

I would hope that police call buttons or something of the sort replaces these things, but I'm guessing not. I guess also a lot of Manhattan has been gentrified such that they can rely on victims to probably have or know someone with a cellphone?

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I'm wondering if there is any significance in that they are almost all just the housing and not the actual phone part. The few shots there have some overlap in number of housings and I can see only three that have the phone parts. I wonder what lands a payphone in this lot.

</comment><comment><USER2> 2600's Valhalla

</comment><comment><USER3> "EXTERMINATE" \-- Dialek.</comment>


The argument that kills any monetisation discussion - <AUTHOR> https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2020/09/the_argument_th.html <comment><USER2> When we get a functioning micro-payment system it should be easy to just pay Facebook etc. the ~$1 a month pr. user that ads otherwise gets them.

<comment><USER3> There will never be such a system legally besides cash where you aren't shotgunning your personal information all over the place, ripe for data sharing and privacy invasion due to Anti-Money Laundering/Know-Your-Customer requirements.

Any sufficiently functional to be user friendly is a primary target for criminal activity, which ensures it won't be long until surveillance requirements of the medium increase the onboarding friction significantly.

Not saying it's a bad thing per-we, just that I'd rather only do business with people I can trust not to attract more attention to my existence unless I'm explicitly doing business for that purpose. I like straightforward business. Not the convoluted web of BS the tech industry has transformed the world into.</comment></comment>


The onion architecture: Remove all architectural dependencies on your infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/the-onion-architecture-part-1/?

<comment><USER2> I find these sort of things more useful in theory than in practice. I used to think that the architecture described in this article was a good goal. I have since seen systems built with the many layers of indirection (and pass through service layers) and they are very difficult to maintain. Simple interation bugs become hard to discover because the leaky abstractions built on top of one another interact in complex ways. They are also very difficult to optimize for scale- if you don't own your data, it's hard to invalidate your cache, as just one example.

This onion stinks. If you are obsessed with creating a service layer, stick with Fowler: <http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/serviceLayer.html></comment>


The Science of Near-Death Experiences - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/03/the-science-of-near-death-experiences/386231/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe DMT can be produced in the pineal gland? I can't read this paper from 1976 but that's what the title says [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-4159.1976....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-4159.1976.tb04456.x/full)

DMT is hallucinogenic, similar to LSD and psilocybin (magic mushrooms), and these NDEs sound quite similar to the results of medical psilocybin trials [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip- treatment](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment). I'm surprised the author didn't mention this aspect (or if they did, it was very brief).

As the author alluded to, the disappointment for me is with this false dichotomy - mystical and wonderful or scientific and mundane. Isn't the idea that a bunch of neurons can produce these incredible experiences wonderful enough? How great is it that we can produce a drug to make the last moments of our life beautiful? Aren't we lucky that sometimes we get a second chance, and our brain can rewire so dramatically we change the way we live our life? And just think how it will change our understanding of consciousness when we figure out how all of this happens! I think that's a much more fulfilling explanation than the intangible mind/soul argument. But maybe that's just me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Read the first bit, then scanned some, then read the closing, so fair warning: I may have missed some important parts. (I like The Atlantic, but I do not always have time to consume it)

I think the problem in digesting all of this that the author describes is due to the fact that this is not a science -- it's philosophy. That doesn't make it any less real, it just makes the issues and questions more difficult to grasp.

I would find it odd if people traveled half-way around the world to go to a conference on NDEs and all thought the idea was hokum, so the author may be a little unfair in his observations. If you're looking for falsifiability and reproducibility in something that so far has been intermittant and subjective, then you are using the wrong tool.

What's probably going to happen -- especially with some of the suspended animation stuff going on -- is that we'll start seeing an emerging "science of death". Assuming the suspended animation stuff keeps chugging along, the AI guys start augmenting/transferring small bits of consciousness, and we gain better and better instrumentation to look at what happens at death? We're going to start seeing a really cool field of study open up in another 20-40 years. But we ain't there yet, sadly. Right now it's just a lot of fumbling around in the dark.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anecdotally speaking, I have had 2 out of body experiences which were extremely vivid. Think about if your consciousness could be ejected outside and above your body somehow and you were looking down at your physical self. One experience was while awake meditating and the other was while sleeping. No drugs involved etc.

While these were not technically NDE's, it definitely opened up for me the possibility that an NDE is potentially possible and that more research should go into this.

<comment><USER5> About 10 years ago, I had an experience that felt like I was out of my body. It occurred during the night while asleep. I woke up to find myself floating over the bed, just below the ceiling and against the wall opposite the bed.

I remember looking around the room and I could see myself and my wife asleep. It didn't register to me at that time, that I was looking at myself from outside my body. It felt like a dream and I didn't have any desire to try to fly around or through anything, I was content to float there and observe.

About a minute or two into the experience, I noticed something crawling across my pillow, towards my head. As I focused on it, it appeared to be a spider. This made me panic. I think the panic wasn't because of the spider, but that I suddenly realized I was floating in the air and looking at myself. I was overwhelmed with fear and felt myself suddenly fall into my body, at which point I woke up immediately. There was a physical sensation of light pressure when that happened. That experience felt like it lasted only a few minutes.

I jumped out of bed, turned on the some lights and looked all over. I pulled the blankets off the bed, turning over my pillow, etc. I woke up my wife and told her there was a spider on the bed. We spent a few minutes trying to find it, but to no avail. I never had anything like that happen before or since.

I don't know what actually happened, but the experience felt very real. There wasn't any alcohol or drugs involved, but I was in the Air Force at the time, so it could have been aliens. ;-)

<comment><USER6> > _at which point I woke up immediately._

Could the whole thing have been a dream?

Even if you remember waking up before it happened, that doesn't mean that it was not a dream. You can have a dream within a dream, or have two consecutive dreams that make you feel like you dreamed within a dream.

<comment><USER5> It definitely could have been a dream. It was a strange combination of the physical sensation of floating and falling, but also observing myself in the third person that was very unusual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading this gave me a lot more respect for the god of the gaps, or, at least, the gaps themselves.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be interesting to find someone who had had an NDE _and_ taken LSD (on a separate occasion), and ask them to compare the two experiences in terms of vividness, beauty, feelings of peace or being loved, etc.

<comment><USER9> > vividness, beauty, feelings of peace or being loved, etc.

Or, you know, the complete opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> i was in an acoma at 16. I was floating around the room way above my bed in the hospital. my mom walked in looked up at me straight in my eyes. behind her was a priest with a purplecloth around his neck. I yelled out, that i was not going to die,by the time the words, not going to die got out of my mouth ,i was back in my body.mom laughed commented how she knew this would work. the priest had an odd look on his face as he looked at me and mom.it was a shooked look. this was normal crap for my family. i know know most people are not like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> i was in an acoma at 16. I was floating around the room way above my bed in the hospital. my mom walked in looked up at me straight in my eyes. behind her was a preast with a purple around his neck. I yelled out that i was not going to die,my the time not going to die ,i was back in my body.momlaughed commented how she knew this would work. the priest had an odd look on his face as he looked at me and mom.it was a shooked look. this was normal crap for my family.

</comment><comment><USER11> What we can perceive collectively tells us little about our collective consciousness. Humans are more than just meat.

<comment><USER12> Why do you think that we are more than 'thinking meat'? Seems like there is no evidence for that at all.

[Let's say experiments are done, and there is finally a comprehensive, scientifically rigorous, and materialist account of what causes an NDE. What then? Does it mean that all the stories people tell of seeing angels and meeting their deceased relatives are just fairy tales to be ignored?]

Yes, but that's even unrelated to NDE's.

<comment><USER13> Self awareness differentiates us from "thinking meat".

<comment><USER14> Why is self-awareness an indication of something other than "thinking meat"? Why can't it be a more abstract form of thought?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nothing new here, move along.

But it's a good primer if you've never read up on this stuff before.</comment>